Forum Activity for @Pure Lovin Chocolate

Pure Lovin Chocolate
@Pure Lovin Chocolate
08/23/13 01:23:19AM
2 posts

vegan milk and white chocolate


Posted in: Opinion

Hi!,

My mother and I have a small chocolate business in Victoria, BC Canada. We are also fully organic, fair trade and vegan. We are also soy and gluten free. We use Cocoa Barry organic, fair trade 71.7% dark chocolate for all of our products. This has been a great product for us, and it is made without soy lecithin, meaning we can keep our products soy free, which seems to be an increasing issue for people, and especially children. We have a lot of parents very excited about our products because their child is allergic to soy!

We have also been on the lookout for vegan milk and white chocolates. We have only tried one, and that was the Callebaut "Nolac" milk chocolate. The only reason we got our hands on this was because I have managed to form a relationship with the Callebaut rep for Western Canada. When I explained to him what our company was about, he sent us a roughly 5kg sample of it! It came to us in a bubble mailer envelope with no labels or packaging. Its 'milk' ingredient was rice powder, and it did contain soy lecithin, but we were still keen to try it out. At first taste, I wasn't that impressed, it almost had that 'chalky' taste of a low quality chocolates. I tried to make a ganache with it, as our main focus is truffles, but it did not work well at all.. It melted well, but as soon as we added the hot coconut milk, it turned very dark and grainy. Even after it set, it was almost as dark as our normal ganache, it seemed as it had lost all of its milkiness! I then melted some and mixed it with hazelnuts and gluten-free rice crisps to make a veganized version of a 'Ferrero Rocher', this worked very well, and the additions seemed to completely get rid of the 'chalky' taste I first noticed. I tempered some to coat the 'Rochers' with my Rev 2, and though it did temper well, it was very thick. We sold these at our annual Vegan Fest, and were a huge hit! We continued to make them until we ran out of the chocolate.

We were not sure if we wanted to keep this as a regular item, as it did compromise our no-soy policy, but I reached out again to our rep to get the pricing info just in case. He informed us that there are temporarily pulling the Nolac line. He said because they are currently producing the chocolate on machinery previously used to produced dairy milk chocolate, and because they are calling it Nolac (for no lactose) they are concerned that they may run into legal issues because it may actually contain trace amounts of lactose. But he did tell us that they are going to switch over to using dedicated equipment and relaunch it in a few months, and (bonus for us!) they are going to start producing it without soy lecithin as well! We will definitely try it again when it comes on the market. In the meantime though, we will probably try out some other products and would love any recommendations!

Pure Lovin Chocolate
@Pure Lovin Chocolate
10/21/12 10:26:25PM
2 posts

Sunflower Lecithin


Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hello!

I would like to introduce ourselves as we are new members here..

We are a new, artisan chocolate company in Victoria BC created by my mother and I. We are making Organic vegan truffles and other products like clusters and chocolate coated honeycomb. We use Cocao Barry Organic Fair Trade 71.7% dark for all of our products. To make our truffles vegan/dairy free, we use organic coconut cream instead of heavy cream. At this moment we are only doing farmers markets and events, and have no storefront. We are working out of my mothers home.

In our experience at markets, besides appealing to people who are vegan or lactose intolerant, we have also found that there have been quite a few people who are soy intolerant as well who are very happy to be able to enjoy our products. We want to stay committed to creating products that are dairy, soy and gluten free.

We have never used any lecithin before, but with Christmas fairs coming up, we are looking to extend the shelf life of our truffles a bit more in case they sit a while before being gifted. We found some Organic sunflower lecithin from a nearby supplier and purchased some. It is in liquid form, almost being the consistency as honey. As we have never used any sort of lecithin before, and from the limited info I found on sunflower lecithin which says you need a bit more than soy, I am hoping someone might have some info on how to use it properly? We tried it in a small batch, but it caused the ganache to break. Our standard recipe is 16 oz chocolate to 250ml coconut cream.

Any info on how much to use, and when and how to add it, or if anyone has used it before and can let me know any other tips, that would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks :)


updated by @Pure Lovin Chocolate: 04/18/15 12:33:25AM