​ Food festivals are loved by everyone. They are a great opportunity for public to meet producers to learn how the produce they love is made whether its cheese, bread, gin or chocolate!

Christchurch food festival has been going for the last 20 years evolving all the time. In recent years it has expanded from the High Street to Christchurch Priory and beyond.  Centre stage is the Cookery theatre.  For us, it’s a great way to teach everyone how easy chocolate is to work with.   This year I collaborated with Jennifer Williams from Naked Jam.  The brief was to showcase how chocolate can be part of a wider experience, pairing it with a cocktail.  The cocktail was designed by Tommo Quy of the Captains Club Hotel and was featured as their cocktail of the month.  Jennifer, from Naked Jam, taught everyone how to make a delicious strawberry syrup as one of the ingredients of the cocktail and I designed Earl Grey tea dark chocolate shards.  Earl Grey tea works perfectly in summer paired with chocolate and cocktails as it has a light floral delicate flavour and enhances the Columbian dark chocolate.

If you would to try your hand at making the shards I have included the recipe below – Good Luck!

Earl Grey Tea Chocolate Shards
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Ingredients
100g   70% Dark Columbian chocolate
3g Earl grey tea
Handful of cornflowers and rose petals
Method

• Slowly melt the chocolate in the microwave or using a hairdryer (mine is used just for chocolate!)  turn off hairdryer at intervals and stir, repeat the process until chocolate is melted.
• Check the chocolate is at the working temperature, best way to do this is to tap some chocolate on your lip to see if it is colder than your lip, then you know it’s ready to work with.
• Sprinkle in the Earl Grey tea and stir.  Spread the chocolate onto a cold metal tray lined with cellophane or waxed paper. 

• Before the chocolate starts to set sprinkle over the cornflowers and rose petals, leave to set in a cool dry room. 

Break up the chocolate into shards.  

Top Tip
Using a hairdryer to melt small quantities of chocolate gives your much more control over the temperature of the chocolate,.  Melting chocolate  in the microwave can sometimes burn if you forget to check it and stir every 20 seconds. 

Over the last two weeks I have had the joy of working with  D’Arcy White.

D’Arcy wrote to me in January 2018 to enquire if she could take her work experience placement with Chocolate By Miss Witt.  I met D’Arcy and her mum in March for her interview.  I knew as soon as I met her she was a girl after my own heart.  D’Arcy had the confidence to take the opportunity to approach me for a placement before seeing the list of placements the school had to offer for work experience.   After meeting her I knew we would get on well.  Her mum said she is quiet until she gets to know you and then will chat away.  Sounds like myself I thought, although I am sure not many who know me would believe that!
D’Arcy and I jelled immediately.  We worked side by side, everything I did, D’Arcy did.  I wanted her to have the whole experience of my world.  The first day at work I taught her how to temper chocolate; she was a natural.  I could see her talent and I just wanted to nurture it. 

At the end of the first week we had an event at Foxlease Head Quarters of Girl Guiding, Hampshire.  D’Arcy was confident enough to demonstrate how to temper chocolate to a group of 50 adult Guides.  This was the first time she had stood of in front of an audience.  She was absolutely brilliant, it was enchanting to see the joy in her expression moving the chocolate around.   By the second week we were both in our groove, and I felt confident leaving D’Arcy in charge of tempering chocolate and doing many tasks on her own.

D’Arcy’s teacher came to see us later that week, she was so impressed by how D’Arcy could temper chocolate and how she blossomed in confidence.  Her last day was bitter sweet, D’Arcy had been a complete joy and definitely was becoming a Mini Miss Witt, but we both felt she was ready to go back to school as missed her friends. 

​I hope I have inspired her and you never know, she may be one of the Academy of Chocolate gold Medallists of the future. 

​Mondays at the Miss Witt Kitchen are often a time for Home Education groups.  I have got to know some great mums and children recently.  Monday’s lesson was about how the Aztecs and Mayans would use chocolate. 

