TasWeekend: Sweet-talking teacher

A RAW chocolate-making workshop in Hobart demonstrates how to get the most out of ingredients.

Sweet-talking teacher

I’M halfway up the stairwell to the top floor of sustainable living shop Teros in Elizabeth St when it hits me: the unmistakably delectable aroma of chocolate.

I have a feeling this evening is going to be very, very good. The raw chocolate-making tutorial is run by Anny Fodor, who has owned cafes in Melbourne and Istanbul.

Moving to Tasmania in 2013, she now teaches locals how to “detox” the home and body through her business Annybody Wellness.

Raw chocolate is produced using ingredients that haven’t undergone roasting, boiling or other cooking processes before they arrive in your kitchen, nor any heating above 42C.

It is said to retain the nutritional value of its natural ingredients and, unlike cooked chocolate, won’t melt quickly in your hands.

Anny’s chocolate course isn’t a hands-on event but it’s interactive. I sit in the front row and before me a workbench is covered with luscious organic ingredients: coconut sugar, cacao nibs, virgin cacao butter, rice syrup, vanilla bean powder, sea salt and cold-pressed coconut oil.

Cacao beans and warm chocolate with cashew milk. Picture: WENDY EMMETT

To start, Anny blends a few of these ingredients with pre-soaked almonds into a “warm chocolate”. Served in a double-wall glass, it’s irresistibly creamy, sweet and a little bitter with a slight crunch.

I quickly learn the distinct smell we associate with chocolate is from the white cacao butter, which Anny shaves with a ceramic knife for melting later on.

Small jars of cacao in various forms are passed around for the guests – about 20 women – to dip into for a taste test.

Anny tells us cacao beans were once used as currency in early Aztec cultures. It doesn’t need to be explained that chocolate is one of the richest treats in the world.

Cacao is said to have numerous health benefits, as Anny explains while we nibble on some white chocolate she prepared earlier.

There’s no dairy and, with a subtle coffee-like flavour, it sits on the tongue for some time without melting the way commercially bought chocolate does.

We then watch Anny demonstrate how to prepare it.

She adds the shaved butter, xylitol (as a natural sweetener) and cashews into a high-powered mixer that also heats the ingredients.

Once the mixture is an evaporated-milk consistency, she pours it into silicone moulds and puts it in an Esky to set quickly.

Meanwhile, we’re fed more pieces of white chocolate with matcha and darker chocolate with cacao nibs and goji berries, while receiving handy tips for making the raw treats in our home kitchens – don’t let water anywhere near things and successful tempering adds shine.

The dark chocolate demonstration comes next. Anny adds the cacao butter, powder and Lucuma powder – a low-fructose fruit sugar – into a double boiler.

When it heats up, it looks dry and lumpy (much like what I’d expect to produce in my kitchen) but when she continues it slowly melts and dissolves into a syrup. It looks silky and the smell is irresistible.

I volunteer to coat some fruit truffles she brought in, throwing the walnut-sized treats into the bowl and rolling them in the warm liquid before leaving them to set. We take these treats home at the end of the night, along with white chocolate goodies.

What inspires me the most is being armed with the knowledge a professional taste and texture is achievable in my kitchen. As Anny says, raw chocolate making is “alchemy in its true sense”.