Give someone a chocolate

Chocolate, for most people is very hard to resist. Comfort food as well as a luxury for celebrations, chocolate makes you feel good. Chocolate says ‘I love you’.   Along with chillies and sex, chocolate releases natural endorphines – generating a feeling of well being.  And it’s delicious!
Easter, coming up soon, is celebrated by chocolate — especially eggs and bunnies. I visted Veldemeers at Doon estate for a behind-the-scenes tour of what it takes to produce their beautiful Belgian hand crafted chocolates.
Proprietor Hans Van Hooreweghe is passionate about the art of chocolate making and is committed to producing a high quality, product.
While drinking good coffee in the pretty courtyard outside his retail outlet, café and factory in Doon Estate, he kept me fascinated with a brief introduction to the this intricate art – explaining about raw ingredients, cocoa production, what makes chocolate ‘fresh’ and the need for tempering and constant temperature, to give a smooth and glossy finish. Fresh chocolate means ingredients like butter and cream – making this product difficult and fragile and with a short shelf life.
Then we went backstage to meet the stars — molten chocolate in three colours — kept churning at a constant temperature. Dark chocolate contains only cocoa solids and cocoa butter, milk chocolate has milk powder added and white chocolate is cocoa butter, sugar and milk. All chocolates are hand made and I watched easter bunnies being moulded with different coloured chocolate, making up eyes, waistcoats, ties and buttons. The team of skilled chocolate makers were filling chocolate shells with different flavoured ganaches, nuts, liqueurs, preserved citrus rind and decorating finished chocolates with a delicate hand.
Cocoa trees are an understory rainforest tree, at home in tropical jungle, and grow in a very small band around the Equator. A few large chocolate companies buy and process the pods selling ‘couverture’ – the stable base of chocolate – to chocolatiers.  An absolute advocate for the purity of the raw materials, Hans takes immense pride in the quality of his product and travels to Belgium once a year to purchase supplies and personally oversees loading the container with chocolate couverture, nuts, flavourings, liqueurs and packaging.
He came to Zimbabwe from then Zaire where he had been working with tea. Tempered by that country’s troubles — war, refugees, corruption, collapse hyperinflation —he chose Zimbabwe as a place to start a good business and raise his young family.  He and his wife sank all their savings into buying chocolate making equipment and into learning about high-end chocolate production. It wasn’t easy and their first breakthrough came only after an Easter promotional blitz to the five star hotels. A contract with Meikles Hotel for personalised chocolates, was soon followed by orders from Victoria Falls and Elephant Hills Hotels. Victoria Falls Hotel is still supplied by Veldemeers and tiny boxes of paired chocolates were being packaged for the hotel when I visited.
Zimbabwe’s problems of the early 2000s and continued economic instability, have meant that like many businesses, constant reinvention is necessary to try and keep viable. Hans remembers days when they would serve patient queues stretching beyond the courtyard.  Now Doon estate is virtually dead with only a trickle of customers. Veldemeers has branched out with a bakery producing fresh and frozen croissants, continental breads and cakes. The Doon Estate shop offers breakfast, teas and light lunches and there are now additional shops in Arundel and Borrowdale.
Star of the show remains the chocolate: and Veldemeers is the only locally produced, high-end chocolate in Zimbabwe – superb quality, melt-in –the-mouth, smooth and shiny. Give someone you love a chocolate treat this Easter.