Limited Release, Coco Loco

This bar was inspired by our favorite Colombian beach cocktail, the Coco Loco - a drink we discovered in Cartagena during one of our cacao sourcing trips.  There are many variations on the recipe but we love the combination of coconut, rum and citrus.  To make this bar we had to find just the right balance of flavors to accentuate our chocolate, so we did a LOT of test batches.  This final recipe involves soaking our fruity Esmeraldas cacao nibs in Boston Harbor Distillery's Lawley's Rum and adding just the right amount of organic coconut sugar, organic coconut milk powder, and naranjilla fruit to our grinders.

Our tropical Coco Loco bar is slightly sweet and chocolate forward.  And, that's right - there's NO cane sugar and NO dairy in this bar!

About the Coconut Milk & Sugar

It took us a long time to find coconut milk and coconut sugar that we liked.  One reason was flavor, and another is they often contain a high content of additives.  While almost all coconut milk powders contain various additional ingredients for stabilization purposes, we found a great tasting organic coconut milk powder with a minimal amount of tapioca maltodextrin for de-clumping purposes.  We found this smooth and rich tasting organic coconut milk and organic coconut sugar with great flavor from Coracao Confections.

About the Rum

Local craft spirit maker Boston Harbor Distillery distills their Lawley's Dark Rum in small batches, using a copper pot still and 100% New England style molasses.  This is a vatted rum, aged for eight weeks with wood staves to impart numerous flavors, including caramel and vanilla.  We soak our cacao nibs in 50 bottles of Lawley's, which infuses the nibs with all of the complex rum flavors.

About our Esmeraldas Cacao

To craft this bar we start with beans we source directly from the Salazar family farm in the Esmeraldas region of Ecuador.  The Salazars have over one hundred acres of carefully cultivated, handpicked Nacional hybrid cacao trees.  They ferment and dry all of the beans themselves right on their farm, allowing for an exacting level of control over the entire process.