Trending Inclusions: Increasing Consumer Appeal of Chocolate Products with Ingredients like Almonds
17 Mar 2016 | Almond Board of California
Lu Ann Williams of Innova Market Insights provides a “state of the industry” overview of global chocolate products in this webinar. Using real-world product examples, David Bradley, the Curious Confectioner, shares four new recipes he developed with trending inclusions.
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Hello and thank you for joining us today.
I'm Havinderman, senior marketing manager at the Almond Border California, and we are pleased to host today's webinar, Trending Inclusions, increasing the Consumer Appeal of chocolate products with ingredients like almonds.
In today's presentation, Luanne Williams, director of innovation at Innova Market Insights, will explore the latest trends and new developments for inclusions in chocolate products around the world.
What the key product attributes are resonating most with consumers.
David Bradley, the cura's confectioner, will then take us through 3 confectionery recipe concepts that he developed for the almond board, discussing why he chose those ingredients, the inspiration behind them, the formats, and the techniques he used to bring them together in a way that is both pleasing to the eye and to the palate.
Please feel free to submit questions through the system at any point during the presentation, and after the presentation, we'll address as many of them as we can.
If you submit a question that we're unable to answer live today, we will follow up with you via email.
Finally, your feedback is important to us.
At the end of this session, please take a moment to fill out and submit the brief survey on your screen.
And so without further ado, I'd like to hand things over to Luanne Williams to begin.
Thank you.
Thanks, Harbinger.
So I have a lot of very inspirational slides today since we're talking about inclusion, I have a lot of data and a lot of information, but I think you will find, a lot of new trends, in terms of what's happening with inclusion.
So let's just jump right in and look at, what's happening overall.
So in terms of, deleting inclusion in chocolate confectionery, nuts is #1.
So there's two data points in here that I think are kind of interesting.
So if we look at.
The chocolate instructions overall in the past 5 years, it hasn't been a big change, but if we look at what's happening in terms of inclusion, you can see that, we've looked at inclusions and, in the ingredient list in global product launches.
And you can see that, fruit inclusions are increasing and also chocolates with herbs and spices, have also been increasing slightly over, over the period 2011 to 2015.
So nuts is still number one, and quite high there.
So in terms of all the launches, 36% of chocolate launches had nuts in them, but we are seeing new developments and new types of inclusions, and I'm just gonna go into a lot more detail now in the next slide to show you what's happening, and maybe give you some inspiration for things that you can do as.
So almonds are very popular in chocolate.
So if we look at, overall chocolate introductions, chocolate with inclusions, it's grown by 11.6%.
But if we look at chocolate introductions with almonds, it's grown faster than that.
And it's also, outpaced growth in chocolate with nut introduction since 2011.
So, That just, I think speaks really to what's happening with almonds, and I love the examples here because they're, they're quite different, but again, you can see that almonds are really, really important in all three of them.
They're on the front of the package.
They're all called out.
It's in the, I always say it's like the real estate.
It's the most expensive real estate on the package is what's on the front, and you can see there's a picture and the word almond on the front of all these products.
So the Godiva chocolate there with salted almonds.
I'm gonna talk a little bit about salt, later, but sea salt is one of those ingredients that's really gone mainstream but still brings a very premium, type of positioning to a product.
The dairy milk silk from India, again, has roast almond, really simple on the front of the package, very clear.
And then the recipes of the, of the Lalier from Nestle, again, has big chunky pieces of cranberries, almonds, and hazelnuts.
We actually did a tasting with that, at an exhibition last year and it got very positive feedback.
But again, this just speaks to how, how popular and important almonds have become in terms of, and chocolate products.
These are interesting as , because over the past 5 or 6 years, we've seen every type of, you know, chocolate content being plastered in really big numbers on the front of the package.
And if you look at this now, it's the same with almonds.
So again, you wouldn't be calling it out unless it's something really special.
So these are all examples from Germany, but you can see, the one on the left, it's made with the high content of almonds.
It's really called out on the front 33% almonds, the one in the middle, 45% almond cream filling.
So I'm also gonna talk about.
Texture, so that's an interesting using almond as a cream, or in a cream in a product and then the one on the right, 27% almonds, but again, really big, you know, numbers on the front of the package.
So again, and that expensive real estate on the front of the package.
So that's seen as a very important part of the product.
Looking at dark chocolate, dark chocolate is another one that's just amazing trends that's happened over the past, it's probably been longer, maybe over the past 10 years.
OK, there's a lot of data on this slide, so let me explain.
So milk chocolate, right now, 50% of all chocolate introductions are milk chocolate, but as a total of the percentage, it is declining, and what is growing is dark chocolate.
So.
Dark chocolate is on the increase within all chocolate launches, but also if you look at dark chocolate with almonds as a group of products, in 2011, 24% of that chocolate was dark, and in 2015, a third of all the products launched with almonds was dark chocolate.
So the headline is perfect.
Dark chocolate and almonds are on trend, and you can see three examples here.
I love the one in the middle, the Florentine biscuits with the.
