Chocolate, Christmas and Cheese

If rolling in cash and taking baths in champagne in a mansion in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is your lifetime goal, may I suggest a better alternative: earning an OBE for “services to chocolate”.

Why did I suddenly draw light to this matter? All after an inspiring evening of chocolate with Chantal Coady OBE, the creative director and founder of Rococo Chocolates, a proudly British, London based chocolate company.

The story began with a vivid excerpt of her childhood dreams: running around valleys of chocolate, collecting chocolates and sweets in her skirt, then hiding. She would then wake up and be disappointed by the absence

It started off with a perfectly unexciting Wednesday in college, struggling to keep my eyes open in front of a handful of lecture recordings. After an additional few hours of messy doodling (which was supposed to be an engineering drawing of a pressure vessel), I wrapped up, marched past the glittering Harrods, a few shiny cars and an array of luxury brands on Sloane Street, and around the corner to the quiet Motcombe Street where the doors of Rococo Chocolates stood.

By then it was already six o’clock. The skies had darkened and the navy blue doors blended in with the cold December blackness. Yet the display window shone like a warm, bright star: boxes of chocolates laid across the window sill in their signature white-and-blue patterned coat, tied around by bright orange ribbons. A small Christmas tree stood dressed in red and gold baubles amongst a string of glittering fairy lights.

I pushed open the door gently and entered the shop. It felt like stepping back in time – from the street of modern, soaring house prices into an old fashioned, country cottage of a chocolate shop, reminiscent of those I’ve read in those wonderful stories by Roald Dahl. Wooden cupboards lined up against the pastel blue coloured walls, balancing bars upon bars of chocolate wrapped in colourful paper. Glass shelves were stocked full of chocolate buttons, jelly babies, dainty pieces of ganache which you can purchase by the piece.

A few wooden tables stood by the window, with glasses of champagne, plates of chocolate and platters of mellow, earthy chocolate tapenade (yes, CHOCOLATE tapenade) spread on crackers, ready to kick off the night.

It took 2 rounds of champagne for everyone to arrive. Fashionably late, as bloggers call it. We were introduced to the team of young, friendly team behind the daily operations of the brand, and of course, the mastermind: Chantal. She stood at the end of the table, smiling in her clean apron with Rococo’s signature pattern (taken from an antique French chocolate mould catalogue), her blonde hair cut short, ready to share her story of Rococo Chocolates.

The story began with a vivid excerpt of her childhood dreams: running around valleys of chocolate (think Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory), collecting chocolates and sweets in her skirt, then hiding them under her pillow. She would then wake up, reach under her pillow and be disappointed by the absence.

The story quickly jumped to her days as a squatting Fine Arts student in the late 70’s, when she was offered a Saturday job selling Mars bars at Harrods (and yes, Mars bars were a luxury back in the day). She later graduated to the luxury chocolates section, wrapping up boxes of creamy Leonidas to the wealthy, and on one occasion, Sir Michael Caine.

After being let go from Harrods for coming to work with emerald-coloured hair and spending a few months of boredom at an office job, she set her mind to create her own magical paradise of chocolate. Armed with her strong passion, business skills from Margaret Thatcher’s Youth Training Scheme, and a hefty bank loan (with the family house as the collateral), she opened the doors of her first shop on King’s Road in 1983. Her shop, complete with a sugar chandelier, fitted into the then rebellious vibe of Kings Road, fulfilling the imagination of chocolate lovers who had come on pilgrimages to escape the stale, suffocating, stuffy, department stores.

By bringing the chocolate to the right working temperature, the cocoa butter forms a stable crystalline structure in the chocolate, resulting in hardness and gloss in the final product

The first ten years wasn’t easy. They had their ups and downs, picked themselves up and continued on their journey. Their first products were chocolates produced by small Belgian and French companies, until when she came across Valrhona (a French specialist chocolate manufacturer) which influenced her to start producing her own chocolates in 1990. She got more and more involved in the chocolate industry, pushing to remove hydrogenated vegetable fats, artificial vanilla and excess sugar, and also founded the Chocolate Society in 1991, determined to inject real chocolate into the market.

A major event in her 25 years in industry was the bond between Rococo and Grenada Chocolate Company. Recognising how special their chocolate were, Rococo began importing small quantities to sell in their shops in London. When two hurricanes hit the island of Grenada in 2004 and 2005, destroying the majority of cocoa and nutmeg, Rococo reached out to GCC, providing support, funding new solar driers and building new bridges. In 2007, they finally purchasing a small, nine-acre cocoa farm, naming it Grococo, where it harvested fine flavoured, organic cocoa beans.

Our minds were snapped back to the present with the end of the story. But that was just the start of something exciting – a chocolate masterclass!

We were led downstairs to the small workshop, filling in the space around the shiny, marble tabletop. Aprons (in that gorgeous print of course) and gloves were distributed, and the truffle-making half of the session began. Chantal quickly rolled out the squares of chocolate ganache into spheres, dolloped a spoonful of warm molten chocolate in the palm of her hand, covering the ganache with the chocolate and placed the ball into a tray of cocoa powder. The molten chocolate cooled to formed a crisp layer around the cold ganache. We were urged to follow, rolling our individual trays of truffles.

The second part was a more advanced technique – tempering. By bringing the chocolate to the right working temperature, the cocoa butter forms a stable crystalline structure in the chocolate, resulting in hardness and gloss in the final product. Chantal took a large ladleful of glossy, molten chocolate, pouring it on the cold marble table. The chocolate formed a smooth, flowing ribbon from the ladle to the marble, spreading to form a giant, perfectly circular chocolate button. She took her shiny steel scrapers, scraping the liquid gold from the edge to the center, working around the circle with skill and speed. The temperature had to be precise, meaning the mixture had to be warmed up by adding more molten chocolate or cooled down by adding solids. With the tempered chocolate, we made our own chocolate buttons and lattice work, using some silver transfer she had made before.

With our fingers sticky with chocolate, we were led back up to the dining table for another unique experience – cheese and chocolate pairing.

Cheese? Why not? Platters of chocolate slabs with their paired cheeses were passed around: Lancashire with cardamom white chocolate, Berkswell with a sea salt, almond and rosemary milk chocolate, and Stichelton with their single origin Dominican Republic dark chocolate, plus a sneaky sip of a ten-year Hazelburn Speyside whiskey. We nibbled on the combinations, concentrating on the thrilling palette of flavours on our tongues. It was a surprising match, especially the Lancashire with the sweet, milky white chocolate and the exotic hints of cardamom.

We also tried other flavoured chocolates they had, with the most memorable one being George’s Marvelous Medicine. Sound familiar? Yes, the name of one of Roald Dahl’s most loved books. They had collaborated with Roald Dahl in his centenary year and came up with a range of chocolates inspired by his books. The creatives had studied the stories back to front and front to back, picking up sections, sentences, pictures and words for inspiration. And for this particular bar, they exchanged the Golden Gloss Hair Shampoo, toothpaste and Superfoam shaving cream with an enticing mix of aniseed, liquorice and fennel, creating a marvelously medicinal taste.

With our minds full of new-found chocolate knowledge, and stomachs full of cheese, quality chocolate and tons of creativity, we left the shop (with more chocolate) feeling much more inspired than the previous Wednesdays.

Time for me to start reconsidering my goals in life.