In August the main Match maker decided to roll up her sleeves and dive head first into inclusion chocolate bars. I have always been inspired by Mackenzie of Map Chocolate and Nat of Xoconat Chocolate‘s creativity in flavors and out of the box thinking. When I saw they were collaborating I signed up for their Inclusion craft: Thai Inspired camp on The Next Batch.
So what is an inclusion chocolate bar? Any chocolate that includes ingredients beyond the typical cocoa nibs, sugar and cocoa butter can be considered an inclusion bar. Most often inclusion chocolates have candies, crunchies and caramels mixed in (think of the candy bars of your childhood). In our case we knew we wanted to keep all of our chocolate dairy free and vegan. This led to even more experiments with making the first ever Match “white” vegan chocolates and “milk” vegan chocolates (made with coconut!).
Inclusion Craft Class Format
The 5 day camp was unfortunately virtual, a trip to Thailand would have been a great adventure! With the COVID situation it’s truly remarkable what the instructors Mackenzie and Nat were able to pull together. We not only had wonderful content but also a stunning online learning platform and a seamless online video conference portal. We spent mornings talking about the project of the day. Then had live class discussions, demos and time to work on our projects in the afternoon. The only thing we were missing was being able to taste all of the great bars that we got to see each other, and Nat from Xoconat make on screen.
Each day we were led through how we could be inspired by a classic Thai dish or personal food memory to create a bar that while may not directly reflect it, could be an interpretation of a food memory in a different form.
During the class I played with several flavors and ideas. Some of these ideas worked and some could use some additional tinkering. There were two stand out chocolate bars that I am proud of and think represent this experience best. To read more about them follow the links below.
More About Thai Inspired Chocolates
Massaman curry inspired crunch bar
Green Curry inspired layered dark and white vegan chocolate bar
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