“Providing sugar-reduced chocolate that meets consumer needs with no compromise to taste or sweetness has been a key challenge for food brands and manufacturers,” notes Blommer Chocolate Company VP of research and development Melissa Tisoncik.
She explained to FoodNavigator-USA that while Blommer has offered “great tasting” sugar-free, no sugar added and reduced sugar products in the better-for-you space for more than a decade, “some consumers have shied away from alternative solutions due to negative taste perception or a desire for a solution that does not contain high intensity sweeteners or sugar alcohols.”
By leveraging DouxMatok’s Incredo Sugar, which uses real cane sugar, Tisoncik say Blommer’s new Discovery reduced-sugar chocolate portfolio “will help our customers reach a broader consumer audience, those who desire a cleaner label sugar reduction solution that still tastes superior and indulgent.”
The first product in the Discovery portfolio is a chocolate-flavored chip made with 50% less sugar, fewer calories and more fiber than a traditional chocolate chip, thanks to DouxMatok’s patented Incredo Sugar technology, which wraps sucrose molecules around silica particles to form structures that are perceived as far sweeter than the cane sugar from which is made. Thus allowing for a 30% to 50% reduction in sugar without impacting flavor.
Even though the sugar is halved, “the chocolate flavored chips made with Incredo Sugar still deliver on the sweetness of sugar and sensory characteristics as chocolate made with traditional white sugar, and will perform the same way,” explained Tisoncik. “The finished chocolate has the same crystallization, rheology and application similar to traditional chocolate.”
She added: “It is just as inviting and easy to use! Consumers would be hard-pressed to identify that our chocolate isn’t made with traditional white sugar.”
DouxMatok expands its reach in US
By partnering with North America’s largest ingredient chocolate supplier, DouxMatok significantly expands its reach in the US and ability to showcase the sugar reduction capabilities of its innovative Incredo Sugar to Blommer’s extensive network of CPG customers.
Proud of the work that Blommer has done with DouxMatok, the chocolate company is eager to boast to its customers about the potential role Incredo Sugar can play in new product development across confectionary, baking and dairy industry.
“We will be communicating directly with our network of customers that all chocolate products in the Discovery Product Line are made exclusively using Incredo Sugar’s innovative solution,” Colleen Ness, VP of sales and marketing at Blommer Chocolate Company, told FoodNavigator-USA.
“We’re proud of the partnership and the offering we’ve developed, and its important to us that our customers also are aware of and understand the technology used to empower these chocolate-flavored chips so that they can best incorporate them into their ingredients.”
DouxMatok ramps up production through diverse partnerships
DouxMatok’s partnership with Blommer builds on a solid international foundation the Israeli company has cultivated in the past two years to commercialize Incredo Sugar.
Last fall, DouxMatok partnered with Italian ingredients company Hi-Food to sell Incredo Sugar alongside Hi-Food’s semi-solid fiber Meltec, which together tackle the dual challenges of maintaining sweetness and other functions while avoiding aftertastes commonly associated with sugar substitute bulking solutions.
Before that it teamed with Canadian sugar refiner Rogers Sugar to make commercial quantities of its extra-sweet tasting sugar to better support the North American market, where products made with Incredo Sugar were slated to hit in late 2021.
To test the market and prove consumer interest in products made with Incredo Sugar, DouxMatok earlier in 2021 launched a duo of limited-edition chocolate spreads made with half the sugar of leading brands.
