Tag Archives: askinosie

White chocolate gets a bad rap

El Rey ICOA white chocolateIn the chocolate world, it seems like darker is better. Whether it’s dodgy studies that claim dark chocolate will cure everything that ails you (from heart disease to athlete’s foot) or wannabe chocolate snobs one-upping each other by eating high percentage chocolates, it’s all about the dark. Generally speaking, a 70% bar does best with consumers, somehow striking that balance between perceived bitterness and actual sweetness.

But what about white chocolate? It’s like the abandoned, poor cousin of dark chocolate. It doesn’t even contain any cocoa solids: just sugar, cocoa butter and milk powder. And maybe it does deserve some of your derision. After all, most white chocolate on the market is sparkling, shockingly white and tastes cloyingly of too much sugar and milk powder. But then, that’s like saying all dark chocolate is bitter—which, of course, it isn’t.

How it’s made: white chocolate

After cacao beans are roasted and the skins are removed, they’re transferred to a melangeur (fancy French word for ‘mixer’). In the melanger, the cacao is ground into a fine paste of anywhere from 35-50 micrometres. There are one million micrometres in a metre. While 35-50 micrometres is pretty darn small, it’s still big enough that you’d perceive some graininess in the mixture. From there, the mixture is expelled under high temperature and pressure. Under these conditions, the cocoa mass is solid (think of cocoa powder) while the cocoa butter is a liquid.

When it first comes out of the expeller, cocoa butter isn’t white; it’s actually off-white, yellow or light brown. It often has distinct taste, though that taste will depend on where the cacao beans came from and their quality. In most cases, the cocoa butter is deodorized before it’s transformed into other things. Some chocolatiers add it back into their chocolate to increase its smoothness; some sell it to the cosmetics industry.

That’s right, the cosmetics industry. Cocoa butter commands much more money in the cosmetics industry, where it makes its way into lipsticks, face creams and soaps. This is why most mass-market chocolate makers want to replace cocoa butter with other fats: so that they can remove the cocoa butter and sell it at a higher price to the cosmetics industry.

And still, some take that cocoa butter, mix it with milk powder and sugar, and make white chocolate.

There are a few tricks to making white chocolate. One, if you roast the beans at a higher temperature, you weaken the cell walls in the cacao bean. This makes it easier to expel the cocoa butter. If you’re trying to make money by selling the cocoa butter to the cosmetics industry, this will maximize your profits—but it will also leave you with over-roasted, nearly burnt beans. Chances are, if you’re making your buck off the cosmetics industry, you’re not interested in high quality chocolate.

The second trick is that in deodorizing your cocoa butter, you’re removing some of the inherent flavours of the product. Again, if you’re looking at maximizing profits, rather than producing good chocolate, then this is a moot point. However, if you’re interested in making interesting white chocolate, then this is a problem. Deodorizing makes the resultant white chocolate sparkly white, and also terribly bland. That’s why most white chocolate all tastes the same.

El Rey ICOA white chocolate

This is the darling of the pastry world, as far as white chocolate goes. For a long time, this has been the white chocolate that professionals swear by. El Rey is a Venezuelan chocolate company, and while I can’t say I’m a huge fan of all their stuff, the ICOA white chocolate is quite nice.

This white chocolate is not deodorized, so it’s slightly yellow. It’s delicately milky, with a sharp sweetness at about mid-palate. Most important, both fade away to a clean finish so you’re not left with a chalky, cloying, milky aftertaste. As with all El Rey products, this one is silky smooth and luxuriously melty.

Askinosie Nibble Bar

Askinosie Nibble BarThis was a recent silver award finalist at the New York Fancy Food Show. That in itself is pretty impressive, because—as I alluded to earlier—it’s unusual for white chocolate to win awards. I’m particularly happy about this one because Askinosie is an American chocolate company who’s doing great things: putting pictures of their farmers on the packaging, including a “chocolot” number that lets you trace the provenance of your chocolate bar and innovative, sustainable packaging.

The nibble bar is a cute concept, too. It’s white chocolate with cocoa nibs on top. I like to think of it as a deconstructed cacao bean: taking the components (cocoa and cocoa butter), separating them, and putting them back together in a different way.

Just like El Rey, Askinosie doesn’t deodorize its cocoa butter. But unlike El Rey, Askinosie uses goat’s milk powder. The Askinosie white chocolate is beige-brown, which somehow fits with the rustic look of the packaging. There’s a bit of goatiness and sourness from the goat’s milk, and that offsets some of the sweetness. As you bite into it, it does taste too sweet and a bit grainy, but then the cocoa butter starts to melt and you start to crunch into the cocoa nibs. And as you keep chewing the cocoa nibs, the sweetness intensifies and the graininess becomes comforting, and then you’re just left with a clean palate and a bit of nibby flavour.

