Chocolate 17. Round leaved plantain seeds

Day 17

Round leaved plantain, Plantago major



I started to follow an amazing account on Instagram few years ago, an American forager Alexis Nikole (her instagram account is @blackforager); her posts are informative and fun, and although they often feature plants that we do not have here, it is thrilling to get her take on plants that we do find here.  She introduced me to this plant - because the seeds can be used as a vegan egg substitute in baking.  I started to look out for the plant and realised that it is everywhere here, so started to collect the seeds for my daughter and niece - both into vegan baking.  As I dried them to preserve them, they smelt so malty and delicious, I started to have chocolate making thoughts about them and had to collect even more!  

Lightly roasted, they do have a lovely maltiness, and I was inspired by a lovely malted chocolate from Seven Hills Chocolates down in Bath, to add toasted seeds to a milk chocolate.  And then went one step further and used them to make an amazing plant-based milk-style chocolate with them (using them in the chocolate grind instead of dried milk) which made a fantastic, malty creamy chocolate.  It required a lot of gathering - but well worth it!

This chocolate used that techniques, and the cocoa nibs I used to make the chocolate came from Columbia, shipped over by wind and tide by Fairtransport.  A lovely trans-Atlantic story behind this chocolate.




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