The history of BOMBONS BLANXART starts in April 1954, in a rented ground floor workshop located in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona. A master chocolatier, after working for all the best cake and chocolate shops in the city, decides to leave his prestigious job and open his own business with four partners. They created what would be, after some years, one of the most prestigious artisan chocolate factories that, from its current 3000m2 facilities in Sant Joan Despí (Barcelona), still remains loyal to its origins.
Despite their limited resources, but with great innovative spirit, BOMBONS BLANXART made inroads into the chocolate and sweets world, quickly obtaining huge prestige due to the high quality and design of their products. From the very beginning, BOMBONS BLANXART created its own style by developing its brand logo, inspired from the Arts and Professions Museum of the Barcelonas History Museum. This logotype has been our image since and it appears on all our packaging and boxes, faithfully reflecting the companys philosophy.
The elaboration-quality of Blanxart chocolates comes from a high standard of raw materials, while submitting all our products to stringent quality controls from start to finish. Our company carries out the entire production process, from the roasting of the finest cocoa beans from Ghana, Congo, Guayaquil and the Dominican Republic to the final packaging and distribution.The first step in the elaboration of our chocolate is the cleaning and roasting of the cocoa beans. The degree of roast confers the characteristic aroma and flavour of Blanxart Chocolates, removes the humidity, the acidity and also helps in the chipping process of the cocoa beans.
Once the cocoa is roasted, one of our historic machines crushes the beans into fine pieces.
Once these nibs are obtained, they are turned into cocoa liquor. The cocoa liquor is a fine paste that must be blended with sugar and cocoa butter. We produce it in the mixer machine to exact proportions based on the kind of chocolate that we wish to obtain.
Next we process the resulting blend in our refiner machine. The refiner is a machine composed of cylinders, that by means of pressure, turns the obtained mass of the mixer into a fine powder. This resulting powder goes to the shells, which are great containers kept at an adequate temperature whose whirling arms stir the chocolate for hours until we achieve just the right even, liquid texture.
When the conching process has finished the chocolate is stored in deposits at the right temperature until it is used to create our pralines or chocolate bars.
Today, the three cacao varieties are Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario. The name of the cacao indicates the origen.
Criollo was the predominant cacao of Central and northern South America, but because of its low productivity and susceptibility to disease, it now constitutes, as a recognizable variety, on the order of 0.1% of the world's crop. Porcelana, the best known example of Criollo, retains the signature mild fruitiness attributed to the variety, although it is, of course, even more rare than Criollo as a whole.
Forastero, by far the most common of the three varieties, is believed to be indigenous to the northern Amazon River basin in what is now Brazil. As a result of its disease resistance and high productivity, it represents close to 90% of the world crop. It tends to have earthy, relatively simple flavors with moderate acidity. Depending on the quality of the bean (pod ripeness at harvest and the degree of care taken in fermenting and drying the beans), Forastero can add extremely desirable elements to a blend or little more than color.
A spontaneous hybrid of Forastero and Criollo that appeared in Trinidad in the mid-1700's, Trinitario may be the most difficult to define in terms of flavor due to widely varying ratios of Forastero and Criollo. Flavor notes range from spicy to earthy to fruity to highly acidic. Even Trinitario beans that physically resemble Criollo, suggesting a high percentage of Criollo genes, often exhibit little of its characteristic taste profile.