Willies Cacao Hot Chocolate 250g, Pack of 6

Product Information

Created from fine flavour cocoas by WIllies chocolate from the island of Java in Indonesia providing a dark chocolate with soft caramel and mouthwatering berry notes. Milk or Water? It’s entirely up to you, I use water, so did the Aztecs. There’s already enough smooth and creamy cocoa butter to make a really wonderful hot chocolate but you can try it with a plant-based dairy alternative, and decide your own favourite. This single origin, dark chocolate bar by Willies chocolate is made from Trinitario cocoa beans from Venezuela. The beans from this region are full of flavour with complex coffee and nut notes. I owe debts to a great many chocolate romantics who have helped me accumulate my beautiful old chocolate making machines. Now in fact I have many more machines than I actually use, but they will all have their day.

Froth It! The Aztecs knew it, and you do too… with Aztec-style hot chocolate when you use just water and perhaps a little sugar, you’ll get a lighter froth than with milk, frothing is wonderful and necessary. Rarely do we see a single origin white chocolate bar so this is a real treat. Created by Willies Cacao from fine flavour Trinitario cocoa from Venezuela. This bar offers a clean, milky tasting experience without excessive sugars. High quality beans don’t need heavy roasting, so I lightly roast ours in small batches for 20-30 minutes. Our 60 kilo ball roasting machine is almosta hundred years old and was produced by Victor Gruber from Bilbao, and it has recently been joined by a 250kg 1940’s Bath Sirocco one.A piece of spare pipe on my farm proved my accidental hero. When I couldn’t decide what to use as a mould for my earliest batches of 100% cacao, I noticed a length of the pipe on the floor of my workshop. I chopped up all I had into moulds and it worked beautifully, I kept the shape when I started making it in Devon. It’s great for grating and keeps better because it has a lot less surface area than a flat bar. A fruit and nut chocolate bar with credibility by Willies chocolate. Created from single origin, Criollo cocoa from Peru, combined with plump rasins and whole, crisp hazelnuts.

I have travelled the world sourcing the finest single estate cacao beans that exist on this planet. Few things bring me more joy than discovering great cacao beans with their own unique and colourful characteristics and flavour profiles. Once I’ve found them, I then get to decide what their most delicious purpose will be! Tempering also prevents bloom, which is when the butter and solids separate and the chocolate looks white and tastes grainy. This won’t hurt you in any way, but it is not nice to eat. While the beginning of this process is all the better for the old methods, when it comes totempering and depositing, modern machines are invaluable as they give you complete control and consistency.Roasting and conching are more of an art – you need a feel for them – this is more of a science. Willie's Cacao will be known to many people from the Channel 4 television series 'Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory' which aired in the UK in 2008. This four part TV series followed Willie Harcourt-Cooze, married father of three, on his journey from dream to commercial reality. Filmed in a fly-on-the-wall style by Channel 4, the series documented Willies story from his love of Venezuela, which eventually led to him purchasing a 1000 acre Cacao farm, setting up his own Devon chocolate factory which culminated in him seeing his product on the shelves of a well known supermarket. A ball roaster is generally preferred by premium chocolate makers to a drum roaster or continuous roaster.The beans are roasted in small batchescirculating with the hot air inside the ball. It is thought that the ball shape gives it more even roast and the beans don’t get so broken which is important because small bits burn.

The verdict: Vegan hot chocolates

Again – Froth It! The Aztecs knew it, and you do too… with Aztec-style hot chocolate when you use just water and perhaps a little sugar, you’ll get a lighter froth than with milk, frothing is wonderful and necessary. This smooth dark chocolate bar is created from fine flavour, Trinitario cocoa beans grown on the Hacienda Las Trincheras in Venezuela. A wonderfully rich and balanced flavour profile with notes of dried fruit and nuts.

Created from Baracoan beans (Trinitario) from Cuba that offer notes of honey to this perfectly balanced fruit and chocolate medley. I am a firm believer that the finest ingredients make the finest flavours. So I only use natural ingredients, and I make as many things as possible from scratch.Roasting enhances the flavour of the beans.After fermentation and drying, this is the next most important stage in developing their unique flavour and aroma. The final stage is cooling. Here are the lights changing in my spiral cooling tunnel. The heat is gradually removed so the chocolate shrinks and comes out of its mould easily. Finally, it is wrapped. Rather than buy in nut paste for our pralines we buy the whole nuts and roast them and grind the ourselves. To make the caramel for our Salted Caramel Pearls we caramelise the sugar, clarify the butter and add Devon double cream.