What makes our hot chocolate special…

our hot chocolate

What makes Calm Cocoa special? Well it all starts with some very delicious single origin chocolate that we’ve sourced from two of our favourite ethical chocolate makers.

And we’re more than just a tasty drink. Our aim is to help you create little joyful and mindful moments in the day through the uplifting ritual of making and drinking hot chocolate.

Did you know that many ‘hot chocolates’ are mainly sugar with a bit of cocoa powder thrown in? Calm Cocoa is always at least 90% chocolate flakes - and often more. The chocolate is flaked on our much loved hand-powered rotary grater to create an easily meltable blend.

We’re a proudly small batch maker, and blend and pack our mixes by hand. A lot of love goes into what we do - and we want to make sure this flows into our hot chocolate.

Depending on the flavour mix, Calm Cocoa might have a little organic cacao powder added to help thicken the blend as it simmers, plus a dash of caramelly organic coconut sugar to balance and bring out natural flavours of the chocolate.

One of our customers even said eating the mixture out of the packet was like eating the inside of a truffle; we couldn’t possibly comment as we generally save it for drinking (though we have been know to dip in a teaspoon for a little chocolate taste!).

Wherever possible, Meredith uses organic and sustainable ingredients, designed to complement rather than overwhelm the natural flavours of the chocolate. This includes organic cacao powder, organic coconut sugar and amazing sea salt from Halen Mon in North Wales.

We are single-use plastic free - if you’d like to know more,
you can find out more about our packaging here…

the chocolate we use

As well as being a meditation teacher, Meredith is an affirmed chocolate geek. She has tasted MANY chocolates over the years, including during her stint working as a Chocolate Tour Guide in London and as a judge for the Academy of Chocolate Awards.

Meredith is often asked if she makes her own chocolate - and the answer is no! It’s actually pretty complicated to make good quality chocolate from the beans (which includes grinding the beans over 3 to 5 days) so instead she uses some of the very best couverture* chocolate available.

She’s been using one of her favourite brands Pump Street Chocolate for many years as part of her making and meditation sessions in her wider work through Food At Heart. And this is the chocolate that features in most of the Calm Cocoa blends.

Why?

Apart from the fact that the chocolate is truly delicious, Pump Street is a very ethical and environmentally-friendly company. The team work with a carefully selected set of cacao plantations and co-operatives, fairly and sustainably sourcing their beans. They produce their chocolate in small batches in a fantastic (and aromatic) chocolate factory in Orford, Suffolk on the east coast of England.

Meredith currently uses four of Pump Street’s single origin* chocolates in the Calm Cocoa blends.

The other main chocolate maker we use is the Golden Bean-winning Chocolat Madagascar.

Chocolat Madagascar is a tree-to-bar chocolate maker, creating bars in Madagascar from its own cacao plantations. It’s fairly unusual for fine quality chocolate makers to create chocolate in the country of the cacao origin and this process means more money stays in the country where the beans are grown. They also nurture their cacao under rainforest canopy so that important biodiverse landscapes aren’t cleared to create chocolate.

We’ve sourced our 100% cocoa chocolate from Chocolat Madagascar as it really is a truly delicious 100% cocoa bar. We also incorporate a vegan mylk chocolate based on creamy Madagascan cashew nuts in our Chai blend.

If you’d like to know more about the chocolate (or any other ingredients we use), just get in touch as we’re always happy to chat chocolate.

is calm cocoa suitable for vegans?

Our hot chocolate doesn’t contain any added dairy and most vegans we’ve spoken to are happy with this. However the chocolate in Calm Cocoa blends are created in environments that also contain dairy, so we can’t completely guarantee that there aren’t traces of dairy. We therefore describe our hot chocolate as vegan-friendly rather than vegan certified.

We do also use butter in our Calm Cookie Anzac Biscuits, but have a vegan option available too using cocoa butter.

*Couverture = good quality chocolate used by chocolate professionals/chocolatiers to create chocolate products, such as bars, truffles and other delicious chocolatey treats; it often comes in callets/buttons for easy melting and tempering

Single origin = chocolate that comes from a specific country; in fact most of the chocolate in Calm Cocoa is ‘single estate’ and comes from specific estates or farms within a country of origin