posted by Ken

After learning to tie bows, pack boxes, make ganaches and chocolates, it’s great to finally get the chance to create a collection of my own. I’ve designed and tested five chocolates to premier on July 9. I’ll admit, getting this last one was the biggest challenge of all.

The first two chocolates seemed easy. In my mind, mint julep was in the collection before I made even my first chocolate. Salt and Malt resonated immediately and came out exactly as I had hoped my first attempt, so I thought that with experience, the rest would get easier. Blackberry Lemonade has been a tedious, evolving experiment that spans every expression of the two fruits to get them to play in clear, perfect harmony, but I found it once years ago and knew I could find it again. Salt and Vinegar Potato Chip came from an unexpected flurry of inspiration in my home kitchen after rattling my brain one night while I tried to sleep. But the last one seemed like it would never come. I tried Chocolate Lava Cake: Fail. Cream cheese frosting: Fail. Apple Riesling: Fail. Cherry cheesecake: Fail.

In fact, the elusiveness of #5 came to define it so aptly, that I toyed with the idea of just coming up with something delicious and calling it “#5,” leaving its true identity a mystery.

Thankfully, #5 has arrived. And given the difficulty I found in committing to it, it feels poetic to me that it enlists what may be the most elusive food there is at its very core. Although it’s an unmistakable element, getting a shell around it makes for a chocolate that is mysterious by that fact that it can even exist. So #5 became: Chocolate Covered Cotton Candy.

The first time I talked about it, I got a skeptical chuckle and this challenge: “I dare you. I dare you to try it.” And really, who says no to that?

Sure, it isn’t the complex journey of sophisticated flavors that I angled for with the other offerings in my collection, but its transformative texture and sweetness make it a unique, unforgettable chocolate experience. It doesn’t resolve like other chocolates, but you eat it with a sense that it’s been waiting patiently there for you its whole life to do something magical. So when you get into it, the subtle flavor of the cotton candy recedes pretty quickly into the sweet chocolate shell, and sugary bursts begin forming to create a coarse–but-creamy mouthfeel. And there’s an interesting satisfaction you get when you realize that the chocolate creation you are enjoying was actually brought to life after it entered your mouth.

They thought it couldn’t be done. July 9 it begins.