Author: ETCA

J is for Juniper Berries

Growing up, there was a tree in my parents’ backyard that produced a small, edible, grape-shaped, fuchsia colored berry. Those were the days before the internet, so we consulted encyclopedias and asked neighbors for ideas on what this tree and berry were called. Up until a few years ago, I was convinced that these berries were juniper…but, just today, I discovered that these are actually “Lilly Pilly Berries”!

Why am I telling you this story? Well, when I thought of a juniper chocolate bar, I naively imagined that there would be plump, still somewhat chewy berries featured prominently on the inclusion side. My bubble was burst, but that’s OK…read on to hear more about my experience with chocolate paired with juniper berries!

One of the current masters of the photogenic “chocolate topography” inclusion bar is Violet Sky Chocolate from South Bend, Indiana. I featured them during “round 1” of the Eating the Chocolate Alphabet project and you can read more about them here. When you read about the first bar featured in that post from 2016, you’ll better understand why my mental picture included lots of berries poking out from the chocolate! 😉

Anyway, today’s bar is called “Forest Spirits” – a barrel aged dark chocolate with raspberry, juniper berry and maple sugar.

The outer packaging features a colorful, thick paper with a grosgrain ribbon like texture and a color-coordinating construction paper band letting you know a bit about the bar. The folds are kept closed with an informational sticker that peels away easily.

Inside this, the 28-rectangle bar was wrapped in bright fuchsia colored foil. Honestly, I was not prepared for how the bar looked, since in my mind’s eye there should be juniper berries visible at first glance! Don’t get me wrong, I love the generous amounts of freeze dried raspberries and chunks of maple sugar, but I’ll admit to pouting for a while 😉

I was afraid of turning the bar over to see the “top” side of the bar, but thankfully the inclusions stayed mostly adhered, though some of the raspberry and sugar “dust” had come loose and stuck to the foil to make the other side a little “speckled” – like remnants of confetti after a party.

There was a medium-crisp snap to the bar and a combination of raspberry “dust” and little flecks of chocolate seemed to fly everywhere.

The first bite was tart and acidic. Once my tongue had become acclimated to the flavor, subsequent bites were more mellow and fruity. The aroma triggered a memory, but I still can’t conjure it exactly 🙁 Placing a morsel with the inclusion side away from my tongue, the chocolate was creamy, smooth and there were hints of juniper, though I really thought it would taste more like gin! Some of the chunks of maple sugar were a little tough to crunch on and there was a grainy, earthy sweetness. My only complaint is that tiny raspberry seeds tended to get stuck in my teeth afterwards.

Neither the packaging nor the company website provided information about the percentage of cacao or the country of origin of the beans that were used, but I assumed that something darker than 70-75% had been used based on the taste and prior experience with Violet Sky bars. I wondered how the juniper berries had been incorporated since I knew they can be potent in flavor. Was some sort of infusion used? If so, how?…since most online recipes suggest adding the berries to cream, but I knew that wasn’t the case with this bar. To satisfy my curiosity, I sent an email to Hans, the chocolate maker, to get more information and when I woke up this morning his answer was waiting for me in my inbox!

“Forest Spirits can be on different chocolates, always barrel aged though. That one was a blend of gin barrel aged Brazil 77%, rye whiskey barrel aged Haiti 77%, and a bit of rye Brazil 88%. It’s about 80% after blending.

I use journeyman Distillery barrels from near where I am, they are located in Three Oaks Michigan. Also I age whole raw beans, usually for 2 or 3 months. Usually I use the barrels two times because after that the flavor becomes milder and more woody. 

The juniper berries are simmered in maple syrup to extract some flavor into the maple, which is then cooked down and crystalized. Then the berries that came out of the maple are crushed and sprinkled on the bar also. So basically it’s candied juniper powder. Perhaps bigger pieces of the juniper berries would lead to a more evolving flavor, but I was a bit worried about an overly tough texture. The juniper berries I have are pretty chewy/crunchy on their own, not freeze dried, but just dried like a spice. What do you think?”

After reading his message, I remembered that years ago I had used whole, dried juniper berries to flavor a meaty stew, so I searched through my spice pantry and, lo and behold, I still had a baggie of them.

They smell a little like licorice and look a bit like large peppercorns with a chewy, papery skin concealing the tough, hard seeds inside. They taste woody and astringent, but not unpleasantly so.

Did you know that junipers are the only spice derived from a conifer and aren’t really berries at all…they are the female seed cone from a juniper tree? All species of junipers grow berries, but some are too bitter to eat.

Armed with new knowledge and with my tongue “primed” from having chomped on a few dried juniper berries, I decided to have a second taste. Biting into a rectangle, my tongue was tingly and there seemed to be a “cooling” sensation as I melted the piece on my tongue. The maple sugar tasted “earthier,” but overall there were fruity bursts of flavor as I chomped on another morsel. It was hard to isolate the chocolate from the rest of the inclusions (especially the tangy raspberries), so I would munch, munch, munch trying to put my finger on the different tastes that I was experiencing and put words to those flavors. It’s no wonder that only half a bar remains! :0 There is a lingering, long lasting, fruity, tart aftertaste.

