Cooking with Chocolate

My approach to cooking is the same as my approach to making chocolate. It is all about flavour. Flavour coming from the best ingredients, perfect flavour combinations and balance.

Top chefs like Marco Pierre-White and Ottolenghi use our couverture chocolates, quite simply because they bring such incredible depth and beautiful pure flavour notes. Purity and naturalness is key. If I wanted soya lecithin or vanilla in my recipes I would put them in, but I don’t want them coming in by the back door, hidden in the chocolate!

There are many chocolate disasters just waiting to happen in the kitchen. Hopefully these tips will help you avoid them and make all your chocolate cooking triumphant!

The best couverture chocolates will be made from single estate beans with particular flavour profiles. Choose the one that best suits your recipe. Find out more about our cacao flavour profiles here.

Melted chocolate hates coming into contact with cold ingredients. If you are making a mousse for example, take the eggs and cream out of the fridge an hour or so before and use them when the chill has gone off them. 

This was one of the original three amigos. This, Rio Caribe and Chulucanas were my first three cacaos.

These fine Trinitario beans come 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.

I use it to make one of my best loved 100% cacao cylinders with notes of nut and spice. It is full bodied with a strong chocolaty taste and so perfect for cooking as it really carries its flavour.

Don’t try folding cream or beaten egg whites into melted chocolate that you have just taken off the heat. Cool it for a few minutes first.

It will end up everywhere except in the pan. Just stir in small lumps.