The dark chocolate, dark chocolate covered almonds, you see quite a lot of those.
But I think these are, it's a nice example because if you think about, two of the top 10 trends that we did this year, every year we put together our top 10 trends.
I think that a lot of you have probably seen it or seen the webinars, but one of them is, the indulgence alibi, and that's where we said health conscious consumers are looking for permissible indulgence, and dark chocolate fits that, almonds fit that as.
But also taste for new experiences is one of our top trends.
And that's talking about flavors and textures that they're bolder, they're authentic, they're complex, they're more specific and more adventurous.
And I think these are two things that you're gonna see really through a lot of this presentation.
So chocolate is really dark chocolate, especially has moved into that, healthier kind of space, but also full of flavor.
So again, these products really tick both of those boxes.
And now if we, we're gonna get more specific, and again I have a lot of data, so we're gonna focus on the headlines here, but, nuts and chocolate are increasingly being combined with fruit.
So the blue bar there you can see is the number of product launches that we track that have nuts and fruit.
And then if you look at the, the, the purple line, this is the growth of, chocolate introductions with nuts.
Now 27% of them in 2015 had.
A fruit inclusion.
So fruit is moving in with nuts.
I think that's a good way to put it within chocolate.
So a lot of interest in it, and again, if you think about, I mentioned the trend about, you know, textures and flavor combinations, this really does speak really to that.
And I have some examples here.
There's dark chocolate with orange and almonds.
So dark chocolate and orange has been one of those classic combinations for a long time.
So almonds is another twist to that.
The almonds with cherry and milk chocolate.
And then the white chocolate with lemon cream like a limoncello almond, really, really interesting ideas.
And again, certainly to give you some ideas around experimentation and also a bit of indulgence, but also that indulgence alibi with the with the nuts in there.
OK, and then looking at different fruit flavors again, every, I make these slides and then I look at them and I think it's a lot to present on a webinar, but what's interesting here is that nuts are still mainly combined with raisins and chocolate.
But if you look at the top flavors overall in chocolate, strawberry, orange, and coconut are the top 3 fruit flavors, and if we look at fruit flavors with.
With the nuts you can see raisins or with the fruit, raisins are number one.
So again, those top ones are still the top ones for all of them, but again, what you can do with that and the different types of combinations you can make, I think this just speaks to there, to that, that there is a lot of new combinations being being made today.
So we also see cranberry, raspberry, cherry, blueberry, pear.
So lots and lots of different combinations.
In new chocolate launches and just 3 examples here I've mentioned the top 3 fruit flavors for chocolate are strawberry, orange, and coconut, but they also go really with almonds.
So I said that fruit has really become neighbors, moved in with with almonds and chocolate, and these are 3 nice examples one from Japan with a strawberry.
And almonds in the chocolate, one with almonds and orange, and you can see big chunky pieces in that chocolate bar, and then the one on the right, roasted almonds with white chocolate and coconut flavor.
I think that sounds amazing, but again, in terms of experimentation and new flavors, that certainly does speak really to that.
And I know when David talks later, you're gonna hear even more kind of inspirational things, but I think this is a good, maybe a good lead up to that.
Coconut has exploded.
I think that's no big surprise.
You've all seen coconut.
Water, and now we have coconut milk, and now we have, you know, dairy-free yogurts, you know, coconut milk, yogurt, and there's coconut everything.
And now you see coconut has also moved into, into chocolate.
And over the period of 2011 to 2015, we've seen a 21% growth in chocolate launches that have coconut in them.
And these are just a few examples.
Of those, but you can see toasted coconut, coconut flakes, coconut cream.
So again, lots of different ways to include coconut, and I mentioned earlier we saw an almond cream.
Later we're gonna see a product with an almond butter.
So again, also looking at how do you combine those ingredients, not just, you know, throw some almond flakes in there, but maybe are not coconut flakes, but, you know, make a cream out of it, do something different.
So I think that's one of the trends that we see is different forms of the ingredients being used.
I mentioned pear.
So on that chart that I showed you with all the fruits, pear, had just joined, I think that it was the top 10 there.
And I think these are 3 nice examples.
The dark chocolate with pear and roasted almonds, it almost looks like one of those nice paintings of the, the fruit and the almonds, but very premium type of product from, from France there on the left.
The one in the middle, beautiful picture of dark chocolate with pear and almonds.
They just look like they all go together so there.
And then the one on the right looks like , a dessert plate in a fancy restaurant really with a swirl of.
Of the looks like caramel but with almond cru crunchy almond pieces, and pears.
So again, different formats and different types of flavors, even the same fruit but used in different ways.
Also looking at some of the emerging fruit flavors, it's always interesting to see what's small but growing really fast.
So coconut I mentioned has grown very fast.
You can see here this is toasted almond, coconut milk, chocolate block, passion fruit, and I love that across the, the package it says experimental experience.
So again, that really does speak to, I mentioned the trend about taste for new experiences.
So almonds, chocolate, passion fruit together, it looks really beautiful there, a pleasure charm, and then the blueberry.
The roasted almond covered with white chocolate and blueberry.
