The competition has now closed. Congratulations to the winner Amanda, and her entry – The Headonism Skull “screams” skullinary expertise in chocolate to me!

The Headonism Chocolate Skull is the last word in horror-chic! This limited edition of 150 life-size skulls is finished with precious, 24-carat edible gold and cast in extravagantly smooth 40% milk chocolate and award-winning 70% dark chocolate. The skull is presented in a tailor-made midnight black box, with red ribbon for the ultimate horror-chic show piece!

And this Halloween we’re giving you the chance to WIN one of these gorgeous Headonism skulls; limited edition number 1 of 150! (Closing date midnight 27th October 2011)

To enter the competition simply comment on this post, filling in the blank…

The Headonism Skull “screams” __________ to me!

* Terms and Conditions – All entries must be received by midnight Thursday 27th October 2011. The prize of one Limited Edition Headonism Chocolate Skull worth £50 will be awarded to one entry chosen by the Hotel Chocolat judges. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. The prize must be accepted as offered and cannot be substituted for another ‘gift’ or cash. The winner will be notified by comment reply and announced on the blog post on Friday 28th October 2011. No purchase necessary. Entrants must be UK residents at least 16 years of age. Sorry! Competition not open to Hotel Chocolat employees, their families, any partner running this promotion or affiliated companies, their employees or their families.

Ben Leask, the general manager at our Rabot Estate in Borough Market, attended the nearby Whisky Exchange Show held in Vinopolis, near London’s Borough Market, on 7th-8th October 2011. After the weekend was over, here’s what he had to say about the show.

“Wow what an incredible weekend. I spent all day Friday and Saturday in the food pairing hall at the TWE Whisky Show 2011. Rabot Estate was the hit of the whole affair with guests, journalists and makers all beating a path to try our suggested temptations.

About a fortnight ago I sat down with the famous whisky writer and critic, Martine Nouet, and Alex Hutchinson, the manager of the Whisky Exchange. Together, with dozens of bottles of whisky and almost as many chocolates, we tried to create what Martine calls extreme pairings. Not just simple matches but combinations that create tertiary flavours of their own.

Many hours, and a few boxes of chocolates later, all the hard work paid off and we decided to go with a 16 year old Scapa Whisky alongside the New Season Rabot 66% Saint Lucia chocolate. This was a truly elegant combination that gave the Scapa an extra previously unknown length, whilst creating the harmonious balance of bitter and sweet and drawing out fruit, fruit and more fruit.

We followed this with an Aberlour 18 year old with our very own Rabot 65% with Sea Salt. It was amazing what the salt did. Martine described it as an “explosion in your mouth that forced the Aberlour to come out if it’s shell”!

Perhaps the most satisfying part of the whole weekend was at the whisky show at Vinopolis, where we changed so many people’s perceptions. Many were very hesitant to try our new combinations… but once they did we won them over. More new converts to the cause of great chocolate!”

The final consideration before we can send our chocolate to our stores is how it is packaged. We want you to feel uplifting excitement from the moment you first set eyes on our chocolate – but it’s not just about how it looks…

When we set about designing our packaging, the primary goal is to attract and uplift our customers, which is why our designs cannot simply inform our guests, but they must also provoke feelings and communicate emotions. For Hotel Chocolat, the most effective packaging looks attractive, impresses with its creativity and has its own strong personality and attitude. And it’s not just the look either, because we’re constantly exploring new materials and print finishes to introduce interesting textures too.

Depending on store size and the time of year, our stores will receive between one and five deliveries a week. They are usually carried out overnight, particularly in the summer when night time temperatures are lower. Once the chocolates arrive from the factory into our warehouse, it only takes about two days on average for those chocolates to appear in-store for you to buy.

During the golden age of the chocolate mould, beautifully intricate designs were chiselled into plaster and then cast into metal. We take great inspiration from those mini works of art when we design our own moulds because we believe that chocolate shouldn’t just taste gorgeous, it should look exciting too. Thankfully, we don’t have to use chisels these days…

We usually sketch out what we want the look and feel of an individual chocolate should be, then we add in the technical specifications such as height, width and depth. At that point we’ll iron out anything that might not be possible, taking into account the capabilities of our state-of-the-art of the chocolate making machines. After that we’ll create a technical line drawing to instruct for our mould makers to follow – then all we need to do is add chocolate!

Grinding and conching are the two main reasons that chocolate is so smooth and silky. Grinding is the first, which involves passing the cocoa nibs through large rollers until they are crushed into a liquid called cocoa mass or cocoa liquor. Next the other ingredients of chocolate are added – sugar and milk if it’s milk chocolate – and the whole lot is beaten until it becomes a smooth paste.

Conching is a process of heating and kneading and mixing that gets its name from the original machine, invented in Switzerland, which looked a lot like a conch shell. The aim is to reduce the particle size, which makes the chocolate silky smooth, as well as having a mellowing, smoothing affect on flavours.