Knowing the “behind the scenes” process for this bar, I’m not sure that I would change anything. However, if there was a way to “bump up” the botanical flavor of the juniper without it being overwhelming, I’m certain THAT would be delicious! :p

For more details, please check out Violet Sky’s Facebook page as it contains more information than their website.

50 States Collaboration – Michigan / Fresh Coast Chocolate Co.

So far, every week during this collaboration project, I’ve tried to find a connection between the state and/or maker that Lori posts about and the one that I write about a day later. From our tentative publishing schedule, I knew that Lori was going to write about New Jersey, but I struggled to choose which state to feature next. I decided on Michigan because both states have lighthouses that I admire (and, truth be told, I selected this particular bar SOLELY on the photo featured on the packaging!) So, imagine my surprise after reading Lori’s post about Glennmade yesterday, that my seemingly random and “tangential” choice would pay off, since Glenn from Glennmade learned some of his chocolate skills from another Michigan bean-to-bar chocolate maker: Mindo Chocolate Makers!

When we were compiling a list of chocolate makers within the U.S., one of the sources that we relied upon was compiled by Lisabeth in Canada as part of her “Ultimate Chocolate Blog.” It was through her blog post that I discovered that Fresh Coast Chocolate Co. actually started out under a different company name. With a little research, I found a March/April 2015 interview with Nichole Warner where I learned that “Just Good Chocolate” started in October 2011 by making a cacao-based snack called “Nibblers” and at that time they had the goal of becoming Northern Michigan’s first bean-to-bar manufacturer as well as eventually having a wind and solar powered factory. In May 2016, Fresh Coast launched their new brand and packaging and also won a Good Food Award last year.

Generally I pay attention to country of origin, cacao percentage and/or inclusion ingredients when choosing a bar to feature. However, in this case, what caught my eye immediately was Summer Osborn’s photo of the South Manitou Island Lighthouse, located in Lake Michigan, which can be reached seasonally by ferry boat.

One of the things that you will notice on the back of the packaging is the three values that Fresh Coast Chocolate Co. lives by, which are expanded in more detail on their website:

  • Quality: We don’t settle. It is that simple.
  • Craftsmanship: We don’t take shortcuts. Ever.
  • Integrity: Transparency and honesty matter.

From the packaging and company website, we learn that the beans for this single-origin bar come from the Kilombero District in the Morogoro Region of southern Tanzania. Kokoa Kamili is a social enterprise that works with more than 2,500 farmers across the region and beans are fermented and dried in their centralized facility to ensure uniform quality; all of these elements seem to fit in with their values.

Unsealing one of the flaps from the outer envelope, the 20-rectangle bar is wrapped in lined silver foil.

Just peeling back the folds of the inner wrapping, I could smell a red berry aroma. Turning over the bar, this was the first time I had seen a mold that reminded me of “racing pinstripes” with five diagonal lines running through the middle of each rectangle. The overall glossy finish, with a minimum of chocolate “dust” marring the surface, was both aesthetically visually appealing and very stylishly photogenic.

There was a medium-crisp snap to the bar and the pieces segmented evenly and easily along the score lines. While I can definitely appreciate that Fresh Coast touts having “slightly over the top perfectionism” in their production processes; one thing that I noticed after segmenting 4 rectangles from the bottom row was that the mold must have been tilted slightly during cooling, since some pieces were slightly thicker than their neighboring pieces and the bar would not lay completely flat.

Regardless, taste is the most important aspect and I am constantly amazed when two-ingredient bars can have such vibrant flavor notes without any inclusions. This Batch 003 bar tasted like a not-too-sweet, tangy raspberry with a slight citrus aftertaste. Melting a piece on my tongue produced a creamy, smooth and even melt. As an interesting side note, since it’s unseasonably warm here at the moment, I’m keeping my chocolate stash in a wine fridge set to 62 degrees F. Straight out of the fridge, this bar had a nutty aroma and a more muted raspberry flavor. Allowing the morsels a few moments in this upper 80s degree room, the pleasantly intense and almost juicy berry flavor returns full force.

There are four more single-origin bars + a hot cocoa blend and brownie mix to try. My mouth is watering already! To learn more & purchase bars for yourself, please visit: http://freshcoastchocolate.com/

Remember to follow the Time to Eat Chocolate blog to hear about the next stop in the “50 States” project!

Other chocolate makers in Michigan:

Mindo Chocolate Makers

NOTE: If you know of any other bean-to-bar makers in Michigan that aren’t mentioned above, please leave a comment or send an email so that we can keep this list as up-to-date as possible!

