Page 36 - Food&Drink Magazine Aug-Sep 2021

SNACKS & CONFECTIONERY
Earthly chocolate delights
Loving Earth is one of Australia’s leading organic vegan chocolate companies, building an ethical and sustainable supply chain to produce its premium chocolate range. Kim Berry talks to its chief chocolatier Thibault Fregoni and product development manager Emil Kroll about having one of the best jobs in the world.
QHow is Loving Earth’s organic and vegan chocolate made?
Emil: There are several ways to exchange the milk solids that are so extensively used in conventional chocolate with other ingredients.
Loving Earth has pioneered the use of nuts as a creamy base ingredient to create an animal-free version of milk chocolate.
We have a diverse group of people working at Loving Earth, not just vegans. I am not personally vegan, but I truly believe that our food systems should become less dependent on feeding off animals.
Not using spray-dried milk in our chocolates opened up a new avenue of flavour opportunities, which we have mastered. This is probably the way a lot of great inventions have come about, by having constraints and challenges that needed to be overcome, and then finding new and possibly better ways.
Q
We both started with Loving Earth over the past year, and to begin with we had to deep dive into the current product portfolio and identify some of the core strengths in the current range. We quickly found four of the base chocolates we could build on top of.
Our take on Turkish Delight – the Dirty Rose, the base
TOP: Loving Earth’s latest range features fresh packaging design and a new spin on classic flavours.
ABOVE: Product development manager Emil Kroll exploring tastes and textures.
OPPOSITE: Loving Earth has pioneered ways to achieve creamy vegan chocolate.
36 | Food&Drink business | August/September 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
QHow did you both become involved in the world of chocolate?
Emil: I studied a Master’s of Food Innovation & Health at the University of Copenhagen, graduating in 2017. Before that I was a chef for seven years.
During my studies I co- founded a natural cider company, Decideret Cider, in 2015. Then, on the back of my master’s thesis, I co-founded Circular Food Technology, a food tech start-up upcycling brewery by-product into a nutritious, aromatic flour called Agrain.
Food is a very emotional thing, we all know the feeling of panic when we don’t know where to eat; or how the mood sinks through the floor boards if the food is bad; and the ecstasy a great meal can bring. To me, working with chocolate and confectionery is not just about putting something sweet in people’s mouth, but about delivering bite-sized positivity to people.
Thibault: I landed in Sydney in 1999 after extensive travels. As you do when young and free, I fell in love with the country and
decided to settle for a while... that was 22 years ago and counting!
I fell into chocolate by chance through a French pastry chef friend in the early 2000s. We set up a small business making handmade chocolates at a time when chocolate offerings were very basic in Australia. I moved to Melbourne and set up Monsieur Truffe. Then I moved into making chocolate directly from cocoa beans rather than using chocolate made by other manufacturers, so I started a brand called Matale, named after a Sri Lankan town I was sourcing cocoa from.
I meet the owner of Daintree Estates Barry Kitchen, which has given me a whole host of new experiences as well. I worked with him in Far North Queensland when he was lobbying for feasibility studies into growing cocoa in Australia. Cocoa is rarely manufactured where it is grown, so it is an opportunity to link growing cocoa and manufacturing it in one location. My knowledge of chocolate now extends from the plantation to the manufacturing.
What was the inspiration
behind the new range?