The Raleigh Bar

To anyone recalling my post from January (which is maybe one of you) about "new things rolling out"...behold the Raleigh Bar!  

A top layer of my salted caramel with pecan chocolate nougat underneath.  All enrobed in 72% chocolate. There is a bacon caramel version too!

About 8 months ago, Kevin over at Pine State Biscuits was bugging me about coming up with something to sell there, other than my normal chocolates.  I agreed, as I never felt it would be a great place to sell my individual chocolates, like I do at Cacao or Steve's Cheese, but a singular product (besides Champ's Chocolate Milk), that might be the best idea.

I think that I am like a lot of cooks or chefs in that most of my ideas do not come from idyllic walks though nature or romanticized trips for new ingredients.  No, it just doesn't work like that.  For me, a lot of the time it is a serendipitous thought in my head, reading about food and a non-related idea will arise from it, or it could be eating someone else's food and deriving something from that.

So Kevin kept bugging me, and inspiration had not struck, and I was too busy to try and force it out by constant experimenting.  A couple of months had gone by and still nothing, until one day, and I do not remember the exact details, but nougat, chocolate, pecans, caramel came to me.  It seemed like the right way to go.  Sounds kind of Southern, at least to a Northerner like me.  And maybe I have eaten way too many "traditional" candy bars, but when I think of candy bars, I think chocolate, nuts, caramel, nougat.  So the trials began.  

I think I have said it once before, but things do not necessarily come together on the first trial.  Yet the Raleigh Bar did.  Now it was kind of cheating, since I was essentially combining two products that I already make, but I was excited nonetheless.  Phase two was making it with Bacon Caramel...a no brainer.

"So that was 6 months ago, what the hell took you so long?" 

Good question, and the only answer I can give you is packaging.  They needed to be packaged, and I wanted the packaging to look good and befitting.  Other than that, I do not have a better answer. 

"Why the name Raleigh Bar"

An homage to the capital of the Pine State, North Carolina.  Since it was Pine State Biscuits that got me working on the idea. Plus, it sounds nice.

"So, where can I get them?"

Pine State Biscuits has them right now! Most everyone else I sell to in Portland will have them by next weekend.  They will retail for no more than $3.