The preparation of dark chocolate is a culinary art form. Hugo Arnold dips in.
Sisters Emily Sandford and Sarah Hehir, joint owners of Cocoa Bean chocolates, are a double act. They talk over each other, finish each other's sentences, stop midway and look at each other, laughing. At first I thought they were twins, but later discover they are separated by seven years. So, how did they come to be fashioning dark chocolate into fruit and nut clusters, or tasting boxes of the most sublimely varied cocoa, in an industrial estate in Limerick?
They launch into an impassioned plea to join the revolution. Dark chocolate, with its complex flavours and textures, is where it's at, they say.
The vast majority of chocolate sold in Ireland is milk chocolate, which to a purist means it has been diluted with "other ingredients". These include milk, vegetable oil, sugar and often a lot of other, less palatable ingredients. You can get good-quality milk chocolate, but it is not that common. For Emily and Sarah, the real excitement is to be found in pure dark chocolate, and that is what I visited them to learn about.
We are standing over a bowl of dark chocolate buttons from their favoured French company, Michel Cluizel. Slowly the molten mass delivers sweet and spicy aromas. We are making truffles, expensive to buy and a breeze to make at home, Emily tells me, smiling widely. And she is right. As we scoop, roll and dip our way to creating a bowl of the most divine chocolates, dipped in cocoa, coconut and pistachio, I can see what she is getting at, and taste it, too. Rather too much of it, to be honest.
Chocolate scares cooks, and I am no exception. Exact temperatures, special kit, even the word tempering (making melted chocolate go shiny instead of dull as it solidifies), make me feel anxious. So here I am, in the hands of experts.
Sarah and Emily are good examples of budding young entrepreneurs. In 2002 they were thrilled to make €30 at Limerick market on a Saturday morning. By the end of 2003 they moved into their current premises and are now regularly topping the €500 mark for a morning's work. This, though, is a seven-days-a-week business, and the sisters clearly work hard. New products are developed all the time, packaging is constantly evolving.
Hand-made truffles, which are so fresh they need to be eaten within days, are dispatched once a week. Chocolate coasters, thin discs of dark, intense chocolate with a scattering of anything from cardamom to gold leaf in the middle, came about when some chocolate accidentally spilt on a table. They have proved to be one of the company's best sellers. The tasting box, too, has proved to be a star performer.
When you get into single-estate chocolate, created using cocoa beans from one particular area, things really get interesting, Sarah says: "These really are chocolate nirvana, where all the subtleties and nuances possible are shown up in stark relief." Spices certainly come to mind, but also nuts, minerals, fruit and even warm, Christmas-cake tastes. Not quite the sort of experience you are going to get from your average sweet counter.
info@cocoabeanchocolates.com. Prices start at around €1 for a chocolate lollipop