Darker than Black, Week 3: Raaka Virgin Chocolate Bourbon Cask-Aged
I was originally thinking about skipping this week, since today marks 
eleven years of softlykarou and I being together
and I was planning to have a flourless chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream tonight to celebrate--way less sugary than a brownie with ice cream, and more chocolatey--and then I thought, "You know, there's no rule that says that dogs can't play basketballI have to only do these after dinner," so I suggested doing one right after lunch instead. softlykarou said she was already going to have chocolate, and we sat down to eat.
I was considering doing a Darker than Black on softlykarou's flourless chocolate cake the way I did some C-C-C-COMBO BREAKERs during Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries, but I've only done a couple weeks so far. I don't actually have a combo to break.
I learned about Raaka Chocolate from that article going around a couple months ago titled "How the Mast Brothers fooled the world into paying $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate" (first result if you google "hipster chocolate!"). I'm probably going to try some Mast Brothers chocolate at some point so I can record whether it has the proper mustache-wax-to-cocoa-butter ratio, but wherever I found that article originally had Raaka listed as an alternative that was actually tasty and really did bean-to-bar without any tomfoolery. Plus, they had a deal where you could get three bars for $20, which isn't bad for small-batch chocolate.
Fancy.
This is obviously the fanciest-looking bar we've gotten. I especially liked the cute little bag it comes in, which is just the right size to be totally unusable for anything else I'd want to put in it. Even most of the other chocolate bars I have are too big. I guess it's distinctive!
The ad copy on the back of the packaging for this bar says:This is chocolate for the bold. We age cacao in bourbon casks for four weeks where they soak up rich oak flavor, producing a chocolate like no other in the world.
I don't know about that, but it was good. I admit that I'm not particularly well-versed in the taste of bourbon--I'm more of a sake man, myself--but the main tastes I got from this chocolate were sweetness and a slight sour aftertaste, but only a slight one. I know the sweetness is because I've readjusted myself to the 90% cacao chocolate I usually eat, but I didn't even think of the sourness as being the bourbon taste until I mention something tasting odd and softlykarou pointing out that it was the bourbon. Is that what the oak taste was supposed to be? Is it total bullshit like wine tasting is? I mean, there was something there, so clearly putting the beans in oak casks wasn't just a waste of time.
I guess I can chalk that up to me not being familiar with bourbon. Is there a sake-flavored chocolate that's not novelty Kit-Kats? Maybe brandy-flavored chocolate? I guess that's unfair, though, because this isn't supposed to be bourbon-flavored, it's just bourbon-cask infused.
Now I really want sake-infused chocolate.
So, do I eat the whole thing, or...
softlykarou's OpinionI was surprised at how shiny the chocolate was, it looked a bit like it was made to be photographed rather than eaten, but when dear readers have I ever let how pretty something looks keep me from eating it? I think because it was shiny I expected it to be sweeter but I wasn't disappointed. The bourbon gave it a slight astringency that I really enjoyed. I didn't get a taste of booze, I'm not a huge chocolate alcohol type person. I felt this was a good example of a way to take something from alcohol (the astringency) without adding in an obvious flavor that overpowers the chocolate. I'd eat this again easily.
Unlike softlykarou, I really like alcohol-flavored chocolate, like the various booze-filled truffles out there, and maybe that's the reason I wasn't as impressed with this chocolate as I otherwise could have been. I was hoping for a bit more flavor than a brief kind of aftertaste. The chocolate flavor itself was good, don't get me wrong, but I picked this one based on the bourbon casks and there just wasn't enough of it to really wow me.
eleven years of softlykarou and I being together
and I was planning to have a flourless chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream tonight to celebrate--way less sugary than a brownie with ice cream, and more chocolatey--and then I thought, "You know, there's no rule that says that dogs can't play basketballI have to only do these after dinner," so I suggested doing one right after lunch instead. softlykarou said she was already going to have chocolate, and we sat down to eat.
I was considering doing a Darker than Black on softlykarou's flourless chocolate cake the way I did some C-C-C-COMBO BREAKERs during Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries, but I've only done a couple weeks so far. I don't actually have a combo to break.
I learned about Raaka Chocolate from that article going around a couple months ago titled "How the Mast Brothers fooled the world into paying $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate" (first result if you google "hipster chocolate!"). I'm probably going to try some Mast Brothers chocolate at some point so I can record whether it has the proper mustache-wax-to-cocoa-butter ratio, but wherever I found that article originally had Raaka listed as an alternative that was actually tasty and really did bean-to-bar without any tomfoolery. Plus, they had a deal where you could get three bars for $20, which isn't bad for small-batch chocolate.
Fancy.
This is obviously the fanciest-looking bar we've gotten. I especially liked the cute little bag it comes in, which is just the right size to be totally unusable for anything else I'd want to put in it. Even most of the other chocolate bars I have are too big. I guess it's distinctive!
The ad copy on the back of the packaging for this bar says:This is chocolate for the bold. We age cacao in bourbon casks for four weeks where they soak up rich oak flavor, producing a chocolate like no other in the world.
I don't know about that, but it was good. I admit that I'm not particularly well-versed in the taste of bourbon--I'm more of a sake man, myself--but the main tastes I got from this chocolate were sweetness and a slight sour aftertaste, but only a slight one. I know the sweetness is because I've readjusted myself to the 90% cacao chocolate I usually eat, but I didn't even think of the sourness as being the bourbon taste until I mention something tasting odd and softlykarou pointing out that it was the bourbon. Is that what the oak taste was supposed to be? Is it total bullshit like wine tasting is? I mean, there was something there, so clearly putting the beans in oak casks wasn't just a waste of time.
I guess I can chalk that up to me not being familiar with bourbon. Is there a sake-flavored chocolate that's not novelty Kit-Kats? Maybe brandy-flavored chocolate? I guess that's unfair, though, because this isn't supposed to be bourbon-flavored, it's just bourbon-cask infused.
Now I really want sake-infused chocolate.
So, do I eat the whole thing, or...
softlykarou's OpinionI was surprised at how shiny the chocolate was, it looked a bit like it was made to be photographed rather than eaten, but when dear readers have I ever let how pretty something looks keep me from eating it? I think because it was shiny I expected it to be sweeter but I wasn't disappointed. The bourbon gave it a slight astringency that I really enjoyed. I didn't get a taste of booze, I'm not a huge chocolate alcohol type person. I felt this was a good example of a way to take something from alcohol (the astringency) without adding in an obvious flavor that overpowers the chocolate. I'd eat this again easily.
Unlike softlykarou, I really like alcohol-flavored chocolate, like the various booze-filled truffles out there, and maybe that's the reason I wasn't as impressed with this chocolate as I otherwise could have been. I was hoping for a bit more flavor than a brief kind of aftertaste. The chocolate flavor itself was good, don't get me wrong, but I picked this one based on the bourbon casks and there just wasn't enough of it to really wow me.