I is for Irish Whiskey

When I was initially going through inclusion ingredients in my head during the planning stages for “round 2” of this Eating the Chocolate Alphabet project, I don’t think I fully realized that the letter “I” would be relatively difficult to fill. Maybe it’s me, but the only English-language foods that I could think of involved the word “ice.” Now it’s your turn, go ahead & take a moment, I’ll wait! While I was waiting, I did a search for Spanish foods and discovered Idiazábal (a Basque smoked cheese); if someone finds a chocolate paired with that ingredient, I’ll try it! Google also revealed that there are imbe fruit, ink nuts or iyokan (which is a Japanese citrus similar to a mandarin orange), but I’ve never seen any chocolates with those flavorings, have you?

Since I was undeterred, it was now time to find an “I” word modifier: like Icelandic, Irish, Italian or Israeli. I’ve had several chocolates with Icelandic Sea Salt, but that didn’t seem “special” enough for this blog. Someone suggested Irish Coffee, but I’m not a fan of the coffee flavor profile. So, when Jack from Chocolate Covered San Francisco mentioned that he had an Irish Whiskey bar, I knew I had finally found something I could feature and enjoy!

Ococoa is not unfamiliar to me since in mid-January I tried Diana Malouf’s flavorful and unique ingredient/flavor combinations that are part of her 9 piece Butter Cup Collection. If only I had paid more attention to her other product lines during that visit, this Irish Whiskey Caramel bar could have avoided a 700+ mile journey to reach me!! Oh, the irony!

This Irish Whiskey Caramel bar is made up of 6 thick filled rectangles, decorated on the “back” with a wood-grain patterned transfer sheet. The tops of some of the rectangles were starting to implode a little bit, partly because of the transit and partly because, by the time I was sampling this bar, the “enjoy by” date had elapsed by about a month :’(

There was a strong alcohol aroma and the rectangles cracked while I was segmenting this bar by hand. The milk and white chocolate caramel center from the first rectangle I tried seemed a little grainy and/or crystallized rather than runny, chewy or gooey.

However, when I bit into that piece (and all subsequent pieces), the middle was creamy and smooth, almost like a dulce de leche texture, but wow…it is BOOZY! Probably not what I should have been eating first thing in the morning! It would make for a perfect after-dinner treat though!

Overall, I liked the amount of burnt sugar caramel encased in the thin dark chocolate shell and the slight back-of-the-throat burn from the alcohol. Next time I want to try the Honey Liqueur Caramel bar, the Cardamom Orange truffle bar or the Peat Smoked truffles!

To learn more about Ococoa, please visit: https://ococoa.com/

And if you find any other unique “I” inclusion ingredients, PLEASE send me a message to let me know!!

50 States Collaboration – Washington / indi chocolate + Theo Chocolate

Since Time to Eat Chocolate wrote about Florida yesterday, I decided to feature a state that is diagonally on the opposite side of the country: Washington!

Thanks again to Jess (aka the Seattle Dessert Geek) for helping to shop for chocolates in her hometown! In addition to sending me a variety of chocolates, she sent a super cute hand-drawn card with the penguin avatar from my Instagram handle @myic2016!

First up is a mini single-origin tasting “pod” in the shape of a, you guessed it, halved teaspoon-sized cacao pod packaged in a re-sealable plastic pouch…as if there could ever be any leftovers! 😉

All of indi’s single-origin chocolates are made with just three ingredients: cacao, sugar and cacao butter and, although it’s not stated on the packaging, this Nicaragua pod is made from 72% cacao.

Due to the size and shape of this chocolate, I wasn’t able to “snap” the piece, so I forgot to smell the chocolate after I bit into it! 🙁

I think this was the first time tasting Nicaraguan chocolate, so I regret not sniffing it before eating the whole pod. The flavor was earthy and reminded me of black olives. The slow and mostly smooth melt finished with a slightly tannic aftertaste.

Next is a single-origin mini bar made from Orecao beans.

The country of origin isn’t listed on the packaging, but their website reveals that it is Ecuadorian. I remember this being one of the Heirloom Cacao Preservation “Designation 7” chocolates that I tried last year. If you are interested in learning more about HCP, here is the link to that post.

Though the bar sustained some damage in transit and there was a bit of chocolate “dust” marring the surface, it’s hard not to be captivated by the decorative multi-segment bar depicting leaves as well as whole and cracked opened cacao pods.

Since I had neglected to smell the last bar, I made sure to pay attention this one! To me, there seemed to be a faint “industrial” aroma, but thankfully that didn’t really transfer to the taste of the chocolate itself. Overall the chocolate looked a little dry in appearance and had a sharp snap when breaking it into tasting morsels.

I experienced a grainy mouthfeel and the piece melted slowly on my tongue. Interestingly, the taste seemed to change depending on how I ate the piece: when “chomped,” the flavor reminded me of raisins, but when I melted a piece in my mouth, I was reminded of a hard rind cheese! Afterwards, there was a long-lingering astringent/chalky aftertaste.

indi chocolate is best kept secret of Pike Place Market…but now YOU know! They are currently located on the 5th floor, but it sounds like soon they will be moving to the new Market Front (Spring 2017), so be sure to check out their website for more details: https://indichocolate.com/

One of my current favorite inclusion ingredients at the moment is breadcrumbs, so I couldn’t miss trying a 70% dark chocolate Bread & Chocolate bar which is a twist on a pain au chocolate breakfast viennoiserie and is part of Theo Chocolate’s “fantasy line.”