Again, that sounds really good to me.
I always have something on my desk to snack on, and that would really fit, that really.
OK.
Superfruits is another interesting example.
So again, superfruits have been around for maybe 10 years, started with pomegranate, still a lot of interest in that, but again, this is another great example of how you can look outside of your category for inspiration.
So here we have Baobab and Calamansi and goji, and pomegranate, and you can see all the packages.
These are probably more kind of niche, gourmet or artisan type of products.
But again, the use of ingredients is very inspirational, and there's still a huge interest in super fruits.
And again, I mentioned the indulgence alibi, always looking for an excuse to kind of.
To justify eating something sweet, and this is certainly one way to do that.
And I mentioned sea salt a little bit earlier.
I think the line could not be more clear.
This is chocolate with almonds with sea salt in the ingredient list.
So you can see 42% growth in the period 2015 versus 2011.
So sea salt again has really become established in just about every category.
You know, you see it in snacks and you see it in ready meals and so many things, but also, there's always an opportunity in, in just about every category.
So sea salt, we're also seeing it with almonds and chocolate products, and here's three nice examples.
And even again talking about the, the format of it, so roasted crystals of sea salt, flavored salts are huge as.
So this has roasted salt, and also roasted almonds, and you can see an almond paste and sea salt in the middle.
So the, the sweet, the caramel and salt, which has been so popular for a while, and then you see the almonds, the chopped almonds and sea salt on the right hand side.
So also the salt being used as part of a texture, claim as in these products.
And chili.
So we've seen chili and chocolate for a long time, even in things like chocolate ice cream.
So it's still on trend.
Chili has never been more on trend, I think, but it's still, being used in chocolate more and more, and we saw 22%.
0% growth even in the past year.
And I predict what will happen going forward is that we will probably see not just chili, but we'll start to see chilies being specified because that's happening in other categories and sauces and ready meals and snacks especially and I can imagine that that will be the next, the next thing here and also becoming more specific as I mentioned that that's part of this whole new, taste experience, that people are seeking out.
Yogurt is another interesting inclusion in chocolate.
If you, I think there's no one on the planet who's not aware of what's happened with Greek yogurt.
And so now it's become like one of the ultimate, health foods.
And now you see yogurt being included in a lot more products than Greek yogurt, like the product there on the right-hand side.
But again, it can be a filling, it can be a coating.
We also see the one in the middle, crunch, crunchy yogurt flakes.
I don't think I'm even familiar with that, but obviously another way to dry it.
But again, there's lots of different types of inclusions, and again this would tick that box for a new taste experience, but also in terms of the indulgent alibi, yogurt just, you know, oozes a healthy halo, and it always seems like it's a, a healthy option.
Dessert inclusions is another, interesting example.
So we've seen a lot of like cake flavors and now this is dessert flavors, so we all know about like, cookie dough ice cream, but now those types of inclusions are also being used in chocolate.
So the one on the left I mentioned almond butter, earlier.
So this is an almond butter brownie.
So again, using almonds for a different texture here.
So instead of peanut butter, which also goes with chocolate, almond butter is an interesting.
Inclusion there, the one in the middle wafer style cookie chunks and almonds.
So again, something completely different and then on the right, the banana split, so white chocolate and bananas, almonds and chocolate chips.
So again, all of these really do scream indulgence, but also the inclusions are really, really different and really interesting.
And then I think these are great examples.
The pictures just look beautiful.
I think you, they just really draw your attention as soon as you see that.
But this is, a gourmet chocolate producer in Los Angeles, and they've made these artisan bars, and I think the, the packages just look perfect with these pictures.
But again, Really unusual inclusions as , like popcorn, strawberries with champagne and donuts and coffee flavor.
So again, in terms of inspiration, I think these are just amazing.
We've seen Cadbury do some really interesting inclusions, similar to this over the past couple of years, but I think this even would give you even more ideas of what you could do.
OK, so, I mentioned textures earlier that this is also again just mentioning our, our trends again.
So this whole idea of trying to create some kind of new taste experience, overall we see more texture claims for chocolate.
So they're going across the board.
So here you have two time periods, 2011 versus 2015, and you can see that, smooth, was number one, but soft Claims, had the highest growth.
So I mentioned that sometimes it's interesting to find what is maybe the smallest but growing the fastest, and that would be the example here.
And then crunchy and crispy, were the next two in terms of growing the fastest.
I'm just looking at some examples with that.
There's also different ways to use that.
So in terms of soft, you can see the product from Finland, soft, milk chocolate.
The one in the middle melts softly.
So that's kind of an interesting, and I think that's interesting.
You have the big chunky almonds in there and then the chocolate that melts, so you get a very different, an even more different texture, sensation or experience there.
And then you can see the pralines with soft milk chocolate, so.
Some examples of sauce that go really also with the crunchy almonds.
Crunchy.
So we've seen things like crunchy rice crisps that make the chocolate, Crunchy puffed rice, also almonds being used, for the crunch.
Somebody told me one time almonds are the crunchiest thing you can put into something, and I think that's probably true.
