Chocolate Week #6: Askinosie Dark Chocolate + Malted Milk CollaBARation Bar

One of my favorite, yet incredibly elusive ingredients for baking is malt powder. Its flavor accentuates all things sweet and salty from cookies to milkshakes. I love using gratuitous amounts of it to boost the flavor of chocolate or add a little unexpected savoriness to a dish. It's incredibly hard to find and has a price point per ounce that works out to being roughly the same cost as a pound of good cheese. Needless to say, malt flavor hasn't been making its way into my cooking lately, but malt candies have. Tonight's selection for Chocolate Week comes from Askinosie, following up their CollaBARation set with a third bar incorporating two of my absolute favorite companies into one amazing piece of chocolate.
I cannot get over how crazy cool this is, seriously. For me, this is like hearing that Of Montreal is going to cover all of Steely Dan's songs with Weezer headlining. And then finding out that Steely Dan is covering Alice Cooper as an encore, but I digress. Jeni's Ice Cream and Askinosie have delighted my taste buds for years and now, here they are, in a malted milk chocolate bar. Words cannot express how perfect this is.
Awesome mergers aside, this is a damned good chocolate bar for any company. It has an aggressive barley flavor bordering on hoppy, with a lasting creamy tang to it. More complex than your average dark chocolate for sure. Not to say that that's not a key player, because it definitely is and brings a sharp fruitiness to contrast some of the richer flavors the salty malt powder incorporates. Despite all its nuances, it's extremely easy to eat and would likely be incredible if melted down into a syrup for instant artisan malted milkshakes. Sure, it'll be the most expensive one you've had in a while (the bar retails for $9.50) but perhaps no more expensive than ordering malted milk powder in bulk like me. Regardless, this is amazing, with a nostalgic set of flavors (that would likely make a bangin' s'more) and a complexity that rivals the Lakris bar. I can't wait to see what the next CollaBARation is. I'm crossing my fingers for Justin's Nut Butter or Pat Lafrieda.

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