There’s something addictive about the crunch of the sugar and nibs, and the weirdness of the goat’s milk. They don’t call this the nibble bar for nothing. Notice that the top third of the bar is missing in the photo? Yup. Nibble nibble nibble.

Chocolate 201: Pralus recap (plus extra goodies)

The focus of the second class in Chocolate 201: Pralus.

Last week highlighted Patric Chocolate, which was a great way to open the series. It was such a study in small-batch chocolate, a limited product line, and attention paid to every single detail. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in the room really liked each of the chocolates that we tasted.

Tonight was a mixed bag, with some people liking one chocolate while others disliking the same one. I will say that I have less of an emotional attachment to Pralus, having not met the chocolate maker, but that I respect the company for what it did for artisan chocolate. Pralus is probably best known for its 100% Madagascar bar (typically the best-seller in any shop that sells bean-to-bar chocolate) and for its tasting pyramid. The tasting pyramid features 10 of the single-origin chocolates from the Pralus line, complete with tasting notes. It was really the first marketing campaign that really pushed the idea of how different chocolate can be, based on where it’s from. I’d argue that there’s more to flavour and texture than just origin, but that’s fodder for a much longer post.

Anyway, tonight was a chocolate extravaganza. We tasted six selections from Pralus, and then an assortment of Ecuadorian chocolates that I brought from my personal collection. Finished off with some wackiness from Zotter and a shot of drinking chocolate, it’s safe to say that people left the class chock full of chocolate.

Pralus Venezuela 75%

This bar had some pretty characteristic Pralus quirks: exceptional smoothness and meltiness, due to the addition of extra cocoa butter. This bar had notes of butter and caramel, with just a hint of licorice in it. Last week, we tasted the Rio Caraibe bar from Patric Chocolate, which is also from Venezuela, and the two bars couldn’t be more different. It’s an interesting exercise in showing that bean origin is only one factor; the personality and preferences of the chocolatemaker also have a lot to do with it.

Pralus Madagascar 100%

We jumped right into things and tasted the 100% bar. We compared it to another 100% bar, which was astringent, tannic and bitter. In comparison, the Pralus bar is surprisingly sweet, with definite red fruit and red wine characteristics. It’s certainly not bitter, though it does take some getting used to. And, of course, the characteristic Pralus smoothness of the bar helps its palatability.

Pralus Madagascar 75%

This bar is a single-origin bar from Madagascar, and while it has the red fruit you’d expect for a bar from Madagascar, it isn’t as prominent as with other Madagascan chocolate. You have to look for it a little bit, but it’s there–accompanied with pleasant acidity and brightness, and just a hint of citrus. Again, as a comparison with the Patric Madagascar bar from last week, the Pralus is much more muted and less effusive.

Pralus Tanzania 75%

This one was an interesting study in the flavour of toast. Toast is a tricky one to master, as it can be pleasant to some people or just taste burnt to others. I think the roast on this bar is dangerously close to burnt, though it just manages to come across as toasted almond with a bit of smoke. I think some people in the class found it closer to burnt.

Pralus Ecuador 75%

Ecuador lays claim to its own genetic strain of chocolate, the Arriba Nacional strain. Others think that it’s just a genetic variation of Forastero beans. Either way, these beans are known for brash tropical fruitiness, with banana and citrus being common flavours. This bar elicited a lot of suggestions from the group, including figs, raisins and coconut. There were also suggestions of the bitterness of matcha tea (bitter, but in a savoury kind of way), and tobacco. One person astutely noted that the flavours in this chocolate are quite light–like the flute section in an orchestra–lacking middle or underlying flavours.

Pralus Fortissima 80%

The Fortissima is a blend of various beans, with a decided raisin aroma. It’s marked by acidity, a slight bitterness, and the sensation of spice. People in the class tasted butterscotch, coffee and toffee. If the Ecuador bar is the flute section of the orchestra, the Fortissima is the double bass, or perhaps the French horn: deeper tones, more brooding.

Republica del Cacao La Communidad Vinces 75% and Esmereldas 75%

The bar from La Communidad Vinces is the first certified organic bar from Republica del Cacao, who are a lovely little company in Ecuador. This one has some vague tropical fruit, though I taste a bit of a hay undertone to it. The Esmereldas bar is a bit hesitant, too, and the class had difficulty finding the purported lemon zest notes that are in it. I do love the company and think they’re doing great things, but have found some of the batches to vary widely. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that they come up with a consistently good product, because I’d like to see them do well.

