a Trio from Be Happy

This was on our list as a booth to visit at the Chocolate and Coffee festival.  We were curious about Be Happy chocolate as they make chocolate using raw cacao beans.  Our only other try of raw chocolate was from Australia in mid summer and we don't think it travelled well as all the chocolate had a slight rancid taste that we didn't like.

Be Happy are based in Martinborough and as well as using ethically sourced, raw cacao beans, their ingredients are vegan, organic,  dairy free and refined sugar free.  We bought 3 of their bars to try.

DARK CHOCOLATE WITH BRAZIL NUT AND CACAO NIBS 65.5% 
Ingredients: raw Peruvian cacao, Sri Lankan coconut blossom nectar, New Zealand meadow honey, Brazil nuts, iodised salt

You can taste the different flavours of raw nuts, honey and some wood flavor notes.  The chocolate leaves a buttery slightly fatty feel in your mouth.  It is a pleasant bar and a lot better than our previous experience of raw chocolate.

M*LK CHOCOLATE 52%
Ingredients: raw Peruvian cacao, cashew nuts, Sri Lankan coconut blossom nectar, New Zealand meadow honey, coconut milk, pink Himalayan mineral salt.

This is coconutty and tangy.  It tastes healthy.  It has the same fatty feel in your mouth. 

VEGAN M*LK WITH GOOEY CARAMEL 40%
Ingredients: raw Peruvian cacao, coconut milk, coconut sugar, cashew nuts, coconut nectar, pure maple syrup, pink Himalayan mineral salt.

Tastes of coconut and tangy chocolate.  There is sweetness from the caramel, but it is not overly sweet.  This does have a dark chocolate taste which combined with the caramel is very nice.  We really enjoyed this one and is our favourite raw chocolate to date.

FINAL THOUGHTS
We think raw and roasted cacao have taste and mouth feel differences, as with any food.  We think we do get more flavour notes and layers to roasted cacao, but the raw cacao was nice.  Be Happy was much nicer than the previous raw chocolate we had tried, and we really liked the Gooey Caramel bar.