I’m beginning to think so.
The Springfield, MO, chocolate-maker keeps inventing new products with the speed, and creative genius, of America’s legendary inventor.
Just a few weeks ago, I reported here that Shawn had brought to market his Askinosie 60% Dark Chocolate + Peanut Butter Bar, which was as sensual, sophisticated and sublime as a $300 bottle of wine.
And now... and now... he’s done it again. Hit another one out of the park.
This week, Shawn launched the Askinosie Coconut Chocolate Bar, laconically called, “A Beautiful Mess.”
Discursive commentary on the label explains the bar: “Flakes of Coconut Get Toasted as Rich, Dark Chocolate Teases Coy Coconut Sugar, Creating A Beautiful Mess.”
It’s a mouthful, but so then is the product itself. A delicious, can’t-stop-eating experience of tropical richness.
The underside of the tablet is coated with so much shredded, toasted coconut that it looks like the side panel on one of those terracotta Chia Pets covered in chia seed! Now I understand why this is called a “coconut chocolate bar” because there appears to be more coconut than chocolate!
The dark chocolate in this bar comes from single-origin cacao beans, which Shawn sources directly from growers in Davao, Philippines. It is blended with organic coconut sugar and toasted coconut.
Shawn Askinosie, master chocolate-maker and, I am happy to call, friend.
If you’re getting tired of this photo of Shawn, blame him, not me! Shawn has invented so many different themed chocolate bars, that each time one is released, I have to go back to my file and rerun this same old/same old photo.
(Memo to self: Ask Shawn to release a new shot of himself each time there is a new bar; napaman.com readers are getting tired of this photo!)
Backgrounder
Several years ago, Shawn got the idea to bring to market a series of unique, themed chocolate bars, each produced in collaboration with an ingredient supplier.
The Chocolate Coffee bar was made in collaboration with Intelligentsia Coffee, the Malted Milk Dark Chocolate bar was made in cahoots with Jeni’s Ice Cream out of Columbus, OH.
To date, there have been five “CollaBARation” Bars, as Shawn calls them. The sixth, and newest, comes from the influence of two bubbly sisters, Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman, who work near the Askinosie chocolate factory, in Springfield.
Sisters Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman
Elsie and Emma operate A Beautiful Mess, a women's lifestyle company focused on creating “happiness through a homemade lifestyle.”
On their site, www.abeautifulmess.com they share home decor projects, recipes, and crafts, as well as talk about their life in Missouri.
Elsie, Emma, and others from their web team helped the Askinosie team make the earliest samples of the Coconut CollaBARation bar.
The sisters got to talking with Shawn about their love for coconut, a popular ingredient in their family’s part-Venezuelan heritage... one thing led to another, and before long, the sisters were in the chocolate works, helping to make samples with the talented Askinosie chocolate team.
The Askinosie “A Beautiful Mess” Coconut Chocolate Bar is available for $9 from Shawn’s website, www.askinosie.com
Now I am publicly pleading with Shawn to create a new CollaBARation Bar with another well-known blogger – napaman!
I am exhorting, beseeching, even pleading on bended knee: Shawn, please make the world’s greatest Chocolate Ginger Nugget Bar, a sensuous combination of a bright tasting Criollo chocolate, preferably from South America, assertively tweaked to get your attention with large nuggets of candied, organic ginger that has been folded into the chocolate.
It is unfair, Shawn, to shine a spotlight on ingredients like coconut, coffee, and licorice and leave out one of the greatest chocolate-pairing ingredients that ever existed -- ginger!
What would Laurel have been without Hardy?
What would Rogers (whose first name was GINGER, by the way!) have been without (Fred) Astaire?
Some things are just meant to be together and ginger AND chocolate are two of them.
So how about it Shawn? Can the next CollaBaration Bar be the napaman-inspired, soon-to-be-world-famous, Askinosie Chocolate Ginger Nuggets Bar?
You know where to find me if you’d like help making the samples....