Citrus, Blossoms, Sugar, and Spice
A collaboration bar with a local chocolatier, and the ice cream recipe that inspired it.
Just in time for this year’s Philippine “Independence” Day and Philippine Heritage Month, I am officially back from my sabbatical to announce my collaboration chocolate bar with Vancouver-based, bean-to-bar chocolatiers, Kasama Chocolates.
I don’t exactly remember when I first came across Kasama Chocolates, but it was definitely at a farmers’ market in 2018 or 2019, very likely at Trout Lake. Their name stopped me at my tracks; ‘Kasama’ is the Tagalog word for ‘together’ or ‘companion’, depending on the context with which the word is used. Up until that moment, I had not encountered any Filipino makers at the local farmers’ markets here in Vancouver, much less chocolatiers who work with cacao beans from the Philippines. Furthermore, I was not aware that the Philippines grew cacao beans for export! In my very limited experience with bean-to-bar chocolates, peripherally, cacao beans from South America often took centre stage: Ecuador, Peru, Brazil. And while it came as no surprise to me that the Philippines had the right kind of climate for cacao production, I have never come across a bar that highlighted cacao beans from the Philippines, until I encountered Kasama’s stall at that farmers’ market.
When I got engaged in 2018 and started somewhat last-minute wedding planning in 2019, I knew I wanted to serve Kasama Chocolates as part of our dessert table, so I bought two flavours—one made with earl grey tea sourced from a local loose leaf tea shop, and one made with freeze-dried durian from the Philippines. The durian chocolate was an acquired taste for a lot of our guests, but those who loved it, really loved the chocolate! I am not the biggest fan of durian myself, but I found Kasama’s durian chocolate extremely well-balanced, even caramel-like, with only the slightest durian funk.
I finally met Vincent Garcia, one of the owners of Kasama Chocolates, during the pandemic’s first year, sometime in 2020. Our friendship started off as an Instagram DM where I expressed how much the guests at my wedding really enjoyed their chocolate. When we met in person, we quickly found out that we are both either acquainted with or are friends with many of the same people here in the Vancouver food industry, and our relationship pretty much evolved and grew from there. His business partners, Stefan Klopp, Oliver Koth-Kappus, and Dom Voser—undoubtedly through Vince’s influence—have been extremely supportive of me and my work outside my professional food and product photography practice. When Vince reached out to me for this year’s Philippine Heritage Month collaboration bar just this past February, I did not have to think about it too much. I was already in.
My Kasama collaboration bar is inspired by an ice cream flavour I made for my very first pop-up in 2022, during Vancouver’s first annual Filipino Restaurant Month. I decided to make ice cream using classic Filipino flavours, but with a contemporary twist. I still consider this pop-up to be Amalgam’s first “unofficial” public launch; it would be another few months before I would build and launch this Substack. I was a complete unknown in the local culinary pop-up space, so the first two weeks of sales from my ice cream pop-up were very slow. I got some exposure through my existing Instagram followers and through friends who shared my Instagram posts. I capped each week at 20 pints; I was surprised if I sold ten. But I was determined to finish the month, so I soldiered on.
I made four different flavours—a different one per week during Filipino Restaurant Month—and sold pre-orders through my Square web address. The fourth and final ice cream flavour from that renegade, completely-word-of-mouth FRM pop-up was my Kalamansi Creamsicle with Orange Blossom Caramel. All 20 pints sold out in about an hour. A few people even private messaged me to make extra pints because they had missed the pre-order window, so I opened up some DM sales. I made two dozen pints of the flavour. One person, after picking up their pint, messaged me to say they wanted to just sneak in a taste just to try, but it tasted “so good” that they “ate half the pint on the Skytrain” back to their home. High praise.
When Vince told me our collaboration bar would use their Kalamansi White Chocolate Bar as a base, there was no question in my mind—I would turn my Kalamansi Creamsicle flavour into a bar. We toyed with the idea of doing a cookie crumble, so I made two tests: spiced toffee bits flavoured with orange blossom water and asin tibuok (a rare Philippine heritage sea salt), and a sablé cookie crumble flavoured with orange blossom toffee bits. The spiced toffee bits won the taste test. While the sablé was delicious paired with the kalamansi chocolate bar, it felt a little too complex and way overdone. Focusing on just the toffee bits felt a lot cleaner, a lot more balanced, and certainly a lot more elegant.
Watch how asin tibuok is made here.
The final result is not exactly like the ice cream I made, but that ice cream flavour definitely informed the way I wanted Kasama’s chocolate and my toffee bits to work in harmony with each other. We did multiple tests, making sure the toffee was flavoured just enough for the flavour of the candy to come through, but also not overwhelm the kalamansi bar too much that the citrus gets lost to the spices and orange blossom.
Read about Kasama’s origins here.
Watch how Kasama’s early production and process looked like here.
All of that said, this collaboration bar humbled me, y’all! Making a single batch of toffee was one thing, scaling it up for 300 units was another. While I can confidently put candy-making in my culinary resume, I am afraid this bar will be the end of my candy-and-confection-making journey. When this bar sells out, that’s it folks! I told Vince I will not be remaking this flavour again, hahaha! If I am lucky enough to have another collaboration bar with my dear friends, I think I will be sticking with… well… not candy. Know thyself!
Still, who knows? I might do this flavour again… but… try not to hold your breath. ;-)