Barry Callebaut Launches New Food Coloring System for Personalizing Products

07 Mar 2014 --- Barry Callebaut is to launch Power Flowers, which it describes as the most user-friendly and qualitative way to color chocolate, fillings and compound chocolate. Its customers will be able to add color to their products and personalize them with ease, according to the company. The concept, under Callebaut’s IBC brand, will be presented during Europain in Paris on 8 March.

Made from tempered cocoa butter and 40% coloring agents, Power Flowers enables food professionals to make their own colorfully personalized creations. Barry Callebaut’s IBC brand already has a history as a specialist in color and printing technology for food applications.

Patrick Hautphenne, Barry Callebaut’s vice president specialties and decorations, Western Europe, told FoodIngredientsFirst that the company is definitely seeing a growing demand from its customers in the area of personalizing their products. “The demand starts at the consumers end: they are looking for products that express themselves,” he said. “This can be triggered by different flavors, colors, personalized communication of seasonalities. Personalization is the process of marketing mass produced products to make them appealing to individuals with particular needs and desires.

“That is why we are expanding our product range with different kind of solutions: as well on products adding extra texture, extra flavor or color, we offer our customers solutions as to give their products an extra finishing touch in the most convenient and easiest way. So in fact they can innovate or vamp up an existing product or application by simply adding that extra final touch. This is a cost-effective way to make a product more attractive.

“A few examples of innovations, meeting this trend towards personalization are: our Cake Collars, the Cocoart Collection and now of course: the Power Flowers. They are convenient and easy-to-use and add color to our customer's creations. Art and creativity becomes accessible for every chocolate professional.”

This demand is coming from different market segments, explained Hautphenne, “but it is especially pushed by the confectionery, bakery and pastry businesses”.

For Power Flowers, by simply using the Color Master chart as a guide, every color of the rainbow can be applied to any fat-based product of choice. Any color can easily be added, ranging from deep red to light green and from blue unto purple. Within seconds any fat-based product can be colored in any desired shade by simply combining the four different Power Flowers (red, yellow, blue and white).

Moreover, this coloring can start immediately since no warming up of the food dyes like before is necessary. Power Flowers is easier to use than liquid and powder colorants: simply add individual Power Flowers to a chocolate or fat based product to reach the desired color or tone in only a matter of seconds.

“I am convinced that fellow professionals such as chocolatiers, chefs, bakers and restaurant chefs will be surprised by the convenience of the Power Flowers,” James Berthier, Chef Pâtissier - Chocolatier at 'Maison Sucré Cacao' in Paris, stated. "It is the easiest and fastest way to color any chocolate or fat-based product while guaranteeing color consistency and quality at the same time.”

Because of their power (40% pigment), only a few Power Flowers are enough to color 400g of chocolate. Thanks to the simple and clean dosing cut off pieces of different colored Power Flowers and the Color Master as a guide, the same color result will be achieved, every time again, guaranteed.  

“The Power Flowers are suitable for those who hand-craft products and those who don’t: all artisanal professionals such as chocolatiers and pastry chefs, as well as more industrial chocolate manufacturers will be pleased with this new revolutionary coloring system, since it is easy to use: consistent coloring, time and cost-saving, with surprising results,” Hautphenne explained to FoodIngredientsFirst.

By Sonya Hook