Crispy as.
I thought that was interesting that the strawberries were described as crispy.
So there's been a lot of interest in, like freeze dried, fruit snacks, and there's also some different, some other drying, techniques that make it really crispy, but using that as an ingredient is interesting.
So I think that's a big trend here that we've seen today is look at how the format of your ingredients and what can they bring to your product.
The honeycomb crisp, and the one on the right, crisp, sweet corn.
So I know that there are countries that snack on sweet corn.
So that's interesting to also include it, in the chocolate.
OK, so just to sum up on some of the key insights from, my talk, so nuts are still the most popular inclusion in chocolate, and that's about 1/3 of all chocolates have a nut inclusion.
And chocolate introductions with almonds have grown at a higher pace than total chocolate or chocolate with total nut inclusion.
So almonds are very popular as a takeaway there and still becoming more popular.
Fruit inclusions are showing a growing trend in chocolate, and it combines very with almonds.
Nuts and raisins go together, but we are starting to see other fruits as , like I showed you strawberry, orange, and especially coconut.
And they all also go with almond, but I think there's lots of different experimentation you could do with different fruit flavors.
I think David is going to inspire us, in a few minutes.
And innovation in chocolate's really been driven by consumer interest in new types of flavors, ingredients, and textures, and I mentioned that a few times, but that is really a big trend that we see, and it was one of our top 10 trends this year.
So things like sea salt, chili, you know, it gives you some savory notes in there.
That's a growing trend and also textures.
And I think there's a lot more that can be done with textures.
OK, so that wraps up with me.
So I'm gonna turn it over to, to David, and I think he has some fantastic examples.
So David, over to you.
Good afternoon.
My name's David Bradley, also known as the curious confectioner.
And I'm known for my curious, creative approach to food design, and as such, I'm really very happy to be here to present some chocolate inclusion recipe concepts that I've been working on recently, and these have all been directly inspired by the market insight work of Luanne and the team over at Innova.
And before I move on to the concepts themselves, I just really wanted to thank Luanne for her presentation there.
As a culinary creative whose life is really an active inquiry into food, I always relish the opportunity of gleaning further insights that might fuel my culinary imaginings.
And looking at Luanne's slides, there certainly is a veritable feast of different products to excite and delight my eyes and definitely get my creative juices flowing.
And the one thing.
The one immediate thing that comes to mind is how wonderfully creative the products on the market today actually already are.
It seems like a really exciting time to be working in the sector with a wealth of creative opportunities and everything from super pairings right through to packaging design.
And of course a lot of this is being driven by the open-minded consumers, consumers themselves who are becoming ever more receptive to all the different creative offerings in the marketplace.
So without further ado, let's move on and see how some of these insights can be applied to a few different recipes.
First recipe concept I want to introduce is the chocolate honey roasted almond butter balls.
And you can see them in this picture here, and what we have is we have some sweet and salty chocolate truffles which have been dusted with a honey roasted almond crumb, and for these, the finest Californian almonds have been paired with a sticky module dates to create an indulgent nut butter that forms the basis of this caramel style center of this sweet, silky smooth mouthful.
Just to give you a little bit of a background to the inspiration behind this concept, I think really within my own personal food journey over recent years I've really chosen to try and use alternative ingredients where I can in place of conventional refined sugars, and I guess I'm quite lucky because I work with food and I have access to these things.
I see them and I see the many possibilities.
So in doing this, one of the things that I've been using a lot is Majule dates, and they're increasingly becoming a standard go to ingredient of mine for adding a wonderful sweetness to recipes that is derived entirely from a whole foods source.
And I remember hearing someone actually referring to jeule dates a number of years back and calling them nature's candy, and I have to agree that they really are.
They're fantastic natural sources.
And and great fructose that can be used as a whole food ingredient.
So by combining with the male dates using an almond nut butter, which I've mixed with the processed majule dates, this forms the basis of this recipe, and it not only complements each other, the nut butter really adds a roundness of flavor that balances the sweet fructose of the dates, whilst of course adding a nutritional boost to the mix as.
So these two ingredients together, they resemble a lovely sticky caramel, and this combination can be used as a delicious foundation for any number of confections and dessert recipes.
It's safe to say that it's definitely, something which, has become a firm favorite within my own, recipe and confection repertoire.
So in linking these recipes back to the the in our insights, we, we can look at a number of different points with this.
And firstly, I really want to look at how this date and almond composite plays to the idea of texture innovation.
And I really can't adequately describe, I know I was singing the praises of it, but I can't adequately describe just how wonderful that texture really is.
It really does need to be tried.
It is very similar to a caramel.
And as you'll notice in the slide, I've actually added a honey roasted almond crumb to the top of the truffles there, and that again, it adds a further textural dimension.
It creates a lovely contrast to that smooth caramel center and to the smooth chocolate, of course.
And, and also I think the importance of adding this almond crumb, it's, it can't be underestimated in regards to the valuable visual appeal that it lends.
And that I think that really helps to highlight the inclusion of the almonds, which are actually obviously in the products as as on the product.
