a day ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Student's vegan chocolate a hit
Unlike Willy Wonka, chocolate-maker Lucian Petherick blends into a crowd.
And that is the way he likes it.
If people knew the unassuming 18-year-old University of Otago food sciences and chemistry student had designed his own chocolate bar, he might get swarmed by confectionery lovers.
"Everyone keeps asking me for some."
His Hokey Pokey Gold block of chocolate recently won him an NZQA Top Scholar award in technology and proved so popular with taste testers that Wellington-based craft vegan chocolate company Wonderland Chocolate has geared up to produce it in commercial quantities.
"It's a vegan chocolate, so it's made with a cashew milk base, not a dairy milk base," he said.
"I chose a specific cocoa bean with a really nice honey, raisiny, milky sort of flavour and turned it into chocolate.
"And then that was combined with a hokey pokey that I made using a whole lot of trial and error to create this sort of hokey pokey crunchy chocolate.
"I did more than 30 different hokey pokeys, trying to create the perfect hokey pokey for this chocolate bar."
He said he designed the chocolate as part of his food science and food technology year 13 scholarship project last year.
"I'm really passionate about sustainability, and the option came up to work with this vegan chocolate company and I just thought, you know, it seemed ideal — it seemed like an amazing opportunity to make my own chocolate bar.
"I love chocolate.
"I'd have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if I could. Wouldn't everyone?"
He said only 25 blocks of the chocolate were made, and he had already eaten four of them. The remainder were in storage for shelf-life testing.
The plan was for the chocolate to be commercially produced, and it was expected to hit selected supermarket shelves around the country about Christmas.
"And if it's popular enough, they'll increase production, so it can go to a wider market.
"It'll be really popular with vegan people because there's not a lot of chocolate options out there for vegans.
"Some vegan milk chocolate is not the nicest. Even dark chocolate's nicer than that.
"I think this chocolate is genuinely excellent, and I'm saying that as someone who is not a vegan."
Despite his major input, Mr Petherick would not receive a cent from sales of the chocolate. But that did not bother him in the least. Either way, it was a sweet deal, he said.
"I just feel so lucky because it's not often that you get to turn dreams into a reality like this.
"It was amazing. It doesn't happen that often.
"When I talk to people from the food science course that I'm currently doing at the university, I see that I'm getting to do things that they haven't been able to do, especially not as a high school student.
"There are third-year students and PhD students that I talk to, that think it's a really amazing thing."
As for his next chocolatey invention, he is remaining tight-lipped.
