Original Beans Ganache Chocolates from Geert Vercruysse
I bought myself a small box of the Original Beans chocolates that Geert Vercruysse created for Chocolate Week. The transfers proudly announced that for each bar a tree was planted. If everyone switched from Cadbury’s to Original Beans we’d be able to save the habitat of the Gorilla, rescue an almost extinct bean and increase the diversity of cocoa on the planet while increasing the base salaries of farm workers. Plus we’d all be eating AWESOME chocolate bars. This is about the ganaches however and so I digress…
The ganaches were thin rectangular ganaches which were covered in a thin shell of the chocolate. This is not easy to do but is my favourite method of creating a ganache chocolate. I bought them in a sealed clear plastic jewellery case which enables a full examination of the chocolates without opening the box. I love Lauden for this type of boxing and hope one day to get a selection box from them 😀
It came time to break the seal on the box, with its six precious jewels inside and open it up for me to eat. The scent as I opened the box was deep chocolate and I just cannot describe the anticipation.
The dark chocolate ganache was deeply delicious but without any of my precious red fruits 🙁 there was very little acidity. It was difficult to place the origin and so I decided to drop Geert a line to try and at least help me narrow my focus and concentrate more on matching what I knew the words were for a particular region with what I was tasting.
Well, regrettably, Geert said he used 3 different chocolates here and I have no clue what I’m tasting. In the muddle the distinct flavours flit across my tongue like race cars across a stretch of track – I know they are there and I have a general idea of the fact they are race cars but they go by so quickly I don’t know what team they belong to! This doesn’t diminish the pleasure of the smooth ganache, the delicious subtle flavours or the clean finish.
The milk was surprising from the start – almost like salted caramel then I started getting a bit of woody spicyness. It finished off for me with a bit of a honey flavour I think – hard to say as I polished it off so quickly! Yummy!
These ganaches by the brilliant Geert Vercruysse were lovely but regrettably were part of a very limited run and I don’t know if you can buy any more. I bought mine at the Chocolate Unwrapped event and they were glorious (and I’ve eaten them all). I asked Geert what he did and he said “I made (them) from the Congo, Beni Wild and the Piura a dark (Fortunato N°4) version and a milk (Guanaja 41%) version. So in each box you find 2 Congo’s, 2 Beni Wild and 2 Piura’s.” So while I did have 3 milk and 3 dark, it seems there was the potential for more… maybe I shouldn’t have eaten them so quickly!