And this visual appeal is something which is becoming more and more important when developing chocolate products, especially as we've seen some of the examples that Luanne shared.
I noticed there's definitely a current trend for clear packaging and windows in packaging, so you can really exploit that visual appeal.
The thing that you can't see from the picture is the inclusion of fields, and by adding this, you know, we get that lovely complementary pairing with that caramel style scent that I've spoken about, and for all intents and purposes we end up with something akin to a salted caramel combination, and you know this is something that we all know and love so much.
And of course this flavor pairing extends beyond the caramel, also to the, the almonds and the chocolates too.
And as we've seen, this is a flavor pairing which has become more and more prevalent over recent years, and it really doesn't seem like it's going to be going anywhere soon.
And, lastly, I wanted to touch on the, the clean label credentials of this concept.
As we've seen, it's made from just The brilliants, there's almonds, dates, chocolate, salt, so it fits perfectly with this, this current clean label trend.
And this brings me nicely onto the concept of the indulgent alibi, which is something, it's a lovely phrase.
I hadn't actually heard of it until Luanne introduced me to it, but it's definitely one that's close to my heart and very much in the spirit of a lot of my own personal recipe design.
And so I think this recipe is a perfect demonstration of that very spirit of the indulgent alibi.
It's a delicious whole food bite of clean nutrition.
Which for all intents and purposes appears to be a bit of a naughty indulgent treat.
So, moving on to the, the next slide, I just want to present, our Thai inspired Sweden and spiced caca coated almonds.
And here we have California almonds, which have been dehydrated in a dressing of coconut blossom nectar, raw cacao solids, and infused with kaffir lime leaves, and chili and ginger.
And for me, this is, this really brought me a lot of joy.
I have to say, in regards to the inspiration, I have a real personal love affair with, Southeast Asian cooking.
All those flavors, it's just, it's just part of the world, and, and, and which is, , just, just magical in regards to fresh, big flavors to play with.
So, so I was really inspired to try this concept after.
Actually using a lot of nuts within, within my Southeast Asian cooking and, and throwing almonds, onto my pad Thai recipe every time I did it, and it struck me that the combination of the almonds with the exotic, sweet and spicy botanical flavors, it was just something, it was just a winning combination, they just always worked so together.
But of course, as magnificent as they are, like most things in life, they always generally get improved somewhat with a little touch of chocolate.
So, so for this concept, I've, I've innovated on the classic chocolate coated almond, with the addition of these unique and exotic flavors that I, that I hold so dear.
So in linking this concept back to the inver insights again, we can see, we can see how the concept really plays to that popularity of the fruit and the nut pairings with chocolate.
We have the bold exotic mix of the infused lime leaves with the coconut blossom nectar.
It really plays nicely to the floral notes of the almonds.
Whilst the savory kind of leaning of the chili and the ginger, it, it balances out that sweetness of the chocolate, so you have a lovely roundness of flavor there.
And you can see how this concept really ties in nicely to the taste, taste of the new experience trend that that Lo Luanne mentioned there as.
So I also want to highlight here the use of the coconut blossom nectar.
It's an ingredient which is a wonderfully unrefined, fruity tasting syrup, and in this application it was used to enrobe the almonds and the botanicals all together, and that was, that was done prior to dehydration.
So, so as Luanne mentioned, the coconut is fast becoming one of the most popular pairings for chocolate.
So again, we have a product concept here that boasts a lot of clean label credentials using whole food ingredients that are all essentially botanical by nature, really adds to the clean and healthy feel of this concept.
Within my production methods, I actually chose to use as fresh ingredients as possible, so I chose fresh, fresh lime leaves, fresh ginger.
Really to maximize on those zesty flavors, and by dehydrating them in this fashion in robes in the, the coconut blossom nectar, all that fresh flavor becomes quite literally sort of locked in within that process.
And I think the really interesting thing about using these big bold botanical flavors is how they really lend themselves perfectly to fun and playful ways of positioning such a product.
I believe there's a real opportunity here to add value above and beyond simply the culinary by expounding upon these flavor combinations within the use of visually striking packaging as as language used to position the product.
I really think there's a great opportunity there to make such products stand out and really pop and sing above the rest.
The third and final recipe concept I want to present is my triple antioxidant almond matcha chocolates, and that's a bit of a mouthful, but a most delicious one, I can assure you.
And these are luxurious, luxurious silky smooth scented chocolates filled with a creamed almond and coconut matcha center.
And the unique qualities of the almonds and the matcha have been harnessed for their antioxidant properties and matched here with the complementary textual pairing of coconut cream to to create a particularly indulgent and functional treat.
And just to give you the background of the inspiration for this creation, so really with this concept I wanted to explore a combination of different ingredients that would enable me to play with the concept of functional foods, and this is a concept that is of real interest to me at the moment.
And in this context we see the three ingredients of almonds, matcha, and chocolate, all known for their antioxidant properties, and they're all absolutely wonderful individually, but of course even better when all used together.
