10 Top Coffee Flavored Craft Chocolate Bars
Coffee & Chocolate
In the specialty chocolate world, bars with inclusions have a firm place in the heart of every chocolate connoisseur. Even though myriad unique ingredients are being used creatively by craft chocolate makers everywhere, from savory porcini mushrooms to salty Atlantic seaweed, a classic flavor remains amongst the top favorites: Coffee. Coffee grows in the same regions as cacao so the pairing feels like a natural. A simple ingredient, yet surprisingly difficult to incorporate into chocolate recipes in a manner that does both coffee and cacao complete justice, striking the balance between both beans is truly both an art and a challenge.
Pairing Chocolate and Coffee
“There are inclusions that are used to cover up chocolate flavors like bitterness, astringency, and flatness, then there are inclusions that have to have a perfect balance between both parts, and coffee is one of those. So, besides the challenge of finding the right coffee, we must find this perfect combination of flavors, intensities, and texture. It’s basically a pairing study.” explains Juliana Aquino, who owns Baiani, one of Brazil’s premier tree-to-bar chocolate brands together with her husband, Tuta Aquino.
So, what is the secret to striking a perfectly balanced bar of coffee and cacao? Juliana shares the painstaking process behind Baiani’s renowned specialty coffee-flavored bars. “First of all, the roasting profile in the cacao had to be medium-low to receive the soft specialty coffee flavors as a crib. Then there is extra care of adding freshly crushed coffee at the refining stage of the chocolate making, little by little. After adding a certain amount of coffee to the chocolate, you must wait for the flavors to mix. Taste, taste and taste, and keep adjusting. Most importantly, never over-refine the chocolate at the melangeur or conch, to avoid losing flavors of the coffee, or the chocolate. It is not an easy task. But we were lucky here. We have great coffees.”
Finding the Right Coffee
Speaking of great coffees, with so many quality specialty coffees out there in the market, how does a chocolate maker know which ones to work with? “As you know, Brazil is well known as a great specialty coffee origin […] so we decided to launch a “project” instead of one coffee bar alone. We started searching for three different specialty coffee origins in Brazil with three roasters who were friends of ours. After about four months of research, cuppings, tastings, recipe adjustments, and packaging, the collab project ‘Brazilian Coffee’ brought three different small batch coffee producers, together with their partner roasters, to our three coffee bars.” Juliana shares on Baiani’s slection process.
Finding the Right Chocolate
Nadine Burie, chocolate maker and fine pastry chef of her brand Likklemore in Kingston, Jamaica, also points towards experimentation as key to the success of her Jamaican Blue Mountain 68% bar. Why 68%? “I wanted a chocolate which was not too dark, so as to not overpower the coffee. So, I made various fresh batches (of chocolate) ranging between 65% to 75%, and in the end we (the Likklemore team) all preferred the 68%”. Yet another chocolate maker who insists on pressing their own cacao butter in house, which pays off in distinct flavours and texture, it is often difficult not to notice that the best specialty coffee chocolates tend to press their own butters.
Evidently, the secret to a superb coffee chocolate bar is a cocktail of trial and error, with more than a dash of patience. Thankfully, the significant efforts yield great rewards and thus warrant a more than thoughtful appreciation of a well-made chocolate bar with specialty cacao. Such bars which fall into this category are not easy to find, but here are 10 such bars for an easy discovery.
10 Bars to Savor
1. Om Nom Coffee + Milk bar
Omnom Coffee & Milk
Icelandic chocolate maker may have risen to climatic fame thanks to Zac Efron’s hit travel show on Netflix, but this bar has been worthy of its popularity well before that. A 38% white chocolate bar which could easily be mistaken for a milk chocolate thanks to it’s similar coloring, this bar incorporates Brazilian coffee beans and Icelandic whole milk for a smooth creamy texture, reminiscent of a barista-made flat white, with plenty of caramel notes.
Menakao Arabica & Sea Salt 45%
Trinitario-cocoa beans from the Sambirano Valley in Madagascar serve as the perfect canvas for this 45% dark milk chocolate with pure Arabica coffee hailing from the Madagascan highlands. The addition of local sea salt flakes makes this bar particularly moreish with a fine balance of sweet and savoury. The cocoa butter is pressed in house for a truly Madagascan flavour.
Baiani Brazilian Coffee 70%
3. Baiani Brazilian Coffee 70% with Latitude 13º Roasters
This Brazilian tree-to-bar chocolate maker takes specialty chocolate coffee bars to another level, with an entire project of different bars incorporating various local specialty coffees. The 70% Cacao – Gran Reserva Special Coffee bar is particularly popular, with specialty coffee cultivated at Fazenda Aracuan, in Ibicoara, located in the Chapada Diamantina region of Bahia, now a highly regarded origin of fine Brazilian coffees.
