I am a cake girl. Just writing that makes me want it. Possibly it was the cake walk I won in the first grade and being at eye level with side by side card tables sagging under the weight of cakes all the moms had baked and me having to choose. The thing was, I wasn’t sure what the cakes were or what the names meant, specifically, would I like it? Also, I wasn’t sure how was I supposed to haul an entire layer cake half my height that Bobby Staub’s mom had stacked and frosted, with me around the school fair. I made the only choice a kid headed from the cake walk to the pony rides could make, and picked out an easy-to-carry flat one in an aluminum pan.
Sheet cake girl am I to this day. Where I grew up we called them icebox cakes and if you are like whutisanicebox no it is not a Yeti cooler.
My cakey dream loves rotate in this order: carrot or zucchini or banana or chocolate. Vanilla ones are just…yeah. That. Note: sheet cake means no layers. Just a fat rectangular chunk with a thick roof of cream cheese frosting. Some people plan trips around breweries or wineries. I once routed a roadtrip from Oregon to Montana with a Boise detour just to stop and have a slice of the zucchini cake at Flying M Cafe, it is that good.
All of this happy cake-filled memory lane stuff is to say, if you want to make an inclusion bar you really do owe it to yourself to make one that makes you happy. That, just the idea of making it gets you so excited to get started but since you haven’t got the ingredients yet you doodle up the design instead. Today when I tempered a carrot cake bar during a class livestream I channeled all my happy I love carrot cake thoughts and feelings into what was actually a bit of a juggling/paying attention/don’t f-it-up-on-camera effort: get both batches of chocolate to be in temper at the same time, stir in the inclusions and don’t leave out anything, fill the moulds with one then another chocolate, then carefully decorate with the exterior inclusions, tap to settle, set aside and keep talking through every step.
I even wiped my hands on my apron like I do when I’m baking, something I (oddly) never do when I am making a batch of chocolate.
Every time I temper certain inclusion bars—Meteor Shower (a black sesame + dark milk chocolate with two kinds of salt on the back and an extra sprinkle of toasted black sesame seeds), Love Shack (74% Vietnam Tien Giang with pink shortbread and candied lemon peel), Pool Party (cereal milk white chocolate with fruity-o’s) I can’t help but laugh. Nothing serious about them, 100% confounding in their lack of pretentiousness, no fine flavor chocolate snobbery for miles. Thoughtfully paired origins + flavors, an eye for the visual palate as well as the tasting experience, and as much creative license as I can stuff into them, heck to the yes.
It’s not that nibs adorning a bar aren’t “as good.” It’s not about measuring up or throwing out the rules that guide working with inclusions. It’s about taking an idea, deconstructing that idea (a favorite food, a beloved food memory, a riff on a cuisine or dish) and figuring out how to get that idea into chocolate form. This is where certain guiding principles come in. Wet anything + chocolate, nope. Candied and prone to getting sticky when exposed to air, not on the back of the bar. Crumbs (think those fabulous Pump Street bars with their crunchy bites of sourdough) encased in fat, which means they must be stirred into the batch, not sprinkled on the back. And so forth.
For class this week I dreamed up a carrot cake bar. I used cocoa butter I pressed because of its aroma (not floral, pleasantly cocoa) and its color and decided to use panela (non-centrifugal sugar) instead of cane, for its color + flavor, to help the carrot batch be as cake-ish as possible. I opted for oat powder in lieu of dairy, but if I’d had quinoa flour maybe that. I chose freeze-dried whole carrots (officially a fan now) because do we really taste the carrot in carrot cake? Survey says no.
To the culinary goddess of freeze dried everythingness, I am truly grateful. The carrots are a triumph. Now please do fennel bulbs.
Since my (actual cake) carrot cake recipe calls for crushed pineapple I went with bits and snippets of dried pineapple. Next time I would not use Trader Joe’s pineapple flowers (though I do adore them for their flower vibes), but find a slightly softer pineapple. Originally thought the dried kiwi would go into the carrot batch too, but! way too tart. I chopped the walnuts finely so they wouldn’t bulge in the bar moulds.
If you are new to inclusioncrafting: the nuts and dried bits go into the batch after it has been poured from the melanger, and is cooling in prep for tempering. adding a stirred-in inclusion will lower the batch temperature, so be ready to start moulding soon thereafter. The spices however went in just before I poured the batch from the melanger, to give them a dispersing whirl.
Inclusioncrafting is as much about our experience as the chocolate maker flinging the kiwi snippets at the final steps and back through every step of the crafting, as much as it is about the experience we are hoping to create. Looks too good to eat is not our mantra here. This is no time to be toeing the line: if you feel like dancing around that circle of squares, do it.
Happy chocolate making,
Mackenzie
Interesting! I’ve tried making one in the past but didn’t have access to freeze dried carrot so I made candied carrot to mix in instead. I need to try this again as I didn’t have it quite right and I might use some of your ideas as well 🤔