My only complaint with Theo’s bars is that the outer packaging is sealed so tightly, that it’s impossible to open the wrapper without ripping it. Being ingenious, I ended up using a letter opener to slice the informational sticker from the paper. While it used to bother me when the inner foil encasing the bar itself was folded with the outer wrapper, I now realize that it’s a much neater way to keep both layers crisply folded.

The “back” side of the bar is mottled with tiny dots that appear to be the beginnings of bloom and there were also plenty of large lumps poking out, showing that Theo was generous with the inclusion ingredients!

Though not pictured, this mini bar is made with a 4 rectangle mold and there was a matte finish to the “top side” of the chocolate. Breaking off one of the large rectangles produced a dull snap & little flecks of chocolate flew everywhere. So many nooks and crannies and chunks of bread!

The crunchy, lightly salted, creamy, not-too-sweet bar had a toasted butter aroma that begs to be chomped NOT melted! I would have loved to have known the origin of the chocolate, though perhaps it was a blend?

Just last week, as part of my separate Eating the Chocolate Alphabet project, I featured a different Theo bar, please follow this link if you are interested in reading more about that adventure.

Theo Chocolates can often be found at Bristol Farms and/or Whole Foods Markets in Southern California, but you can always order directly through their website: https://www.theochocolate.com/

Remember to follow the Time to Eat Chocolate blog to hear about the next stop in the “50 States” project!

Other chocolate makers in Washington:

Bellflower Chocolate Company

Fresco

Tease Chocolates

NOTE: If you know of any other bean-to-bar makers in Washington that aren’t mentioned above, please leave a comment or send an email so that we can keep this list as up-to-date as possible!

A Tale of Two Horchatas

Let me start off by saying that I love horchata! There is one that I still dream about from a Puerto Rican restaurant in North Hollywood that makes theirs with ground sesame seeds. But the one that is, for me, the paragon of all horchatas comes from a small mole restaurant in the Maravilla neighborhood of East Los Angeles. Their horchata is made Oaxacan-style, drizzled with fuscia-colored cactus-fruit syrup, rimmed with pink sugar and topped with roasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds). <drool>

However, when I started looking for unusual inclusion ingredients to feature as part of the Eating the Chocolate Alphabet series, horchata never really crossed my mind. This non-alcoholic beverage is typical in Central and South American restaurants, but is also available in Spain. Each country has their own style and a plethora of different ingredients can be used for the flavoring. Some call for milk, others water. Until I started discovering that this drink could be made with ground nuts or seeds, my only experience had been with the ground rice and cinnamon variety.

Shortly after visiting the Mast Brothers factory in Downtown LA, I heard they were selling a Los Angeles collection that included an horchata bar! When one of my friends texted me that she was at the Artisanal LA holiday market in December, I sent her on a quest to find some bars for me. Please don’t write to me and ask if I’ve read the scathing 4-part DallasFood.org exposé articles about Mast Brothers’ chocolate…the answer is yes, and I refer you back to the beginning of this post: I LOVE HORCHATA (that and I’m a sucker for chocolate bars that are part of an “exclusive” collection…I blame my boyfriend for corrupting me in that regard)! 😉

As always, the Mast Brothers’ packaging could easily double as an abstract art print. The thick textured paper of this bar has bold swaths of neutral, earth-tone colors and is credited as “artwork by Block Shop Textiles.”

Like all the other bars that I’ve seen, the back of the package has a center justified, line-by-line list of ingredients.

The cacao is called out simply as 58%, without a country of origin; so if you’re inquisitive (like me), you search on their website to discover that Tanzanian beans were used for this bar. Peeling back the informational sticker to unfold the packaging, you’ll see a gold foil wrapped bar made from a standard 28-rectangle mold.

Not surprisingly, the primary aroma is that of cinnamon, though there is also a nutty scent as well. Segmenting some pieces, there was a soft and slightly brittle snap.

The mouthfeel is certainly not smooth, but not gritty like stone ground/minimally processed cacao either. Despite the addition of cocoa butter, the chocolate seems disappointingly dry instead of creamy. There is a muted tang from the buttermilk; but, overall, this bar falls short of the flavor I would expect to justifiably represent the diverse and vibrant Hispanic culinary tapestry within the city of Los Angeles.

As you might know, I’m also currently working on a “50 States” collaboration project with Time to Eat Chocolate. To save on shipping costs, I volunteered to cover Washington since it’s geographically closer to me. Also, lucky for me, I have a Washington expert in my arsenal…for who better knows about the “sweets scene” than a dessert blogger! Jess, aka the Seattle Dessert Geek, was instrumental in acquiring some chocolates for me since apparently there are some Theo Chocolate flavors that never make it out of the city. As a shameless plug for my other project, stay tuned when I cover two different bean-to-bar chocolate makers from Washington soon!

