Limited-edition dark Filipino chocolate spiked with Fly by Jing chili crisp
This great new spicy dark chocolate bar just arrived in Ann Arbor from our friends at Askinosie Chocolate—and damn, is it good!
To be honest, chili-spiced chocolate isn’t always my thing. But the crew at Askinosie, as they pretty much always do, has hit the nail on its full-flavored head! This very limited-edition collaboration bar has great complexity of flavor, and, per our definition of quality at Zingerman’s (see the pamphlet “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy” for much more on that), it’s beautifully balanced and complex, with a long, lovely finish.
The bar is made using the hard-to-get Trinitario cacao that comes from Shawn Askinosie’s long-standing sources in the Philippines. Cacao originally arrived on the islands with the Spanish colonizers. The Trinitario beans make up a tiny percentage of the world’s cacao production, but artisan chocolate makers have long recognized their excellence. In the modern era, Askinosie was the first to bring them out of the country for nearly 50 years!
We’ve been buying (and eating) chocolate bars from Askinosie for something like 20 years now. Shawn was one of the first five or six bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the nation, and we were early appreciators of his good work! For this bar, though, I talked to his daughter Lawren, who led the way on the project. (Shawn and Lawren also co-authored the wonderful book Meaningful Work.) Here’s what she shared with me a few days ago:
I’ve been a fan of Fly by Jing’s chili crisp for a few years—putting it on everything from burgers to pizza. You could say it was kind of a condiment obsession. Little did I know that our head chocolate maker was also a chili crisp fan, even making his own at home (that’s way out of my league). I’ve followed Fly By Jing’s founder, Jing Gao, for a long time. I admired the way she and her team stayed true to their roots, mission, and flavor while growing the company into a global food brand. I messaged Jing on Instagram pitching a partnership, she loved the idea, and the rest is history. Working with her team on this collaboration was a joy.
We made almost two dozen iterations of this bar over the course of several months before settling on the final recipe. We endeavored to create not just a “spicy” bar—but one that’s layered and complex. The final product is earthy, aromatic, and smooth. We added a touch of organic brown rice to our Trinitario cocoa beans from the Philippines to complement the tingly, buzzy, building spice—which comes from the tribute peppers used in the Sichuan oil—that hums in the back of your throat on the finish.
Due to the limited nature of the ingredients, we were only able to make a few thousand of these bars. So, like a lot of great things in life, this bar won’t last for very long.
As I said above, the flavor of the bar is impressively balanced: creamy on the tongue, deeply chocolatey, and extremely delicious. The heat is very moderate and, to my taste, more than a bit magical!
The Slow Burn bar is available at the Candy Store, Deli, and Roadhouse. You won’t see it on the zingermans.com Mail Order site, but we’d love to ship some your way. Just email us at [email protected].