Coffee Chocolate...over my dead body!

Coffee + Chocolate = dream match

Coffee – we love it, in the UK, 98 million cups of coffee are drunk every day. Chocolate is massively popular too, with over half the UK buying chocolate at least once a week. They are so often consumed together – it’s a dream match – Espresso with dark chocolate or a Flat White with something more milky. 

 

 

But coffee chocolates usually don't work

So what happens when you bring them together? The answer is you usually end up often with a sickly-sweet centre seemingly fighting with a bitter coffee – often the last un-loved flavour remaining, now banished from Cadbury Roses and Milk Tray, and only occasionally resurfacing in Quality Street. This is why I’d said to Steve to avoid it like the plague!

 

 

Coffee is a flavour that we regularly get asked about, especially by coffee-aficionados, but we just hadn’t figured out a way to do it R&A-style – with amazing taste and special provenance.

 

Step forward family-owned and run Bella Barista. I bought my home machines off them and Steve and I treated ourselves to a machine for Chocolate HQ, post our appearance on Dragons’ Den. Oh, and we did a little April Fool with them for an in-home Chocolate maker.

 

When I took my coffee machine in for a service in February, we got talking about an opportunity to do something together.

 

 

We love a tasting!

So in March, we headed up Bella Barista for a full-on Coffee tasting or ‘cupping’ as we learnt it is called in the trade and repaid the favour by tasting with our chocolates

 

 

The highlight was tasting the amazing Salt Marsh Coffee , made by Henrique Sloper (previously president  of BSCA (Brazil Specialty Coffee Association) who inherited Fazenda Camocim from from his grandfather Olivar Araújo. Olivar was a pioneer in the production of Organic coffee. 

Saltmarsh is coffee how it used to be

Coffee beans used to be transported by sea to Europe in wooden sail boats. The journey could take months, during which the humidity of the ocean and the sea winds would gradually change the character of the beans, helping them to develop more complex subtle flavours and greatly reducing their acidity. Modern transportation reduced the length of this journey and better protected the beans from being exposed to weather and salt air, however this resulted in the coffee lacking the depth and character of the coffee beans previously transported by sail. This is the inspiration for Saltmarsh coffee which is stored in a secret location next to a Saltmarsh in Norfolk.

If you're interested in buying the coffee - it is occasionally available in small batches from Bella Barista's site here. 

 

So we agreed to make a chocolate with this rare and beautifully delicate Saltmarsh Coffee -  Bella Barista did a special ‘light roast’ of the beans for us for Steve to experiment with.

 

 

The Saltmarsh was wonderfully smooth, with gentle notes of popcorn, red apple and toffee – Steve was relishing infusing it into our chocolates.

 

We then travelled to Norfolk to the actual (secret) boathouse where the coffee beans were hung to taste the prototypes and agree the final recipe.

 

 

Steve then took this agreed recipe into our scale-up kitchen and made by-hand over 100 pouches...

 

And Saltmarsh Café Crème Chocolates were born! They are different to normal coffee chocolates – beautifully balanced without the usual sickly sweetness (from the chocolate) or the harshness from a bitter coffee. 

 

 

They will be available to order from midday Friday 16^th May from our Top Sellers range.

 

Micro-batches are where we experiment with new experiences – we usually lose money on them, but it’s a great way of testing new flavours with our consumers to see if they would like us to make a bigger batch!

 

We’re really excited, this is our first Micro-Batch with a coffee roaster – it’s super-gentle and creamy chocolate, just like the coffee – and we LOVE it.

 

Update: As expected, we sold out in less than 24 hours - although Steve had managed to make a few more than usual, they still went very quickly! Now the real test - seeing what our customers think - this will lead us to decide whether to make a bigger batch or not! Join our mailing list to be informed first about new batches...