Oakland Chocolate - Rum Barrel - April 18, 2013

Chocolate of the Day:

The Oakland Chocolate Co, LLC
Barrel - Rum Raisin, Sweet Curry Milk
Weight: .4 oz. (11.32 g.) (estimate) for 1 barrel
Calories: 60 calories (estimate) for 1 barrel
Cost: $N/A - part of a previous assortment
Purchased from: The Oakland Chocolate Company, Oakland, CA

Today was Day #4 of Chocolate and Spirits Theme Week.

The Oakland Chocolate Co, LLC is a small company, based in Oakland, CA. Chief chocolate maker, Nancy Nadel, uses cocoa beans from St. Mary's Parish in Jamaica.

While there are dozens of women chocolatiers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nadel is one of the few women who are making chocolate from cocoa beans (bean to bar, and in this case from bean to bar to bonbon), rather than buying blocks of chocolate to make her bonbons, rolled truffles and chocolate leaves.

She describes her Jamaican-based chocolate as having chocolate brownie and plum notes, and this is consistent with flavors I tasted in her dark (70 - 72% cacao) chocolates (part of an assortment box), including an oak leaf and a chocolate barrel that I imagined was filled with Jamaican rum. It was either rum raisin, sweet curry milk -- or both. In any case, the flavor of this soft golden filling was quite tasty.