(image credit: Valley News)

My dream chocolate bar is inspired by Raaka's delicious Bourbon Cask Aged 82% Cacao, before which I never even knew that I liked dark chocolate! 

I'm calling it "Baby Bourbon Vanilla Raisin," and it would be somewhere between 75-85% cacao.

The beans would be aged in barrels from Tuthilltown Distillery in New York's Hudson Valley. These guys run an amazing place that's completely off-the-grid, and has a really great story behind it — I highly recommend visiting for a whiskey tasting. But I digress...back to the chocolate bar.

You'd probably get some vanilla flavors from the bourbon casks, and then I'd add a little more sweetness with raisins to top it off once it's in temper. 

 

(image credit: Mobile Cuisine)

 

Question for you guys over at Raaka (if you'd be so kind!) – do you think it'd be worth adding a drop of vanilla extract to enhance the vanilla flavors? Or would the aging in bourbon barrels be enough? I definitely don't want it to be overpowering.

Open to suggestions from fellow students as well. Thanks for reading this far! 

Zack