Orange and chocolate come together to make something super special
by Ari Weinzweig
If you like orange and chocolate, this exceptional bar from my good friend Shawn Askinosie and the crew at Askinosie Chocolate is an awesome option! It has become a widely appreciated staff favorite across the ZCoB since they started crafting it!
The exotic origin of chocolate and orange.
Four hundred years ago in Europe, the combo of orange and chocolate was completely cutting edge. If one wanted to impress a couple of your royal cousins, catch the attention of upper-crust colleagues, or get in good with a high-ranking court dignitary, chocolate with orange might well have been the almost-impossible-to-ignore ticket. Both ingredients were then relatively new on the European culinary scene. Oranges are native to China; they started to arrive in Europe, likely into Sicily, by about 1400. Chocolate would have come a century later after the return of Columbus from the “new world.” Both were originally approached tentatively—exotic edibles for wealthy folks to experiment with. The same can be said for sugar, which came from India. It would have been innovators in the royal courts, the merchant class, and the church who’d probably have been the first to take a “chance” on these new luxuries. Because chocolate was mostly consumed in that era as a beverage, the original blend would likely have been hot chocolate scented with orange flower water.
Sean Askinosie revitalizes a classic pairing.
But that was then, and this is now. Orange and chocolate in some form are everywhere. They’re on my mind, though, because of this very special iteration of the combination in my good friend Shawn Askinosie’s incredible chocolate bar. The bar begins with the relatively rare (it accounts for less than 10% of the world’s chocolate) and very carefully crafted Trinitario cacao that Shawn brings from the Philippines. It’s a 58% dark chocolate—very smooth and gentle—that comes from grower Peter Cruz. Thanks to Shawn’s good work, Cruz became the first Filipino farmer to export cacao since the country’s land reform in the mid-1970s. Shawn shares that “Peter is known nationally as an expert in organic and regenerative cocoa farming,” and his skill comes through in the quality of the cacao. The beans are conched and blended with turbinado sugar and cocoa butter (made by the folks at Askinosie from the same beans), and then a nice bit of orange pulp and orange peel. The finished flavor is something special.
Good things take time and effort.
To be clear, developing an offering of this quality is not an overnight activity. Natural Law #10 (see “Secret #01: Twelve Natural Laws of Building a Great Business”) is that “it takes a lot longer to make something great happen than most people think.” This bar is no exception—Shawn says it took about 20 iterations to get the ratios right, all done in a series of experiments that took about 18 months. I appreciate all the hard work, and I’m betting that, if you like orange and chocolate, you will most definitely want to buy a bar too. Or five. The flavor is fantastic. The chocolate and the orange are beautifully balanced. Like any good partnership, they bring different things to the table. The chocolate is the bass line—dark, nutty, cocoa-y. The orange comes at it from the other end—it’s the violin playing over top. Light, bright, sensual, ethereal. Together, the combo is otherworldly. The royal court of Spain, which brought cacao to the Philippines early in the 17th century, would likely have swooned over it
Can a chocolate bar make that much difference? Both Shawn and I are big fans of the work of the Irish philosopher John O’Donohue, so I’ll close this piece with a quote of his that conveys what I’m thinking after eating and reflecting on how good this bar is. Share a bit of your bar with anyone you care about. Or even someone you don’t yet know. As O’Donohue writes, “The time is now ripe for beauty to surprise and liberate us.” Swing on by the Roadhouse and pick up a bar while supplies last to taste why this bar is so special!