Sorry for veering off on a tangent there…now back to this post! During Jess’ day-after-Valentines’ shopping trip, we were both surprised to discover that one of Theo’s new flavors is Cinnamon Horchata! So instead of keeping that bar for the collaboration project, I decided to feature it with my other horchata bar; though, in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a fair side-by-side comparison :0

As mentioned, this 45% milk chocolate bar is one of the newer additions to their “Fantasy Bar” line. The colorful illustration on the packaging (as well as the name) shows that cinnamon will be prominently featured; but what I didn’t realize until reading the ingredients is that it would also include crisped brown rice and crisped quinoa. One of my only complaints, aside from the fact that the first ingredient listed is sugar, is that the foil was wrapped with the external paper and the folds were sealed so tightly that I had to practically mutilate the outer band to get to the chocolate bar.

As you can see the bar is just bulging with crispy crunchy goodness and who doesn’t love a bar with crunch?!

Here are a couple of close ups of the inclusion ingredients: the first showing the crisped rice peeking out from a segmented piece & the second showing a small lump of un-dispersed ground cinnamon:

This is a relatively small bar, just 4 large horizontal rectangles. While cinnamon is the initial aroma, you also can’t miss a milky sweet, caramel scent to the chocolate. Breaking off one of the rectangles produced a brittle snap and tiny shards tended to fly everywhere! Don’t even try to melt this bar, chomp away blissfully, combining creamy with crunchy!

Of the two horchata bars that I tasted, Theo was the winner for me! Now if someone could figure out a way to combine chocolate with either of the two horchata drinks that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, THAT would be the BEST of times!

H is for Hemp Seeds

Are you trying to eat healthy and include “super foods” in your diet? Well, here is a chocolate bar that includes three different super foods: goji berries, cacao nibs and hemp seeds (since it’s “H” week on Eating the Chocolate Alphabet)!

Don’t worry, I won’t go into the health benefits or discuss super foods here since you can conduct your own research on the topic. I just want to introduce you to one of the most photogenic chocolate bars that I’ve seen in a while (and I’ve seen quite a few as part of this inclusion project)!

I don’t know about you, but my eye is immediately drawn to the lightly shriveled elongated reddish orange goji berries and the generous sprinkling of tiny white and greenish hemp seeds. The cracked cacao nibs almost blend into the 72% Dominican Republic dark chocolate base that you might forget they are there until you take that first crunchy bite!

But, let’s start from the beginning of the tasting process! If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that I like using an “EAT” approach: E for exterior (which refers to the packaging), A for aroma and appearance and T for taste 🙂

Chequessett Chocolate is the third bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Massachusetts (Taza was the first & Rogue was the second). Self-taught co-founders, Katherine Reed and Josiah Mayo, handcraft their minimally processed chocolate bars in small batches in a workshop on Cape Cod, at a shop location that once stood abandoned for two years, but now thrives as a café, production room and office. From what I’ve seen on their website, each of the small button and string tie dark blue envelopes sport a distinctive map motif with silver lines and numbers.

After reading that Josiah had 20+ years’ experience working in commercial fishing, I figured that these were topographical maps of some sort, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out the “proper” term to describe them. After several fruitless Google image searches, I finally broke down and called Chequessett to get the information “from the source.” Thanks for confirming my hunch that these were bathymetric maps that show the shape, size and distribution of underwater features as well as the terrain and contours of the ocean floor.

Removing the foil wrapped bar from the outer packaging & peeling back the folds, the inclusion side of the bar “greeted” me with a nutty, roasted aroma. I was almost afraid to turn the bar over for fear of dropping ingredients everywhere, but amazingly everything stayed pretty well-adhered to the 20-rectangle chocolate bar (I’d love to learn the technique that was used to achieve this)!

The “top” side of the bar was a reddish brown color and only had some slight scuffing from the transit to Southern California (I had purchased this bar after Thanksgiving last year to take advantage of their free shipping “Black Friday” deal & also indulged myself in an order of caramel cashew turtles with Wellfleet sea salt…which were DELICIOUS, by the way! Still kicking myself for not buying more than one container!)

When segmenting rectangles from the main bar, there was a soft snap since the chewy, lightly sweet goji berries would hang on to their spot tenaciously and then tear to reveal the tiny seeds hidden inside.

The shelled hemp seeds (sometimes called hemp “hearts”) are softer and nutty, though I’m not sure why some have a greenish tinge to them. With all this texture to the bar, it was pretty much impossible for me to “melt” a piece in my mouth…I made several valiant attempts to do so, but always succumbed to “chomping” after 15-20 seconds 😉 I wanted to isolate the chocolate by itself, so I tried slicing off the raised “hump” from the top side of several rectangles. Even though it was very messy to do so (wish I knew a better way of doing this), now I could taste the citrusy notes of the evaporated cane juice sweetened chocolate.

