The Many Flavours of Chocolate

With the world of chocolate ever-expanding in its vast choices of flavours and sommelier-esque descriptions, it can sometimes feel as if there’s no limit to the amount of micro and macro flavour trends that chocolate can associate to itself. Chocolate is also always trending, Sean Pera helps explore chocolate trends that are sure to inspire you!

There’s absolutely no doubt that a pink trend is in. Mostly due to the creation of the infamous Ruby chocolate made with unfermented cocoa beans, there seems to have been a jolt in pink-inspired flavours. So, naturally, florals and botanicals are in this year. Everything from rose, rhubarb, berries, hibiscus, cherries and pink spices.

We all grew up with doctors telling us to eat our fruits and veggies, and technically, they never said combine them with chocolate. But, why not? I mean, cocoa beans are in fact a vegetable according to the CFIA and FDA. So feel free to make fruit and vegetable-inspired ganache for your chocolate bonbons, or mélange some beet powder into your dark chocolate.

And maybe this is my favourite trend: smoked and fermented chocolate flavours. Chocolate is already made with fermented cocoa beans and gets slight smoky notes from roasting, and if it didn’t, well, it just wouldn’t taste like chocolate. So as natural as fermentation is already to the chocolate world, I’m thinking of different ways to bring fermented flavours into a ganache. Did someone say kombucha?

Smoke is on the rise, quite literally, and smoked chocolate is definitely a good thing. In fact, pretty much anything you smoke is bound to be delicious. Smoke and ‘smokeless’ flavours are more often being highlighted in applications such as Cherrywood infused into cream for ganache, and smoked chocolate tequila sorbet.

It’s true that chocolate is a flavour that never goes out of style, and depending on how you manipulate it, chocolate is an ingredient that is proving to get better with time. As the months grow colder customers are looking for a warmer feel to their frozen desserts. Adding a heating element to your frozen