The fruits of a collaboration with local coffee roasters, Latitude 13o Roasters, the coffee is cultivated using biodynamic concepts of certified organic farming, which are said to contribute towards the flavoursome notes of sugarcane molasses and chocolate. “It’s a very balanced and delicious coffee encountering the perfect chocolate notes to blend. This is my favourite up to now,” says owner and chocolate maker Juliana Aquino. A Baiani bar not to be missed.
Likklemore Blue Mountain Coffee
Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is prized for its sophisticated and nuanced flavour, making it a favorite among coffee connoisseurs. It has a smooth and mild flavour, without the bitterness often found in other coffees. The acidity is well balanced, which gives it a bright and vibrant taste without being too sharp. “We wanted to create the same balance in this bar between the fine flavours of our cacao beans and the Blue Mountain coffee notes. We didn’t have any challenges creating this bar, because the coffee which we use is freshly roasted by the coffee roasters just next door to our atelier, and goes directly into our melangeur – it doesn’t get any fresher than that!’ says Nadine Burie, the talented chocolatier and fine pastry chef behind the her brand.
Solkiki 39% Yirgacheffe Coffee & Redskin Peanut
Ethiopian coffee, redskin peanuts, whole pod Madagascan vanilla and a dash of pink salt bring this unique coffee and white chocolate bar together. With cold pressed cacao butter, the directly traded, organic coffee is grown by smallholder farmers in the Yirgacheffe wetlands in Ethiopia, the birthplace of Arabica coffee. In the specialty coffee world, Yirgacheffe beans are known to be fruity, bright and full of complex flavour notes. A sweet and umami bar with a gorgeous taupe colouring from the red skin peanuts, this is one of the more unique specialty coffee chocolate bars to be found in the market.
Marou Cafe Au Lait
Marou brings us straight to the streets of Vietnam with their Ca Phe Sua (local Vietnamese coffee) dark milk coffee bar. Organic Vietnamese Robusta and single-origin Vietnamese dark chocolate are blended expertly, making for a creamy melt with plenty of rich, full bodied coffee flavours throughout its melt. The flavour is lengthy, meaning that a small piece goes a very long way.
Goodnow Farms Las Palomas Coffee
Goodnow Farms has a plethora of exceptional inclusion bars, with several using specialty coffee and this bar is no exception. Pressing their own cacao butter in house makes a world of difference in experiencing the flavour of their single origin chocolates.
The makers explain that they the Asochivite nibs in coffee, infusing them with the fresh brewed flavors of coffee, then they carefully dry them before grinding them.
A popular bar amongst many specialty coffee and chocolate connoisseurs.
Standout Gesha
With Sweden being one of the countries in the world that consumes most coffee per capita, probably thanks to their strong ‘fika;’ culture, it is no surprise that this Swedish chocolate maker crafts an outstanding specialty coffee chocolate bar. Gesha coffee beans, which are of Arabica varietal, are highly sought after and prized by specialty coffee aficionados due to their extremely delicate flavor, which some even compare to a fine tea. Here, washed Gesha from Hugo Mariño in the Cusco region in Peru is well blended with a fruity Dominican Republic Öko Caribe yielding a brightly flavored bar.
Latitude Bukonzo Coffee 70%
‘A Breakfast Alternative” says the wrapper, and the description fits perfectly. Single origin Ugandan arabica coffee from Bukonzo, a cooperative of coffee farmers who grow coffee on the Rwenzori Mountains right next to Latitude’s single origin cacao, makes for a powerful bar reminiscent of a freshly brewed filter coffee. Proof that truly, ‘what grows together, goes together’. The cacao for this bar comes is sourced directly from small-scale cocoa farmers in Rwenzori, Uganda.
Feitoria Cafe
A vacation to Colombia via Portugal is what you will experience with this multi layered, complex bar. Bean to bar pioneers in Portugal, chocolatemakers Tomoko Suga and Sue Tavares have crafted a pure Colombian delight comprising Huila coffee and Sierra Nevada cacao in a gorgeously textured bar with ground coffee granules.
They say,“..The contrast between the rich, smooth taste of milk chocolate and the fresh bitterness of medium-light roasting, with the crunchy texture of coarsely ground coffee, provide the perfect balance and gradual complexity in the mouth. It is a very glamorous chocolate, where you can appreciate two Colombian jewels, cocoa and coffee, in a single chocolate bar.”
With specialty coffee craft chocolate bars like these, you just may be tempted to skip your cup of java altogether. Or better yet, enhance it by pairing the two together!