Normally we are purists. No sweetener or milks in our coffee. Not more than three ingredients in our favorite craft chocolate bars. However, once in a while some inclusion bars really stand out. Most recently it was Elements Truffles Rose Bar with Cardamom Infusion.
Inclusion bars are those that include other ingredients beyond the bean-t0-bar basics of cacao, sugar and sometimes cocoa butter. We often find that many inclusion bars unnecessarily mask the cacao flavors rather than complimenting them. There are, however, many excellent inclusion bars, but as we mentioned before we’re purists.
Who Makes These Inclusion Bars?
Elements Truffles is a New Jersey-based chocolate maker, focused on incorporating Ayurvedic-inspired flavors into organic, raw chocolates. Not only does Elements source only fair trade and organic ingredients, it uses local honey as it’s only sweetener and donates 25% of it’s profits to children’s charities in India. We can get behind this line of inclusion bars.
The Craft Sense team had the pleasure of tasting their inclusion bars and chocolate at the recent Good Food Awards Mercantile in San Francisco. Elements’ products and philosophy really impressed us. While we enjoyed all their bars, our particular favorite was their Rose Bar with Cardamom infusion.
We’d never tried these flavors in a chocolate bar before and were concerned that the normally-delicate rose flavor would be drowned out. Fortunately, the rose and cardamom are both bold enough to compliment rather than dilute with the cacao.
Ayurveda-Inspired
This ingredient combination of this inclusion bar is not only delicious, but in harmony with each other according to Ayurvedic philosophy. In Ayurveda, we achieve good health through a balance of mental, physical and environmental factors. Individuals have one of three doshas or mind-body types depending on their particular traits and should adjust their diet accordingly. The ingredients in the Rose Bar with Cadamom infusion balances for all three doshas: vata, pitta, and kapha.
Elements Truffles products are available for order on their website and at specialty retailers around the country.