On the stone
Stone chocolate is the oldest and most traditional way of manufacturing chocolate, as well as the way which more labour requires due to its characteristics, being totally handcrafted.
Although it can also be produced in a bar form, the classical at our family is the traditional so-called Valencian “bollet”.
Bollet
How do we prepare the traditional Valencian bollet?
To produce the “bollet” (traditional Valencian chocolate), we take the amount of cocoa needed, then we toast it on a pan with holes and remove them constanly until the skin can be easily removed with the fingers.
Then, we grind them in the metate (grindind stone in the form of a chair), previously heated. For that, we add the husked cocoa beans and we grind them with a roller until they become a liquid and uniform chocolate mass.
We add sugar and rice flour to this mass (very bitter). after mixing everything carefully, then we only have to add the arome, be it vanilla or cinnamon, the ones most commonly used. This mixture is known as chocolate.
Then we shape it. We place 50 grams of chocolate mass on a rectangular piece of brown paper and we move it up and down until the mass becomes a cylindrical shape (bollet), letting it get cold in that form.
Finally, they are wrapped in paper one by one, by hand, identiying them with brand, ingredients and date of consumption.
Bars
The bars are made by melting the cocoa mass with all its ingredients (with sugar or sugar free, with milk or without it, etc…)together with the lecithin and the specific arome. Molds are filled with this liquid mass and nuts are added if needed, then they are placed in a cooling chamber to get eventually unmold and packaged.
Hot Chocolate
The making of the hot chocolate has barely secrets, although its natural ingredients, will give us a unique taste. In order to elaborate it, three basic ingredients are needed. First, the pure cocoa (powder or mass), then a sweetener (in our case cane sugar, except the sugar free chocolate we make, which is made with carob flour and stevia) and lastly a thickener (gluten-free rice flour). All this together with a vanilla touch is mixed and we get a simple but very natural hot chocolate. We serve plenty of cafés and chocolate shops throughout Spain.