So the concept, it came from a number of different places, really, not least, my recently established love affair with a matcha and vanilla almond milk latte, which really turned me on to that matcha and almond combination.
Who knew it was going to be so good?
I, I didn't since I tried it, and, and now I'm slightly hooked.
So that along with this concept of wanting to explore functional foods.
And also wanting to explore the potential of using almonds as a basis for a soft and creamy texture which was neither an almond butter nor a marzipan.
All those things together sort of brought me to this point.
So I think I set myself quite a challenge, especially trying to get this texture that I had in mind.
However, after much experimentation, of course lots and lots of tasting, I found the key to reaching the texture that I'd been thinking of was achieved by blending a whipped coconut cream into my already processed blanched almond paste, and this whipped coconut cream is something which I've been exploring in a number of other dessert recipes recently.
And essentially it's achieved by separating the coconut solids from the coconut water that you get in regular cans of coconut water and whipping those coconut solids as you would regular whipping cream, and this gives a lovely creamy light whipped texture that was just, just perfect for this application.
And then just to finish the recipe, I used a small amount of, of psyllium huff powder, to act as a natural thickener and.
And of course, should this recipe ever be scaled up and used in a sort of factory style production, any number of texturizers or stabilizers could be used to a similar effect.
And finally, the the matcha powder and a little vanilla essence and powdered sugar was added for for flavor purposes and also as a nod back to that matcha vanilla almond milk that first inspired this this concept, a bit of a homage to that latte which turned me on to the matcha and almonds flavor combination.
So linking this final recipe back to the aforementioned innovator insights, we can really see how this concept strives to push the possibilities of texture innovation through the choice of ingredients there.
And it's interesting to know how the choice of using the ever popular coconuts was was actually from a technical perspective.
But also just how perfectly it ties in with the insights, and a nod to the increasingly popular trend of coconut inclusions.
And it was just really nice actually in Luanne's presentation there to see there was actually a product there which had er a coconut cream style center.
So the flavor and the function innovation is really what excites me most about this concept, as I was talking earlier about the idea of functional foods, and we can see the benefit of using matcha powder for not only bringing value in terms of its contemporary flavor pairings, but also boasting the many functional health benefits of its superfood status.
And I know how Luanne actually spoke about superfruit inclusions, and whilst not a fruit, I do think this can certainly still be included under that banner, and we can actually include the matcha powder as part of this trend for a super functional botanicals.
And finally, this combination of chocolate, almonds, coconut, and matcha, which to my mind are all superfoods, it definitely puts this concept into the premium inclusion territory.
And lastly, I, I shouldn't forget that the concept also fits perfectly into my newfound favorite category of the indulgent alibi.
So definitely I'm going to be a future indulgent alibi for myself, that's for sure.
So I just want to thank you all for joining the webinar today.
It's been a pleasure to be involved.
All of these recipes that are presented can be found on the Almond Board website.
And if you submit a request through the Q&A portal, we'll, we'll send the the recipes directly to you.
So I will now turn the session over to Luanne to kick off the live Q&A.
OK, David.
That was really, really interesting, and there's a lot of questions coming in for you.
So let's just start with the first one.
I have to say one thing that I'm really amazed about with this, the things that you make is that you find so many interesting things like the coconut cream.
So here's a question.
Have you ever tried Peruvian Amazon fruits, like, I don't even know if I can say this, aguamanto or camu camu?
They're both citrus, fruits.
If you can't answer that specifically, can you talk about how do you find things to experiment with, or how do you find new ingredients and how do you work to develop those into your recipes?
Sure, sure, that's a great question.
I actually, I have a bit of a love affair with, Peruvian, produce as as, South Asian, South Asian produce.
So kamak cau I am aware of, and it is something I've tried, and, I, I, I love it both, for the taste.
I've actually managed to source it in London as a puree.
I've never actually had the whole fruit, but.
I've used it as a puree in, ices and also as a product to put into my smoothies as.
And the great thing about kammakamma is I think it's one of these superfoods which is incredibly high in vitamin C.
I think it's the highest amount of vitamin C in Kamakamma than anywhere else.
So yeah, in regards to where I find these things, I think I'm very spoiled being in London where you know we have a wealth of restaurants and produce suppliers from all around the world, and there's obviously lots of different communities here from different parts of the world, so there's constantly a whole.
Array of things to explore and I never get tired of just getting turned on to new things, and often it takes me on an adventure.
One thing leads to another.
And I think, you know, when you start digging around in, say, Peruvian food, you start finding Peruvian recipes and it just leads to a whole new discovery.
So yeah, it's a great question, and I look forward to hopefully trying that other fruit which I'm going to have to.
Look up now.
It's a great name.
Yeah, I don't even know how to pronounce it.
OK.
There's another ques no, it's a hard one, but there's another question about coffee flour.
Is this a trend?
And I know that personally, I met a guy, gosh, probably about, a year ago, and he, sent me coffee flour, and, really interesting.
That, I think Google was one of their, their biggest customers for it.
