“Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate.” ~ Jo Brand
A dessert that is loved universally is chocolate, well at least by most people. And when it is a good quality chocolate made with quality ingredients, your chocolate experience is elevated several notches higher. Commemorating the spirit of freedom this Independence Day by unveiling India’s first-of-its-kind 72 kg Rocky Road chocolate bar.
Specially crafted with 72 exquisite ingredients, Fabelle luxury chocolates from ITC Foods will simultaneously be on display across it’s chocolate boutiques in six ITC Hotels in India namely – ITC Grand Chola (Chennai), ITC Gardenia (Bangalore), ITC Maratha (Mumbai), ITC Sonar (Kolkata), ITC Kohenur (Hyderabad) and ITC Maurya (New Delhi) on 16th August, 2018.
Hand-crafted by Fabelle Master Chocolatiers, the special Rocky Road bar will be displayed and be available for sale in the chocolate boutiques from 16th until 19th August 2018. And you can buy a portion of the Rock Road chocolate bar for Rs 72 and all the proceeds from this will go towards Make-A-Wish Foundation of India, a non-profit organization. I caught up with Chef Tanvi who shared some interesting tit bits that went into the making of this chocolate and also gave me a mini education in all things chocolates.
Tell us about the unique creation that you have crafted?
It took us about 6 days as we made this in 15 blocks of individual blocks totaling 72 kgs in a frame so it looks like a bar of chocolate. It has been entirely hand crafted using the good quality chocolates that we use at Fabelle. Also we have tempered the chocolate – something that can be done by a machine but we have done it by hand. So we had 60 kg of chocolates that we tempered by hand.
Can you explain what tempering is all about?
Tempering is a very important technique in chocolate making. What it does is that it helps you enjoy the chocolate. So when you break it it gives you a snap, when you see it, there is a shine and when you put it in your mouth it melts in your mouth. All this happens only because of tempering. If the chocolate is not tempered, it will just crumble in your hand, not have a good mouth feel and definitely no shine. It would be like a matte finished cocoa powder with lines.
How many people worked in your team?
We are a team of four who worked together to create this chocolate and to be honest even we did not foresee what it would look like as this was the first time we did something of this size.
You have 72 ingredients in the chocolate – tell us about them?
We conceptualized the ingredients over a month and we actually tried out each ingredient with chocolate to establish how it would taste to ensure it blended well. The ingredients that were chosen were based on a series of textures and flavours. for the crunch there were four types of biscuits used, five type of cereals, chocolate chips, chocolate sprinkles, seeds – flaxseed, pumpkin, sunflower, chia seeds and nuts like hazelnuts, pecan nuts, almonds, walnuts, pistachio.
Did you face any challenges in the process?
Surprisingly, it was quite smooth and there was footage of us making it was taken across all the properties. The brand wanted to end it with ITC Gardenia being the flagship store, they wanted the final assembly to happen live. This was challenging as it had to be done in one take. We had a wooden frame that was made and we had to do it live with the chocolate being at the right temperature.
