Tag: Raaka

C is for Cabernet Sauvignon

Chocolate paired with wine is popular…but, how about a chocolate that TASTES like wine?! Yep, Brooklyn’s Raaka Chocolate has that covered with their 68% CAC Pangoa, Peru dark chocolate Cabernet Sauvignon bar!

According to the description on the back of the outer packaging: “This chocolate is tipsy. You don’t even need a glass!”

Unroasted cocoa nibs are steamed over a simmering big/bold California cabernet wine to infuse juicy, grapey flavors with a raisin-like finish.

You wouldn’t know it, but this bar is almost a year old (it was part of the July 2018 First Nibs subscription shipment). I love that the detailed mold design mimics the abstract illustration on the paper wrapper.

Tasting morsels segment easily with a sharp snap, releasing a raisin/dried fruit aroma. Starting off subtle, there were bursts of bright red fruit during the slow/even melt & the mouthfeel was, surprisingly, not completely smooth. It seemed like the grape/wine flavor was more vibrant when chewing the chocolate rather than just letting it melt on the tongue. Maybe it’s my imagination (or my palate becoming acclimated to the taste), but I swear the intensity of the fruit flavors are cumulative since my second “chomp” was like eating wine in solid form! Lightly tannic and long lasting finish mostly on the tip of the tongue and back of the throat.

Normally I have so much more to say in my posts; but, honestly, bold red wine is not my favorite spirit. Give me a late harvest or dessert wine & I’ll ooh and aah. Give me a gin and I’ll wax poetically.

I’ve been told by friends who are wine drinkers, that this bar is one of their favorites! So if the taste of California red wine is your thing, check out Raaka’s website for more details!

Y is for Yacon Root

OK…is it just me, or have you noticed that as I near the end of the alphabet, it’s getting harder and harder to find viable inclusion ingredients that start with my featured letter?! ?

For “Y” I could have potentially found yams, yeast, yogurt, yuca or yuzu…but I chose yacón root instead!

According to Wikipedia, yacón is an Andean tuberous root composed mostly of water that is a close botanical relative of Jerusalem artichokes or sunflowers. While the root can be red, orange, yellow or even purple, it seems like most pictures online remind me of a slender yam with cream-colored flesh reminiscent of jicama. Upon reading things further, Ecuadorians refer to yacón as “jicama” (wow, talk about confusing!) Speaking of names, it’s also called a “Peruvian ground apple” which makes sense since the French call potatoes pomme de terre (literally translated as earth or ground apples). Yacón is known to have a flavor that is slightly sweet & resinous with floral undertones. I was fascinated to discover that until the early 2000s, yacón wasn’t widely available outside of its native growing areas and that companies have since developed new products like syrup and tea from this root due to its extremely low glycemic index (1 on a scale of 0 to 100), making it popular among people watching their sugar intake (like diabetics or those on a diet).

After all that, I was really curious about how this bar would taste!

Raaka 79% Dominican Republic sweetened with Yacón Root

Raaka leaves their cacao beans unroasted (aka “virgin”) to allow the flavors to come through. For this bar, they are using Dominican Republic beans from the Öko Caribe Cooperative.

I love the simplicity of the micro fine point black ink lines on thick white paper. I see bamboo through mini blinds or plantation shutters. Though, I wonder if the front packaging is really an autostereogram (also called a “magic eye” picture) that needs to be viewed from a distance (or by squinting) for the image to finally emerge.

Removing the rectangular bar from the wax-lined silver foil that was folded with the outer paper like a hiyoku (inner kimono layer), you immediately see abstract art embossed into the chocolate (despite the jagged edge splitting the bar into two pieces; a transit-caused “casualty”).

There was a sharp brittle snap when segmenting pieces and the “breaking point” looked a little dry.

The tasting morsel melted slowly in my mouth (and with a bit of effort), yielding a chalky, powdery, not smooth mouthfeel and a mouth-puckering bitter flavor. There was a starchy, filmy residue that clung to my tongue, teeth and palate long after the piece was gone from my mouth. When “chomped” the chocolate tasted fruity…maybe this was the Dominican Republic terroir coming through?

Overall, this bar was extremely photogenic, but sadly the “acquired” taste of the unrefined sweetener did not win me over. I like earthy bars, but this one was a little too astringent for my taste. Maybe it was the unroasted beans? Maybe it was the 79% cacao content? Maybe I just need to find the right “pairing.” Have you tried this bar? Let me know what you think!

For more information on Raaka, please see their website: https://www.raakachocolate.com/