Part 33. The January Foodie One. Sweet Like Chocolate

Bath water, "Chocolate doesn’t really have a flavour,” and Jaffa Cake

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Welcome back everyone. Right then, this is the foodie one, the once a month Post discussing our thinking, approach and experiences of creating dishes over the years.

So this one is all about chocolate.

But sorry, no recipes for choccy chip cookies or the best hot chocolate, you can find them on pages 1-326 of the internet.

So lets start. Many years ago, before we opened Vanilla Black, I was working on a dish, goats cheese, melted onion and lavender tart. All was well, apart from the lavender part. I tried using dried lavender buds and infusing them in oil, but the flavour was erratic, sometimes the buds were strongly flavoured, other times they tasted of air. I mentioned this to someone, and they put me in contact with a very helpful lady who dealt in essential oils.

Essential oils!! Why would I use essential oils. Sounded odd, but I contacted her anyway. She was very helpful and assured me that the oils were edible, they just needed diluting in a carrier, sunflower oil for example, otherwise they were too strong. I tried the oil neat, she was right, they were pretty powerful. Good breath freshener though.

“Hi, my name is Andrew,”

“Nice to meet you, have you been drinking bath water?.

Anyway, this helpful lady, let’s call her Penelope, told me that she had other oils I may would possibly be interested in, orange, lemon and lime. She even had frankincense and myrrh, I bought some to try. But only once!

Anyway, I was intrigued, so I asked if she had a chocolate flavour oil.

She replied with a response which had me pondering for many years afterwards.

“No, chocolate doesn’t really have a flavour.”

What? How could she say such a thing? Everyone loves chocolate, it’s everywhere, people love it, it tastes of everything.

She would have seen that on pages 1-326 of the internet, but there were only two pages of chocolate recipes back then.

She continued to explain, “Chocolate in its raw form doesn’t actually taste of very much, what you’re tasting is what the manufacturers have added, milk, cream, vanilla etc.”

I thanked Penelope and didn’t dwell on the chocolate conspiracy theory too much at the time.

However, we did do some interesting experiments with the essential oils. For example, and this is very interesting, if you put your tongue out, add a drop of essential oil* to the tongue, but hold your breath, you can’t taste anything. Now, bear in mind that the undiluted oil is very powerful, but you could put four potent drops on your tongue, hold your breath and taste nothing.

But, put your tongue in your mouth and start breathing…….bang! It’s like a flavour punch in the chops. And that’s because the oil is only ‘tasted’ through the nose.

You can try this yourself with a lemon or orange, don’t try it with essential oil, we’re not insured for the consequences. However, take the juice of a lemon or orange, hold your breath and put a teaspoon of juice in your mouth, still hold your breath. You’ll detect the acid, but not the flavour. Then start breathing. Then you’ll get the flavour. That’s because your tongue is detecting sweetness and acidity, but the tongue doesn’t actually detect flavour.

OK, back to chocolate. Many years later I was making something with cocoa powder, probably a cake. Suddenly the words of Penelope came back to me, “Chocolate doesn’t really have a flavour.” I took a spoon and scooped up a little cocoa powder, then tasted it.

PENELOPE! You’re right! The cocoa powder just tasted bitter. And with some sat on my tongue, and my breath paused, there was nothing, just bitterness.

There was no rush of a Milky Way, no Yorkie undertones, no Marathon (Snickers) indulgence, just powdery bitterness.

Actually, buy yourself a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, tap it, unwrap it, then take a piece, put it in your mouth and hold your breath. Then try to taste it, maybe a little bitterness. Then start breathing, now you get the orange. And that’s because the food industry uses a form of essential oils, it’s orange oil in that chocolate. If they used orange juice you would get some acidity in your mouth also.

Now this was fascinating. So, when we eat a chocolate bar, we get the the slight bitterness of the actual chocolate, in whatever form it’s been added, but everything else is milk, probably powdered, sugar, and whatever other flavour has been added.

Maybe that’s why some people don’t like very strong dark chocolate, it’s just too bitter.

So hang on, doesn’t that mean, that actually……..they don’t like chocolate?

Controversial stuff there.

If you think this is OK and you fancy dropping three quid in the pot for a coffee, then this is the button to do so.

So in food terms, the bitterness of the chocolate is being subdued by the fat in the milk and the sugar.

A bit like coffee. Make yourself a strong black coffee and take a sip, bitter eh? Now add a glug of milk and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. It’s a completely different drink.

