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Chocolate 24. Sitka spruce

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Day 24 - the last chocolate Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis We finish with the Christmas Tree!  In our household, Christmas Eve is when we decorate our tree – not just because I am so busy with chocolate-making in December that this is the first opportunity for me to do it – but just because it feels most special on that day – the day we can relax, sit back and lay outside-life aside for a short while and dressing the tree is the joyous and creative task that helps that transition. Although a Sitka spruce would be an uncomfortable tree to dress, with its very spiky needles; its more friendly cousin Norway spruce is more commonly used!  However, it is Sitka that has this amazing flavour – we have already had the milk chocolate flavoured with it – if you can remember chocolate 8!  And today we have a plain chocolate as the base; it is made by the Chocolate Tree , from the same Guatemala beans as the milk chocolate, but in this plain version the Sitka is even brighter and as ...
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Chocolate 23. Crab apple

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Day 24 Crab apple, Malus sylvestris This is the wild ancestor to the domesticated apple, although it is very unlikely that many trees you come across when foraging crab apples will actually be pure M sylvestris .  There are thousands of versions of the domesticated apple and they interbreed with the wild, or often what we think of as crab apples are feral trees growing from seeds of discarded fruit.  So there is a great deal of variation in the crab apples you find – some are green, others yellow on ripening, others still go red.  Their size can vary as well, but on the whole they are a sour and small version of the domesticated apple.  Once you have managed the tartness though, they reveal a wonderful apple flavour and are commonly used to make jellies with other wild berries and flavours as they are plentiful and full of pectin. We have used crab apples in two ways – boiled, pulped and dried – to grind into chocolate, or boiled, pulped and sweetened, then dried to ...
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Chocolate 22: Scots pine catkins and seeds

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Day 22 Scots pine catkins and seeds Pinus sylvestris The last of our flower and fruit combos - this time the male flowers of the pine tree, and the seeds.  We use many parts of the Scots pine tree over the year, from young spring shoots, the unripe catkins, the very young green cones, and in this chocolate, the seeds!  It takes two years for the seeds to develop - the female flowers appear at the very tips of the new shoots each spring, and the seed-bearing cones from two seasons ago are two seasons growth behind them on the branch! The seeds are small given they take so long to grow and the trees go on to be so big!  They are not the pine nuts of Mediterranean fame, and come attached to a wing that is surprisingly irritating to remove!  On fine dry late summer days, the ripe cones crack open (such a pleasure to be out in the woods when this happens) and release little winged seeds that spiral away in the breeze, off to find new ground and life. The catkins are plump...
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Chocolate 21. Elderflower and elderberry

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Day 21. Elderflower and elderberry, Sambucus nigra Elderflower is one of those foraged ingredients that has gone commercial – you can buy elderflower flavoured cordials, gins, ice-creams etc in all supermarkets now.  Nevertheless, gathering the flowers and berries yourself is such a joy and the tree gives so much pleasure just being there in most hedgerows, along woodland edges, paths and roadsides.  Those gorgeous cream coloured plate-like flower heads, those deep purple drooping berries.   We wanted to include in this selection plants both spring and autumn harvests of plants where we enjoy both flowers and fruits – and this of course is a classic.  In this chocolate we have flavoured a Columbian made white chocolate, made be Casa Luker, with cocoa butter in which we have infused elder flowers – a technique we use for a limited number of flavours.  Run through the chocolate, as an inclusion, are small pieces of elder berry leather.  So floral, fruity...
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Chocolate 20. Water mint

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Day 20 Water mint, Mentha aquatica We find at least three mint species within a ten-minute walk of the house, and they appear at their own times and in their own places.  They have distinctly different flavours - this one, the water mint, has a Moroccan mint tea vibe to it - and is my favourite for making tea, as well as for making ganaches.  The other two mints - M rotundifolia and M avellana - that we find are distinct in their own ways - the first is much sweeter, and the second is hard to identify as a mint in flavour, being more delicate and a little bitter. I use the water mint a lot from early to late summer to make ganaches, and only recently tried it as a flavouring for a chocolate bar.  Mint chocolate is so available and usually very powerful spearmint flavours from oils, and I thought a more subtle mint flavour might just underwhelm people.  But of course, how wrong could I be!  The simplicity of a simple bright mint flavour with a really good milk ...
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Chocolate 19. Blaeberry

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 Day 19. Blaeberry, Vaccinium myrtilis Blaeberry, or bilberry, bushes cover the hills here, and they particularly love to grow under tall, high and open canopied pine forests.  Springy deep cushions of them often make walking around the hills hard work - but exhaustion often sees me just give up and fall into their entangled embrace.  Even better when they are covered in their gorgeous berries - recover your dignity with an imporomptu snack! I like to try and harvest as much as I can in the early autumn - they make wonderful jams, leathers, freeze well, dry well, ferment well.  A blaeberry pie in mid January is such a pick me up in those short gloomy days.  They take patience and time to pick, an exercise in mindfullness that can be really therapeutic - as long as the midges are kept at bay.  Oh and you tick-proof yourself as best you can! There is a delicious earthiness to the taste of the berries - and we paired them with a wonderful fruity and deepflavou...
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Chocolate 18. Sloe blossom and sloe berries

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Day 17. Sloe blossom and sloe berries, Prunus spinoides The second of our flowers and fruits duos, the spring and autumn combo of Sloe magic.  In spring when the sloe blossom is out, great thick snowy drifts of it catching the spring sunshine - and when you are in that thicket surrounded by the sun-activated almond scent, it is - almost - heaven.  The almost being the 2" thorns that tear at your clothes and hands!  the thorns are still there in the autumn when the berries are ripe, and just as sharp but just a little bit easier to avoid! For this chocolate we used Chocolat Madagascar s 37% white chocolate, and flavoured two batchs.  In one we ground the dried flowers from the spring, and in the second we ground in dried two types of sloe berry pulp; one made from plain boiled sloes, and the second from salted sloes - using Blackthorn sea salt of course!  Salting the sloes transforms them - banishing the astringency and deepening the plum flavours. And then we w...
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