Add intensity to your recipes

While it's essential for coating, molding, and making bars, couverture chocolate isn't always the best choice for some pastry and chocolate recipes that do not require added cocoa butter.

With this in mind, and in keeping with our spirit of innovation, we have pooled all our teams’ expertise to develop a range of chocolates tailored to our customers’ needs. We're unveiling four new chocolate references with no added cocoa butter, grouped together in a new range: Confection.

Add intensity to your recipes

With Confection 80%, you can be sure you've chosen the most suitable chocolate for your recipe with the right cocoa intensity. 

A range of four Pure Origin chocolates with no added cocoa butter that bring together all Valrhona's expertise to make and elevate fillings such as ganaches and creams as well as mousses, sponges, soufflés, and ice creams.

Chocolate with no added cocoa butter, perfectly suited to specific recipes

  • Just two ingredients: 80% cocoa beans, 20% sugar to bring out the cocoa’s aromatic power.​
  • 4 Pure Origin chocolates: aromatic profiles that reflect the terroirs where they were grown
  • Specific uses: designed to enhance fillings such as ganaches and crémeux, as well as mousses, sponges, soufflés, ice creams, and more
  • Recipes taken to the next level: high cocoa content (80%) for an intense taste

Pure origin chocolate with character that perfectly reflects the terroir where it was grown

Ghana, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Madagascar: each of these four chocolate references offers a unique aromatic profile, typical of its specific origin. These single terroirs chocolates feature tangy, bitter, roasted, or fruity notes, providing dessert artisans a wide spectrum of tastes for their creations.

GHANA 80%, 
COCOA WITH SPICED NOTES 

Vanilla, toasted nuts, bitterness, cocoa-rich

Ghana 80%, with its sweet notes of vanilla, coconut, roasted nuts and cocoa, whisks us away to the heart of Ghana's plantations. 

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 80%,
WITH NOTES OF RIPE FRUIT

Tangy, ripe fruit, bitterness, cocoa-rich

Dominican Republic 80%, with its tangy notes of ripe fruit and more subtle cocoa notes, reveals the secrets of the island of Santo Domingo.

MADAGASCAR 80%,
A REFLECTION OF THE MADAGASCAN TERROIR

Berries, tangy, roasted cocoa nibs, bitterness

Madagascar 80% is a mirror held up to the Malagasy terroir, with its notes of tangy berries and slightly bittertoasted cocoa nibs.

ECUADOR 80%,
A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF AMAZONIA

Bitterness, herbal, astringence, sweet spices

Equateur 80% leads us deep into the Amazonian ecosystem with its bitter, herbal, and sweetly spiced notes

An intense cocoa taste to elevate your recipes

These 4 Pure Origin chocolates, with no added cocoa butter, embody Valrhona's expertise to take your fillings to the next level. Confection 80% intensifies the cocoa taste in your recipes.

These chocolate products are suitable for a range of uses for chocolatiers, pastry chefs, bakers, restaurateurs, and ice-cream makers.​

They are not suitable for coating and molding.

A wide range of chocolate intensities

Adapt the cocoa intensity of your creations to suit the sensory balance you are looking for, while preserving the unique character of its origin.

Four Essentials recipes have been reimagined in three different intensities: tart ganache, whipped ganache, crémeux and mousse. For each recipe, the strongest intensity is based on the current Essentials method, and the two other intensities are based on a new method developed by the chefs at the École Valrhona.

RECIPES BASED ON THE CURRENT ESSENTIALS METHOD

The texture is achieved using the cocoa butter provided by the chocolate.

 

The texture is achieved using:
- The cocoa butter provided by the chocolate.
- By adding ingredients with texturizing properties (such as gelatin, gracila or pectin, explained below):
> Bovine gelatin provides the desired texture.
> Derived from Gracilaria algae, gracila is a vegetable alternative to gelatin.
> Pectin X58 is the most suitable gel for the tart ganache recipe.

Tangible commitment in plantations

Valrhona has made a commitment to each cocoa plantation through long-term local partnerships and ethical cooperatives. The aim is to improve producers’ working conditions and local populations’ living conditions, as well as to develop environmentally-friendly farming practices. 

We have been working with the Millot Plantation for over 30 years in an exclusive partnership. In 2016, our company became a shareholder in this 600-hectare farm, which employs nearly 500 people. Our partnership with the Millot plantation has enabled us to set up an agroforestry project to riase farmers' awareness of the benefits of combining cocoa with other crops, including vanilla, to mahe their livelihoods less vulnerable. Using agroforestry techniquesm 151,400 cacao trees and 5,000 shade trees have been planted. 

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In 2019, we entered into a long-term collaboration with our partner Osella, which brings together 287 producers and employs 44 people. Our two organizations are working together to preserve the Nacional cocoa variety and help improvefarmers' agricultural practices in 8 provinces. This initiative focuses on pruning, fertilization, plot renovation and enhancing the fermentation and drying processes of cocoa beans.

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Since 2017, together with our partner FEDCO, we have been running a large-scale program to improve education conditions in communities. A three-way program involving the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, FEDCO and Valrhona has been launched in communities in the Tarkwa district. Over the past 5 years, we achieved significant milestones: constructing 5 schools (1 nursery, 2 primary schools and 2 secondary schools), renovating 2 elementary schools, and equipping 4 computer centers. Each school now had its own facilities including toilets with wells ans septic tanks. Today, 1,600 pupils benefit from the new and renovated schools. 

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Since 2016, we have been working alongside our partners Conocado & Cooproagro in a pioneering initiative that is revolutionizing cocoa farming in the Dominican Republic: Cacao Forest. Four models were tested across 36 plots, covering nine hectares for experimentation. More than 1,900growers were involved in the project. The results have shown significant benefits including increased and diversified income for producers, improved biodiversity and effectivecarboncapture. 

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