Ceremonial Cacao or Ridgewood Chocolate?

We hear this question in the store: "Can your chocolate replace my ceremonial cacao powder?"

Our answer starts with another question: what's in your cup?

Two parts of every cacao bean

Every cacao bean is made of two things:

    Cocoa solids, the "brown stuff." They carry the flavor, the color and the character of the bean.
    Cocoa butter. It's the bean's natural fat, and it gives cacao its rich, full body.

A whole bean has both, and when you taste it, you get both.

Read your label: powder or whole?

Cocoa powder is made by pressing the cocoa butter out of the ground beans. What's left is dried and milled into powder. The butter is valuable, so it's sold separately to chocolate makers and to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

If your ceremonial cacao is a powder, most of the bean's butter isn't in it. If it's a block or paste, it's the whole bean.

What goes into our chocolate

We make Ridgewood Chocolate ourselves, starting from raw cocoa beans:

    We roast whole beans in small batches, about a pound at a time.
    We shell every bean by hand.
    We grind for about six hours rather than days, which keeps the bean's natural aromas intact.

The ingredients are cocoa, cocoa butter and unrefined sugar. Nothing else goes in: no emulsifiers, no flavourings and no powder.

You get the brown stuff and the butter together, the way the bean made them.

One gram at a time

A ceremony doesn't need a cup of chocolate. Ours is meant to be experienced one gram at a time.

    Place one square on the roof of your mouth.
    Hold it there with your tongue and close your mouth.
    Speak to no one. Let it melt slowly.
    Take out your phone, switch to selfie mode, and look into both of your pupils.

Many of our customers see their pupils widen as the aroma opens up. We take it as the chocolate announcing itself.

With sugar or without

Most people choose our roasted chocolate as it is: bold, deep, and lightly sweetened with unrefined sugar.

If you avoid sugar, ask for our 100% chocolate: just the bean, with nothing added.

Come taste the difference

Buy Chocolate    Ceremonial

Made in Ridgewood, Queens.