Inventing the Sassafras Chocolate Bar


Sassafras is a tree native to eastern North America and grows in my home state of Georgia. Root beer was traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree. When coming up with a signature bar for my company, it only made sense for it to be a root beer flavored bar!

So I started to think about all of the flavors that go into that root beer taste as well as flavors that compliment it. My first thought was to bring forward a root beer float chocolate bar which consists of root beer, milk, vanilla and sugar. This was going to be my base delivered in a 61% chocolate bar (the somewhat middle ground between a milk and dark chocolate).

Then I wanted to build on those flavors by adding cherry for the tartness and toasted fennel for that nutty licorice taste. I always like to add a crunch element to my bars so the cinnamon graham cracker was a perfect fit and adds a smore element to the bar. When I put all of this together and conducted some taste tests, I felt like something was still missing. Ginger was that “something” that rounded all the flavors out!

So when you taste my signature bar, I want you to think about all of these flavors and see if you can individually taste them while you are enjoying the bar.