Oodaalolly chocolate and Don Papa rum—sugar, and spice make nice.
Two distinct flavors with roots in the Philippines come together in a limited edition chocolate collection.
There are 7,641 islands in the Philippine archipelago. Each has its own terroir, the equivalent to an agricultural fingerprint, imparting unique properties to the living things that grow on their shores.
Pride in The Philippines
The cacao we use for chocolate grows on the Southern island of Mindanao around the Davao area. It’s also locally fermented by skilled growers who cultivate theobroma cacao, which we turn into chocolate that hopefully lives up to that name — ‘food of the gods.’
Sourcing ingredients primarily from the Philippines is a guiding principle for our founder, Swiss-Filipino chocolate maker Hernan Lauber. But, more than just pride of place, “even before I start crafting chocolate, the Philippines’ diverse plant life impacts the flavor of the cacao, imparting characteristics onto the beans as you grow, dry, and ferment them.”
The way we process cacao is the flourish we add as chocolate makers to flesh out the taste and highlight the complexities of flavor hiding under the surface. Chasing that full expression is a challenge and opportunity. It’s also fun, especially when you hit upon something with a unique taste.
A Special Ingredient
Such is the case with our limited holiday chocolate collection of cocktail sized bars and flights of truffles infused with Don Papa rum. This collection makes its formal debut on Valentine’s Day.
Don Papa is distilled from some of the world’s finest sugar cane and blended in collaboration with a master blender from Ginebra San Miguel. It is then aged for seven years in American oak barrels in the foothills of Mount Kanlaon, a powerful stratovolcano straddling the island of Negros (Occidental and Oriental) in the Pacific Ring of Fire.
The rum grows flavorful in this unique environment, and when one of the small batches is ready, the amber liquid is released, heavy with notes of caramel and vanilla, with a warm spice balanced with sweetness.
A Methodical Process
Like any good marriage, we needed to figure out a process that gave both voices great solos while also making a harmonious blend.
We looked for and selected cocoa beans with specific characteristics. We developed a unique roasting profile to prime the beans chemically so that after cracking and winnowing and turned into nibs, they would interact with the rum as we soaked them in special containers for an extended period.
Next, the rum plumped nibs are sifted and dried slowly at low heat— toast them too much, and the flavor is marred. Now dry and infused with Don Papa rum’s beautifully rich flavor, the conching begins, a process that releases taste inhibiting acids and shrinks particle size.
Finally, a small amount of single-origin cocoa butter and coconut sugar, also from the Philippines, is put in the mix and conched some more, resulting in a smooth and consistent particle size that ensures a good mouthfeel.
Chocolate this complex to make is tricky to temper, but we figured it out. The result is a deep chestnut drown chocolate with a high pitch snap.
It has a caramel bouquet quite unlike anything we've ever made—the interplay between the coconut sugar and rum, along with our extended conching technique, resulted in something special.
A Chocolate Rum Truffle, Exquisitely Elevated
We crafted our truffles using premium ingredients and a time-honored technique. Each truffle has a mature and seductive flavor that melts in your mouth.
A chocolate truffle starts with a thin chocolate shell filled with a ganache or a type of mousse. It's then coated with more chocolate before it's ready to pop into your mouth. Sounds easy, but we like a real delicacy, we've elevated the technique.
We make these truffles with my family's chocolate ganache recipe. The chocolate comes from our Philippine sourced cacao transformed into something luxurious and smooth using a Swiss technique. And of course, we can't forget our special ingredient - the notable introduction of Don Papa Rum. The result is a creamy dark mousse enrobed in even darker chocolate in perfect balance with Don Papa Rum’s unmistakable flavor.
If you are a truffle lover, you might be witness to peak rum truffle.
A Memorable Valentine’s Day
Enhance your enjoyment and explore the flavors of Don Papa Rum and Oodaalolly chocolate this Valentine’s Day with a cocktail pairing curated by Don Papa mixologist Tomas Delos Reyes inspired by the collection.
We take pride of place very seriously at Oodaalolly
Even though we are a small company, as much friends as co-workers, we do everything in our limited power to pluck as many choice ingredients from the Philippines as we can.
Sometimes, that means it takes a little longer for a new product to come out.
When we do come up with something new, you can be sure the time used and the effort spent was all to make sure we made something that respects our ingredients’ provenance and worth it for you to purchase.
Truffles and Cocktail Bars Available In The Oodaalolly Store