Lincolnshire chocolatier Jan Hansen is this month launching a special edition range of Valentines’ Day Chocolates…. but the best news of all is that chocolate has just been deemed officially healthy! This month, we find out why…

There’s no food more evocative and more alluring than chocolate. It’s the ultimate comfort food, a romantic treat for Valentine’s Day and a luxurious accompaniment to a soppy film in  front of the fire with your loved one. However, new research has revealed that our favourite ‘guilty pleasure’ may in fact be rather more innocent than first thought.
Creating his first chocolate shop in Stamford, before moving to Billingborough in 1988 to enable him to manufacture his own chocolate, Jan quickly gained a reputation as being Lincolnshire’s chocolate artisan par exellence.

The difference in Jan’s products is worth knowing, especially this month, since the chocolatier’s prices are at least on a par with High Street chocolatiers, yet often represent better value and more chocolate for your money.

That’s good news for any chocoholic, but in addition though, his chocolate is arguably a much better product; utterly heavenly, with a cleaner texture and a creamier taste.

The secret, according to Jan, who began retailing Belgian chocolate and diversified into manufacturing his own prodcts after  a dissatisfaction with wholesale products, is in the manufacture of the raw cocoa products – which not only affects the final flavour, but its health and nutritional benefits too.

“Cocoa beans are roasted and ground in a process known as conching.” Says Jan. The cocoa mass is worked into a pulp, and compressed. During this process the cocoa butter is squeezed out to leave dry cocoa cakes, to which cocoa butter or other fats are reintroduced.”

The harshness with which most chocolate products are treated and the substitution of cocoa butter for combination of sugar and milk or vegetable fats are responsible for poorer quality chocolate and result in exactly the kind of product that we recognise as cheaper, run of the mill, mass produced chocolate.

Because cocoa butter is expensive to reintroduce, vegetable fats are often used but are poor substitutes and are in fact considerably worse for our health; it has recently been proven that cocoa butter has