GUAYAQUIL | ECUADOR
Our Ecuador cacao comes from Hacienda Victoria in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Decadent Hazelnut Spread
Decadent Hazelnut Spread
Our Hazelnut Spread is heaven on a spoon. It features a massive 40% of freshly roasted Nelson hazelnuts and ground and whipped into a smooth creamy dark chocolate spread.
Its amazing on toast, granola, ice cream (pretty much anything you can think of) or be a bit naughty and eat it straight from the jar.
We won Gold at the International Chocolate awards for this one.
Ingredients: Hazelnuts (40%), Organic Sugar, Clarified Butter, Organic Cocoa Powder, Organic Vanilla
Weight: 210g
Regular price $16.50
Unit price per
ARRIBA NACIONAL
The variety is Arriba Nacional a species whose natural home is in Ecuador where it is known as “Fine Flavour” cacao. Hacienda Victoria are experts in fermentation and have no less than 11 different fermentation protocols to choose from. We chose a protocol that gives the cocoa very low acidity and a mild fruitiness, focusing more on the cocoa flavour rather than fruitiness. This makes it excellent for high percentage chocolate.
our feature ingredient | Hazelnuts
Our hazelnut are grown in our home town of Nelson, we choose the tastiest and sweetest varieties to use in our Gianduia.
Hazelnut orchards usually have a collection of different varieties to offer, this is because a Hazelnut tree requires a different variety than itself to pollinate. The main variety cultivated in New Zealand is Whiteheart (mainly because it blanches well, is easy to remove the skin, and suited for cakes and biscuits), so there is usually more Whiteheart on offer than any other variety. However, we prefer one of the “pollinator” varieties (we wont reveal which one) which tends to be smaller in size and sweeter. It is harder to source the our favorite variety, but we think it really makes the difference in our chocolate, so well worth the search.
Sort
We hand sort every batch to ensure only the best beans make it into our chocolate. We discard broken, mouldy and germinated beans, plus any other foreign matter which may have made it into the sack.
Roast
We roast batches of 10-15kg in our modified coffee roaster according to a roast profile we have developed for that particular bean. We roast to tame acidity, develop chocolate flavour, evaporate moisture and puff the husk away from the bean centre to allow easier winnowing.
Crush and Clasify
To successfully winnow (remove the husk) the bean needs to be broken apart and the pieces sorted into different fractions according to size. We do this in our home built classifying machine that vibrates the pieces through a series of sieves.
Winnow
Winnowing is the process for separating the husk from the bean’s meat, which is known as Nib. We use a system we built ourselves where the broken beans are allowed to fall through an airstream going in the opposite direction, the light husk is pulled up the airstream to be removed while the heavier nib falls to the bottom.
Grind and Conch
The goal is to grind the nibs and sugar until we reach our desired texture and the cacao’s inherent acids left over from the fermentation have been released (conched), being careful not to over grind or over conch.
Age
Once the grinding/conching process is complete the chocolate is poured out into blocks, wrapped and stored for a minimum of 1 month. Ageing allows the remaining acidity in the chocolate to mellow, it is an important and unique step in our chocolate making.
Melt, Temper and Mould
The aged chocolate is re-melted and tempered. Tempering is a complicated process of heating and cooling where we force the chocolate to set in the correct crystal structure that will give the best shine, the loudest snap and longest shelf life. The tempered chocolate is deposited into each of our custom moulds.
Hand Wrap
Once taken from the moulds, each bar is sealed in a gold foil pouch, then enclosed in one of our beautiful colourful envelopes, all by hand.
