Chocolate Fundamentals with Valrhona

Posted: 15 May 2025

Valrhona event blog – Keylink WP

Chocolate Fundamentals: Valrhona Event at Keylink 2025

We had the pleasure of hosting the very first Valrhona & Keylink customer event at our offices in April. Valrhona’s Chef Circle Wong created a variety of wonderful chocolate confections in the Keylink kitchen, and gave us a presentation on all things Valrhona, including recipes and introductions to some of the wider product range. It was a fantastic day spent talking chocolate with some of our talented customers and tasting Chef’s creations.

Read on to find out what we learned from the fabulous Chef Circle, and what delicious confections we were lucky enough to sample…

Valrhona Values

Choosing Valrhona chocolate isn’t just about using the best quality couverture for your creation, it’s much more than that. Thanks to long term relationships with the plantations and cocoa producers, Valrhona’s cocoa is 100% traceable. This benefits everyone, allowing Valrhona to carefully manage supply, quality control, and pricing.

With dedicated sourcers on the ground, and a commitment to building strong relationships with cocoa farmers and their communities, Valrhona’s chocolates are not only the finest quality, they’re also fully sustainable and helping to build a better cocoa industry. Being a B Corporation isn’t just a label for Valrhona, it’s at the heart of everything they do.

How Valrhona Chocolates are Made

The beans Valrhona use are roasted separately according to which country they’re from, as each type of bean requires a slightly different process to bring out the best flavour. This means the roasting process takes longer, but it allows Valrhona to get the absolute best from every bean, showcasing the flavour profiles of their origin while still blending perfectly with other beans into some of Valrhona’s most iconic and well-loved couvertures.

As well as having higher amounts of cocoa butter in many of their recipes to increase the fluidity of the chocolate, Valrhona also adds sunflower lecithin to bind and stabilise the chocolate; meaning every couverture is a dream to work with. Unlike soy lecithin, sunflower lecithin is not a major allergen and is widely considered the most sustainable choice.

What is a Single Origin Chocolate?

Single origin chocolate is made from the cacao beans of one single country, or even plantation. The flavour profile of the chocolate produced is indicative of the terroir, and the local processing techniques. For example, in some areas where rainfall and humidity create a climate that is too wet for the cocoa beans to dry naturally in the sun, the beans are dried over a fire, giving the chocolate a subtle smoky taste. In other areas, such as Madagascar, the other crops grown nearby and the acidity of the soil influence the taste of the chocolate, giving both Manjari 64% and Tanariva 33% a tangy, red berries flavour.

With beans from a single origin, if the yield isn’t high enough, it may mean there isn’t enough cocoa to make a specific couverture that year. Which is why single origin chocolates are so special!

What is a Blend?

Blends feature cocoa beans from a variety of origins, allowing chocolate makers like Valrhona to achieve the perfect balance of flavours, with small tweaks to the recipe depending on the crop. The result is a couverture with a consistent taste and aroma that you can rely on year after year.

While single origin couvertures carry notes that pair perfectly with particular flavours, blends are more versatile and can be used in a wider range of recipes. When choosing a blend, it’s best to think about the cocoa intensity you’re looking for, and the application you plan to use it in, rather than specific flavour pairings.

What is a Cuvée?

Cuvées are Valrhona’s most unique and exclusive range of couvertures. Made from beans that showcase the aromatic profile of a terroir, and made in small batches, the availability of cuvées is very limited. If you’re looking for something very special, celebrating a particular country or heritage, then Valrhona’s cuvées are ideal. Choose from:

Chocolates for Professionals

Valrhona’s Professional Signature collection includes a variety of couvertures that have been specially designed for use by chefs and chocolatiers in need of a consistently reliable chocolate. The Satilia, Equatoriale and Tropilia ranges feature four dark chocolates, three milks and one white, all of which boast rounded flavours and are suitable for every application.

