Dark, milk, white, and then, not long ago, a fourth one showed up. Pink, tart, and genuinely different. Here is what ruby chocolate is and what we do with it.
What is ruby chocolate? It is widely called the fourth type of chocolate, after dark, milk, and white. It is made from specially selected and processed cocoa beans that give it two traits no other chocolate has naturally: a rose-pink color and a bright, berry-like tartness. No food coloring, no berry flavoring. The pink and the fruit notes come from the bean and the way it is handled.
When it was introduced a few years back, I will admit I was skeptical. New chocolate categories do not come along often, and when they do, they are usually marketing. This one earned my attention the first time I tasted it.
What does ruby chocolate taste like?
The honest description: somewhere between white chocolate and fresh berries. It is creamy like a white chocolate (there is real cocoa butter and milk in it), but where white chocolate is all richness, ruby finishes with a sweet-tart edge that reads as raspberry, even though there is no fruit in the base. The tartness is the surprising part. It behaves less like candy and more like an ingredient with a point of view.
Is ruby chocolate real chocolate?
Yes. It is made from cocoa beans, cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, the same building blocks as the chocolate you know. The difference is in the beans selected and how they are processed, which preserves compounds that ordinary processing loses. That is where the color and the tartness come from. It is not white chocolate with dye, which is the most common misconception I hear at the shop.
What pairs well with it?
Because ruby already leans toward berries, we pair it with ingredients that either echo that fruit or push against it. Our Ruby Garnet Strawberry Bar folds in freeze-dried California strawberries, and the sweet-tart berries bring out the fruit that is naturally in the chocolate. The Raspberry and Pistachio Bar adds deeply roasted pistachios for contrast against the freeze-dried raspberries. And the Cocoa Nib Brittle Bar is my favorite kind of pairing: our crunchy cocoa nib brittle against the berry brightness, so you get the deep roasted side of cacao and the fruity side in the same bite.
If you want to taste the range in one sitting, the Ruby Garnet Chocolate Bar Collection brings all three bars together.
I would not tell you ruby replaces a great bittersweet. Nothing does. But it is a real fourth category, it photographs absurdly well, and it makes an unexpected gift for someone who thinks they have tried everything. Taste it next to a dark bar and a white bar once. You will see why it got its own name.
Enjoy,
Chuck Siegel
Founder, Charles Chocolates
Chuck Siegel
Founder, Charles Chocolates
Chuck has been making chocolate in San Francisco since 1987. Self-taught, he founded his first chocolate company, Attivo Confections, sold it in 1995, and started Charles Chocolates in 2004 on one uncommon idea: chocolate should be treated like fresh food.
Everything is made in small batches with all-natural ingredients (real cream, real butter, real fruit) and no shortcuts. His work has earned a Good Food Award, Sunset Magazine's Best of the West, and recognition from San Francisco Magazine, and has been covered by KQED and the San Francisco food press.
