Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

chocolate

Mars Teams Up With Perfect Day to Launch Animal-Free Chocolate Bar

Today Mars announced the launch of a new animal-free chocolate under the brand CO2COA. Developed in partnership with precision fermentation specialist Perfect Day, the chocolate is available today via the product’s new website.

While Mars already offers a range of vegan chocolate bars, this is the first bar from a major candy brand that replaces animal dairy with identical proteins produced through precision fermentation. A German startup by the name of QOA announced last year they are using precision fermentation to develop new chocolate, but their focus is on replacing cocoa rather than animal inputs. The Mars deal follows an announcement made by Perfect Day and Betterland Foods in March of an animal-free chocolate bar.

The new candy is available only via a new website and “while supplies last,” which tells me Mars is trialing the concept before committing to a longer-term product launch (and rollout at retail). It’s reminiscent of the toe-in-the-water that Starbucks took with its testing of Perfect Day’s animal-free dairy. My guess is the company will keep a close on customer response and, possibly, eye a wider rollout in time if the response is positive.

For Perfect Day, the Mars deal is yet another in a growing list of partnerships the company has inked with consumer-facing brands to utilize their animal-free dairy in products such as gelato, chocolate milk, and protein powders. The company also continues to periodically add new products under their own consumer brand subsidiary, Urgent Company, adding protein powders late last year and acquiring another ice cream brand, Coolhaus, to add to their ice cream lineup alongside Brave Robot.

WNWN’s Alt-Chocolate Could Be A Win-Win-Win for the Planet, Workers, and Consumers

Willy Wonka has nothing on food futurists Ahrum Pak and Dr. Johnny Drain. While there may be no golden tickets inside their alt-chocolate, they promise all of the taste of the real thing without any environmental harm and labor abuse. It’s not a trick—it’s pure science with more than a touch of creative artistry.

London-based WNWN (that’s Win-Win), the company behind this cacao-free treat, uses a version of fermentation that’s been around for thousands of years instead of precision fermentation, a more complex and costly process that is challenging to scale. “Our approach is rooted in traditional fermentation techniques.  We use a suite of microbes and a process that is not too dissimilar to how a baker might work or how a winemaker would work,” CTO Drain told The Spoon In a recent interview.

In WNWN’s approach, a substrate (in this case, British Barley) is combined with an assortment of microbes to produce a brown paste that skips the shelling and roasting process of traditional chocolate making. The paste then goes through the standard chocolate-making process, which includes running the paste through a melanger machine and placing the finished product into individual molds.

While British Barley is being used initially as a substrate, Drain says that other cereal grains (including ones that are non-gluten) and other plant-based ingredients can be used for the alt-cholate fermentation.

“The more you learn about some of the things you love, the more you learn horrifying stories,” Pak, a former executive in the finance industry, says of her company’s dual mission. “Because of the global food chain, the way we grow food now is unstable and unethical in many ways.”

“Chocolate has a truly dark side with more than a million child laborers estimated to work in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where three-quarters of the world’s cacao is grown, and more CO2 emissions pound for pound than cheese, lamb or chicken,” CTO Drain said.

Pak and Drain landed on chocolate partially by accident but also because of the limited number of companies tackling this popular treat. Drain, a master fermenter, who went to school in Bournville, the company town built by Cadbury, recalls the aroma of chocolate when he would head out from his classes and feels it’s part of his legacy. That makes him a lot more like Willy Wonka than the fictitious Ronald Dahl character. Before his work with WNWN, Dr. Drain traveled the world, working with noted restaurants and developing new flavors based on his fermentation skill.

“We are in a golden age of food science,” the company CTO said. “We’re just starting to break down what is in a bar of chocolate to characterize it and create a chemical fingerprint. We explored how we end up getting a chocolate flavor profile that is in a cocoa bean.”

For possible legal and marketing reasons, Drain and Pak said they cannot call their product chocolate and have toyed with a few names, including “chok.” Beyond selling it in retail, initially in the form of a thin or wafer, Pak believes there is a solid B2B play where WNWN’s “chocolate” can be used by companies that use chocolate on cookies, cakes, or anything that currently uses cacao-based chocolate.

WNWN won’t stop with revolutionizing the world of chocolate. The company plans to explore how other foods can be safe from changing climates, biodiversity loss, and poor working conditions. These include coffee, tea, and vanilla, which have supply chains mired in unethical and unsustainable practices.

