We are immensely proud that so many professional chefs and bakers choose to use Willie’s Cacao couverture chocolates. Ottolenghi has been making his brownies from our Rio Caribe 72% dark chocolate for many years, while Marco Pierre White has made some of his most iconic desserts from our Chulucanas 70% dark chocolate with its beautiful raisin and plum notes.  

And what is the secret weapon in a Masterchef final? Yes, our chocolate  has twice been used to make the winning dessert.  Lisa Snowdon’s Chocolate Tart with crème fraiche and sour cherries was a show stopper in the Celebrity Masterchef 2022 final… another hit for our Rio Caribe!   

So why does Willie’s Cacao make some of the best couverture chocolate? 

Depth of flavour: Top chefs spend their lives striving for the finest flavours, which is why chocolate craft made from the finest beans hits the mark. Our chocolate is known for its incredible depth of flavour. We achieve this by controlling every step of the process, ‘bean to bar’. In particular we conche for up to 3 weeks to protect the precious flavour notes of our beans, compared to industrial chocolate that is made in a few hours at high temperatures.  

Nothing artificial: Our chocolates never contain vanilla or lecithin, so they are a completely clean palette for chefs to work on. We use completely natural ingredients – nothing muddies the pure flavours of our beans. If a chef wants vanilla in their recipe they can add it, but we don’t let it in through the back door with the chocolate.  

This is particularly noticeable in our Couverture White Chocolate, which is the perfect carrier of delicate flavours in desserts and chocolates. It is a remarkable chocolate, not too sweet, with soft cacao and caramelised notes coming from the natural (not de-odourised) cocoa butter and raw cane sugar.  

Single estate chocolates with distinct flavour profiles for different uses: Our couverture chocolates are all made with different single estate cacaos. This means they each have distinct charismatic flavours that perfectly pair with different ingredients. So for example the smooth nutty notes of Las Trincheras 72% make it perfect for baking and Rio Caribe 72% pairs perfectly rums and cognacs in desserts and truffles.  

We have even been known to custom make couverture chocolates for specific recipes, getting exactly the right flavour notes and sugar level.  

Allergy free chocolate: The professional kitchen now has to be super aware of food allergies and intolerances. So what is increasingly known as Allergy Free Couverture Chocolate helps manage this. Willie’s Cacao couverture chocolates contain no soya or gluten, and we have dairy free milk and white chocolates.  

Vegan Couverture Chocolates – dark, milk and white: All the Willie’s Cacao dark couverture chocolates are dairy free and suitable for vegans, but we now have Surabaya 42% Vegan Couverture Milk Chocolate and 36% Vegan Couverture White Chocolate . Both of these are oat based and have our characteristic depth and purity of flavour. 

Ethically sourced: All our beans are sourced direct trade, which means we buy them directly from the farmers paying a higher price premium than Fairtrade. Since Willie himself is a cocoa farmer, we put naturally put the interests of the farmers at the heart of how we do business. We have very long standing relationships with all the small farming groups we work with. They grow cacao the traditional way under shade trees so supporting bio-diversity, and without using pesticides or other chemicals. To ensure there is no contamination, we get a third party laboratory to test all the cacaos for chemicals when they arrive.  

Versatility: Willie is fond of saying that there is a chocolate for everything. Couverture chocolate is used for baking, desserts, ice creams, ganache, truffles, coating, moulding and much more. For some of these you need a light chocolate like Sur del Lago 70 that allows other ingredients to shine, and for others you are looking for distinct flavours. We even have two different couverture milk chocolates: the more intense Surabaya 54% with caramel notes and the classic Rio Caribe 44% with nutty notes.  

To order trade samples or for trade prices please email mail@williescacao.com or call 01884 840650.

Vegan…chocolate?

No, you aren’t dreaming. You’ve read right, and there’s actually a whole section of my website dedicated to nothing but vegan chocolates.

I am a dark chocolate fanatic myself, so many of my bars and gift chocolates are in fact naturally dairy free and suitable for vegans. The only ingredients in my dark chocolate are cacao, raw cane sugar and little natural cacao butter.

What makes my dark chocolate naturally vegan?

Cocoa Butter!

The name may be deceiving but cocoa butter is naturally free of dairy, eggs, honey and other animal-derived ingredients. Cocoa butter is a type of fat that comes from cocoa beans.

Approximately 50% of each cacao nib is cocoa butter. To make cocoa powder you need to remove some of this butter and I do this on a pair of antique cocoa butter presses. I make the chocolate exactly as I do for the bars then physically press the butter out of the conched 100% cacao.

