High-end, dairy-free chocolate is a vegan treat
Former engineer spent two years perfecting a formula without use of milk or cream
HUNT VALLEY, MD— To make good chocolate, it all starts with the right bean.
The cocoa beans manufactured for Hunt Valley’s Charm School Chocolate factory and retail store arrive in 120-pound burlap sacks, with anywhere from 35,000 to 40,000 large almondshaped nuggets per bag.
Carefully but nimbly, Joshua Rosen — the facility’s owner and the company’s founder, frontman, head chocolate maker and business developer — sifts through piles of cocoa beans to weed out those that fall below his company’s standards. They must be whole, not cracked; singular, not adjoined; uniform, not discoloured, distorted or dwarfed.
“A lot of reading and science goes into this,” Rosen, 36, says as he sorts through a sample of fudge-coloured teardrops from Guatemala.
Rosen’s business specializes in concocting dairy-free and vegan milk, white and dark chocolate treats using highquality ingredients, homemade recipes and even handcrafted machinery that he helped design, a testament to his short-lived career as a mechanical engineer. Since pivoting to the culinary in- dustry about 10 years ago, his creation has since gone on to take home top honours from the International Chocolate Awards. Charm School Chocolate candies are now sold in dozens of stores and shops across North America.
“For vegans, it’s difficult to find myriad options, so it’s important for us to provide the full spectrum,” he said, adding that the vast majority of chocolate makers have relied on dairy products like milk to achieve chocolate’s sweet taste and soft, smooth texture. “Most chocolate is not dairy free. It’s extremely unusual.”
The price of Rosen’s products far ex- ceeds that of most other chocolates: A single bar of his Coconut Milk Chocolate — the most popular chocolate bar — sells for $7.99 online without shipping and tax fees. By comparison, a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar sells for under $2 at many retailers.
But Rosen said that price margin not only reflects the hand-intensive labour involved in the company’s chocolatemaking process, but also covers the cost of shipping his exquisite beans and fairly compensating his sources for their efforts overseas. His business abides by a direct-trade model, meaning that he works directly with individual farmers and co-operatives and reimburses them for their services instead of collaborating with a third party mediator.
“We want to make sure everyone’s treated well, but beyond that, we go down there and spend time with them,” he said, noting that he’s made two trips to Belize, his primary cocoa bean source, in recent years.
“If you buy really amazing stuff, you get beautiful flavours without having to add a bunch of things to it.”
Rosen said his chocolate thus proves more balanced than his competitors’ confections. In addition to no soy and no dairy, there’s no gelatin and less added sugar. The natural beans, grown from rich dirt in warm climates, contain most of the chocolatey flavour.
But without milk or cream, it took about two years to perfect the formula. Now a vegan himself, he recalled setting up shop in his former New York apartment and subjecting his roommates to tireless taste tests until he cracked the seemingly impossible code.
He primarily substitutes traditional dairy products with coconut and coconut milk and incorporates a variety of other flavours and spices like maple syrup, pecan, cinnamon and even salt and jalapeno to set his confections apart from the pack.
“The flavour is on point because we showcase the cocoa,” he said. “It’s way more flavour forward.”