It will come as no surprise that this bar is almost gone now, so I’ll leave you with this one parting photo:

You can bet that the Blueberry Ginger or Cranberry bars will be next on my wish list!! Or maybe the Farrago confection, though the Mexican hot chocolate mix is calling to me too 🙂

To learn more about Chequessett Chocolate & their Cape Cod products, please visit: http://www.chequessettchocolate.com/

50 States Collaboration – Arizona / Stone Grindz Chocolate

Partnering with Time to Eat Chocolate on this collaboration project has provided me with the opportunity to expand my horizons! Since Lori posted about a chocolate maker from her home state yesterday, I thought it would be fun to write about a company that I only recently discovered was near my home state! Honestly, it never occurred to me that there could be a chocolate maker in Scottsdale, Arizona since their summer temperatures are consistently in the triple digits!! It surprised me to discover that there are actually quite a few companies in other parts of Arizona as well (see the bottom of this post for a full list of makers).

As any marketing person will tell you, vibrant packaging sells! When trying to select which Arizona maker to feature, I was captivated by the colorful/eye-catching rustic artwork of the Stone Grindz bars as shown on their website. Seeing that they also carried a Bolivia bar (one of my favorite origins at the moment) “sealed the deal” – now to try to locate it! Luckily their bars are sold by Chocolate Covered San Francisco, so I quickly placed an order and received the bar within two days.

To me, it looks like both a llama and a donkey are depicted on the front of this C1S (coated one side) notched cardboard sleeve since these “beasts of burden” are perfect for transporting supplies in the Bolivian Andes.

Removing the bar from the outer packaging, the clear heat-sealed plastic bag allows you to immediately see the matte finish of the 18-square mold, despite some minor chocolate “dust” marring the overall finish.

Cutting open the plastic wrapper released a deep, rich, chocolatey aroma. Taking a closer look at the bar, I noticed tiny air bubbles at the corners of most of the squares and some slight “ghosting” swirls. I’m always mesmerized by the natural beauty of minor imperfections, if you take time to notice them. FYI, I enhanced the photo below a bit to make it “pop.”

Breaking off a row of squares to make tasting morsels, I noticed that the mold had not been evenly filled since each of the pieces varied in width.

There was a slightly brittle snap to the bar and I detected a nutty aroma at the break. The mouthfeel is smooth and creamy – something I didn’t really expect from a name like Stone Grindz. After melting several pieces in my mouth, I noticed a malty aftertaste; however, the overall flavor of this Wild Bolivia bar was mild to me, rather than the distinct earthy flavor profile I have come to expect from other Bolivian beans (Alto Beni, in particular). To my surprise, I tasted mostly green apple rather than the cashew and plum from the tasting notes. Based on my experience, green apple is generally considered to be an “off flavor” in beer, so I’m wondering about the amount of acetic acid produced when fermenting this particular batch of beans which, according to the packaging, grew wild along the Amazon River Basin. [As a side note, I sampled this bar twice with the same results: once in the morning as a “first taste” before having anything to eat & a second time after eating a spicy meal.]

Taste is definitely subjective! Just recently, the Choocolate Journalist published an interesting article about some of the reasons why people taste things differently than others. So, don’t take my word for it…try it for yourself & let me know your thoughts & experiences!!

If you’d like to learn more about the different bars available from Stone Grindz, check out: http://www.stonegrindz.com/

To be sure not to miss any story from this “50 States” project, I recommend that you also follow the Time to Eat Chocolate blog!

Other chocolate makers in Arizona:

Brazen Chocolate https://www.newfangledlabs.com/

Chocofin http://www.chocofin.com/

Desert Indulgence http://www.difinechocolates.com/

Lulu’s Chocolate http://www.luluschocolate.com/

Zak’s Chocolate http://zakschocolate.com/

NOTE: If you know of any other bean-to-bar makers in Arizona that aren’t mentioned above, please leave a comment or send an email so that we can keep this list as up-to-date as possible!

** Updated May 16, 2020:
Monsoon Chocolate https://www.monsoonchocolate.com/

Bonus G – Goat Milk

So far I’ve tried camel milk and donkey milk, so when fellow blogger and chocophile Estelle Tracy from 37 Chocolates suggested a cross-country swap, I jumped at the opportunity to try a goat milk bar from Philly’s own Chocolate Alchemist!

I had heard that Robert Campbell (aka the “Chocolate Alchemist”) uses hand-stitched wrappers made from re-usable Nepalese lokta paper, so I took the time to carefully unstitch one side of the packaging…

only to later realize that I merely needed to lift the round sticker from the back of the packaging to release the foil wrapped bar from the envelope enclosure…DOH! Face palm! :0

The bar had broken in half during transit to California, but that made it easier for me to compare “back” and “front” at the same time:

The “back” looks a little mottled, full of swirls and tiny dots; while the “front” is shinier despite a slightly grainy/flecked appearance with some “ghosting” marring the finish.

Segmenting the rectangles to create tasting morsels, there is a soft/dull snap and the pieces are a little crumbly. I really shouldn’t have been surprised by the amount of nooks and crannies at the break, since that’s the texture you get when cacao beans are minimally processed.