In ancient times the Mayans and Aztecs would grind the cocoa bean to make a chocolate drink.  The drink entailed magical spices e.g. cinnamon, vanilla, cloves and nutmeg. They mixed the ground cocoa with water, rather than milk.  The drink tasted spicy and bitter compared with our modern day hot chocolate.

During the late 17th century Hans Sloane, President of the Royal College of Physicians, visited Jamaica.  When he tried the drink, it made him feel nauseous so decided to add milk to the recipe and brought it back to England, and the rest is history!

​To make your own Aztec inspired hot chocolate drink see recipe below
 
Stage 1 – Make the Hot Chocolate stick
Melt 200g of chocolate slowly in a microwave or using a hairdryer, leave to cool.  
To check the chocolate is at the correct temperature to work with, tap the chocolate on your lip using a spoon – make sure it feels cooler  than your lip!  Pipe into your silicone freezer tray.   Place lollipop sticks in the tray leave to set.
 
Stage 2 -  Creating the drink
1 litre milk
3 cinnamon stick
Few cloves
1 vanilla pod seed scrapped out
Grated nutmeg
Serves 4
Pour milk in a saucepan add all the spices. Bring it to just below boiling point, strain through a sieve and use a whisk to create a frothy top. Divide the milk between 4 cups, stir in your chocolate stick.  The warm flavoured milk will slowly melt the chocolate to create a delicious drink. 

The end of last month I was invited to Judge at Wessex Salon Culinaire, one of the UK largest live culinary competitions.   The popular event, which is held in association with The Craft Guild of Chefs, has grown in stature over the years and is a fantastic platform for all chefs, but especially student chefs, to get a first taste of competition experience. 

The venue was Brockenhurst College, located in the heart of the New Forest National Park.  It is one of the Country's top colleges and has been awarded the prestigious Beacon College status for excellence and innovation in further education.

Brockenhurst college played a fundamental part in my life to where I am today.  Taking a trip back in time to September 1995 it was my dream destination.  I will never forget wearing those chef whites for the 1st time … the buzz of the kitchen, the excitement of learning classical French cooking, the style of my heroes The Roux Brothers, it was heaven.  I did try to spend as much time as I could in the pastry kitchen, even sneaking in  when I was on a different section,  just because I wanted to spend my whole time working with chocolate and other delicious sweet ingredients.   I can remember my name being called out “Where is Miss Witt?!” when they noticed I had disappeared!  The tutors at Brockenhurst were 1st class, 2 of them are still playing an active role today, nurturing the students to their full potential.  
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One of the highlights for me at the competition was to see a student create a chocolate show piece, he demonstrated so many different skills using different techniques.    For next year’s Salon Culinaire I have been asked to play a role in designing new classes for attracting more entries in the pastry section.  This is going to be an exciting role and will incorporate skills the chefs need to have if they would like to become part of the next generation of chocolatiers. 

Coffee Brittle is now available direct from Coffee Monger’s, Christchurch Confectioners, and soon, will be served with coffee in a number of restaurants.

Coffee Brittle is the ideal gift for Mother’s Day!

Each month Bodega holds different events. As part of the World of Port evening, the last port to taste was Graham’s Quintados Mavedos 2004.  This has a long finish with rich fruit aromas such as blackcurrants, blackberries and black cherries.  This was paired with 70% Columbia dark chocolate shards.  The slight acidity of the chocolate cut through the richness of the port making it the perfect drinking companion!  Look out for future events when chocolate will be featured paired with different drinks.

http://www.bodega-christchurch.co.uk/events.html

Tha perfect pairing, 70% Columbia dark chocolate shards and Graham’s Quintados Mavedos 2004

I first met the founders of Pothecary Gin back in January 2016.  We were introduced by a mutual chef friend, Ian Gibbs.  Ian had told me about his friends Lukasz and Martin Jennings spending the last year experimenting with over 100 botanicals (def: a plant part or extract used in medicinal preparation derived from a plants) to come up with their gin.

