17 September 2009
Divine makes the dream cooking ingredient and we have recipes and quotes from top chefs to prove it! In celebration of national Chocolate Week which runs from 12th-18th October and which Divine, the company co-owned by cocoa farmers, is once again co-sponsoring, leading chefs across the UK have been working hard to submit their best chocolate recipe.
Two-Michelin starred chef Michael Caines says of Divine, “All their products use natural flavourings which are perfect for making great tasting recipes”. Michael and his team of pastry chefs have just sent us this gorgeous pudding recipe made just for Divine: Chocolate Tart with Coffee Anglaise and Crème Chantilly. Michael’s recipe uses Divine’s critically acclaimed dark chocolate*, made with 70% cocoa solids which is available from all major supermarkets and wholefoods stores (RRP £1.49 for 100g bar).
Multi-award winning chef and television star Jean Christophe Novelli has designed a Divine Chocolate Fondant. Jean Christophe runs special chocolate courses at the Novelli Academy in his Hertfordshire farmhouse.
Alan Coxon, the chef voted in the top ten best TV chefs by BBC viewers, is also a huge fan of using Divine to cook with. He has created a sumptuous Chocolate Pud with Hot Cherry Sauce for Divine in honour of Chocolate Week.
TV chef Jun Tanaka, who regularly appears on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen has sent in his wickedly rich Warm Chocolate Pudding, which oozes chocolate from the centre.
Young chef Sam Stern who is due to publish his fifth cookbook next year has toiled away in his kitchen to create a fabulous Triple Chocolate Soufflé.
Michelin-starred chef Rob Rees MBE (aka The Cotswold Chef) has produced a White Chocolate & Strawberry Pudding, made using Divine’s sublime flavour of 100g bar, White Chocolate with Strawberries (RRP £1.59 from Liberty, Oxfam, Wholefoods Market and independent stores).
Baking and chocolate expert and private chef to the former Queen Mother Linda Collister, has submitted a Hazelnut Chocolate Sponge with a dark chocolate sauce. This is one of a collection of sweet (and savoury!) chocolate recipes in Divine’s Heavenly Chocolate Recipes with a Heart (published by Absolute Press, RRP £19.99).
The head chef at The Pudding Club which was made famous through Rick Stein’s BBC series Food Heroes and celebrates the traditional British pud, sent Divine his Squidgy Chocolate Pudding in honour of Chocolate Week. Divine has worked with The Pudding Club at Three Ways House Hotel in the Cotswolds for a number of years and has even more exciting choccy activities to offer this Chocolate Week! Divine’s resident chocolatier will be heading down to Gloucestershire to host Divine chocolate masterclasses for the Chocoholics Weekend taking place on 17th-18th October. An exclusive Divine Chocolate menu will be on offer to hotel guests and a special Divine Guilty Pleasure Afternoon Tea will be open to guests and non-guests alike all week. 
Couture cake-maker to the stars (from Madonna to David Beckham to the Queen), Mich Turner, of Little Venice Cake Company in London (www.LVCC.co.uk) says, “Divine offers quality indulgence with moral satisfaction. A Divine combination of flavours, perfect for creating mouthwatering chocolate treats”. She has specially designed the heavenly Chocolate & Raspberry Truffle Bites, which use Divine’s brand new flavour of chocolate, Dark Chocolate with Raspberries (available from Waitrose and Booths RRP £1.69).
Cupcake Queen Lily Vanilli, designed Dark Chocolate & Avacado Cupcakes for Divine and partner Tate & Lyle. Divine’s dark chocolate combines beautifully with creamy avocados and toasted walnuts to create a truly unique and luxurious taste and using avocado in place of butter makes it a slightly healthier option.
Every stage in the creation of Divine chocolate is carried out with passion and devotion with the sole aim of creating an irresistible taste experience for chocolate lovers. The flavour and texture of Divine – whether it is the smooth, creamy milk chocolate, the rich, intense dark chocolate with 70% cocoa, or the silky vanilla white chocolate has been designed to bring out the very best from the quality cocoa sourced from Ghana in West Africa.
Divine Chocolate is made from only the very best cocoa nurtured and handpicked by cocoa farmers in Ghana. The cocoa trees grow in the shade of the tropical rainforest, and the beans are slowly fermented and dried in the sun to produce the finest flavour. Divine combines the cocoa beans and butter with entirely natural ingredients to allow the full chocolate flavour to come through and has an exciting and alluring product range including a diverse range of 100g and countline bars, gifts and seasonal specialities. Brand new to the Divine flavour range are the 100g Dark Chocolate with Raspberries and the countline Butterscotch Milk Chocolate bars. All Divine’s bars are suitable for vegetarians and Kosher certified.
Choosing Divine as your chocolate treat is a delicious way of playing your part in a more equitable trading partnership. Divine is the only Fairtrade chocolate company which is 45% owned by the farmers. While fair trade ensures farmers receive a better deal for their cocoa and additional income to invest in their community, company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine’s profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry.
Divine has sponsored Chocolate Week since it began six years ago when it was launched in collaboration with the Academy of Chocolate. It is celebrated every October and is a week choc-full of 100% chocolate indulgence. Divine has hooked up with more top chefs, shops, restaurants & hotels than ever before to make this the best year yet! Divine’s events, promotions and special Chocolate Week recipes.
* Critical acclaim for Divine’s 70% dark chocolate includes:
• Charles Campion, Food Critic, The Independent: “…for a really good balance between price and performance look out for Divine’s Fairtrade 70% dark chocolate – very fruity, with a good texture and a long finish”.
• Chocolate expert and founder member of the Academy of Chocolate Sara Jayne-Stanes on Divine 70% Dark: “a mouthful of intense, very smooth, delectable chocolate … Divine is in a league of its own”.
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Please contact Rosanna Mayhew on 0207 378 6550 or Rosanna for images and more information.
Editors’ notes
• Divine Chocolate Ltd is the only Fairtrade chocolate company that is also co-owned by cocoa farmers. Kuapa Kokoo, a co-operative of 45,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana, benefit not only from the Fairtrade premium on the sale of their beans, but also receive a 45% share of Divine’s distributable profits giving the farmers more economic stability, as well as the increased influence in the cocoa industry company-ownership brings
• Keep up to date with Divine online:
For Divine gifts: Divine Chocolate Shop to buy online.
Follow the Divine blog
Follow Divine on Twitter
• For sales and stockist enquiries contact Alistair
• All Divine products carry the Fairtrade Mark. This is an independent guarantee certified by the Fairtrade Foundation that the ingredients are sourced under internationally agreed fair trade terms and conditions. These include a guaranteed, secure minimum price, an extra social premium payment for the farmers to invest in their own community programmes, long term trading contracts, decent health and safety conditions – all aimed at empowering farmers to make their own improvements to living standards and prospects for the future
• Divine Chocolate has won a number of prestigious awards. These include Good Housekeeping’s Favourite Fairtrade Product 2008 and Best Food Brand in the SHE magazine Ethical Awards 2007. Divine Chocolate Ltd was awarded Best Social Enterprise 2007 at the Enterprising Solutions awards run by the Office of the Third Sector and The Observer Best Ethical Business 2008.
• The UK chocolate market alone is worth approximately £3.6 billion a year: if Fairtrade products can capture even a small proportion of that market, producers in developing countries gain real benefits.