Raaka Chocolate Love
RED HOOK, BROOKLYN, NYC | In the still rather industrial-looking neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn is a re-occupied warehouse that is home to a company called Raaka Virgin Chocolate. I was first introduced to the very fine and high quality Raaka chocolates at my good friend's candy store The Sweet Shop, and immediately became a new fan and a new appreciator of this virgin chocolate process that produces and offers a far purer, unadulterated flavor of cacoa by stone-grinding the cacao at a lower temperature—than most mass-production chocolate-makers choose to—instead of roasting them.
I was lucky to have been invited by The Sweet Shop to be a guest at a recent Raaka-hosted factory tour and chocolate-making event.
The warehouse, specializing in small batch chocolate production, is expansive and inviting. We were joined by food and chocolate enthusiasts, and after some quick introductions by our hosts, our tour began.
We learned that the cacao (cocoa) tree produces the plant pod, which holds the cacao seeds. The seed husks hold the cacao nibs that are the part of the plant that eventually become chocolate.
Raaka has machines whose express purpose is to separate the nibs from the seed husks, break them into same size pieces, then stone grinds them for three days into a delicious creamy, naturally sweet pure cacao paste.
That paste is then milled, tempered and eventually mixed with unrefined cane sugar and a variety of other natural ingredients to make up their "menu" of virgin (unroasted cacao) chocolate flavors.
The batch of chocolate those of us in attendance this particular evening got to work with was their vanilla rooibos (South African herb) chocolate. We poured the liquid chocolate into molds by hand, and had a choice of all-natural ingredients to custom add to our individual bars.
I chose to top one of my three bars with candied ginger and sesame seeds, I topped the second with dried cranberry and candied kalamata olives, and finished the third with toasted coconut and smoked salt.
Once all of us were done creating our "signature" chocolate bars, they were put on racks and dollied into a cooler to chill and set.
Thirty minutes later they emerged solid, even, and beautiful.
Most of us were so proud of our bars and how pristine they looked that we didn't dare break into them. I luckily was allowed to also adorn the test bars our host put together, and I eagerly bit into those once they came out set.
They were delicious, with a higher concentrate of cocoa flavor, a cleaner mouth feel, and because of the non-roasting doesn't suffer from needing all that added sugar most commercial chocolate has to cover up the roasting process' bitterness.
There was a lot more to discover during this event than the quality taste properties of virgin chocolate—of which there are many. I discovered the advantages of not roasting and stone-grinding the cacao. I discovered the more easily manageable and quality-controllable small batch process.
And I discovered the high level of acumen, care, and even humanity that goes into the company ideology of Raaka Virgin Chocolate. Spearheaded by Ryan Cheney—who discovered chocolate-making while in Thailand—the deeply involved whole team take great care in—and have great passion for—the whole "bean-to-bar" process, working with highly reputable partners—from the Dominican Republic, Madagsacar, Belize, even Bolivia—to start with the very best, well-sourced cacao.
So, if "chocolate is love", imagine how good the chocolate is when made by people who love the source of the chocolate (and love the planet as well as their products are wrapped in recyclable paper with biodegradable inks) as much as these guys do?
The passion is seen from the pride on the faces of the Raaka team to the faces on the faces of devout Raaka customers.
May you soon share the face of the latter.
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Raaka Virgin Chocolate | 64 Seabring St, Brooklyn, NY 11231 | (855) 255-3354 | raakachocolate.com