And then I met, by chance, Nathan Myhrvold, who's, if any of you know him, he used to be the chief technology officer at Microsoft, and now he's a scientist that loves to cook, and he's involved in this coffee flower project, and he told me it's more of a flavoring than a flour, but have you heard of coffee flower, David, or Come across it anywhere in the in your food world?
No, not at all.
It's absolutely new to me.
So again, something I need to look up now.
It sounds like you know more than myself.
Is it a trend?
That's the question.
Is it?
Is it going to be a trend and I guess you're the person who can give us the insight there.
I think everything about coffee is very, you know, coffee flavors are so popular in a wide range of products, but with the coffee flower, the great story about it is apparently after coffee is processed, you have just a huge amount of waste stream.
And I don't know if it's exactly if it's the outside of the bean or outside of the, the, which part of the, of the coffee it is exactly, but I know that there's, piles and piles of it all over the world.
And that was the idea that it's sustainable.
It's processing a waste stream, and then it becomes a very high antioxidant.
Yeah, it looks like flour.
I have some on my desk actually.
So I think that's interesting.
That's also an interesting topic of looking at at Waste Stream, and I know that that's something that we've been talking about for a long time, but I think it's very much on trend and people are really interested in creating new ingredients out of, out of things like that.
So I think There's a trend isn't there, for using the waste product from coffee also in regards to health products or for cosmetic products, so coffee scrubs and that sort of thing as for exfoliating with.
Yeah, exactly, and cocoa the same way, you know, every, everything from the cocoa, the cocoa bean can also be used in lots of different things.
OK, there's another question here about is there any trend for fruit using tropical fruits in the market in addition to cocoa?
Like what about pineapple, mango?
So, what about your, your cheffy view on that?
What's chef, I think all those tropical flavors have, they, they're always exciting, aren't they?
I think, there's definitely a taste for them, and in regards to that question about the Peruvian, fruits like the camu cau.
Both being something which has that superfood status and also a new, a new bold flavor, I think like Peruvian food has actually blown up in London over the last couple of years, so there is that introduction for those sorts of tropical flavors which are tropical flavors beyond, I guess, the established sort of mango and pineapple, but they're classics, aren't they, mango and pineapple.
They're never going to go out of fashion.
No, they're not, but I think you made a good point.
Like you talked about how Peruvian restaurants are so popular.
So maybe, and I think this probably is a trend, is looking at how the fruit is used in different types of cuisines or in different types of applications.
Like I think, something I saw, recently was like more fruits being used in savory dishes, you know, to get the whole sweet and savory, but the sweet, instead of coming from caramel or chocolate, that, that the the sweet coming from something like mango or pineapple.
I think that's very on trend.
Yeah, going back to those Peruvian dishes, I know a lot of the sort of ceviche style dishes that they serve, you know, they quite often have fruit in them, we, you know, that's fish served with fruit, and so it's a whole, you know, array of.
Flavors, and I think that that's often the key for a lot of food from more exotic parts of the world is there is that in my mind, the idea of savory and sweet, it's not really viewed in those terms.
It's more about a balance between a whole array of flavors in one dish.
You have like the sort of the tart flavors and the salt flavors all coinciding with like salty flavors as.
Yeah.
And what about, so I kind of combine two questions, but here's somebody else asking about Peru.
Like, have you ever tried dark chocolate with Peruvian quinoa?
Like that's very specific, but what is, what is your initial thought about that?
Yeah, I don't see why not.
I, I, I, I love both of those ingredients.
I think.
Actually, a number of years ago I was developing some recipes with using amaranth.
Amaranth is arguably very similar to quinoa, and we were actually using it in popped as a popped.
A puffed seed of amaranth and creating like puffed amaranth pecan pralines.
So there we have the chocolate with the puffed amaranths and I guess quinoa puffs as in a similar fashion.
So yeah, I think they're definitely onto something there.
Why not?
That's a great point because if you think about popped rice or puffed rice and chocolate, it's been a classic combination for a long time.
When I was a kid, my favorite bar was the Nestle Crisp bar, and that's all it was was milk chocolate with the puffed rice.
So I guess something like quinoa or the amaranth, kind of, it's a maybe a more modern twist on something like that.
Definitely that's going to be your new favorite, Luanne.
There we go.
There we go.
You can make it for me.
I have to say, if you ever get a chance to meet David somewhere where he's cooking and making things, it's, it's amazing.
OK, this is a great question.
So chilies, so, , God, chilies have just exploded everywhere in the world.
I have kind of young kids and they like to see, I remember they were talking about Sriracha.
They had seen it in a cartoon or something, and then, you know, it's gone mainstream when kids are learning it from cartoons.
But there's a question about what type of chili is used for your Thai-inspired almonds.
Oh, you know what, this is probably quite embarrassing, because they, they, they weren't anything particularly special or exciting.
They, they were just, it was just, crushed chili flakes, just generic crushed chili flakes.
But as you say, you know, chilies are huge and exploded, so there's, I don't know how many different varieties that must be available, hundreds, hundreds, if not, you know, infinite possibilities of chili types.
So yeah, it's a rich area to be exploring like chilies with lots of different nuances to their flavor.