This is very different to the industrial process that is called Dutching in which the cacao is washed in an alkaline solution to neutralise their acidity.

Discover How I Make My Bean to Bar Chocolate

What about my Vegan White Chocolate?

Discover My Full Range Of Vegan Chocolates

Discover my favourite Vegan Recipes:

Some of my all time favourite recipes are naturally vegan. Taking flavour inspiration directly from the natural notes of the cacao. From my dark chocolate sorbet to my fiery cacao harissa, these 100% vegan recipes range from sweet desserts to savoury dinners.

Discover My Full Range Of Vegan Recipes

How to use my 100% cacao cylinders to Make Luxury Vegan Hot Chocolate :

My 100% cylinders are my personal choice, I use them to make my Aztec hot chocolate. They’re also naturally vegan.

Choose your single estate cacao bean. Which of my prized beans will you enjoy the most? Why not try a few and experiment? My personal favourite is Peruvian black, Chulucanas, it’s fruity with notes of raisins and plums. Your personal favourite, however, may well be different. You won’t know unless you try… Check the descriptions in each of my 100% cylinders and pick those that resonate the most with you. Are you into toffee caramel notes, smooth and nutty, fruity? Discover my 100% cylinders.

Simmer to thicken it. Don’t miss this stage, once it’s boiling with the water, lower the heat and simmer for around 3 minutes or until it thickens. It makes all the difference!

Froth It! The Aztecs knew it, and you do too… with Aztec-style hot chocolate when you use just water and perhaps a little sugar, you’ll get a lighter froth than with milk, frothing is wonderful and necessary.

Milk or Water? It’s entirely up to you, I use water, so did the Aztecs. There’s already enough smooth and creamy cocoa butter to make a really wonderful hot chocolate but you can try it with a plant-based dairy alternative, and decide your own favourite.

Experiment with flavours. My Aztec Hot Chocolate Recipe uses Ancho chilli, it’s mild, but the Aztecs would have used many types of chilli with varying heats. Over the years in different countries many other flavours have been added to hot chocolate. For example, when hot chocolate arrived in the east they added spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, crushed rose petals and jasmine leaves. Can you think of anything else you’d like to try?

Discover My Vegan Hot Chocolate

Want to know How I Make My Chocolate from Bean to Bar? Find out here

We all know chocolate and love are a match made in heaven, but have you ever wondered why sweet treats pair so well with romance?

Cacao has through its long history often been associated with romance and sex. Cacao was revered for its aphrodisiacal properties among the Maya and the Aztecs in ancient times. The conquistador Bernal Díaz describes seeing the Aztec emperor Motecuhzoma consume vast quantities of a cacao drink, which he was told was for success with women.

The Spanish were very taken with the idea of chocolate as a love potion. Although the Church usually allowed it to be drunk by priests and monks during fasting, a number of Inquisition documents reveal a deep suspicion of its alleged power to excite the venereal appetite, citing examples of men who sought out ‘knowledgeable women’, or witches, to cook up seductive chocolate drinks with which to debauch their targets. Equally, women would mix their blood with chocolate in order to seduce unwilling men.

Try Making My Aztec Hot Chocolate

Modern research into the cravings of the female sex has shown that chocolate increases libido and counteracts mood swings in women. It contains magnesium and iron, so female chocolate cravings might signal a physical need for these nutrients because magnesium levels rise and fall during the menstrual cycle and iron may become depleted. Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, another chemical that is found naturally in the body; it releases a dopamine in the brain that stimulates physical pleasure. It has been suggested that this is why some women say they prefer chocolate to sex, although this is probably oversimplifying things. After all, men love chocolate too.

Perhaps part of chocolate’s appeal is that it contains a molecule called anandamide, which is said to activate cellular receptors and make you feel happy and high. I am the living proof of this theory! Whenever I experience a dip in energy at the factory, I whip up a quick hot chocolate booster, or just grab a bite of unsweetened cacao if I’m pressed for time. Within minutes, I’m buzzing and energized again. My chocolate never fails to uplift me.

Showing our love through chocolate is still a truly romantic gesture and what better way to express it than with the pure flavour of real chocolate, made with 100% natural ingredients in small batches from the world’s finest cacaos.

Discover How I Make My Bean to Bar Chocolate

Discover my favourite Valentine’s Gifts:

Take your pick from my best selling Valentines Day chocolate gifts. All deeply indulgent and thoroughly luxurious. From my Signature Truffles with beautiful gift sleeves to my Letterbox Chocolates, perfect for when you can’t be there in person on Valentine’s Day.

Discover My Full Range Of Valentine’s Day Gifts