VIU student designs new chocolate in France

Poirier (pictured) said she learned a lot from her experience of making the chocolate, especially reminding herself that quality takes time. Photo courtesy of Grace Poirier

Chocolate can be one of the sweetest gifts to give the person you love for Valentine's Day, and Grace Poirier knows a thing or two about chocolate.

The second-year Vancouver Island University (VIU) bakery and pastry arts student recently returned from Europe after a field school trip. There she had the opportunity to learn the secrets of chocolate making and design the next signature chocolate for VIUl.

This came after a blind taste test competition where students in the program tasted different items and guessed what ingredients were in them.

“It was a blindfolded taste test with around 20 different foods, beverages, and different ingredients that can be incorporated into chocolate. So some of them are a little strange,” Poirier said. “You blind taste test them and whoever gets the most right wins the opportunity to go to the lab and make the chocolate when we're all on the trip.” 

As the winner of the competition, Poirier and her instructor Ken Harper traveled to Meulan (an area outside of Paris) to visit the Cacao Barry's Or Noir Lab to design the university’s next signature chocolate.

“We tried around 20 different chocolates from regions all over the world just to get a flavour palette,” she said. “Then to narrow it down a little bit more, we taste the cocoa mass from that product.”

During this time she got to try combining different flavours and cocoa masses to find the right mixes.

“You make a few different recipes, you mix it up, we made little callets out of them to taste test the chocolate,” Poirier said. “We ended up doing this around six times, so we have six different versions of the chocolate that we made.”

Although she cannot spoil what the new flavour will be, she said it will be a mix of dark and milk chocolate. Poirier said this mix of milk chocolate with a higher percentage of cacao can be a bit unusual but goes along with what her favourite type of chocolate is.

“I really like dark chocolate but I [also] like a lighter dark chocolate, so this is very within my niche, my realm,” she said.

She said she learned a lot and the experience of making the chocolate reminded her that quality takes time.

“In my head, I suspected it to be a pretty quick process because we had a lab technician they're doing all the scientific parts on the computer,” she said. “Our [job] was just vocal opinions and discussing it, but it took around nine hours.”

Along with continuing to make chocolates at home for her friends and family, she hopes to find ways to incorporate chocolate-making into her future. 

“Long term, I want to open a business that has to do with hospitality and pastry dessert type business,” she said. “So I would definitely see myself creating chocolates and producing them for sale.”

This is the second time through the Cacao Barry Or Noir Experience a VIU student has created a signature chocolate for the school. VIU's first signature chocolate, Spindle Whorl, was released in Fall 2021.

According to VIU, Cacao Barry has been a sponsor of the VIU Bakery and Pastry Arts program for 11 years and donates 500 kg of chocolate to the program annually. 

So why does chocolate coincide with Valentine's Day?

Poirier said chocolate can be a great gift to give somebody especially if you know the person so well you know what their favourite type is. 

“I really like these specific pistachio chocolates from Purdys,” she said. “So every year my boyfriend gets me these pistachio chocolates and it's just like something random I told him years and years and years ago and he remembers every year so I think it's really a lot about the thought of the person you're getting chocolate for.” 

Poirier said the new chocolate is expected to be ready for distribution and sales between October and December.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.