This tablette was created out of nowhere, using toasted aniseed which is light under the tooth unlike untoasted anise, and added cocoa nibs and Greek currants.
It was originally created in milk chocolate and it was our favourite original flavour – It works amazingly well together.
It is also made in dark chocolate for the purpose of those who do not like or cannot have milk chocolate, but the anise is less prominent as the dark chocolate is very intense. It still is very delicious in dark.
Ingredients: cocoa mass, sugar, (milk powder if milk chocolate version) vanilla extract, toasted aniseed, cocoa nibs, washed and dried Greek currants. May contain traces of nuts.
Available in dark (76% cocoa content) or milk (42% cocoa content) chocolate.
The dark chocolate is suitable for vegan diet.
Sold by weight.
One of my market friends who never eats my chocolate tried the prototype, (he likes Cadbury’s) and it took him back to his childhood when he used to “steal” the anise sweets in his grand-mother’s pantry!
Needless to say he ate it all and had a big smile on his face. l had conquered him with some chocolate at last, after years of knowing him! He commented on my next trial batch that there wasn’t enough anise in, so l updated my recipe and left it to brew in the ethers for many months, till l was ready to make a batch for sale and find it a name.
The name Chocolat d’Albi kept coming to my head, because Albi is the first place in France where l found, in the local bakeries, a cake/bread made with added whole aniseeds, which isn’t generally very popular in French baking.
Those cakes were very curious, they were boiled and then cooked in the oven, with a shiny surface, and quite chewy. Albi being one of the big Cathar towns, it made a continuum link with our ancestors who used a different system to the Catholic religion, despite being Christians. (they believed in good and evil having the same power and women had the right to debate and were respected as well as allowed to be "perfects" priests. The priests worked like everyone else and had vows of poverty, didn't eat meat nor consummed alcohol, and lived simply which wasn’t popular with the Catholic church).
Albi has a beautiful cathedral made out of small red brick, which is unusual. It is worth visiting if you are in the area.
Tablette chocolat d’Albi – Anise, cocoa nibs and currants
42% milk chocolate, 76% dark dhocolate