Ancho Cinnamon Bonbons

Ancho Cinnamon Bonbons are a complex firecracker of a candy: bittersweet chocolate with textured bits of ground vanilla beans, mild Mexican cinnamon, and freshly ground ancho chilies. It's very warmly and cozily spicy, not at all overwhelming, with flowery and sweet notes. This bonbon is made with Taza chocolate, a stoneground, organic, better-than-fair-trade (they use a direct-trade system that is superior to traditional fair-trade certification), bean-to-bar, biodynamic, recycled paper-packaged, bike-delivered chocolate (from Chiapas!). Phew! That's some liberal cred! European-style chocolate is the result of many steps—chocolate is not a heavily refined food in the sense that it is chemically treated or “modified,” but it takes a whole lot of mechanical potchking around to get it from bean to bar. Taza skips one of the big steps, conching, and the result is something strange and lovely that doesn’t sound lovely at all—gritty chocolate. As they put it: “We skip [conching] in order to preserve the texture of our chocolate and the natural flavors of the beans...the distinct texture of our chocolate gives it the appeal of more wholesome food. We use Mexican molinos, which are traditional stone mills, to achieve our tasty and ridiculously intense chocolate... Taza chocolate is food, not candy.”