Woman who finds joy in creating craft chocolate

A WOMAN from Stoke Row has her own craft chocolate brand based around sustainability.

Joy Skipper created JOYOUS a year ago, which focuses on the concept of bean-to-bar and her products are made in small batches in her home in Main Street.

Ms Skipper is a certified chocolate taster and has judged international competitions including the Academy of Chocolate Awards and Great Taste.

She has worked in the food industry for 20 years in a variety of roles, including as a food stylist and writer, photographer and nutritionist.

Ms Skipper said: “I have worked for most of the supermarkets. I used to do quite a lot of work for Tesco but I have done work for Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.

“A food stylist prepares food for photography and TV. The natural progression from styling is to test the recipes and then to write them and then to write features.

“For me, it just grew organically. I studied photography when I lived in Norfolk in my 30s, I was photographing racehorses at the time, and I was working in a restaurant to earn some money and someone suggested for a joke that I should enter MasterChef.

“I did and got through the regional finals so then I thought maybe I should do that instead of horses. I then began assisting a food photographer and became his food stylist.

“Then when you start writing recipes, people ask you to taste foods. I get sent products sometimes to taste and give my opinion on.”

Ms Skipper was asked to judge the Great Taste Awards about 15 years ago and from there moved on to chocolate competitions.

She said: “Being a judge involves a lot of eating chocolate, some bad, not all good, but also learning about the process, learning about the history of chocolate, the different varieties, the different origins.”

It was her passion for sustainability and healthy food that encouraged her to get into making chocolate.

She said: “I have a real passion for sustainable, delicious food. I have written more than 20 recipe books. I specialise in nutrition to support sport and exercise, I love to help others to understand how nutrition can play a hugely important role in their lives, whatever their activity level.

“I want to inspire and motivate people to get excited about food and what it can do for them, as well as tasting great. I realised I could make a significant difference to my performance by how I fed my body, and this led me to want to learn more.”

In 2009 Ms Skipper gained a foundation degree in nutritional therapy from the University of Bedfordshire and in 2011 qualified as a registered nutritionist with an honours degree at Middlesex University.

She said: “Nutritional therapy is much more than just healthy eating. It is based on scientific research into how our individual biochemistry works and my goal with every client is to find the perfect diet and lifestyle to ensure they enjoy optimum health.”

Early last year Ms Skipper travelled to the cacao plantations of Southern India to meet the growers and to learn more about the sustainable processes involved in craft chocolate making.

She said: “I visited all the cacao plantations in India and when I came back I thought I would try it and once you have bought all the machinery, there’s no going back. When I began, friends just kept asking to have some and buy some and the business has just grown.”

Ms Skipper makes craft chocolate in a variety of flavours including spiced orange, white timut pepper and fruit and nut.

She said: “With craft chocolate, the makers tend to know a lot more about where their food comes from so they will go to a specific plantation and ask to have their beans. They probably know the farmer, they know they are paying a good price so the whole thing becomes more sustainable.

“That is obviously why it is a little bit more expensive than your normal supermarket chocolate but it is a better quality product and you are paying the people that are growing the beans at a good price.

“If you gave 10 chocolate makers the same beans, they would all make a completely different chocolate and, for that reason, no one is too precious about their recipe or how they do things. At the moment there is a shortage of cacao and the price is really high as it’s tricky to get the beans.

“It is probably not the best time to launch a chocolate business, as the price of cacao is the highest it has ever been but each time I find a new bean and have to experiment and come up with a new bar, my range is rapidly expanding.

“In theory, everyone has the same process of making chocolate. I get the raw beans and then I decide how long I am going to roast them for and at what temperature. Another chocolate maker may decide they are going to roast them for longer or shorter or higher temperature or lower temperature and that will have an effect.

“Then I decide what sugar I am going to use, what milk I am going to use if I am going to put milk in, and then how long and how much I am going to refine them. When I started making chocolate, I just wanted to perfect one bar. But now I can’t resist experimenting with new beans and new flavours.”

Ms Skipper normally roasts her beans for about 18 minutes and uses a sugar called panela which gives the chocolate a caramel flavour.

She said: “I can only make one chocolate at a time, it takes up to three days of careful roasting and stone-grinding to make around 48 bars, from 2kg of beans, and each bar is individually wrapped by hand.

“In my chocolate I use organic cocoa butter which is the fat that is extracted from the cocoa bean, with a mild flavour but rich chocolatey aroma.

“Organic panela, which is an unrefined whole cane sugar, is typical of Latin America and is derived from the boiling and evaporation of sugar cane juice. It provides delicious hints of caramel to bean-to-bar chocolate.

“I did not want to go too crazy with the variety and I wanted to give people an upmarket version of what they love. Everyone loves a chocolate orange and everyone loves fruit and nut and, I suppose, the only wacky one I make is the white chocolate one with pepper, just because I have this pepper timut that I love and always have wanted to put it in chocolate.”

With her master’s in sustainability Ms Skipper has taken steps to reduce her carbon footprint including delivering orders within five miles by bike and not using plastic packaging.

She said: “Cycling to deliver is great although in the middle of winter down these hills it’s not so nice. The chocolate is wrapped in grease-proof paper and then just in plain craft packaging. I try to keep the packaging as minimal as possible and then when they are posted they are just sent in boxes — no plastic.”

Ms Skipper says there is a correct way of tasting chocolate. She said: “You should never munch chocolate, you should just let it melt in the mouth. The whole point about chocolate is it should be a bit of a journey, so when it first melts, you get some flavours coming through and then as it slowly melts more, you get more flavours. With munching you’ll just get one flavour and then it is gone.

“I think people now are starting to care a little bit more about their food, where it comes from and want better quality. As a nutritionist, my clients think they can’t have chocolate but you can if it’s good stuff. Don’t have stuff that is just full of sugar and vegetable fat.”

Ms Skipper, who rows at Goring Gap Boat Club, said: “A client once said that it was a shame that you can’t buy health. But I believe you can — you can buy the best quality food, which is also likely to have the best flavour and may be the most nutritious.

“It also means you are paying towards a sustainable future rather than a cheaper option that may be destroying it. That brought me to chocolate and learning about the small producers who care about where their cacao beans are grown, they care about how much the farmers are being paid and they care hugely about the flavour of their wonderful chocolate.

“I am hugely passionate about great food and how it can help us all to function optimally. Learning to eat a healthy diet that can support us throughout the changes and challenges in our lives is hugely important and I aim to support others through those changes and challenges, using great-tasting, sustainable food as a starting base.”

Ms Skipper will be holding a chocolate tasting at her home on February 19 at 7pm. For more information and to book, visit www.joyouschocolate.co.uk