Askinosie San Jose del Tambo, Ecuador 70% and White Chocolate Nibble Bar

I really wish that Xoxolat carried Askinosie, because then I would have made Chocolate 201 into a five-part series and highlighted this great company from Springfield, MO. Whether it’s the picture of the farmer on the package, the lot number that lets you trace its origin, the innovative sustainable packaging, or the great story about the chocolatemaker, this is a fun product to talk about. The Ecuador 70% tastes distinctly like banana, with a pleasant toastiness to it. The white chocolate nibble bar–what I like to think of as a deconstructed cacao bean, with the cocoa nibs embedded in white chocolate–is slightly too sweet and a bit granular, but the shock of goat’s milk is really quite fun.

We capped off the evening with a selection of Zotter bars (beer, champagne, blood orange) and Xoxolat’s famous West Coast Breakfast Bar, featuring maple, double-smoked bacon and espresso. Breakfast for dinner never tasted so good.

I think everyone is looking forward to next week’s chocolate and whiskey extravaganza. I can’t think of a nicer pairing: the shocking flavours of Amano Artisan Chocolate, plus a crash course in smoky Islay scotches with Marcus von Albrecht.

Chocolate vocabulary lesson

I throw a lot of terms around, like “bean-to-bar” and “confection,” and I’ve never really sat down and defined what I mean by those terms. I’ve defined three words: chocolate makers, chocolate blenders, and chocolate confectioners, to the best of my ability. I’ve also listed some of my favourites in each category. These are not exhaustive lists, and I know that I’ve forgotten (or simply don’t know about) some great stuff out there. If I’ve offended you…well, that’s just too bad.

Anyway. Here we go.

Chocolate makers

Also called bean-to-bar producers, chocolate makers actually make chocolate. They start with cacao beans and process them into the delectable thing that we know as chocolate. Typically, the chocolate comes in the form of chocolate bars, or chocolate pistoles (giant, flat chips). This chocolate is sometimes sold to consumers, while some is sold exclusively to industry folks.

Chocolate makers buy dried, fermented cocao beans from farmers, though their level of involvement in the growing, fermenting and drying process can vary. Some chocolate makers work very closely with farmers, while others deal exclusively with bean brokers and never meet the growers.

Chocolate makers are one part agricultural expert, one part production engineer, and one part artisan. They need to understand cacao (an agricultural product), be able to transform it through a series of steps (that’s the engineering part) and create something delicious, nuanced and distinctive at the end (definitely an artistic pursuit).

Some of my favourite small-batch producers: Amano Artisan Chocolate, Soma Chocolatemaker, Claudio Corallo, Theo Chocolate, and Askinosie Chocolate. I’ll also admit that I’m partial to working with Valrhona chocolate, thought they’re far from small-batch.

Chocolate blenders

Chocolate blenders don’t make chocolate, but they buy chocolate and blend it. This is less lame than it sounds. It’s not quite bean-to-bar, but there’s still a fine art to blending a chocolate mixture that is delicious and distinct. Think about an artist’s palette; while the colours come in a tube, the right mixture of colours can express something that stock colours can’t.

I don’t taste as much blended chocolate as I do bean-to-bar chocolate, but I was impressed with Chocolove’s 73% organic dark chocolate bar. You can read about it here.

Chocolate confectioners

Chocolate confectioners are what most people think of when you say chocolatier: someone who takes chocolate and creates bonbons, pralines and truffles. Way back when, the term chocolatier meant someone who took chocolate from bean to confection, but not anymore.

Chocolatiers don’t typically make their own chocolate. It’s partly economic, and partly because the two tasks are so very different. The equipment required is completely different, and it really doesn’t make sense to have the equipment to process chocolate and turn it into bonbons. (Two exceptions: Soma Chocolatemaker and Theo Chocolates are both bean-to-bar producers and chocolatiers.)

Quality confectioners work with quality ingredients: chocolate, but also with cream, sugar, spices, fruits, nuts, and liquor. Beware of fondant, corn syrup, or – to quote Michael Pollan – “anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize.” The lack of preservatives in quality confections means that these treats have a limited shelf life: 3 weeks, at most.

There are a lot of folks out there masquerading as top-end chocolatiers. Some of them are pretty good – say, an 8 out of 10. And then, there are some whose attention to detail, flavour profiles and execution are all there. If you want to impress me, bring me something from Thomas Haas, Christopher Elbow, Norman Love, Kee’s Chocolates, Vosges, or La Maison du Chocolat.

P.S. Thomas Haas is opening a new location in Vancouver, next to Lumiere. Boss-man says that it’ll be open in mid-October. Wheee!