Robert strongly believes in creating blends instead of single origins, using only all-natural, unrefined sweeteners and eschewing the “standard” 70% bar; so this 65% bar is a blend of Dominican and Peruvian beans, sweetened with local maple sugar.

There is a musty, earthy aroma to the bar; but I was completely unprepared for the intense sour, tangy goat cheese flavor. This was sharp, almost like a blue or Roquefort cheese or a yogurt on the edge of going past the expiration date! Honestly, a little goes a long way & this is not a bar that I would recommend eating all in one sitting!

As you might know, if you follow the Chocolate Alchemist on Instagram, he is fiercely outspoken and un-apologetically direct when speaking his mind about subjects near and dear to his heart. While I’ve not had the opportunity to meet him, based on what I’ve seen of his interactions with others online, he is very generous and supportive of his friends and family. Where other chocolate makers might try to tone down or tame the “wild” flavors of cacao to be more universally palatable or accessible to everyone, he unabashedly embraces the brash tastes for what they are.

Melting a piece on my tongue (yes, I was “brave” enough to do so), I felt the abrasiveness from tiny errant pieces of cacao nibs; though, overall, it wasn’t as grainy or gritty as some stone ground chocolate bars that I’ve tried in the past.

Is this chocolate for everyone?! No…but I think that’s OK. If everything was homogeneous, then how could you appreciate or realize when something stands out as being different or unique?

You’ll also enjoy reading Estelle’s article from Edible Philly where she dedicates several paragraphs to describe Chocolate Alchemist chocolate bars, as well as Robert himself…you’ll need to scroll down toward the bottom of that article for the section called “Bean-to-Bar Chocolate in Philadelphia.” Make sure you don’t miss the lead-in photo at the top of the webpage since it shows what a block of un-tempered, aged goat maple chocolate looks like when it is dappled with fat “bloom.”

In the spirit of blending, I just sampled a piece of the goat milk bar with last week’s foie gras bar and discovered it’s a surprisingly well-balanced combination! Dare to be different & stay curious! ;-p

For more information about the Chocolate Alchemist and to order his products online, check out: https://www.chocolatephilly.com/

G is for Gold

Yes, I’m still eating Christmas chocolates at the end of February…don’t judge me 😉 What you may not realize is that this has been the most highly anticipated bar (so far) during “round 2” of Eating the Chocolate Alphabet! Also, based on the unique inclusion ingredients, I could have potentially used it for not one, but three different letters: F, G or M! The story about how I came to acquire this bar (spoiler alert: I actually had 4 bars in my possession at one time!) is long, convoluted and funny…but, I won’t bore you with the details here. However, if you find me in person + are curious, ask me about it! 🙂

As you may have guessed…this is a Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh bar by Rococo Chocolates. This holiday favorite was first created by founder Chantal Coady in 1996 & Christmas wouldn’t be the same without it!

While the “Three Wise Men” are not named in the New Testament, other traditions have given them names, different ages, countries of origin and attributed special significance to each of their gifts.

This particular package art depicts the “Three Kings” as being from the same age group, but below is a compilation of information I found:

  • Caspar (or sometimes listed as Gaspar) was said to be the king of modern-day Turkey. He represented an “older” man in his 60s and his gift was gold. Gold was (and still is) a valuable possession, but this item is also thought to embody kingship on earth and virtue.
  • Melchior represented a “middle aged” man (in his 40s) and gave frankincense from his native Arabia. This aromatic resin has been used in perfume and incense and is considered a symbol of deity & prayer.
  • Balthazar (a “young” man, aged 20) was said to come from modern-day South Yemen (though other traditions list his country of origin as Ethiopia or other parts of Africa). His gift was myrrh, which has often been used as an anointing or embalming oil and is a symbol of death or suffering.

Until this project, I never really thought about frankincense and myrrh, so I was surprised to learn that they are both obtained from the sap of trees and that Somalia is the biggest exporter of frankincense. While it might have been interesting for Rococo to have used these ingredients in their solid state, their chocolate was actually infused with trace amounts of oil that were obtained by steam distillation of the dry resins. Frankincense is said to be woody in flavor, while myrrh (a natural gum that is waxy and coagulates quickly) is considered bitter & spicy by Chinese medicine.

Upon opening the cardboard packaging, I noticed that the bar was wrapped in festive thick gold foil.

However, after unwrapping the bar from the foil, I noticed that the chocolate had sustained some damage in transit: it was broken in 2 pieces & some of the edible 22 carat gold leaf had become detached from one of the rectangles.

Since I had a bar in “reserve,” I decided to open that one as well…only to discover that the inner packaging was the same patterned white & blue one that I had seen on the Earl Grey Tea bar from a couple of weeks ago.

As I alluded to earlier, 3 bars were brought back directly from England after the Christmas holidays + I acquired another bar at Chocolate Covered in San Francisco on Christmas Eve day. Turns out that the UK version had the gold foil inner wrapper + more gold leaf decorations while the US version had the “standard” inner packaging, less gold leaf & more chocolate “dust” + scuffing marring the surface (as well as a minor crack along the entire length of the bar where the first “C” of Rococo was imprinted on each of the rectangles).

