1. The inspiration

Carnival is inspired by our trips to the Caribbean!  Did you know that there are over 700 islands included in the Caribbean region?  They are all located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and of the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.  Beautiful landscapes, stunning beaches, coral reefs, volcanic outcrops and tropical rainforests, it’s an explorer’s paradise.  Its natural environmental diversity has led to recent growth in eco-tourism, particularly on islands without dense human populations.

We chose the name Carnival, as it conjures up images of music, dance, fun, sunshine and happiness.  That’s what we remember about visiting this region.  Naturally we had to choose banana and coconut to go in our Carnival bar.   They just speak tropical flavours to us.  We’ve used organic banana powder, sun dried banana pieces, coconut chips and hazelnuts to create this flavour. A hint of cinnamon and vanilla adds a little extra to this lovely combination.

2.  The ingredients

As with all our bars, we think all our ingredients are pretty special.  All are organic and all have a nutritional benefit for your body and mind.  Palmyra Blossom Nectar is used to sweeten all our bars and its amazing benefits can be found in a separate blog.

We flavour our Carnival bar with home made roasted organic hazelnut butter and sprinkle chopped roasted hazelnuts, toasted coconut chips and pieces of sun dried banana on the top.  The hazelnut butter gives a lovely richness and the toppings give delicious bursts of flavour, texture and sweetness!  

Hazelnuts, banana, and coconut all have their own amazing health properties and we will talk about them in a separate blog posts.

3.  Our label

We love our wrapper for Carnival, it’s so colourful and vibrant.  We hope you can just picture yourself dancing and swirling around, when you look at it.

4.  Its versatility 

As well as enjoying Carnival bar on its own, we also like it in muffins.  We’ve made lovely gluten free banana muffins. Adding chopped pieces of our carnival bar, elevate them to a whole new level!  Our recipe can be found on our blog site.  Let us know if you make them!

5.  Travel

As with all our bars, the flavours are inspired by travel to different parts of the world.  So far we’ve been lucky to visit two of the Caribbean islands, Barbados and The Dominican Republic.

Both are so very different and beautiful in their own rights!  The climate, local people and a few sips of locally produced rum (!) just invoke happiness.  Whatever it is, it’s a delight to be there, to feel relaxed and let your cares melt away.  

We were lucky to go white water rafting, sailing on a katamaran, snorkelling with turtles, rode racehorses on the beach, water skiing, ate wonderful food, spent precious time with family and friends and just relaxed on beautiful sands listening to the sounds of the ocean.  We also learnt how to dance merengue and salsa.  Such joyful moves and music, you can’t help but feel care free.  We’re longing to go back some day!

We’d love to know about your trips to the Caribbean and whether our bar brings back happy memories of your times spent there too.  It’s also ok to do a little dance wherever you are when you munch on this bar!!