This topic has been on my mind for a while since I realized that we make three chocolate bars that present in a very similar colour but have different genetic make up.
The original purple DWN bar is the black currant and cardamom bar, which is classified as a fruit bar. The colour occurs naturally from the amount of freeze-dried black currant powder that forms its base, which is ground with cocoa butter and organic cane sugar. There is no cocoa bean in this chocolate.
The berry fizz bar starts in the same way as any dark chocolate with cocoa butter, cocoa nibs and sugar. However, the juicy colour of this chocolate comes from the addition of freeze-dried berry powders. I really like this technique because the cocoa nibs create a nice foundation that can allow a lot of other creativity.
Finally, ruby chocolate is a specific cocoa bean from Oxaca, Mexico that keeps its ruby colour through the roasting and grinding process if it is treated with an acid — there is no additional ingredient creating its unique colour. You can read the full blog post on this process.
Three chocolate bars that look very similar when placed together on a shelf, but achieve their unique purple / violet colour in different, natural ways.