To make their gin, the duo use fractional distillation where each of the 5 botanicals are singularly distilled, rather than all being distilled in one copper pot at the same time. This allows them to finely blend the flavours to make their unique gin. 

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The 5 organic botanicals which make up Pothecary Gin are Organic Lavender from Provence, Organic Black Mulberries from Anatolia, Organic Lemons from Sicily, Wild Tilia flowers from Poland and Organic Juniper from Bulgaria.

I tasted the gin for the first time in Spring 2016.  Initially I considered making a G&T inspired chocolate, but this didn’t really feel innovative or unique enough. This was when the inspiration came from Nicole (Martin’s wife) and Martin to use the individual distillates. Because the fractional distillation process is used it allowed me to experiment with the different distillates to make chocolates to compliment the gin. You can imagine my excitement when I tasted all 5 distillates at 73% proof! Wow!  Each had the most incredibly unique taste and aroma. The lemon distillate took me walking through a lemon grove, wild mulberries conjured up Christmas, wild Tilia flowers had the sweet aroma of honey and the lavender was so delicate & light. A real journey of aromas and flavours!
An added benefit of the process used by Pothecary Gin was the Black Mulberry mass that remains in the still post distillation. The founders of Pothecary Gin try to reduce wastage, and re-use or recycle where possible, and this thinking is what led to Nicole’s idea to possibly use the sieved extract of the distilled Mulberries as part of the chocolate, genius! A sample of the sieved black mulberry extract was sent to a science lab in Wolverhampton to be analysed. Nicole and I wanted to make sure that the black mulberries, post distillation, used in the ganache were within safe limits of copper as they are heated in a copper still for a considerable time. It turned out that you would have to eat over a kilogram of the black mulberry ganache to be over the recommended daily intake of copper in your diet, but trace elements of copper were found, bonus! Once the results came back I was so excited to start creating my recipe.  

I immediately knew which chocolate would work especially well; the floral notes in Casa Lukers’ 70% aruca chocolate.  The cacao beans which the chocolate is made from comes from Orinoquia region of Columbia.  Don Elio cacao farm is on a piece of land formed by the two arms of the Arauca river.  The cacao is grown between the valleys & mountains of this region. The flavour notes from this chocolate compliment the botanicals perfectly.
I knew the Mulberry extract combined with the chocolate would make an excellent combination.  It produced a silky smooth texture to the chocolate. On heating the extract, I added the lemon peel.  The scent filled my tiny chocolate kitchen and I could just imagine the flavours combining with chocolate, singing and dancing around my mouth as I took the first bite! Heavenly!

The Pothecary team had asked me to create two chocolates to go in their gin & chocolate gift set by now. The gift boxes were created in consultation with Print & Packaging Solutions Ltd, a local specialist in Southampton. Melissa, Martin and Nicole’s daughter, worked tirelessly to get the box to have the premium look and feel that would properly reflect the quality of the gin and chocolates contained within, and it looks amazing!
 
After a few weeks of experimenting I worked through some recipes by using different combinations of the distillates. By the end of August, I had come up with two bespoke recipes for the Pothecary chocolates.  

​Ana
organic mulberry ganache, infused with the lemon distillate & encased in gold 70% dark chocolate from Orinoquia region, Columbia
Provençal
Lavender & sea salt ganache, encased in turquoise white chocolate from Dominican Republic.

The Luxury, Handcrafted gin and chocolate gift set was launched at The Country Living Christmas Fair in Islington, London, where they were extremely well received. The two chocolates are intended to be eaten whilst sipping the gin, as the chocolates are made with some elements of the gin rather than the gin itself. This sipping and eating gives a unique flavour sensation, is an innovative idea where gin is concerned, and one that is proving very popular. As the chocolate and gin gift sets are a collaboration, and not the main products of both Pothecary Gin and myself, they are only available occasionally. At the moment we are delighted to announce that the Luxury Gin and Chocolates gift set can be bought at Harvey Nichols as from this week.