World Champion Chocolatier, Meilleur Ouvrier de France*
Gold Medal winner, Pastry & Chocolate World Championship, Milano, Italy
*Meilleur Ouvrier de France. This prestigious title is awarded yearly to the best French artisans. Each competitor must enter a masterpiece representative of their work. This work of art is then evaluated against extremely rigorous standards. The winner becomes "Meilleur Ouvrier de France".
Pascal Caffet & zChocolat
Pascal Caffet has created 15 exquisite recipes, numbered from 1 (Z) to 15, exclusively for zChocolat. Our combined expertise and experience has resulted in worldwide availability of the finest French chocolates in the world. Available only online, these signature dark, milk or white chocolates include rich ganaches prepared with the highest quality French butter and cream and finely textured pralinés with an avant-garde mixture of Valencia almonds and Piedmont hazelnuts. This collection combines Pascal Caffet's expertise in chocolate making with years of meticulous chocolate tasting and feedback from thousands of customers worldwide.
Bite into Pascal Caffet's Z chocolate, a sweet and salty caramel truffle, and savor the Piedmont hazelnut praliné filling. You will immediately realize that you are tasting the crème de la crème of confectionary creations. Pascal Caffet's secret is his combination of artistic passion, culinary purity and years of experience. The result is an unequaled repertoire of edible masterpieces. Our chocolates are chocolate in its purest form: made of the finest cocoa and freshest local ingredients, low in sugar, with no preservatives, no coloring, no alcohol and 100% pure cocoa butter.
The best chocolatier in the world
While his miniature works of art speak for themselves, Pascal Caffet has been lauded for his discipline, talent and creativity. This is his story:
At the early age of four, Pascal Caffet assisted his father Bernard, a pastry chef, in his shop in Troyes, France. In 1979, Bernard Caffet opened a chocolaterie, and his devotion and zeal were infectious; Pascal was hooked. Instilled in the young Caffet was the importance of using traditional methods while exploring exotic new recipes.
For Pascal, chocolate is not merely a treat, but an experience. While some artists use paint or clay, Pascal has found nature's ingredients to be his finest medium.
Pascal takes pride in handpicking his raw materials and believes that premium ingredients are the key to creating the finest chocolates. He uses absolutely no preservatives and no fat other than pure cocoa butter. It is no wonder that by the time Pascal turned 27, he had become the youngest Meilleur Ouvrier de France in his profession. Shortly thereafter, he won the Gold Medal at the Chocolate World Championship in Milano, Italy.
After Pascal inherited his father's business, he and his wife Florence turned it into the gastronomic sensation of Troyes. Three new boutiques opened in his hometown, followed by a shop in Paris and four Pascal Caffet chocolateries in Japan.
When he is not dreaming up new recipes to elate our palates, he is teaching his apprentices the art of seducing the most scrupulous chocoholics. It takes precision, enormous patience, and inspiration. In 1997 he established the Trophée Pascal Caffet with the goal of encouraging emerging young chocolatiers worldwide to demonstrate their talent and make names for themselves.
In 2000, Jean Philippe Khodara, co-founder of zChocolat.com, approached Pascal Caffet with the opportunity to make his award-winning chocolates available worldwide through the Internet. This would be the first time that anyone, anywhere could order some of Pascal Caffet's creations to be delivered straight to their door. In 2009, zChocolat.com began to work exclusively with Pascal Caffet.
In 2009, Le Club des Croqueurs de Chocolat, an independent association made up of 150 members who taste and rate high-end chocolate, voted Pascal Caffet as one of the best French chocolatiers with a five chocolate-bar rating, the highest possible distinction.
When asked what is next, Pascal will tell you, "The adventure has only just begun."
A word from Pascal
“There is a supernatural universe of chocolate to discover. Close your eyes and prepare yourself for a journey to an enchanted world of remarkable and subtle flavors: soft, spicy, sweet, aromatic, light, tender, sharp, bitter, dark, creamy and even white. These magical elements, flirting and melting with one another will bring you to higher places. Each cocoa bean has its own unique and rare qualities, aroma, appearance and texture: smooth beans from Ecuador, glistening beans from Brazil, intense and brilliant beans from Venezuela and burnished, pungent beans from New Guinea. I have always loved working with chocolate, which is demanding and tough to break, yet wonderfully warm and flavorful. Chocolate gives me the freedom to create, to search for new flavor combinations (without blending more than two to preserve purity) such as bold spicy blends. Behold the magnificence of a world of flavors through the power of your senses. A small personal recommendation: never stop tasting chocolates, and by all means, never forget to offer chocolate, it is too much fun! Our love story with chocolate must continually unfold
