History has named it food of the gods while fiction has imagined it to be a sinful delight. There’s something about the velvety brown that saw Cadbury (now part of Mondelez International) set up a demonstration cocoa farm at Chundale in Wayanad in 1965. Over the last 50 years, cocoa - grown as an intercrop with arecanut, rubber, coconut, coffee and oil palm in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh - has come to be procured by several international takers like Cadbury and Mars. There is a growing number of people who stay away from the compound form because of its vegetable fat content and swear by couverture chocolate which contains a higher per cent of cocoa butter (minimum 32-29 per cent). And, they are up-to-date with global trends.
There’s a watch on good fats and good carbs in their chocolates, experimentation involves playing around with herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and flowers and there’s a preference for the fine variety. People are slowly waking up to the joys a box of chocolate offers and these are interesting times to be working with the brown goodness, echo chocolatiers and chocolate makers.
Cocoacraft Chocolate Factory
Bean-to-bar is the motto at this enterprise helmed by a former commander in the Navy. Here, ‘C’ stands for couverture chocolate that is trans-fat free. With beans sourced from the state and Tamil Nadu, Cdr C T Kuruvilla and his daughter, Sanjana, watch over sourcing of the bean till it takes form as cocoa powder, cocoa butter and confectionery at their factory. And, his is a labour of love. Having retired after 20 years of commissioned service, Cdr Kuruvilla chanced upon a recipe for chocolate, based on butter, shared by a Hungarian national he met during his time at the Staff College at Wellington.
Hooked to the potential of chocolate and having lived through the cocoa boom of the ‘70s, he set about devising machines to process the bean and did his reading on the Internet. His brand, set up in 2008, sells its cocoa products across Kerala and its one-kg couverture chocolate blocks (available in bitter, bitter-sweet, dark and milk variants) are on the shelves at outlets of Nature’s Basket, Gourmet and Foodhall. And the city can get its share of couverture quotient at their cafe at Kochi, where everything from waffles to chocolate drinks come served with the real deal. With French premium chocolate manufacturer Valrhona as his benchmark and his eye on the organic trend, Kuruvilla is going in for an organic certification for his dark chocolate.
Petit Four
If you’re a Mollywood fan, you are bound to have heard of Nayantara returning to the scene after long. And starring in the lead with Mammootty in Siddique’s next titled ‘Bhaskar the Rascal’. So, what links cake decorator and chocolatier Kavitha Santosh to the film’s sets? Chocolates is the answer. Santosh has been working behind the scenes, putting together sweet treats for Nayantara who plays a chocolatier in the film. “I don’t know how this deal came through.
But the production controller reached out to my neighbours and I was on board,” says Santosh, who also works with event planner, The Dancing Tortoise. And chance has played an important role in Santosh’s journey with chocolate. A few years earlier, she missed a chocolate making class her friend had enrolled her in but decided to learn on her own. Chocolate from Parragon Books came to her aid and so did California-based chocolatier Christopher Michael. Taking inspiration from Michael - who has crafted a sizzling bacon chocolate bar and infuses chili peppers, Thai tea, kaffir lime, sea salt and balsamic vinegar in his fare - Santosh put out her experimental range for Valentine’s Day. Out went rosemary, thyme, ginger and cinnamon infused chocolates, apart from chai-infused and paan-flavoured ones. “People are open to something more than the cliched sweets box,” says Santosh, who gets her couverture supply from dealers in Bengaluru and Kolkata.
Incredible Art
Rumana Jaseel and Shazneen Afshar, of the Kochi-based artisan cake boutique, believe this is the right time to talk about couverture chocolate. And this maybe why they are in the middle of a three-day session on introducing the purest form of chocolate, understanding its working temperatures, composition, processes (tempering), etc. “Most people know and use compound because it is tailored for easy use. Couverture, on the other hand, is expensive and works well in temperate climates. In tropical conditions, it melts easily and requires an ambient temperature of at least 22 degree Celsius to retain its shape,” Jaseel explains.
The duo uses only couverture from the houses of Barry Callebaut, Cacao Barry and Belcolade for the handcrafted mendiants, knackerli, bonbons, pralines and truffles that go out as favours for events. A dietician by profession, Jaseel vouches for the antioxidant properties of dark chocolate but notes that there are few takers for the above 70 per cent variants. For now, Afshar and she are in the business of educating customers to take the couverture route. “On an average, couverture is at least three times more expensive than compound. So we take the effort to make our customers aware of what they are paying for. We give some tasting sessions as well. Travelling has exposed people to the real deal but there needs to be a lot more awareness about the hydrogenated fat and sugar content in compound,” Jaseel adds.
Cacobean Chocolatier
Part of India Cocoa, the country’s largest producer of cocoa beans, the brand was set up in the city six years ago and deals in premium gourmet chocolates. Being in a family that owns cocoa plantations (for over three decades) across South India and chocolate processing facilities powered by Swiss technology, the business prides itself on knowing everything from “the bean to a fine chocolate”.
And is involved in collecting, fermenting and drying beans to be sold to the country’s most popular chocolate manufacturer. “Kerala is the largest producer of cocoa and has a growing awareness of brands. With brands like Barry Callebaut and Mars setting up in the country, the market will only grow further with gifting chocolates coming to be a trend,” says Sarin Patrick. director of the firm. He is particular about where the brand’s couverture chocolates go, given its delicate nature and the handling logistics. Cacobean’s finished products include truffles, a caramel collection (in flavours of orange, coconut, coffee, banana and lychee) and pralines.
A’s Chocolate Factory
Twenty-seven-year-old Kollam native Ann Benjamin is a convert to couverture chocolate, after having started out with compound. Her first tryst with cocoa was at a class hosted by Bengaluru-based confectioner Marina Charles at Thiruvananthapuram, a couple of years ago. Experiments continued with the Morde compound and she soon delivered her first order of six kgs to a local bakery. But it was not until she relocated to Kochi that she heard of couverture.
A friend explained the basics and Benjamin did her share of reading but found that her chocolate did not set owing to the temperatures here. She found a good teacher in Pooja Rajwani, a chef with Barry Callebaut, and picked up lessons in fillings and flavours as well. Her business, which is just over a year old, crafts signature chocolates with fillings of mango-basil with sesame seeds, honey-cinnamon ganache and caramel wine cream. There are truffles with star anise and pralines with coconut and vanilla bean, too, and a popular customer is director Fazil.
Now holding classes, Benjamin ensures her students know the difference between couverture and compound and tells customers the fine qualities of their purchase. “Since every second person makes confectionery now, many come to classes with set ideas. They think melting chocolate is what tempering is. You have to first get them to let go of their notions,” she says. Though she often finds people foregoing a good chocolate experience given the pricing of couverture, Benjamin is positive about the cocoa culture finding more takers.