Magical Artisan Malt Balls Made in Missouri
Amazing offering from the folks at Askinosie Chocolate
One of the things I love about our work is that we find ways to take popular, often mass-produced, foods and, by using great ingredients, turn them into something wonderful! The Peanut Butter Crush bar I wrote about last week, our handmade Cream Cheese, our Big O oatmeal raisin cookies, and the fried chicken at the Roadhouse are just a few of the many examples that come quickly to mind. Allison Schraf, long-time manager at our Candy Store (inside the Coffee Company, out on Plaza Drive), says it’s “when your inner little kid gets together with your grown-up palate and everybody has a good time.”
My good friend Shawn Askinosie is making the same sort of magic happen by turning an industrial offering into a world-class confection. If you’ve been a lifelong fan of malt balls, try these! If you never really liked them, try these! They’re so much more flavorful than what one would find at a movie theater! My friend Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Café and a dozen other restaurants in NYC, sings the praises of Askinosie’s direct purchasing relationship, “One hundred percent of the chocolate he sells is 1,000 percent traceable to the farmer who grew the cocoa beans himself.” That’s not the case with your average, store-bought malt balls.
Malted milk, in case you didn’t know (I didn’t), was invented by an Englishman named James Horlick in 1873. He created it originally as a nutritional supplement for infants but failed to make much of an impression on new mothers. Frustrated, he went west, all the way to Wisconsin, to join his brother, who’d already emigrated. In 1887, they began selling malted milk in the American Midwest, which, as you probably know, turned out to have a wholly different market than the one they’d sought. Fame and fortune followed, but only after many, many years of hard work.
Malted milk balls have a center of malted milk—dried, powdered milk with wheat and malt formed into a powder. The balls are then coated with a chocolate layer so that when you eat them, they have that sort of magical textural contrast of soft, milky, and crumbly, with crisp and chocolatey. Askinosie’s are amazing. Making them requires eight hours of spinning the malted milk centers in dark, direct-sourced Tanzania chocolate so that thin layer after thin layer of cacao covers the soft, crumbly, off-white-colored centers. Unlike commercial versions, Askinosie’s have none of that all-too-common stuff added to give that shiny, smooth look. The aroma is fantastic—when you open the package, you’ll immediately be hit with the smell of good chocolate (not industrial additives). Crisp and light. Not at all too sweet, with a really great flavor!
Aside from making crazy good confections, Shawn Askinosie does some amazing work with the farmers and communities who grow the cacao. The quality of the malted milk balls is as good as the quality of the organization’s work! Shawn and crew are making a meaningful difference in the world every single day, and every one of us buying their products is helping to make that happen. I wrote a lot about his efforts in The Power of Beliefs in Business in Secret #45. The book he co-wrote with his daughter, Lawren Askinosie, entitled Meaningful Work, is wonderfully marvelous! Last month, on his 51st trip to cacao origins, Shawn went to Tanzania. Aside from the main point of the visit—buying the cacao, convening with the farmers of the cooperative, and returning annual profit-sharing payments (yes, Shawn pays profit-sharing from his Missouri-based business to farmers in East Africa)—Shawn also taught visioning to the local high schoolers! Over the last 10 years, he’s taught it to 7,000 young people! Not to mention having taught it to the growers as well.
Buy a bag at the Deli
Or the Candy Store
