This is one of our local collaboration workshops (#chocollaborations), where we invite a local producer to share their wonderful products and ingredients with us. The idea is to enjoy creativity and experimentation in a professional chocolate kitchen, as you get to try and taste different recipes and combinations.
In this event, we welcome Andy & Rachel Bleakley. Rachel's family own St Basils Olive Grove, which is just south of Almyrida in the Ghania region of Western Crete, Greece. It's quite rare to be able to get your hands on a Single Estate Olive Oil in the UK that comes straight from the producer. But with family connections, Andy & Rachel have been able to bring the family's beautiful extra virgin oil to us here in the North East. Saint Basils Oil is the special stuff the taverna owners keep for themselves and their families.” If we're really lucky, we may even get the very first taste of the latest harvest, which may be ready for this workshop in January - we'll have to wait and see!
This workshop promises to be exciting for us at Davenport's Chocolates, as its very special to be entrusted with creating ganache truffles with such a prestigious a single estate olive oil. We'd like to invite you to join us, as we experiment with ganache recipes to find the perfect recipe. As you may know, a ganache is formed when chocolate is blended with a liquid. The amount of fat (usually butter or cream) in the recipe affects how creamy and unctuous the ganache is.But using this single estate olive oil gives us the opportunity to investigate deep, rich flavour notes - as well as the advantage of being vegan.
St Basil's Olive Oil is described as "Fresh and ‘grassy’ with a smooth buttery texture and peppery finish" and whilist we would often associate these terms with savoury flavours, you may be surprised that many of those flavour notes can also be found in cocoa beans.
So do come and join us for this exclusive collaboration, and be amongth the first to ever taste chocolate truffles made with this wonderful single estate Olive Oil from St. Basil's. We may be adding these vegan chocolate truffles to our permenant collection... so come and help us make this a reality! Hope to see you there.
