Chocolate
Where It All Began
Chocolate was the starting point for everything we make at nicao.
In 2016, we started with a small tabletop stone grinder, working mostly by hand and making around 20 chocolate bars at a time.
Roasting the beans, removing the husks, grinding times, sugar ratios and tempering. We experimented with each step, gradually developing our own way of making chocolate.
What We've Changed Along the Way
As we've made more chocolate over the years, the tools and equipment we use have gradually changed too.
We've moved from a small stone grinder to larger ones. We've also experimented with different ways of removing the cacao husks and tempering the chocolate, making adjustments as we went.
But having more equipment hasn't meant replacing everything with machines. We still do plenty by hand, from pouring chocolate into moulds to checking the finished bars.
We've adopted tools that make sense for us, choosing methods that suit the scale of our business as we go.
What We've Kept the Same
While we've gradually changed our methods and equipment, some things have remained much the same.
One of these is the cacao we import directly from the same family-run farm in Guatemala. By working with it over the years, we've gradually come to understand its character and how best to handle it.
We've also kept the basic recipe for our 70% dark chocolate largely unchanged. Even when trying new ingredients or flavours, we begin by thinking about how best to make use of this cacao.
Keeping things the same has never been the goal in itself. We've simply considered, each time, whether a change is really needed.
The Small Choices That Add Up
Making chocolate involves plenty of small decisions about ingredients and how we work with them.
For most of our chocolates, we use beet sugar from Hokkaido that retains some of its molasses. For our milk chocolate and Chilli & Sea Salt, we prefer the rounder sweetness of sensōtō, a type of washed cane sugar from Kagoshima.
Because sensōtō contains moisture, using it straight away would make the chocolate thicker and harder to work with. So we dry it for several hours beforehand.
We also make the cocoa butter silk used for tempering ourselves, using cocoa butter from the same farm in Guatemala. It takes a little extra work, but means we can use cocoa butter from the same farm as the cacao in our chocolate.
None of these is a big decision on its own. But together, they've helped make nicao's chocolate what it is today.
Guatemala →
