In the chocolate world, there's a strong wind blowing in its direction and that's the craft movement aka bean to bar movement. It all started from a country: Madagascar. Cocoa from that country is known for its fruity flavours like berries and citrus that made people go, "Wow, what is this?" In the late 1990s, when a chocolate company - Scharffen Berger - started selling chocolate with those cocoa beans, people started to notice that chocolate isn't the flat, boring product mass-produced by industrial companies. It started inspiring the inventors in them to make their own chocolate from scratch - thus, the name 'bean-to-bar chocolate'. Bean-to-bar chocolate seems to be more popular in the U.S but not so in Asia, even though most of those unique flavoured cocoa beans came from Asia.
If I were to summarise about bean-to-bar chocolate in a sentence: Its organic, unique, mind-blowing, crafted with great effort and care, and not forgetting - delicious.
Thankfully, the wind is starting to blow in Singapore's direction too - especially in the year 2017. Now, we even have our very own local chocolate makers like Lemuel and Fossa, and cafés that are starting to make their own chocolate. But, it's still not enough. The problem about us is we tend not to care what we consume. We just buy something without ever questioning its origins and how did it turn into a product. The craft movement may seem like a simple "Oh, its different and I can DIY my own chocolate!" but most chocolate makers in America, they went far and beyond that. The craft movement has a deeper agenda; a mission. Most of the chocolate makers are not only here to make chocolates, but to help to put a smile on the most hard-working, under appreciated, under paid workers - the farmers. To cut this short, they try to liaise with cocoa farmers directly and source for their beans at a higher price. Yes, they voluntarily paid their beans double the standard pricing. Why? Because they felt that these precious, high quality cocoa beans are taken for granted. And what happens when no one cares for these beans? The farmers are not taken care of too. Usually, when you don't pay a staff for their worth, the normal reaction is: slack off on the job. And that tremendously brings down the quality of cocoa beans.
I can go on and on about bean-to-bar chocolates but I'll leave it to another post. So far, I'm still new to bean-to-bar chocolate and honestly, there's not much I can explore since there aren't many in Singapore. I hope Singapore could recognise more of these chocolates and introduce to the market. The truth, the more sincere and higher quality chocolates are being made, the more expensive it is. The average pricing in Singapore is $10 per bar. Yup, I know, its about twice the price of your Cadbury rectangular bars. Well, if you want to eat a healthier, organic and gluten free chocolate, its actually reasonable.
I bought these chocolates from Beans To Bars SG. They only have an online store so if its your first time buying bean-to-bar chocolates, you'll have to buy at your own risk. But I think you can roughly guess the taste from their names. Most chocolate makers would indicate tasting notes in their bars to guide your taste palates. I bought three types from two chocolate makers: Hazelnut Gianduja - 1 Milk Chocolate and 1 Dark Chocolate - by Monsieur Truffe and Mulate Sea Salt Dark Chocolate.
Hazelnut Gianduja Milk Chocolate
Okay, this chocolate came in a very thick, solid size. Its not exactly a chocolate bar but you can just bite into it. As you can see from 3 pictures above, there are suggestions on how to eat it. It is really chocolate-y and I can taste the distinct hazelnut but it could be quite dry to eat it by itself. I recommend to make it as a topping like how I did below.
Chocolate Pudding with Hazelnut Gianduja Milk Chocolate
The chocolates were delivered on the same day that I made chocolate puddings so it was a great timing to add it as a topping.
I tried their Hazelnut Gianduja Dark Chocolate.. and O.M.G. It was the best hazelnut chocolate I've ever tasted!! I'm not exaggerating since I especially love hazelnut chocolate. Its so so much more deeper and rich than your Nutella! The dark chocolate version easily won my heart. Highly recommended.
Mulate Sea Salt Dark Chocolate
As suggested on the packaging, its 70% cocoa mass. For beginners, an average bean-to-bar chocolate is made of 70% cocoa. It seems that 70% has the right balance to bring out the uniqueness of the cocoa beans but at the same time not too overwhelming or "dark". For this bar, they added sea salt. I had a sea salt dark chocolate made by our local chocolate maker, Fossa and it was really delicious. In my case I preferred Fossa's rather than Mulate. At my first bite, I didn't really like it because the sea salt wasn't sprinkled on the bar, they actually mixed it in to the bar while for Fossa, they didn't. But after 3 bites, I came to like it as I grew fond of the bar with a deep fudge brownie tasting note.
*WARNING: Do not eat the whole piece at once. Take small bites and let the chocolate melt into your mouth or else the sea salt will be "too much" for you.
That's all for my first review on bean-to-bar chocolate! I hope there will be an increase of bean-to-bar chocolates in Singapore and I wish to see more creative bars that brings out the unique taste as much as possible of the cocoa beans that they're using.
I'm going to try my best to dig and taste as much as bean-to-bar chocolate I can find in our sunny island.