WNWN’s alt-chocolate will be available starting May 18 exclusively on the company’s website. Each box sells for £10 GB (about $12.50 U.S.), on a par with premium dark chocolates. 

Voyage Foods is Creating the Future of Coffee, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate

I don’t want to live a world where coffee and chocolate don’t exist. First off, I love all of these things dearly. Secondly, I imagine if the supply of these precious items runs out, this will lead to utter chaos amongst self-proclaimed coffee and chocolate “addicts.” Unfortunately, climate change threatens the ability to continue to produce these crops to the extent that they are produced today. However, a company called Voyage Foods wants to “future-proof” these foods by creating sustainable alternatives that taste exactly like coffee and chocolate and peanut butter.

To understand how exactly Voyage Foods is doing this, I spoke with the CEO and founder of the company, Adam Maxwell. Founded about a year ago, Voyage Foods focuses on foods that pose environmental, ethical or health issues. Maxwell explained that there are already many companies making vegan products in response to a demand for sustainable products, and said “There is a tunnel vision kind of focus on really where we should put effort in the food system.” So many other parts of the food system are being ignored, and this is why Voyage Foods landed on coffee, cacao, and peanut butter.

The massive global demand for coffee and cacao has led to some negative consequences like illegal deforestation, child labor, and increased water usage. The land available for growing these crops (which can only be grown in certain regions) is shrinking. “The production of these things is going to go down and down,” Maxell said. “The world’s consumption is projected to go up, so part of it’s how can we archive these things for the future?”

While there aren’t necessarily environmental concerns associated with peanut butter, it has other problems; approximately 1 percent of the population in the U.S., or about 3 million people, are allergic to peanuts.

Voyage Foods sent The Spoon a sample of its bean-free coffee and cacao-free milk chocolate bar. I first took a swig of the coffee, and it tasted like a smooth cold brew coffee. It also had unique tasting notes that I had never tasted in coffee, leaving a slight smokey mesquite flavor in the back of my throat (for me, this was a good thing). I appreciated that the coffee had no acidity and thoroughly enjoyed it poured over ice with a splash of oat milk. Maxwell could not disclose what ingredients were in the alternative coffee but did say it still contained caffeine.

The milk chocolate bar was fully vegan and made from a base of grape seeds, shea butter, sunflower meal, and a few other ingredients. It certainly tasted like chocolate and reminded me of the milk candy bars I would eat as a child, like a Hershey’s bar. I am someone who typically only eats dark chocolate, but was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and was sad when it was all gone.

When asked about how Voyage Foods makes all of its products, Maxwell responded with “A lot of our process and our technology is, how do we manipulate different feedstocks into the same outputs? How do you roast something that is not a cocoa bean, to make it taste like cocoa?”. Voyage Foods starts with whole food ingredients, like sunflower meal or grape seeds, and manipulates them in a certain way to achieve flavors found in the products they are trying to mimic. Maxwell also said the company’s facilities look similar to existing chocolate, coffee, and peanut butter production facilities.

Although I did not get to try it, Voyage Foods’ peanut butter product is made from various grains and seeds. This product is slated to be the first to launch and available for consumers to purchase in early 2022. The chocolate will likely launch in mid-2022. I would love to get my hands on more of Voyage Foods’ coffee, but we will all, unfortunately, have to likely wait until 2023 for this product.

Chocomake’s Countertop Device Lets You Make Your Own Chocolate

One of the more exciting aspects of food tech is its increasing ability to push food production to the edge. Instead of food being created in central factories and shipped around the world, advances in consumer appliances and the internet of things means that you can create more types of food more easily in your own kitchen.

Take chocolate. Between getting all of the proper ingredients, mixing, tempering and cooling, making your own chocolate can be a complicated endeavor. It’s much easier and faster to buy a pre-made chocolate bar from the store.

And while Israeli startup Chocomake may not take all of the work out of making chocolate at home, it promises to get pretty close. The Chocomake (which will soon be changing its name because evidently some other company holds that moniker) is a connected countertop chocolate maker. Choose a recipe from the accompanying app, add the ingredients and Chocomake takes care of all the mixing and tempering. When you’re done, pour your homemade chocolate into your preferred mold to cool and then eat.