Other Chocolate Innovations from Valrhona

Some of the more unique and innovative products from Valrhona include P125 Coeur de Guanaja 80%, a dark chocolate concentrate made from the same beans as their iconic Guanaja 70%. It’s not suitable for tempering and works best in ice cream, cremeux and soufflé.

Two single origin, double fermented couvertures that have been fermented a second time with an additional ingredient, giving them a fruity taste without any added flavours. Itakuja 55% is a Brazilian chocolate with passion fruit notes and Kidavoa 50% is a Madagascan chocolate with banana notes.

The Xocoline range features a 41% milk and a 65% dark chocolate with no added sugar. Made with the sweetener maltitol, they’re ideal for chocolatiers looking to offer a ‘no added sugar’ promise with their confections.

And finally, the Inspirations range showcases fruit flavours in an innovative couverture designed to be used just like chocolate. With raspberry, strawberry, passion fruit, yuzu and almond available to choose from, there’s a fruity couverture for every taste and applications. Their bold flavours and colours are ideal for coating cake pops and ice creams, using to dip and drizzle over baked goods, or even grating onto chocolate bars and cakes.

Chef Circle even hinted at a new Inspiration product coming very soon, in a flavour that has been trending for the last year, so keep an eye out for an announcement soon!

Valrhona’s Praliné Range

The nut pralinés from Valrhona come in several varieties, including raw pralinés, caramelised pralinés, nutty pralinés and gianduja-style fillings. Whether you’re looking for a praliné with a nuttier flavour or a more caramelised sugar taste, Valrhona has the perfect product, with a huge variety of nut flavours to choose from. They’re slightly textured (except for the 50% Crunchy Fresh Almond & Hazlenut Praliné!) and easy to work with, whether you’re making your own gianduja, swirling into cremeux and ice cream, or spreading onto cakes and pastries.

Absolutely Versatile Glaze

Valrhona’s unique neutral glaze, Absolu Cristal, is a must have product for every kitchen! It can be poured or sprayed for a smooth, flawless finish, and your products can even be frozen and defrosted without losing that perfect glossy look. Add in water, juice or purée, boil and spray for a coloured or flavoured glaze, and use Absolu Cristal to make nougat, compote, sorbet, truffle fillings, sauces and gels. You can also combine the neutral glaze with cream and chocolate or praliné to create sumptuous frostings.

Introducing Norohy Vanilla

Norohy is another brand in the Valrhona family, dedicated to the finest vanilla products for professional use. Offering both Madagascan and Tahitian vanilla, Norohy works just as closely with vanilla producers as Valrhona does with cocoa producers, leading to the highest quality, sustainable vanilla.

The Norohy product range includes extract, pods, vanilla paste, vanilla powder, and a unique, innovative solid vanilla that can be grated or melted into your creams and ganache in the perfect dose. Tadoka is simply vanilla and cocoa butter, with no added water or sugar, which distributes perfectly when melted.

No matter your application, Norohy has the perfect, fine quality vanilla for every confection or culinary creation.

Recipes from L’École Valrhona

Throughout the day, we were invited to sample some of Chef Circle’s fabulous creations, including a fruit and nut-packed nougat made with Absolu Cristal neutral glaze and Opalys 33% white chocolate, and a variety of Namas; a popular Japanese confection, similar to ganache.

Nama, in Japanese, means ‘fresh’, and these silky smooth squares of chocolate and cream are exactly that. Made with more cream than the traditional ganache and dusted with cocoa or fruit powder, they’re best kept in the fridge until serving, and provide a sweet, refreshing and moreish treat for the warm summer months.

Try one of Chef Circle’s delicious recipes for yourself:

It was an absolute pleasure to host Valrhona and Chef Circle, as well as our wonderful customers, for a day of learning about the fundamentals of chocolate! Tasting the variety of nama chocolates and nougat made by Chef Circle was a real treat, and discovering more of the Valrhona and Norohy ranges, all of which can be ordered from Keylink.

We’d love to see your creations using Valrhona and Norohy products, tag us on social media @keylinkltd!