Chocolate 11. Hazelnut and wild cherry

Day 11:

Hazelnut, Corylus avellana and Wild cherry, Prunus avium


A wild take on the classic Fruit ‘n Nut milk chocolate!  Foraging for both hazels and wild cherries requires careful timing – both are delicious to squirrels and to birds, which are much better equipped to gather them than I am!  They have to be ripe for best results, so you can't pick too early and hope to ripen them 'at home' like supermarket fruit suppliers insist on doing; leave them too long though, and they are snaffled by wildlife!.  Each also require trees with low enough branches for ground based picking – and both make me wish I could tame and train a legion of squirrels to pick for me. 


Hazel has held a really important role in Scotland for a very long time; both in terms of food, but also craft and folklore.  Hazel was considered a defence against evil, and the eating of hazel nuts was said to bring wisdom.  One of the finds at the iron age crannog archaeological excavations on Loch Tay at the Scottish Crannog Centre, is an entire hazelnut - perfectly preserved in the loch water, waiting 2500 years to be found and illustrate its importance in that time. My favoured spot for picking hazels is just above the old Crannog Centre and I cannot help but think of generations before me that have grappled with the brittle branches and competed with the squirrels to harvest enough of these delicious nuts to sweeten the winter months ahead.

We have used Original Beans Femmes de Virunga 55% milk chocolate – exceptional fruit and nut requires an exceptional chocolate.  The beans for this chocolate are grown in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by farmers living in the buffer zone around the Virunga National Park.  Original Beans work with farmers, most of whom are women, to farm high quality cocoa, enabling them to develop secure livelihoods in a precarious part of the world.  This also helps support the anti-poacher work of the National Park team who are working hard to protect endangered mountain gorillas.  

So a bar full of folklore, history, rare ripe wild cherries, conservation and extraordinary chocolate.  A real treat!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chocolate 1: Meadowsweet flower in plain chocolate

Image
Day 1 Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria , with Pump Street Chocolate Solomon Islands 72% plain chocolate  I love meadowsweet for so many reasons - its beauty (those tufts of cream coloured fluff); its scent (so evocative of summer walks); its history (we have been using this plant for many, many purposes for 1000's of years); insects love it - it is always a busy place, what is there not to love!   According to Tess Darwin's 'The Scots Herbal', the name meadowsweet is derived from its use to flavour mead rather than it's contribution to sweet smelling meadows; however, it is now more popularly recognised for the sweet heady scent that it contributes to meadows and hedgerows on warm summer afternoons. The fragrance is quite hard to pin down, and can veer on the side of unpleasant to some; however, when mixed with white chocolate it seems to have an aniseedy quality that is really delicious.  It has been used as a flavouring since Bronze Age or before, but also has an...
Read more

Chocolate 24. Sitka spruce

Image
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 ...
Read more

Chocolate 8. Sitka spruce

Image
Day 8 Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis Much maligned as 'dark, monoculture, plantations marching across our hill-sides', Sitka spruce is indeed a common sight in our landscapes across the country.  Whether you love it or hate it, there is no denying that it is delicious!  In the early summer, the dormant buds on the ends of each branch start to sprout and they look so enticing; small vivid green soft brushes, at the ends of the spiky blue green needled branches of the Sitka.    You can pick them and use them to flavour syrups, vodkas, teas, dry them and add to baking - they have a wonderful bright, citreousy flavour. We first used them fresh to make a milk chocolate ganache, which is now a regular in our spring selections.  The flavour keeps well on drying, and we can flavour creams for ganaches and caramels all through the year - as well as grind into chocolate.   Our chocolate choice for this flavour was Chocolate Tree 's wonderful Guatemala 50% milk c...
Read more