Kelp ma Boab… bladderwrack is chef’s secret ingredient as his chocolates have seaweed smell of success

SEA salt is a popular ingredient for those who want to add a tang to their sweet treats.

But chef Dave Williams has given the idea an unlikely twist – by adding seaweed to chocolates.

He first made a bar of dark chocolate featuring the unusual ingredient to accompany a friend’s seaweed gin two years ago.

Customers lapped up the taste of the sea and now Dave has developed a seaweed truffle using bladderwrack, freshly harvested from the Shetland coast.

Dave, 53, said: “Just like when you hold a shell to your ear and hear the sea, you can smell and taste the sea in the truffle.”

Dave, a military chef for 26 years, made his first seaweed-infused chocolate bar for a local food festival.

Dave said: “The owners of Shetland Reel Gin were launching their seaweed gin at the food fair in 2015 so I made a very basic chocolate bar to go with that.

“Demand for the chocolate was quite high so I just kept making it.

“It has evolved into a proper gin truffle which I decorate with aqua-coloured seaweed.”

The yellow-brown seaweed is hand-picked from the coastline.

Dave dries it in a hot cupboard and dyes it, then blitzes it in a food processor to decorate his Ocean Sent gin truffle.

Seaweed features in the ganache in the centre – made from the seaweed gin – and in the crispy dried seaweed topping.

Now demand for his chocolates – which also include flavours such as sea salt & caramel, cherry & amaretto and espresso – is such that he has opened a shop in Shetland, Mirrie Dancers Chocolatier, and another in Orkney. Mirrie Dancers is the Shetland term for the Northern Lights.

Chocolates can also be ordered online – Dave has customers as far away as the US, Canada and South Africa – and bought at Hardy’s Chocolates in Aberdeen.

Dave said: “I’ve been a chef all my life. I’ve picked up ideas and I try then to drop them into my chocolate.

“While the ganache is nice and soft and the chocolate around that has a snap, the seaweed adds another texture. It’s all about contrast.”

Seaweed has become one of the trendiest ingredients in recent years.

Harris Gin, which uses sea kelp, has quickly become a best-seller and their website says: “Juniper, coriander, angelica root, orris root, cubebs, bitter orange peel, licorice and cassia bark all play their role in defining the taste of our gin.

“But it is sugar kelp which is key to the subtle coastal notes that mark out our spirit.

“Hand-harvested by a local diver from the deep underwater forests of the Outer Hebrides, this natural and sustainable ingredient completes the wider aspects of the gin’s flavour.”