For tasting purposes, I chose to stick with the UK bar despite the less-than-pristine appearance of the cracked bar (in case you were curious, BOTH bars tasted the same!)

Gold is a malleable and pliable chemical element, so “gold leaf” is created by hammering pieces of gold into thin sheets. It is odorless and tasteless, but it adds a certain “bling” to the chocolate…don’t you agree?!

Here is a close up of the gold leaf:

Overall, the chocolate smells and tastes primarily of citrusy orange oil. There was a sharp snap to the bar, though I also noticed an air bubble along the breaking point.

Melting a piece, I noticed that the texture was not completely smooth, but the morsel melted evenly. During the melt, I experienced a prickly, tingling sensation on my tongue that was vaguely effervescent. This reminded me of prior experiences with tasting pine resin and it left some astringency behind.

This was definitely a fun and unique Christmas-inspired bar & I’d love to get the Chocolarder version next year for comparison purposes!!

To learn more about Rococo Chocolates and their range of artisan bars, check out: https://www.rococochocolates.com/

50 States Collaboration – Ohio / Maverick Chocolate

Little did I know when I selected Ohio for this week’s blog post that there would be a tangential connection to Lori’s Missouri post from yesterday…read on for more details!

I always find it fascinating to hear stories about what leads people to become involved with chocolate. When Paul Picton would travel internationally as an aviation engineer and executive for Comair (a subsidiary of Delta Airlines), he would seek out chocolates to bring back to his wife Marlene. When that job ended in 2013, their stash of fine chocolate quickly became depleted. Paul & Marlene were looking for a business venture in which they could both contribute equally; so, after a visit to the Askinosie Chocolate factory in Missouri, the Pictons decided that entering the craft chocolate movement was a viable option. It’s become a family affair, since their sons Scott and Benjamin are also involved in the company’s operations.

One thing that you will notice when you access Maverick’s website is that each of their bar labels depicts a different 20th Century “flying machine” which pays homage to Paul’s former aviation career. The vintage/historic theme continues at their Findlay Market storefront in Cincinnati, Ohio since that space once housed the Hong Kong Tea & Coffee Company in the 1800s. A “maverick” is defined as an unorthodox or independent person and this bean-to-bar chocolate maker seeks to emulate its namesake by pushing the envelope and trying new things to please those with an adventurous palate.

63% Morropón Dark Chocolate

Immediately upon opening the tab keeping the outer textured cardboard packaging closed, you see a list of things to consider when tasting chocolate (which I try to touch upon in each of my posts).

To feel more connected to the people behind the chocolate, be sure to read the inner middle panel of the packaging which provides the details of Paul & Marlene’s chocolate journey.

Upon removing the reddish brown bar from the clear plastic pouch, my first smell was of roasted coffee. Sadly, many of the shiny faceted squares were marred by chocolate “dust” due to transit to California.

It took me a little bit of effort to split off a rectangle (2 squares) from the thick bar. There was a slightly brittle snap to the chocolate when segmenting the two squares from each other and I noticed several air bubbles at the breaking point, which yielded a nutty aroma.

Each of the 10 squares of their mold comes to a raised point in the center & this extra thickness made it a little difficult to bite into or segment into smaller tasting morsels. Chomping a piece, the initial flavor I experienced was sweet raisins. Then, while slowly melting a piece on my tongue, I could taste tart cherry and citrus (Peruvian chocolate is known to have natural citrus notes). I’m not sure if the additional cocoa butter contributes to the thick (but smooth) mouthfeel; personally, I would have liked the flavors to last longer and for the chocolate to melt more easily.

While researching Maverick Chocolate online, I enjoyed reading this 2015 article and was especially pleased to see a picture of a jute bag stamped with Morropón, Peru, the exact origin of the beans from the bar that I just sampled above! Additionally, from the bar’s packaging: “The Norandino Co-Op in Morropón, Peru unites small farmers with a common goal – to preserve the Piura White Criollo Cacao and to improve the quality of life for their farming community.”

Even though I’m generally a dark chocolate fan, I’d love to try their “Prohibition” milk chocolate with Kentucky bourbon, which won a silver medal from the International Chocolate Awards in 2015. Additionally, within a few months of opening Maverick Chocolate in 2014, they submitted their spicy Fahrenheit 513 bar and won a Good Foods Awards in 2015 (FYI, “513” is the area code of Cincinnati).

To check out the rest of their product line, which also includes nibs and a drinking chocolate mix, visit: http://maverickchocolate.com/

Remember to follow the Time to Eat Chocolate blog to hear about the next stop in the “50 States” project!

Other chocolate makers in Ohio:

fincaChocolate grows their own cacao in Puerto Rico & then makes small batch chocolate in Central Ohio. While their website doesn’t have too many details, they also have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/fincachocolate/

Ohiyo

NOTE: If you know of any other bean-to-bar makers in Ohio that aren’t mentioned above, please leave a comment or send an email so that we can keep this list as up-to-date as possible!