Blog

It’s officially strawberry season here in NYC, and basil isn’t far behind. We love this time of year. Our local farmers markets are abundant with tender greens, crisp spring vegetables, and the harvest season’s first fruit. To celebrate this season’s first strawberries, we’ve come up with the perfect cookie to compliment the beginning of the season’s bounty: the Strawberry Basil Cacao Cookie. This cookie was inspired by an old First Nibs favorite, Strawberry Basil and Eric Kim's Cranberry Glazed Cookie for The Kitchn (itself loosely adapted from Nigella Lawson’s “Chewy Almond Macaroons”). It’s a veganized, chocolate-ized, summer-ized version, but the chewy texture...

Our favorite recipe of the week comes from Alexander Roberts, a food stylist, trained pastry chef, and recipe developer based in Los Angeles. Alexander made classic buttermilk donuts with our single origin Tanzanian Cacao Powder and our Rose Cardamom bar (also made with Tanzanian cacao from Kokoa Kamili!). These donuts have a lush, floral, and ambrosial flavor profile. Ingredients: 1 ½ cup flour  2 tablespoons single origin Tanzanian Cacao Powder ⅔ cup brown sugar  1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder  ½ teaspoon baking soda  ¼ teaspoon salt  3 tablespoons butter, cold  1 egg  ¼ cup buttermilk  1 teaspoon vanilla extract  ¼ cup...

This is perhaps the most fun a math and food mash up could get. Pi Day officially celebrates the mathematical constant, but now it's become custom to just make and eat actual pies every March 14th. Our recipe editor, Abbe Lentz, crafted this Cinnamon Chocolate Chess Pie for this most unusual “holiday” and it’s a fantastic fusion of flavors adapted from her great grandmother Lois’s recipe. The original recipe was written down on an index card and passed down through her family. Abbe used that same index card - hand scrawled, stained and worn from decades of use, as the...

Raaka is really excited to have collaborated with one of our awesome partners, Olympia Coffee, on our January First Nibs collection. Olympia sources and roasts award winning direct trade coffees from around the globe to share online, with retailers, and with coffee lovers at their 6 cafe locations in Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle. We sat down (virtually!) with one of Olympia’s co-owners, Oliver Stormshak, to learn more about Olympia, their amazing coffees, their Fair for All sourcing model, and the inspiration behind our chocolate collab!   Oliver, how did you first learn about Raaka Chocolate?  The first time I met...