So shat’s like the difference between a bar of Lindt 90% Cocoa and a bar of Cadburys Dairy Milk.

Stay with it because we go a little further here.

Now it’s going a bit cheffy. Let’s say you wanted to make a chocolate buttercream, you know, butter, loads of icing sugar and some cocoa powder. Or some chocolate cream, whipped cream and some cocoa powder. Now the problem here is that the fat, be it the butter or the cream, mutes the flavour of the chocolate. Remember that from a few sentences ago?

So how do we make sure we still get a strong chocolate flavour which can punch through all that fat?

Well, there was a guy who worked for us many years ago. He was tall and he was called Tom. AKA, Tall Tom. Now Tom had done some research and discovered that if you roast cocoa, it becomes stronger in flavour. Like when you roast potatoes, or onions, or carrots, the flavourer intensifies.

So, get this, you roast cocoa powder, the good stuff, not that stuff which contains sugar or loads of additives, then the natural bitterness increases. Then when you mix it with buttercream or whatever, the deep chocolate ‘flavour’ is still there.

Good eh? Well it is good if you’re fascinated about food and flavour.

Well anyway, here’s a recipe based around a Jaffa Cake. This is a process we used at Vanilla Black all the time. Take something which already exists, then twist it into a dish. In this case we looked at Jaffa Cakes and discussed why we liked them. Obviously they're sweet and chocolaty and all the rest of it.

But we realised that having the orange hidden as a little surprise, even though you knew it was there, was quite pleasing. So we created this dish which looks as though there is no orange element, until you cut it open. Surprise!!

Off we go…….

Jaffa Cake-ish

We use a thickener here called Ultratex, you can buy it online. It allows you to thicken something without heating it. Also, the garnish is a sugar crisp type thing, it’s made using isomalt, which you can also buy online. It’s magic stuff, it’s a form of sugar so you can create crispy shapes with it but it doesn't crystallise like sugar does. They even use it on Bake Off. Yea I know this looks like a lot of faff but it looks pretty impressive at the end. Tastes OK as well.

In case you haven't noticed, this recipe contains dairy and gluten.

Makes a few portions.

Ingredients

Base-

-140g Self raising flour

-1g Baking powder

-110g Unsalted butter

-60g Granulated sugar

Pinch salt

20g Double cream

Ganache-

-100g Dark chocolate, like 70% or above

-60g Unsalted butter

-60g Double cream

Orange-

-90g Orange juice (keep the zest for garnish)

-20g Icing sugar

-3g Ultratex

Chocolate cream-

-20g Good quality cocoa powder

-15g Icing sugar

-230g Double cream

Crispy nibs-

-3 tablespoons Isomalt

-1 tablespoon Cocoa nibs

Method

-For the base, add flour, baking powder, butter, sugar and salt to a bowl and rub in.

-Then add the cream and stir without bringing the mix together. It needs to stay broken and crumbly.

-Add the mix to a baking sheet lined with greaseproof and flatten until around 1cm thick. Or thereabouts.

-Bake at 160c for 20 minutes until cooked through and golden.

-Cool slightly then cut out required shapes while still warm. Cool.

-For the ganache, heat the chocolate and butter in a bowl over simmering water.

-When melted add cream and mix. Cool.

-Add orange juice, icing sugar, and Ultratex to a bowl and mix. It will thicken in about 30 seconds.

-For the chocolate cream, add the cocoa powder to a baking sheet lined with greaseproof. Level out.

-Bake at 140c for 10 minutes, stirring half way through to prevent catching. Cool.

-Whip the cream with the icing sugar until semi whipped. Add the cocoa then continue until it reaches pipe-able consistency.

-Melt the isomalt, carafel, it gets very hot. Then add cocoa nibs, fold in then quickly spread on a sheet of greasproof. Cool.

To assemble, place ganache in a piping bag and add a dot to a plate. Place biscuit on top. Then pipe a layer of ganache on the biscuit as a base then circle around to create a wall. Add the orange juice to the well you have created. Next, pipe the chocolate cream around to cover everything. Sprinkle on the zest to give a more orangey flavour. Finally add the crispy nib tulle.

Now eat it.

Thanks for reading this, we’ll be back to restaurant stories next week.

Be good.

Andrew and Donna

*Essential oils from citrus fruit are found in the skin, not the actual fruit flesh. The acidity is found in the flesh. So when you use a citrus fruit in cooking, a lemon as example, grate some of the skin into your dish also, maximise the flavour.