Belgian Chocolate Butter Creams

Chocolate Butter Creams are delectable - soft and rich with a smooth melt and lingering chocolate flavor. In fact our award winning California Collection contains several butter creams handmade in the classic Belgian chocolate, French chocolate and Victorian chocolate butter cream tradition.

Homemade butter cream chocolates are fun to make and perfect for dessert. Here is one of the easiest chocolate butter cream recipes around. This is a chocolate recipe handed down from a Belgian chocolate master in Bruges.

2 Cups Santa Barbara Chocolate Cocoa Powder (a rich slightly alkalized cocoa powder)

2 Cups Powdered Sugar

1 Cup Melted Salted Butter

1/4 Cup Whole Milk

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

Mix/Beat all ingredients thoroughly to a smooth fine whipped paste

Once you have your completed butter cream you can use it as a filling in a praline (Belgian chocolate style), you can pipe into starch molds (Victorian English chocolate style) or pipe into a long log roll, chill, cut and dip into chocolate (French chocolate style).

Probably the simplest way to enjoy this easy chocolate dessert is to spoon your buttercream into balls and roll in a mixture of cocoa powder and finely chopped nuts (hazelnuts for the European traditionalist). If needed, chill the butter cream mixture slightly to help set it up. Your creation may look rough around the edges but this is okay and is exactly how the earliest chocolate makers would have made chocolate butter creams.

Guaranteed everyone will be impressed with your classic chocolate making style and for sure everyone will love the impeccable taste of your traditional chocolate dessert.

The Best Chocolate - But How?

Cocoa bean – Sourcing and testing

Top quality cocoa beans are required in making the best chocolate ingredients such as chocolate couverture and cocoa powder.

Expertise in cocoa bean sourcing as well as a secure broker infrastructure set up in growing areas,

allows Santa Barbara Chocolate to select the best cocoa beans available.

One country we get cocoa beans from in West Africa is the Ivory Coast which has more than 800,000 farmers growing cacao. Most of these family farms are very small, about 3 hectares in size. These small family cocoa farms play an important role in the quality level of the finished chocolate.

Family farmers give attention and love to their cocoa trees, along with proper pruning, fermenting and cacao drying which all contributes to top quality cocoa beans. By starting with the best ingredients such as family farm grown cocoa beans Santa Barbara Chocolate is able to make the best chocolate.

Santa Barbara Chocolate works with ethical brokers who buy cocoa beans directly from small family farms.