Independent chocolatiers, Salcombe Dairy, have released a range of luxurious Easter treats: a collection of bean-to-bar Easter eggs made from their single origin Peruvian chocolate. The Easter egg arrives in beautiful, fully compostable packaging with a nautical rope handle.

Salcombe Dairy's hand-crafted Easter eggs are available in milk, white or dark chocolate with a choice of two flavours of The Bar. All RRP £19 for 160g with two 80g The Bar chocolates. Available from salcombedairy.co.uk and good west country retailers. 

Only one of a handful bean-to-bar producers in the UK, Dan and Lucia Bly wanted complete quality control over the entire production process. Their quest to produce fine chocolate began by travelling around cacao growing regions of South America with their family, visiting plantations, personally meeting farmers, understanding social and economic issues and seeking inspiration from the masters of chocolate.

They decided to source from Peruvian cooperatives, breathing new life into the beans with their own blends and processes back home in Salcombe.

This means that each Salcombe Dairy Easter egg, bar and miniature chocolate has been carefully hand-crafted from start to finish. Everything produced by Dan, Lucia and their team can be traced back to Peruvian farms, ensuring excellence in quality control.  

Salcombe Dairy has been proudly producing scrumptious ice cream since 1979 using local cream and the finest ingredients to create some of Great Taste's Top 50 products. Their ice creams, sorbets and frozen yoghurts are all natural, egg and gluten free. Their sorbets are suitable for vegans. 

For further information on Salcombe Dairy, please visit www.salcombedairy.co.uk.

Notes to editor:

Salcombe Dairy was founded in 1979 by Peter Howard, in the small, stone built shed at the bottom of Coronation Road in Salcombe.

On talking about bean-to-bar chocolate, Lucia Bly, Salcombe Dairy Retail Director, says:

“Bean to Bar chocolate is a growing market and follows the trends set by small coffee producers, where the key to achieving the best product is in the selection of ingredients. Each cacao bean has thousands of different flavours to be discovered, and this can only be done if care is taken in the manufacturing process.

“We have our organic Peruvian cacao beans roasted for us, to our specification. The beans are then winnowed leaving the Cacao nib, which we then grind for 48 hours with raw cane sugar to achieve a particle size less than 20 microns which is roughly the point at which the mouth cannot pick up any rough texture.

“We then conche the product for a further 3 hours to taste, at which stage we should have removed some of the unwelcome volatiles including some of the acetic acid and tannic acids whilst still leaving the essence of the bean within the flavour.

“We think that the Peruvian beans we use have some really interesting fruity and woody notes.Having done this – it is just then down to our chocolatiers to achieve the final shine and snap with a really well tempered bar of Chocolate.

For further information, photography or an interview with Dan Bly, managing director of Salcombe Dairy, please contact:

Harry Wild at RAW Food & Drink PR - Email: harry@rawfoodanddrinkpr.co.uk / Telephone: 07540399025 / Twitter: @RawSW