french broad luscious chocolates:

ingredients (note: this section is expanding AND expansive.  because our ingredients are the backbone.) 

a note on cacao liquor, percentages...

On our boxes of chocolates and most other high quality chocolate, you will often find a percentage which is not always explained.  It refers to the amount of cacao mass, or cacao liquor--used interchangeably--in the product.  These terms count all dry cocoa solids and cocoa butter (fat), the sum of all things that originated as the cacao nib.  (For more information on the process of making chocolate, check out our links page.)  A noteworthy example is our milk chocolate.  It is listed as 37% cacao liquor.   That may not seem like a lot, but consider the content of Hershey's milk chocolate, for instance--11% cacao liquor.  Needless to say, there is no vegetable oil or other unnecessary fillers in any of our chocolates, hence the high cacao percentages.

 Milk chocolate is a great subject that we'd like to say more about.  In the mean time, we've got some killer milk chocolate bars featured in our artisan bars collection at the chocolate lounge.  Come see!  Also this new york times article recently came to us from a customer: milk chocolate renaissance. 

Dark chocolate is, as the above article declares, still king.  And many peoples' palates are outpacing their kids' math scores, i.e. closer and closer to 100%.  We offer a couple 100% cacao mass chocolate bars in our collection, as well.  Do try.  However, we urge you not to blaze the trail without looking back to what you are leaving behind.  More on this soon...

why are we not certified organic anymore?

The rules governing what can be labeled as organic, the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) is a complex piece of legislation that divides the world of agricultural products that may be labeled as organic into three categories: "100% organic", "organic", and "made with organic ingredients".  We cannot here reproduce the whole NOP, but we encourage you to read it in its entirety, if you are so bold.  

So what category do we fall into?  Previously, it was the middle option, "organic."   If you look carefully at our truffle ingredient lists below, you will find three ingredients that are not certified organic.  These we believe to be unavoidable, but permissible under the NOP: soy lecithin, carrageenan, and natural bourbon flavor.

the ubiquitous soy lecithin Lecithin is necessary in most chocolate and many other things as an emulsifier, i.e. something to prevent solids and fats from separating.  It is generally recognized as safe, as it is metabolized completely in the body, but still may irritate those with soy allergies.  It is now becoming available in organic form.  Only our white chocolate currently contains non-organic (albeit still non-GMO) soy lecithin.  Lecithin is on the short list (thanks, no doubt, to the omnipotent soy lobby) of permissible agricultural ingredients in non-organic form allowed in small amounts in foods labeled as "organic".

carrageenan

Another popular additive for anything for which thickening and stabilization is desired, carrageenan makes up a fraction of a percent of our heavy cream, found in every truffle.  It is derived from red seaweeds that grow abundantly along the Irish coastline, near the village of Carragheen.  There are murmurs from the scientific community that certain forms of carrageenan, those which have been subjected to extreme temperatures and acidity and thereby have a lower molecular weight, are not healthy to consume.  Our cream supplier, Organic Valley, assures us that they only use carrageenan of high quality (i.e. high molecular weight, not degraded by extreme processing conditions) to stabilize their heavy cream.  Carrageenan is permitted as a non-organic ingredient on a list of non-agricultural substances in the NOP.  As the seaweed from which it is derived is wild-harvested, we do not expect availability in organic form.

natural flavor and the organic rule: bottoms up!

We learned of the harsh reality of "natural flavors" from a little book called Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.  In short, a natural flavor is a natually derived flavor essence suspended in a grain-based alcohol.  The law of trade secrets permit an ingredient label to simply list "natural flavors" without divulging the source or constituent ingredients.  Schlosser, in classic muckraking style, finds that most natural flavors come out of test laboratories in New Jersey.  Doesn't much call to mind "natural" at all, does it?

When we were developing our organic truffle arsenal, we came upon an apparent conflict: presently, not a single distillery of the South's pride and joy, bourbon whiskey, offers an organic product.  (We are trying to encourage the award-winning Buffalo Trace Distillery, which offers Rain Vodka, distilled from organic corn, to rise up to the challenge.  Unfortunately, were they to accept, we would still be waiting some years for their hypothetical organic straight bourbon to mature.)  Chocolate goes beautifully with bourbon, so we struck a compromise, taking advantage of the finicky NOP, with all its merits and misgivings. 

The NOP permits, at least until further modifications of the law, that natural flavors be allowed in non-organic form.  If one were to give an NOP-style definition of, say, Knob Creek straight bourbon whiskey, it would read like this: a naturally derived flavor essence suspended in a grain-based alcohol.  Sound familiar?  We call it "natural bourbon flavor" so that it conforms with the rule, but it is nothing other than pure, unadulterated straight bourbon whiskey.

...but I digress.

We have s

the sum (∑) of the truffle is greater than its parts

         * denotes certified organic ingredients

Café Au Lait: Ecuador dark chocolate*, cream*, milk chocolate*, natural bourbon flavor (100% pure Knob Creek® bourbon), coffee beans*

Cayenne: Dominican Republic dark chocolate*, cream*, ground cayenne pepper*, ground cinnamon*

Double Mint: Peru dark chocolate*, cream*, butter*, fresh mint*, pure peppermint oil*

Fresh Raspberry: 59% dark chocolate*, raspberries*, cream*, milk chocolate*, butter*, natural cane sugar*, lemon juice*

Hazelnut: Peru dark chocolate*, cream*, hazelnuts*, milk chocolate*, butter*

Indian Kulfi: milk chocolate*, cream*, pistachios*, butter*, cardamom*, rose buds*

Kentucky Bourbon: 59% dark chocolate*, cream*, pecans*, sugar*, natural bourbon flavor (100% pure Knob Creek® bourbon), vanilla bean*

Lavender Honey: 59% dark chocolate*, cream*, milk chocolate*, honey*, butter*, lavender buds*

Maple: milk chocolate*, 59% dark chocolate*, cream*, grade A maple syrup*, butter*, maple sugar*

Masala Chai: milk chocolate*, cream*, Dominican dark chocolate*, butter*, black peppercorns*, black tea*, cardamom*, ground cinnamon*, cloves*, ground ginger*

Mimosa: milk chocolate*, cream*, white wine*, white chocolate*, orange zest*

Mole Negro: Madagascar dark chocolate*, cream*, butter*, cacao nibs*, water, sesame seeds*, almonds*, peanuts*, crushed red pepper*, crushed jalapeño*, pecans*, cinnamon*, paprika*, clove*

Single Origins: dark chocolate* (Peru, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Madagascar or Dominican Republic), cream*

White Jasmine: white chocolate*, Ecuador dark chocolate*, cream*, honey*, jasmine green tea*

ingredients of our chocolate and dairy

More Luscious Chocolates?