Milk + Mocha: An Inclusion Adventure
By some happy accident, I wound up with an extra 2 pounds of beans back in July. — Fear not, they were paid for. — These beans were from Haiti, produced by Produits Des Iles SA (PISA). This amazing company is committed to revolutionizing cacao production and export in Haiti, providing smallholder farms with access to the specialty cacao market. To read more about PISA and their beans, check out Uncommon Cacao’s website.
The beans I ordered and the country in my travel calendar for July were both Haiti! That was a fun surprise.
My aim has been to remain a sort of purist during my first few rounds of chocolate-making; sticking to a 70-72% dark chocolate with only nibs (beans), cocoa butter and sugar. I’ve chosen to do this because I really want to familiarize myself with the flavor of the beans and gain an understanding of the different flavor profiles each origin has to offer. With 2 extra pounds, though, I decided to have a little bit of fun and test out my first inclusion bar. Dame Cacao defines inclusions super well: “Inclusions are extra ingredients added to chocolate, intended to improve the chocolate’s overall impact, either flavor-wise or aesthetically.”
Tangent: Prior to this year, I had not been much of a coffee drinker. Why would anyone want to drink some bitter, watery concoction that makes your breath smell bad? Turns out, I just hadn’t had the right kind of coffee yet. Some very sweet friends of mine introduced me to direct trade, single origin coffee that was bursting with flavor, and I was hooked. All that to say, I have found myself on a bit of a coffee adventure alongside this chocolatey one, and now have various direct trade coffees hanging out in my pantry.
With some leftover milk powder from batch 4 and plenty of coffee hanging out in my pantry, I decided to shoot for a dark milk mocha bar. It is my favorite bar I’ve made to date. By some delectable miracle, the flavors in the coffee and cacao aligned and created a bar that I can (and often do) gobble up in one sitting. I’ve shared it with a number of friends, and the majority of them have also had trouble not consuming an entire bar in under a minute. It’s chocolatey, with a glimpse of coffee (not too much) and even a TINY hint of vanilla and fruit. I think this 62% Dark Milk Mocha is here to stay!
