In the Kitchen with Precious Chocolates #Blog

Lisa Edwards
12th March 2017

We do realise that our job is pretty fabulous! Briony and I were once again got to spend a day ‘In the Kitchen’ with a Cheshire food producer. And what better way than to learn about how to make amazing chocolates than with Carl Gillard, Managing Director of Precious Chocolates Limited.

Carl has worked as a consultant to confectionery manufacturers around the world. He started this business in 2007 and what Carl doesn’t know about confectionery and chocolate isn’t worth knowing. He is the absolute expert in his field, and drives the business through his creativity, imagination, passion, enthusiasm knowledge and sheer dogged determination.

We arrived at the factory at 11am and after chatting for a while we donned our hairnets and protective clothing and went into the factory. Health and Safety are paramount in this environment and it was evident that Carl runs a very rigorous health and safety policy in his factory.

Our first task was to learn about the environment; No, not your typical (Reduce, Reuse , Recycle) but to make chocolate as well as Carl does you have to be very conscious of the humidity and air flow of the room, this is very tightly controlled to establish the perfect environment for chocolate production. Next we learnt about the equipment, which Carl has developed and installed. When you walk into the factory the first thing you see are the large stainless steel ‘Pans’. What I can only describe as stainless steel cement mixers. There were also a couple of Chocolate Tempering Machines with chocolate already being tempered.

Carl demonstrated how to make chocolate bars, which was pretty easy to be honest, but only because the chocolate was already tempered and the process was simple. We did think we would be able to eat the bars later, but they had to settle and set overnight in their trays before popping out of the trays and packaging! So whoever out there eats one of Precious Chocolate Milk Chocolate Bars, we do hope you enjoy it.

Next we progressed to making alcohol soaked raisins covered in chocolate. This process being rather more complicated and lengthy. Firstly the raisins had been soaking and infusing in the alcohol for 3 days. I made Milk Chocolate Toffee Vodka Soaked Raisins and Briony made White Chocolate Strawberry Vodka Soaked Raisins.

Firstly we put the already soaked raisins into one of the steel pans which was set to rotate. Then added icing sugar to coat the raisins and bring out the alcohol, whilst the pan was in motion. Once enough icing sugar had coated the raisins we then set to add the tempered chocolate. By hand using a jug I may add! Certainly my arms were aching after a while. The process of slowly pouring the chocolate onto the raisins in the pan took about an hour, my biceps should be toning up by now I thought!

Once Carl was happy that the chocolate had covered enough of the raisins he turned the rotating pan off, and we transferred the chocolates to a tray where they needed to rest overnight, before weighing and packaging. Again we couldn’t taste them.. We did however get to sample some already made chocolates, which were absolutely devine.

My personal favourites (which is very difficult to narrow down) are the Milk Chocolate and Chilli Raisins (which really were hot and spicy) and the Milk Chocolate Crystallised Ginger (which uses dragon ginger) oh and I can’t forget the Milk Chocolate Honeycomb!

Briony loves the Dark Chocolate Kendal Mint Cake Liquor Soaked Raisins and the Milk Chocolate Crystallised Ginger.

But in all honesty, all the Precious Chocolate range are delicious. You can find Precious Chocolates on many Farmers Markets, our very own Taste Cheshire Food Fiesta’s, Backford Bells Ice Cream Parlour, The Grosvenor Garden Centre, Hootons of Anglesey and he will be exhibiting at the Chester Food, Drink and Lifestyle Festival 15 – 17 April 2017.

Thank you Carl for such a great time. We learned so much about the rigorous methods used to make your very special and Precious Chocolates.