They’re her strongest seller, and for Easter Sarah Wheeler is turning her LoveBites into Easter eggs. As if Easter isn’t pretty much her busiest time of the year anyway – I mean, chocolate!
Sarah’s chocolate, for those (surely few) unfamiliar with the vibrantly colourful packaging on a chocolate-coloured background which has been a fixture at Mullum farmers’ market for about twelve years now, is not only gorgeously more-ish but also utterly devoid of anything remotely harmful to health. In short, it’s a health food, cunningly disguised as a decadent sweet.
It all came about when Sarah, chronically tired, was recommended the paleo diet by her doctor and advised to consume 50 grams of 85% cacao chocolate a day. ‘Everything improved health-wise’, she tells me – but just as importantly, it set her on a quest to devise her own chocolate, to create an organic product which was cane sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan. And her business was born, because not only did she succeed in making a chocolate positively wholesome, she managed to make one that tasted every bit as luscious as those ‘sinful’ ones we all try to steer clear of, usually unsuccessfully. Her chocolate is never heated over 45C, so all its antioxidants, vitamins and minerals remain intact.
Since then she’s broadened the range to include drinking chocolate (in pure cacao, mint, and ginger and turmeric) and ‘Sticky Chai’, which she also dispenses as hot and iced drinks from her stall – and of course the LoveBites, heart-shaped mouthfuls of almonds and coconut sugar and chia seeds and naturally her own special PureMelt chocolate. She’d like to keep expanding, athough ‘in a measured way’, she says, especially in terms of wholesale and online. And yes, she still eats chocolate most days!
PureMelt is at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 -11 am
Victoria Cosford
