5 minute read
Sweet Tooth?
STORY BY G. MICHAEL DOBBS PHOTOS BY NATE BLAIS
The Art Of Chocolate and Cannabis
For people who used cannabis back in the day the word “edibles” usually referred to a home-made brownie. Today with adult use cannabis legal in Massachusetts and many other states the word “edible” takes on a whole new meaning and new forms.
Julian Rose, a chef with decades of experience and training as a classical French pastry chef, is in charge of developing edibles for Insa, which has dispensaries in Easthampton and Springfield.
A native of Montreal, Rose said he was “born into the industry of sweets and cakes.” As his career progressed, he became more interested in chocolate and made his own line of high-end truffles.
That led to teaching classes to other chefs and in 1999 he was asked to lead the Chocolate Academy in Canada, a training center in chocolate and pastry. He owned his bakery while teaching and “loved every minute of it.”
He said his experiences “opened me up to the industrial world and a much larger scale of manufacturing.”
Within the world of confections, Rose said there is a constant change due to emerging trends. Today, he noted, people are more interested in ethnic flavors and there are differences regionally in what people like.
He was working in Portland, OR, before joining Insa to direct their edibles program and he said in Massachusetts he has learned, “the mainstream consumer is quite conservative; they don’t want to dive too deep into the unknown.”
Understanding the need for seasonal products, Rose said that product development is an everyday thing. He said he has “episodes of creativity” in which he creates five to seven products in one week.
To keep up with a six-to-eight-month lead for seasonal products, Rose compared the designs and manufacture of edibles to fashion. “It’s like fashion; they design stuff now for the next year,” he said.
Explaining the seasonal aspect of his business, he noted that a pumpkin spice bar was great for fall, but after that season “you couldn’t give that bar away.”
Rose has developed new seasonal products that include Champagne Drops and Cranberry Sauce Drops (or gummies); Peppermint Candy Cane Chocolate Bar in dark chocolate and a Gingerbread Chocolate Bar in milk chocolate.
He said, “The new cranberry drop is a flavor I have been thinking about since last year since I was not able to get to it for the 2021 winter seasonal drop. Of course, the thought of Thanksgiving and the holidays comes to the forefront at the beginning of the winter months, as does cranberry. It’s the perfect fruit with a tangy and sweet balance, ideal for a fruit drop. And this season, we are also going to have the champagne drop to follow for a festive holiday flavor.”
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Of the new chocolate bars he added, “Our dark chocolate peppermint chocolate bar is back and is such a classic, with a refreshing natural peppermint flavor topped with crushed candy cane topping. For the milk chocolate lovers, the new gingerbread spice with roasted hazelnuts bar will be a huge success with the warm flavors of blended spices and crunchy hazelnut pieces.”
He is also working with cacao juice, the liquid from the seed pod from which chocolate is eventually made. He said the juice is a “super food” and has high levels of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, along with a honey flavor. Insa is the first company in the cannabis industry to incorporate it as an ingredient to edible products, according to the company.
Naturally with all of this product development being led by a classically trained pastry chef, one had to ask about brownies – would he develop that homemade pastry into one of his infused creations?
Rose said that he would want a brownie that is of “top quality,” but he said the fact that everything created must be tested for consistency of THC levels – the active ingredient in cannabis – that creates a week delay before the brownie can be put on sale. He doesn’t want a stale product, nor does he want to freeze a brownie for better shelf-life.
“It’s important to me to delve high quality great tasting products,” he said.
He is thinking about cookies, though, as maintaining freshness is different with that baked good.
