Willies Cacao Hot Chocolate 250g, Pack of 6

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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. To make cocoa powder you need to remove some of the cocoa butter that makes up approx. 50% of the cacao nibs. I choose to leave in around 25% of the cocoa butter, this helps to give my luxury hot chocolate such a wonderful silky smooth texture. Retaining this much cocoa butter also means that my Luxury Hot Chocolate is 100% vegan, adding milk powder isn’t necessary. 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.

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. 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.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. Then the chocolate goes through a depositor, which deposits exactly the right amount of chocolate into each mould. The same machine does everything, the balls, the bars and the cylinders. 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. 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!

Made exclusively from Carenero Superior cocoa from Venezuela. A cocoa producing a full bodied, chocolaty flavour profile with notes of nuts and spice. The cocoa beans are sourced from Barlovento which means ‘windward’ and refers to a coastal stretch of Venezuela east of Caracas where the humid winds blow continuously onto the land. Carenero refers to the port it was once shipped from and Superior to the quality of the beans. 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.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. 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. 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 only ingredients in my dark chocolate are cacao, raw cane sugar and little natural cacao butter.