Like Water For Chocolate

No, not the book of the same name, but Damian Allsop's delicious CH2OCOLATES.

Damian was demonstrating his techniques for making dairy-free chocolate mousse at the Southbank Center Chocolate Festival a few weeks ago. I just missed out on tasting some as the queue for samples was so long after the workshop finished that they ran out of spoons, but I couldn't resist buying a box of the water ganache.

Damian claims to have discovered that using diary products in ganache alters the flavour. He therefore worked long and hard to find a way to create ganaches using water rather than the traditional cream.

The results are a stunning set of flavours. I didn't feel the 'Olive Oil' chocolate combination really worked, but was pleasantly surprised by the 'Basil Leaf' ganache, which might work well at the end of a meal for those who prefer their sweets less sweet.

Of the rest, it goes without saying the raspberry was my favourite, but we all know I'm biased there. The 'Peanut Crunch' and 'Salty Liquorice' were moreish, but the biggest surprise for me was the 'Pear Aniseed'. I hate aniseed. I really do. Never did like it even as a child, so I was expecting to be spitting it out and tried it with a great deal of caution. But here, the combination of pear, aniseed and chocolate was lovely and the aniseed was not in the least overpowering, so much so that I've decided to throw caution to the wind from here on in and try more aniseed flavoured items in future.

So there you go. If you give Mr Allsop's water ganache a try, in addition to having a pleasant chocolate experience he might even change your mind about flavours that had long since fallen out of your favour.