Cocoa mass and cocoa butter
Imported in blocks from West African beans through a Karachi supplier.
About meltX
We make two things.
meltX started in a home kitchen in Punjab with one mould and a thermometer that turned out to be lying. Everything since has been about getting the temperature right.
The in-between we started making
The idea came from a complaint. Boxed chocolate here is either imported and priced for someone else, or local and made with compound — the vegetable-fat stuff that never really snaps and leaves a coating on the roof of your mouth. There was very little in between. So we started making the in-between.
crownX came first, and the rule was set on day one: every cube gets all five nuts. Not a variety box where you hunt for the one you like. Almond, peanut, pistachio, cashew, black raisin — in each cube, every time. It is slower to make that way. It is the whole point of the product.
peanutX came after, because not every day is a gift day. Sixty rupees, one packet, roasted peanuts under a thin coat of the same chocolate. It goes in a bag and it survives a Lahore afternoon.
The part that matters
Tempering, properly explained
Cocoa butter can set into six different crystal forms. Only one of them — form V — gives chocolate the snap, the shine and the clean melt at body temperature.
Getting form V is a temperature routine, not a recipe. Melt everything to 45°C. Cool to 27°C. Warm back to 31°C, which is above the melting point of the unstable crystals but below form V. Hold it at 31°C while you fill the moulds.
This is the step most small producers skip, because compound chocolate does not need it. We do not use compound, so we cannot skip it.
Sourcing
Where each thing comes from
Nuts and raisins
Bought whole from the dry-fruit market in Lahore, then sorted by hand.
Sugar and milk
Pakistani cane sugar, milled fine in-house.
Why
The reason it exists
We wanted a box you could hand to someone without explaining it, at a price a person in Lahore or Multan would actually pay.
The promise
Four things we will not do
We will not use compound chocolate.
We will not put fewer than five nuts in a crownX cube.
We will not sell you a box we would not eat that week.
We will not add a preservative to buy shelf life.