11 September 2012
Valrhona Chocolat will be launching their latest creation, Dulcey, to press,
chefs and buyers today at a special Afternoon Tea reception at the Berkeley
Hotel in Knightsbridge.
Where there was dark, milk and white chocolate - there is now blond.
Perfect for October's Chocolate Week, Dulcey is the fourth chocolate,
opening up a new world to pastry chefs, chocolatiers and gourmets in
gastronomy and the world over.
Dulcey has a blond colour and a smooth, enveloping texture. Its lightly
sweetened biscuity flavor gives way to lush notes of shortbread with a hint
of salt.
Some eight years in development, Dulcey was a serendipitous accident:
One early spring morning, at Valrhona’s Ecole du Grand Chocolat, Frédéric
Bau put some Ivoire chocolate in a bain marie as he prepared to demonstrate
a recipe in front of pastry chefs from around the world.
He used part of the chocolate for his recipe but, in a moment of
absent-mindedness, completely forgot about the bain marie. Ten hours later
the white chocolate had become blond, a colour he had never seen. The
fragrance was extraordinary: it smelled of toasted Breton shortbread,
caramelised milk and unrefined sugar and had a fresh-out-of-the-oven scent
that was simply irresistible. He tasted it. To his pleasant surprise it was
a pure delight, a treat that instantly took him back to his childhood,
filled with happy memories. He closed his eyes and ecstatically savoured
that which had no name – he had just accidentally invented something new.
The next day, he tried to replicate his serendipitous accident. He succeeded
and was filled with glee. This blond chocolate was a revelation – its
natural colour looked like nothing he’d ever seen. He brought it to his
manager and to the company engineers. They tasted it and immediately fell in
love with it.
The Valrhona team were originally unable to reproduce this chocolate on a
large scale, but after much patience and research, they formulated a
completely new production process for this new chocolate.
Where conventional white chocolate can be challenging for chefs and amateurs
to work with, Dulcey has a multitude of applications and pairs particularly
well with ingredients with gourmet notes (caramel, coffee, hazelnut), as
well as yellow, mildly acidic fruits (mangos, bananas, apricots).
Dulcey will be available from Classic Fine Foods, who will be offering chefs
a 3kg bag, while the retail bar will be available from Harvey Nichols,
Selfridges, Fortnum and Mason and Chocolate Trading
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