First Steps

The movie ‘Chocolat’? Johnny Depp, Juliette Binoche… pouring chocolate onto a marble table, infusing cream with exotic flavours?

That’s what started our passion for Belgian chocolate making that has now become Wild Patch Chocolates. We send chocolates, take orders for chocolates online and teach others in our chocolate courses.

First Principles

Start with the finest ingredients, learn traditional methods from the experts, and taste food from around the world. Be passionate and a bit of a perfectionist - and when you've mastered that, you'll have to share it ... because you can't eat it all yourself!

Leave Things Out

We intentionally leave out all artificial flavours and preservatives. Our Belgian chocolates are all GLUTEN FREE. So when you get chocolate gift baskets, wedding chocolates, Easter or Christmas chocolates, you'll be getting fine ingredients without any additives.

Temper The Chocolate

Tempering chocolate is the process that gives Belgian chocolate its smooth mouth feel, beautiful shiney appearance and allows it to slip out of its mould, shrinking as it cools. There are several ways of tempering chocolate which we teach in our chocolate classes. Of course most other commercial chocolate makers use tempering machines to automate the whole process; however, at Wild Patch we only use traditional methods and temper all our chocolate by hand. Here are two of the most common ways of tempering chocolate. The Tabliering Method requires the couverture to be melted to 45°C. Two-thirds of this is poured onto a marble or granite slab and stirred with a spatula, allowing it to cool evenly. When it has cooled to around 27°C, it is poured back into the tank and mixed with the remaining one-third melted couverture. This allows the chocolate to reach its working temperature of 29-31°C (28-29°C for white chocolate, 29-30°C for milk chocolate, and 30-31°C for dark chocolate). The Seeding Method used unmelted chocolate buds to drop the temperature of the melted chocolate and to 'seed' it with the correct crystals. Melt the couverture to 45°C, then add one-third of this amount in unmelted buds and stir. Test the temper by dipping the edge of a plastic scraper into the chocolate and leaving it on the bench to dry. The chocolate should set within a few minutes and have an even colour, without visible oily streaks (if there are streaks, this means the chocolate was too hot). You will learn to recognise the temperature of chocolate from its look (its viscosity or fluidity) and feel (touch a spoon or paddle pop stick into the chocolate and place against your lower lip). Tempering chocolate by hand, however, can be a tricky business - best learnt from a professional. So come to one of our chocolate courses and learn chocolate making from our professional chocolatier (see Courses).

Devise Exquisite Fillings

Exquisite fillings are a whole other production which we teach in our chocolate courses (see Chocolate Making: Pralines). There are some great books around with recipes for basic ganache (generally made with cream, chocolate, glucose or inverted sugar and flavouring). Start with a recipe, try it out, modify it and apply the principles to other ingredients. You will only be limited by your imagination (and the success of your flavour combinations!). At Wild Patch Chocolates, we use fruit purees and concentrated extracts such as passionfruit, blood orange, wild strawberry and many other equisite ingredients. They are heated and poured over the chocolate to give the explosions of flavour our chocolates are known for (try our Passionfruit, Lime Jelly and Coconut, Strawberry and Balsamic Vinegar). Other complex flavours come from caramelising sugar in copper pots, steeping dried lavender flowers or rose petals in cream, or adding just the right amount of chilli oil to produce subtle ganache that is piped into chocolate shells or made into truffle balls (try our Smooth Caramel, Cappucino Cups and Chilli Chai). When you order our gourmet chocolate boxes, you get a variety of all the fabulous fillings in our Belgian chocolates for that season. So you'll have to come back for more to see what we've created next.

Select Only The Best

The principles for great chocolate making are common to all great food - start with the finest ingredients, learn traditional methods from the experts, and taste food from around the world. Be passionate (and a bit of a perfectionist) and when you’ve mastered that, you’ll have to share it … because you can’t eat it all yourself! After learning chocolate making and visiting chocolatiers all over the world, we now send chocolates all over Australia (and some of our customers send chocolates on to friends and family overseas - just to show them how well we make Belgian chocolates here in Australia!)