VEGAN CHOCOLATE
HUMBLE VEGAN ETHICS
First, do no harm to any living creature.
FAIR-TRADE PRINCIPLES
Paying cacao farmers and harvest-workers a liveable wage to supply us with our fundamental ingredient.
A SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS
We source unprocessed, eco-friendly ingredients from a wide range of Australian producers, in order to create delectable local goodies with a low carbon footprint. We never have and never will use any nasties in Vegan chocolate products. Why? That’s an easy answer: Because chemical manufacturing has contributed to widespread destruction of ecological habitats and animal life, and that’s against our ethos.
LOVINGLY HANDMADE PRODUCTS
Every single item that leaves our workspace has been lovingly handcrafted right here in Sydney, specially for you - our valued clientele.
Our artisan chocolate maker has taken many years to perfect his craft. He lives for chocolate so that you can sit back and experience that chocolate in all of its unpretentious glory. At the Vegan Chocolate Co. we are always looking to pair our range of milk and dark chocolate with fresh and interesting flavours. Look out for special edition bonbons and seasonal surprises. If you’re a true die-hard and would like a special taste combination, email us with your suggestions and our master chocolatier may just make your dreams come true. We also have a new range of vegan chocolate biscuit and vegan marshmallow chocolate goodies stocked in a select number of Sydney cafes and vegan stores. Watch this space for your chance to order from us direct, including our delectable Timmys ™
and Tammys ™.
A LITTLE POD FULL OF HISTORY
The word chocolate finds its origins in the Mayan word “XOCOLAT”, which translates into English as ‘bitter water’.
The cacao tree is native to the Amazon Basin in South America, and the Mayans used the fruit of the tree – the cocoa beans – to make a frothy & and rather bitter drink called xocolat. The Mayans revered chocolate and used it to seal important tribal deals and in celebrations of significance.
But cacao has been around a lot longer than that. Some time ago, archeologists unearthed some ancient pots and vessels dating from 1500BC covered in traces of theobromine; a stimulant compound that one finds only in chocolate and tea.
To make xocolat, harvested cacao beans were crushed, and the fresh paste was mixed with water, vanilla, chilli peppers and other spices to make their drink. There was no drying and roasting of the beans the way we do it now to create the richness in flavour and complexity found in today’s edible chocolate, but instead the ancients stuck to drinking their raw cacao brew.
The beautiful thing about these ancient people, is that we understand chocolate to have been an egalitarian household item; often consumed at every meal and by those from all walks of life.
NIBS OF GOLD – The Aztecs
By the time that the Aztecs moved from Mexico into South America in the 13th Century, cacao beans were not only believed to be a gift from the gods but had developed into a currency used to pay for goods and services.
Given its currency status, chocolate consumption was limited to the upper echelons of society and was enjoyed by the general population only at weddings and other festivals. At one point, cacao beans were even seen to be more valuable than gold (we really do understand the sentiment about chocolate’s inherent value here at the Vegan Chocolate Co…).
AN OCEAN TRANSITION – The Spaniards
In around the 16th Century, the Spaniards had sailed to South America and had taken shiploads of cacao beans back to the Spanish court. It’s from there that the beginnings of modern-day chocolate consumption began, with the European tastes adjusting the drinking chocolate recipe to resemble that of modern-day hot chocolate, with sugar, cinnamon and other spices and flavourings.
ALL HAIL THE FIRST BAR –
An English Invention
From that time chocolate was enjoyed only as a drink, all the way up until 1847 when a very cluey bunch of British gents at J.S Fry & Sons created the world’s first chocolate bar. They did this through combining a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter into a moulded bar shape. All hail J.S. Fry & Sons for that piece of brilliance!
Milk was added to chocolate bars many years later by Swiss chocolatiers, taking the previously vegan ingredient list into a different space. And so commercial chocolate production began in earnest.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF CACAO BEANS
What we’ve done at the Vegan Chocolate Co is to bring it back to basics. We have taken out the unhealthy modern additions seen in mass-produced chocolate such as high fructose corn syrup, milk powder and commercial emulsifiers. Instead, we have drawn from the wisdom of the ancients and stripped chocolate back to its rich, purely plant-based origins. We present to you our divinely decadent products that are wholesomely ethical and 100% vegan.
PARED BACK TO ITS HEATHY BEST –
The Vegan Chocolate Co.
What many people don’t know, is that the freshly harvested beans of the cacao tree are filled to the brim with over 620 different known antioxidants and more than 300 healthy compounds including:
- Polyphenols
- Theobromine
- Flavonoids
- Potassium
- Copper
- Iron
- Magnesium
- Calcium
Better still, chocolate has been scientifically proven to be one of nature’s best anti-depressants, as it contains amongst its many healthy compounds the chemical components to human happiness: dopamine and serotonin.
Here at the Vegan Chocolate Co., we reckon that whoever said chocolate was bad for you wasn’t up on the science of it all.
We take care to heat our chocolate to the very lowest temperatures possible, so that we retain as much of that goodness as we can in the bars and bonbons that make their way to you.
Admittedly, dark chocolate takes the crown for being the most heart-healthy, antioxidant-rich choice. But our creamy vegan ‘milk’ chocolate bars are equally tempting when you’re looking for a pure plant version of that old crowd-pleasing favourite found in a lighter coloured chocolate bar.
The quality of our products speak for themselves. And in turn, we try our best to be a voice for the planet when it can’t speak for itself.
We hope that you enjoy our chocolate as much as we enjoy making it here at the Vegan Chocolate Co.