RUBY CHOCOLATE

On Easter, we continued our tradition of exchanging chocolates and this year, not to be outdone, 2nd Man got this for me:

Ruby cacao bar

It's a new type of chocolate.  Wait, what?

Yep, it's called "ruby chocolate".  It is made with an unfermented cocoa bean variety that has a pinkish hue caused by being unfermented.  There are no colors added and no additional flavorings.  The final process is of course a trade secret at this point as there is apparently only one company making it, Barry Callebaut, a Belgian Swiss cocoa company.  It was just released in 2018 and initially overseas but now popping up here in the states.

I was excited to open it and try it out.

Ruby chocolate

Yep, sure enough, look at it.  It's a deep pinkish color, quite stunning to see actually.

As for taste it's very good but definitely different.  It's super smooth, like you would expect a quality chocolate to be and if you didn't see the color, you'd definitely know that it is chocolate you are eating.  However, once the taste starts to come through, you notice it has a slightly tart note to it, not unlike a tart berry.  Indeed the descriptions describe a fresh berry fruitiness.  Now I don't mean tart in a bad way, it's very good, I shared with the office and everyone there liked it as well, it's just that you can tell it's different, in the same way white chocolate is different from milk chocolate and even milk chocolate is different from dark.  I told 2nd Man he should get some and try baking with it.  

Image courtesy of Wikicommons

Love this picture I found while researching it.  This is the first new chocolate variety in 80 years (white was the last new one).  So the world now has "milk", "dark", "white", and "ruby". 

Pretty cool!

Anyone else try this yet?