Our latest chocolate made with Rabot Estate cocoa is our 66% dark, which has been conched for just 24 hours. We’ve chosen this relatively short conch to preserve the fruity, characterful nature of our Trinitario cocoa without mellowing the flavours too much.

There are several key moments in the making of chocolate, and roasting is most definitely one of them – because if you get the roast wrong there’s no coming back from it, the cocoa will be ruined.

The beans are roasted to develop their chocolaty flavours at temperatures of around 150ºC inside large rotating cylinders, for anything between half an hour and two hours, depending on the depth of flavours required. Over roasting is probably the worst crime, resulting in very bitter tasting beans. Roasting also helps to sterilise the beans, make the winnowing process easier and improves the ‘grindability’ of the nibs.

Different types of cocoa require different roasting times – fine Criollo beans tend to require shorter, cooler roasts, while bulk Forastero beans tend to need hotter, longer roasting times. The Trinitario cocoa we grow on Rabot Estate is roasted at fairly low temperatures to help preserve the great character of the beans.

It is often assumed that the whole of the cocoa bean is used to make chocolate, however, that is not the case. Chocolate makers are only interested in a small part of the bean called the nib, which nestles at the heart of the bean. So, after roasting at high temperature the beans are broken up by a process called winnowing, or kibbling, usually by sending them at high speed onto impact plates. Next, they pass onto large vibrating sieves, which allow the nibs fall through while the shells are blown away. The nibs are then taken for grinding and the shells are often made into fertiliser or cattle feed.

Before our dried cocoa beans can go anywhere they need to be graded, which actually begins while they are still on the drying trays.  Preliminary grading involves removing little bits of leaves or twigs that may have found they way into the beans as well as removing tiny, under developed beans and any remaining pieces of dried pulp.

One of the main dangers for cocoa at this stage can be mould, which will grow on beans that haven’t been dried properly.  To avoid this we have a moisture meter (the only one on the island) so we can completely control the drying process, neither under nor over drying the cocoa.  Ideally, the beans should have a moisture content of 6.5%.

The final step in grading is the cut test – a process by which we slice in half 50 beans and examine the colour of the beans to determine that they are well fermented and dried and there has been no any insect or pest invasion.  We do 13 cut tests to every tonne of cocoa.  When they pass, they’re packed into jute sacks and shipped across the Atlantic to be turned into chocolate.

Next year we begin work on our next exciting project in Saint Lucia, the building of a small batch chocolate factory.  This will allows us to turn industry practice on hits head by making chocolate in the cocoa growing region itself – using our own Saint Lucian cocoa, local ingredients and labour.

Only about 1% to 3% of the delicate little cocoa flowers on a tree go on to produce cocoa pods. Unusually, pods grow direct from the trunk and main branches and they do it throughout the year, taking about six months to grow into mature pods. We harvest twice a year – the main one happens between November and February and there’s a smaller one between April and June. Unfortunately, Hurricane Tomaz, which hit Saint Lucia on 30th October last year robbed us of our main crop – we’re hoping for a bumper crop this year as Mother Nature has a habit of compensating!

The pods are picked when they’re ripe and left to rest for three or so days, after which they are ‘cracked’ (chopped open with great skill using sharp machetes). The empty pods are used as organic fertiliser around the estate while the seeds and pulp are scooped out and placed in wooden boxes in the fermentation shed. It’s a crucial, seven-day process by which the beans undergo a chemical reaction and the foundations of future chocolate flavours are laid. We turn the box every two days using wooden cocoa paddles, gathering temperature data at each turn – the beans can reach 50ºC.

After seven days, the beans are turned out onto trays to dry in the warm Saint Lucian sun. At Rabot Estate and elsewhere in the West Indies, our drying trays are on runners so they can be pushed under cover as you never know when the next tropical shower might come along. Recently, we have also started to protect our beans from the hottest part of the sun to avoid burning or over-drying them by putting them in the shade between midday and 2pm.

Whether it’s grown from a seed or grafted onto rootstock, cocoa is a fairly difficult tree to grow, which is why it is always nurtured as a seedling first, before being planted out on the farm.  Even then they can’t be left to fend for themselves as cocoa is a fragile tree – needing both shade and sunshine, frequent rain and protection from winds, pests and diseases.

At our own Rabot Estate on Saint Lucia, all new seedlings are created by grafting.  It’s a process by which cuttings from our most prized trees can be grown on strong and productive rootstock.  It is more expensive and time consuming than growing from seeds, but it allows us to control precisely which trees we propagate and get quicker yields.

We have worked with university experts to identify the DNA of the old and rare cocoa trees on our estate, which we then propagate to create new seedlings with which to repopulate and expand our historic estate.  If you visit us at our Hotel on Rabot Estate you can take part in the Tree to Bar Experience and see for yourself our seedlings nursery.  You’ll be able to create your own seedling, which will be labelled and planted out – so you can go back and visit it!