Willies Cacao Hot Chocolate 250g, Pack of 6

Product Information

This pressing process leaves a cake that then has to be milled into a powder and mixed with raw cane sugar to make my Medellin Luxury Hot Chocolate.

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. 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. The only ingredients in my dark chocolate are cacao, raw cane sugar and little natural cacao butter. 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 milk, dairy or plant-based, and decide your own favourite. 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.

How we tested

Making my luxury hot chocolate is a very lengthy process. Yet getting to enjoy such full-bodied, silky, luxurious hot chocolate and share it with fellow chocolate lovers like you, makes the extra effort worth every single second! 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.

Approximately 50% of each cacao nib is cocoa butter.To make cocoa powder you need to remove some of this butter and I do this on a pair of antique cocoa butter presses. I make the chocolate exactly as I do for the bars then physically press the butter out of the conched 100% cacao. This leaves a cake that has to be milled into a powder and mixed with raw cane sugar to make Hot Chocolate. My approach is very different. I conche for three or more weeks – not hours or days – at low temperatures. This allows the acidity to be removed without damaging the precious flavour notes of our fine cacaos. No need for lecithin or vanilla. We conche until two people agree the taste is perfect. When the beans are fresh it will take longer. Taste not time is what matters. As the creator of your luxury hot chocolate, It’s my duty to equip you with the knowledge you need to make the absolute most of your experience drinking it… once it’s out of the factory, it’s over to you…Actually one of the best ways of telling if a chocolate is good is by looking at the ingredient list. If you can see vanilla, it is there to cover up the fact that the beans are not good. It creates an overall “house” taste but in my chocolate it would cover up all the precious flavour notes. If you see lecithin it is because it has been made in an industrial continuous production process. My 100% cylinders are my personal choice, I use them to make my Aztec hot chocolate. They’re also naturally vegan. 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.

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.

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. Next we remove the shell leaving the cacao nibs, the edible part of the bean. If too much shell is left in the chocolate it will affect its flavour and fluidity. Willies mission on the show was described as wanting to create the best chocolate in the world, direct from the cocoa bean, a brave move at a time when no one else in the UK was doing so. Willie's passion and sheer determination certainly resulted in putting his chocolate on a par with some of the best chocolate in the world. How it all began 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. 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.

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 beautifully flavoured single origin, dark chocolate bar from Willies chocolate with crystallised ginger and organic lime essence. Some are great for pairing with fruits, others are just so alive and full of dancing flavours that they’re at their best standing alone, others are wonderfully round and soft and work in all kinds of ways with different aspects, singing to new tunes when matched with new and interesting flavours that haven’t been tried before.Again this is very different to the industrial process that is called Dutching in which the cacao is washed in an alkaline solution to neutralise their acidity. 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.