A tattered old cookbook, tied with string and stuffed with old and well-tried confectionery recipes, was the inspiration for Pemberton’s Victorian Chocolates.
The book belonged to the Pemberton family and the recipes went back to Alice Pemberton and her old sweet kitchen.
Alice's grandson, Alan Jones, and his wife Elizabeth were inspired by the Victorian wisdom and started their chocolate factory in Wales. Over the years the recipes have been modified, and Elizabeth went to Belgium to hone her skills with some of Europe’s top chocolatiers.
The business is now moving to the next generations with both daughters Emily and Jessica taking active roles within the family business.
"I suppose the idea of making chocolates on an old hill farm – miles from the nearest town – seems a bit silly. All I can say is that it works" says Alan Jones.
The Welsh Chocolate farm has earned a solid reputation for exceptional chocolates, as the string of top awards testifies.
The years have seen the farm buildings lovingly restored to chocolate workshops and each year thousands of visitors turn up for a factory visit and to buy some of the 200 odd products turned out with care by the dedicated team at Pembertons.
Chocolate lovers from all Britain and the rest of the world clamour for Pemberton’s chocolates because they’re excellent value. Everybody claims they use only the best ingredients….Pemberton’s actually do!
The Jones family describe their chocolates as "at the top of the 'non-snob' market". "We try to make chocolates that people actually enjoy. We hear so much about chocolate with 70 or 80 percent cocoa solids. That doesn’t mean its good. The unsung magic ingredient of chocolate is cocoa butter which melts on the tongue at one degree below body heat and which, when sweetened with subtlety and flavoured with skill, makes a most memorable eating experience" says Alan Jones.
When it comes to chocolate, it's hard work keeping up with the Joneses.
The Story of Chocolate
The beans are fermented for about a week, dried in the sun and then shipped to the chocolate maker. The chocolate maker starts by roasting the beans to bring out the flavour.
Different beans from different places have different qualities and flavours, so they are often sorted and blended to produce a distinctive mix.
Next, the roasted beans are winnowed. Winnowing removes the meat (also known as the nib) of the cocoa bean from its shell. Seeds are fermented and dried before they are roasted.
Once roasted, winnowed, and blended, the nibs are ground, and the ground nibs form a viscous liquid called chocolate liquor (the word liquor has nothing to do with alcohol -- that's just what it's called).
All seeds contain some amount of fat, and cocoa beans are no different. However, cocoa beans are half fat, which is why the ground nibs form a liquid. If you have ever ground up peanuts to make real peanut butter, that is similar -- real peanut butter is a thick liquid. The difference between peanut oil and cocoa oil is that peanut oil is liquid at room temperature while cocoa oil is a solid up to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
Chocolate liquor is pure, unsweetened chocolate. Eaten in this state, it's pretty nasty because it is bitter, but it's possible to acquire a taste for it.
You can do two different things with chocolate liquor. You can pour it into a mold and let it cool and solidify. This is unsweetened chocolate. Or you can press it in a hydraulic press to squeeze out the fat. When you do that, what you are left with is a dry cake of the ground cocoa bean solids and cocoa butter (useful in everything from tanning products to white chocolate). If you grind up the cake, you have cocoa powder. You can buy both unsweetened chocolate (baking chocolate) and pure cocoa powder at the grocery store. What you are buying is ground cocoa beans, either with or without the cocoa butter.
Making Chocolate
So far, we've taken the seeds of a tree, roasted them and ground them up. Now the process of making the chocolate we eat can begin, and it takes a lot of talent, fortunately Pemberton's have all the experience needed to produce the finest chocolate.
Discs of dark chocolate can be used for baking or can be eaten just as they are. There are three basic things that must be done by the chocolate maker to make a chocolate bar:
- Adding Ingredients - The chocolate that we eat contains sugar, other flavours (like vanilla) and often milk (in milk chocolate). The chocolate maker adds these ingredients according to his or her secret recipe.
- Conching - A special machine is used to massage the chocolate in order to blend the ingredients together and smooth it out. Conching can take anywhere from two to six days.
- Tempering - Tempering is a carefully controlled heating process, tempering is "a process where the chocolate is slowly heated, then slowly cooled, allowing the cocoa butter molecules to solidify in an orderly fashion." Without tempering, the chocolate does not harden properly or the cocoa butter separates out (as cream separates from milk).
These three steps, along with the blend of cocoa beans chosen at the start and the way they are roasted, are the art of chocolate making. The steps control the quality, taste and texture of the chocolate produced, and are often closely guarded secrets!
Types of Chocolate
Baking Chocolate - Pure cocoa liquor with nothing added.
Cocoa Powder - Cocoa bean solids; cocoa liquor pressed to remove the cocoa butter.
Semisweet Chocolate - Pure cocoa liquor with extra cocoa butter and some sugar.
Milk Chocolate - Pure cocoa liquor with extra cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids; more milk than chocolate liquor.
White Chocolate - Cocoa butter with sugar and milk; no cocoa bean solids.