Dark Milk Chocolate
The Best of Both Worlds
Until recently, dark chocolate and milk chocolate did not really hang out in the same cliques. Chocolate connoisseurs turned their noses up at the candy-like approach to most milk chocolates, while those with a sweet tooth found dark chocolate too bitter to enjoy.
Enter Dark Milk Chocolate. These high-cacao mass milk chocolates (generally greater than 50% cacao) possess the richness and complexity of dark chocolate, but are milder, smoother and creamier thanks to the addition of organic milk powder. Dark Milks are here to unite these two disparate worlds.
Chai Masala
From India, With Love
We love to collaborate with fellow makers in Asheville, like the folks at Spicewalla, who import vibrant spices and blend them in the same maker space as our chocolate factory. Spicewalla is the latest brainchild of Meherwan Irani, whose Indian street food concept, Chai Pani, benefits from these mindblasting spices.
Serendipitously, we just imported a limited quantity of very special cacao from India. With floral and tannic flavors, this cacao is a perfect vehicle for Spicewalla’s signature Chai Masala. The marriage of warming chai spices and fragrant cacao has us dreaming of a cup of steaming chai sipped on a street corner a world away.
Scorpion
Peppers and chocolate make a good pair,” says grower and pepper enthusiast, Bobby of Jah Works Farm in Asheville. Both possess euphoric qualities, boost energy, and lend themselves to tasting with discernment: relishing the layers of flavors that reveal themselves slowly, and differ slightly on everyone’s tongue. Scorpion peppers are among the most piquant in the world, with more than 1.2 million Scoville heat units. Aside from the heat, The Scorpion offers a tender fruit flavor, which makes it the perfect pepper to pair with a fruit-forward cacao blend.
This chocolate isn’t a badge-of-honor experience meant to burn you from the inside out; our use of The Scorpion is judicious. We taste the fruit notes of both the pepper and the cacao.
Dark Chocolate Sea Salt
Salt affects flavor in curious ways, thanks to the tricky flavor receptors in our brain. It subdues some flavors, and enhances others. Paired with the right cacao, salt can be another tool for manipulating the flavor of the chocolate we create!
Our friends at Bulls Bay Saltworks collect water from Bulls Bay, SC, in the protected Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, home to one of the healthiest saltwater ecosystems on the east coast. This pristine site produces a unique salt with natural purity and a distinctive flavor.
This chocolate contains seventy five percent cacao and is sprinkled with flake salt. The salt brings out the jammy fruit notes in the profile, which combine with the flavor of peanut butter.
