Day 1: Blackthorn sea salt caramel filled chocolates


We have been making this chocolate for many many years now - I think the first was in 2008 when we developed the recipe for wedding chocolates for the daughter of a dear friend.  The groom had grown up in France and asked if I could include a sea salted caramel as he remembered them from his youth.  At that point, unsophisticated person that I was, I had never heard of a sea salt caramel - as indeed hadn't 99% of the UK population!  Hard to imagine, I know, from these sea salt caramel saturated times.  So I set about developing recipes and sending them to the groom for feedback - given that I did not know how soft or hard the caramel was to be, how sweet/not sweet, how salty it should be - I really needed his guidance.  On about the fourth iteration, he said 'Yes! this is it, takes me right back to childhood', and from then on, we understood his affection for them - they were indeed delicious.  

Initially, I thought making them was just a bespoke thing for their wedding, but early the following year, I realised that it would be useful to have a longer shelf-life filled chocolate, and we started to produce them boxed up for sale.  They have been popular ever since, and it has been a source of amusement to see the sea salted caramel swell of enthusiasm grow steadily in parallel in the UK - and, no, I don't lay claim to introducing it to the UK - although many of my customers have often suggested it.

We entered the filled chocolates into the 2014 Great taste Awards and were delighted to receive 2 stars.  At the time we were only using a Fairtrade 70% couveture from Callebaut which given the limited range of chocolate that was available at the time, was an adequate enough couveture.  We have since switched to Chocolat Madagascar's 70% Madagascar couveture, and it does deliver a significantly better experience in flavour.

The sea salt that we use has also shifted over time.  Initially I think it was Cornish Sea Salt; then the Hebridean Sea Salt company started and we switched to theirs to use a Scottish provenance salt.  When that business ceased to trade, we moved back to Cornish, and then when the Blackthorn Sea Salt company started up in Ayr, south west Scotland, we switched to their salt and have never looked back.  The salt is perfect for the job, and I just love the process they use to produce it - check out their website to learn about the amazing wall of blackthorn twigs that they use to trickle the sea water over to start the evaporation process - using the wind to help power the drying out.

This first chocolate in the Advent calendar was incredibly difficult to make - the chocolate mould we use for the squares is really too shallow to create a filled chocolate in - and while making them, we regularly wondered whether we should rethink the whole thing.  But when it worked - and we had enough room above the layer of caramel to seal the chocolate properly - it has that amazing After Eight thinness with the soft flavoured filling in the middle.  We found it really satisfying and hope you do too.





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