In April, our head chocolatier Al Garnsworthy was asked by French Chocolate Makers, Valrhona to attend the September Specilaity Fine Food Show and demonstrate how to make one of his favourite chocolate recipes.
To be asked by one of the largest luxury chocolate makers to showcase Al's skill at a trade show of quite some magnitude was a huge compliment to Al, and shows how well regarded his fresh chocolates are in the industry.
The chocolate Al showcased was one of our favourite chocolates, a moulded blonde chocolate filled with a delicious blonde chocolate sea salt caramel. This innovative chocolate uses a new type of chocolate from Valrhona called Dulcey. Dulcey is in essence a white chocolate, that has caramelised butter added to the chocolate in the manufacturing process. This imparts an incredible caramel biscuit flavour on the chocolate, and gives the chocolate it's unique blonde appearance.
For the demonstration, Al had to make the chocolate from start to finish in forty five minutes. This included tempering and moulding the shells, and then making the sea salt caramel, filling the shells and capping them off. The final results were delicious and enjoyed by all of the audience and spectators.
After the demonstration, Al spoke to make of the audience who asked questions about making artisan chocolates and different techniques. There was also much interest in our chocolate courses and workshops with many people wanting Al to teach them the art of chocolate,
It was a great pleasure to be invited to do a chocolate demonstration at such a prestigious show, and we thoroughly enjoyed the weekend.
