88% Super Dark Blend Bar from Shawn Askinosie
A contributor to happiness at so many levels!
In 1980, while I was still learning to cook the line, Mother Teresa’s team in India rescued a small orphaned boy from the streets of Calcutta. He was adopted in the U.S., where he grew up with the name Jaime Illien. Determined to pay back the world that had given him grace and a second chance at a good life, Ilien began years of work to start what is now recognized worldwide as International Day of Happiness. It has happened every year on March 20, ever since its formal inauguration in 2013. The idea is to actively encourage people to embrace happiness and spread positive feelings in small but meaningful ways, wherever we can. The work is to “encourage and advance the primacy of happiness, well-being, and democracy.”
It turns out that March 20th is also my good friend Shawn Askinosie’s birthday. I can think of no one better suited to have paired happiness and a birthday! I had the pleasure of seeing Shawn, without question one of the kindest, most generous human beings I’ve met, while I was in Austin for the conference on Perpetual Purpose Trusts. As I do everywhere I go, I tasted any number of chocolate bars I happened to see in local specialty shops. To my taste, none came close to the quality, complexity, balance, and finish that I find in every one of the bars I’ve bought from Askinosie.
As he so often does, Shawn’s exceptional spirit of generosity has given us all a gift to mark the occasion. Not surprisingly, it’s chocolate. It’s actually the darkest chocolate bar he’s ever done: 88% cacao! That means that only 12% of every bite is not cacao; a bit of natural sugar and a tiny hint of organic vanilla bean.
This delicious bar is also a first for Shawn because it’s a dual-origin bar. Cacao from two of his longtime sources—the co-op farmers at Mababu, Tanzania, who provide the hard-to-find but delicious Trinatario cacao, and at San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador, which grows the unique-to-the-region Arriba Nacional. Try each of the single-origin bars on their own—they’re terrific. I eat them both regularly.
To be clear: if you don’t like dark chocolate, definitely skip this one. The Super Dark Blend bar pushes chocolate to its limits. It’s darker than dark—delicious, edgy, and far from milky. Not for the faint of heart. Think of it as the heavy metal of the cacao world—but without the pounding bass. Surprisingly smooth and gentle, it still delivers some of the richest, most intense chocolate you’re likely to try. You could call it the heart of chocolate darkness. I love it. Bold, big, and full of terrific tannins, like a fine, full-bodied red wine. Notes of dark caramel and rich sorghum syrup linger on a long, clean, impressively gentle finish.
If you want to read more about Shawn’s superb work, check out his great book, Meaningful Work, co-written with his daughter, Lawren Askinosie—we have copies on hand at the Roadhouse. Or read about him in Part 4 of the Guide to Good Leading—he’s in Secret #45, “A Six-Pointed Hope Star”! If you like really dark chocolate, I hope—and believe—that you’ll love this bar!
Grab a bar at the Candy Store
Or at the Deli
