Boost your Summer Season with High-Temperature Cacao Products
It is great when the sun starts to shine, the days are becoming long, and people’s moods are lifting just because summer has arrived. A tiny downside of higher temperatures is that chocolate making is more difficult, shipping chocolate becomes tricky, and demand for chocolate is lower anyway. At Silva we picked our brains, and came up with a list of cacao products that work well in the summer season.
The Obvious One: Ice Cream
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Ice cream and chocolate are match made in heaven. It can be chocolate ice cream, or stracciatella, chocolate hazelnut, chilly chocolate, rum chocolate, strawberry chocolate, or just a really nice scoop of vanilla ice cream with warm chocolate sauce. If you can treat your customers with a nice chocolaty ice cream, they’ll be happy to show up when it is hot.
Follow-up: A Good Chocolate Sauce
Once you have a good chocolate sauce for your ice cream, your customers can use it in many other ways. In Belgium we like to drip it over waffles (you should come and try our national delicacy). Pancakes are also great with chocolate sauce. And you can add it to a smoothie for an instant chocolate kick. Or use it for dipping strawberries, banana, marshmallow, pretzels, cookies and so on and so forth.
The Summer Version: Cold Brew Chocolate
Hot chocolate is a comforting drink in the winter months. Cold chocolate is a refreshing and energizing drink during the summer season. The best way to make your chocolate drink is with roasted and grinded whole cacao beans, just like the indigenous people of South and Central America have been doing for centuries.
The cast-off: Cacao Husk Tea
Don’t discard your cacao husks! Use these as tea leaves to make a healthy and refreshing tisane that tastes of chocolate and has all the good ingredients of cacao, like theobromine, antioxidants, and minerals. Another product in your chocolate (web) shop.
For grown-ups: Chocolate Liqueur
Why not offer your customers a chocolate liqueur to go with their after-dinner chocolate? With the flavour profile of specialty cacao the liqueur can be elevated to a whole new level. Fancy bottle, elegant label and you are done!
B2B: Chocolate Couverture
The beautiful cacao mass you are using to create your chocolate products is of course also a very good ingredient for pain au chocolat, chocolate cake, brownies, cookies (and ice cream, see above). Why not step into your local bakery and restaurant to check if the chef is interested in the flavours of your chocolate, and the story of your cacao.
The health angle: Cacao Nibs
In a healthy life style cacao nibs cannot be missed, it is considered to be a super food. Nibs contain all the good stuff of cacao, and not the sugar. It is a lovely addition to granola or to a bowl of yoghurt with fruits in the morning. So best to pack some nibs in a stylish package, and put it on your (virtual) counter.
The guilt-free perspective: Chocolate Spread
Every parent wants their children to eat wholegrain sandwiches, and this becomes much easier when the sandwich is covered in high quality chocolate spread with less sugar, no additives, and ingredients from ethical and sustainable sources. Developing a guilt-free chocolate spread might be a good way to spend the summer.
Chocolate experiments: Aging and Special Storage
Summer seems to be a perfect time to research the impact of aging on your cacao mass. Similar with wine, the aroma and flavour of cacao mass can change (improve?) when it has been resting for some time. Or check out the effect of storage in a beer, wine or whiskey barrel. Who knows what comes out – it might be a price winning chocolate!
The trendy one: Cacao Juice
A hip drink this summer is cacao juice, which is made from the pulp covering the beans in freshly harvested cacao pod. A natural energizer full of proteins, vitamins, polyphenols, potassium and other minerals. If you are interested, let us know, we might have some news for you!