But, and, and that leads us on to the to the next question.
Are there any flavors or inclusions that are falling out of trend?
And I have to say the way, I'm gonna say no.
And the reason I will say just no, it's because if you look at like the, so we track new product launches, obviously, and if you look at the top 3 flavors in ice cream, pretty much any country in the world at any time it's chocolate, vanilla, strawberry.
Always.
And so, but I think what happens is there's always a new twist on it, you know.
And then I think the other thing that's really happened is that the world has kind of exploded into niches for everything, you know, for entertainment, for music, you know, everybody at your house can watch their own, you know, personalized movie.
I think it's the same thing with flavors that there's so many, there's a market for everything, you know, even something really small like everyone can get bacon, bacon ice cream.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really the sky's the limit.
And even I was in the US for 2 weeks, for the past 2 weeks, and somebody said, oh, like we're looking at things like, you know, rice pudding and tapioca pudding and things that seem so old fashioned, but it's so clean label and it's so, it's so simple and the flavors, like people just like the flavors.
And I said, you know, but what's, I think what's interesting about that is like everything retro is kind of, if it's positioned in the right way, can become a huge hit as.
Yeah, definitely people have a nostalgic thing with food as , don't they?
So the idea of retro foods, it plays into that sort of collective memory we have, and I think our taste buds, like smells, they're so evocative of time and place, that if you can stimulate someone's taste buds and take them back in time, quite literally, to memories I had as a child, then you're onto something, aren't you?
It's nostalgic food.
Yeah, no, true.
OK, David, I'm gonna ask you, let you answer this first and then I will answer it.
So which one is more important to you?
Functional, the functional trend, healthy or taste like indulgence, or could they all, are all, should they all be combined together, but can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, why not combine them all together?
Definitely.
I think that's that's the trick, isn't it, to create watertight products that tick tick many boxes, and I think if you're dealing, I think there's no point in having , food can be medicine.
Food is medicine, maybe, and like medicine, often medicine doesn't taste too good.
So you ultimately, if you're creating products for consumers, you want to be creating something which is absolutely delicious.
So if you can find those things which, which straddle both those camps, they are naturally delicious.
Like for instance, the kammakkamu, it is a delicious citrus fruit.
That has incredible health benefits, so, so, so I think you're laughing at, I think actually, funnily enough, a lot of the, the really delicious, or, or a lot of the.
Medicinally good for you herbs and spices are actually quite delicious, at least I find they are.
A lot of the Indian spices, they work in relation to one another.
Often, for instance, turmeric is said to become more bioavailable, and turmeric at the moment has been purported to have so many different benefits and It's the curcumin is the active component in turmeric, and that is increased like a thousandfold when you combine it with black pepper.
So you, you know, when you start arranging these delicious flavors together, they become not only enhanced in flavor but also enhanced in their functional ability, I guess as.
But yeah, what, what, sorry, I was going to say, what do you think, Luanne?
No, I, I'm saying I think you're, you're bang on that it's, they're not mutually exclusive, you know, it's not tasty or healthy.
It can be both, and I have to say I, I sometimes I put myself whenever I'm giving advice to, to customers that I put myself in their position that I think if I were making something, if I were creating a new dessert, I would absolutely be thinking about some type of healthy halo or healthy component to it.
Like I would probably always use a darker chocolate or I would include nuts.
And even last night we had a birthday cake at our house and it was dark chocolate, but it had raspberries on top.
And somehow you still feel a little bit better.
Like I made my son eat the raspberries before he put his plate in the dishwasher.
And it's not that I'm like trying to, I don't know, trying to compensate or something, but somehow you do feel slightly better about it.
So, but at the end of the day, it has to taste good and, and taste is still king.
And, and consumers will never sacrifice that.
And I think that's the important thing to, to remember.
OK.
Here's another question for the chef.
Are there any particular flavors or ingredients that you would recommend combining with white chocolate to balance the sweetness of the white chocolate?
OK, yeah, similarly to how I was saying about, those exotic dishes which have those, balance of, of flavors within them, I think to, to, to balance that sweetness, you, you want something that's going to cut through it, something quite sharp and tart and sour, and , the obvious thing that comes to mind is, is raspberries, as, as you were saying, Luanne, in your, in your birthday cake there.
It's, , it's a classic pairing with with white chocolate, and it has that.
That tartness that will, that will cut it and balance it, so, but anything within that sort of flavor profile, I think, so yeah, sours and tart tart flavors.
I think even unsweetened coconut, is that that little candy that's made with the Raffaello's from Ferrero, I think are a great example of that, that it's really indulgent and also has a creamy center, but the unsweetened coconut on the outside is a nice balance to that too.
OK, David, that's a lot of questions, so I think we'll, we'll wind it up today.
So, I hope everybody found it really interesting, and that you learned something from it.
We thank, thank everybody for their time today, and, and yeah, and hope you share this with your friends.
It's on demand and also make sure that you answer the, the survey at the end.
That's really helpful to us.
So thanks everyone, and goodbye.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
Goodbye everyone.