Chocomake is still in the prototype phase, so a manufactured device wouldn’t even be available for another year or so. Liora Omer, Founder of Chocomake, told me by phone this week that the company is targeting people with dietary restrictions (need lower sugar or vegan options) and foodies who are interested in putting their own spin on chocolate. Though Omer wouldn’t share a specific price, the company will make its money by selling the hardware as well as kits for specific recipes.

But Omer was also quick to point out that Chocomake will be open, so you won’t be locked into a particular ecosystem a la a K-cup. This openness also means that customers will be able to customize chocolate recipes to their liking.

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because CocoTerra is doing much the same thing. It too is a countertop device that lets you make your own chocolate (it too also doesn’t have a specific price yet). Omer said that the biggest difference between Chocomake and CocoTerra is that CocoTerra grinds cocoa nibs (Chocomake does not) and CocoTerra only dispenses into a ring mold (Chocomake’s output can be poured into different molds).

The bigger question looming over both devices, however, is one of convenience. Between direct-to-consumer channels from high-end CPG brands and the increasing ubiquity of online grocery shopping, getting high-end chocolate delivered to your door is easier than ever. Even if Chocomake takes most of the work out of making chocolate, will people still want to do any work to get their choco fix? Especially if it means spending a few hundred bucks on a single-use device that takes up real estate in the kitchen?

Having said that, this type of food production on the edge could be more appealing to small businesses. It’s not hard to see small coffee shop or grocery store chains buying one of these to make their own customized chocolate blend that can be branded and sold in stores.

Or who knows, maybe Chocomake can figure out a way to turn your homemade chocolate into a filament that can be run through a chocolate 3D printer to make something super sweet at home.

This Swiss Company Can Now 3D Print Tons of Personalized Chocolate

It’s February 14, which means there’s a good chance you’ll give or receive chocolate at some point today. The chances that that chocolate will be 3D printed? Slim to nil.

But all that could soon change thanks to Barry Callebaut AG, a company that makes roughly one-fourth of all the world’s chocolate, including that used by well-known brands like Hershey’s and Nestlé. According to a press release from the Swiss corporation, it will work with gourmet clients to let them print personalized chocolate designs en masse through Mona Lisa, its chocolate decoration brand. In short — Barry Callebaut will help brands print customized chocolate creations.

Business partners can develop their own custom designs and specify size parameters for their chocolate. They’ll then share those with Barry Callebaut, which will print the custom chocolates in large quantities at its Mona Lisa 3D Studio. Barry Callebaut can print thousands of a particular design succession thanks to its new 3D printing tech, which keeps melted chocolate at the perfect temperature for speedy printing.

Chocoholics will have to wait a while before they can buy these 3D printed creations in stores, though. Barry Callebaut will first work with high-end clients, like hotels, pastry chefs and coffee chains. Its first customer will be Dutch hotel chain Van der Valk. Down the road, Barry Callebaut will open up its tech to use with manufacturers such as Nestlé and Hershey.

For aspiring chocolatiers who don’t want to wait, there are some home options. Mycusini is a countertop chocolate printer (though it’s only available in Europe). The Mayku Formbox lets you print DIY chocolate molds at home. And while it’s not available yet, but the Cocoterra lets you make bean-to-bar chocolate right in your kitchen.

Barry Callebaut’s tech is perfectly situated to tap into a trend we at the Spoon have been seeing everywhere lately: personalization. The chocolate-maker can’t produce individualized chocolates for every person, obviously — the Mona Lisa 3D Studio will be printing chocolates on a large scale. But with this new 3D printing service, businesses can get more creative with their sugary marketing and branding efforts. For example, Starbucks could make a line of hot chocolate sticks (it’s a thing!) in the shape of their signature coffee cups. Or your favorite hotel line could make pillow chocolates shaped like pillows!

As consumer demand for personalization grows, CPG companies are hustling to figure out how to tap into the trend — even when manufacturing in massive quantities. In fact, that’s one of the questions we’ll be tackling at Customize, our food personalization summit happening in NYC on February 27th! If you want to come, use code SPOON15 to grab 15 percent off your tickets.

Mycusini, the First Consumer-Priced 3D Chocolate Printer, Begins Shipping in Europe

While the future of 3D food printing will include everything from printed bread to plant-based steaks, the reality is printing globs of goo for your meal might not be an appetizing thought for most consumers.

But what if it were chocolate?

If you live in my home, where pretty much everyone is a certified chocoholic, there’s a good chance you’d find some takers. Luckily for us, a consumer-priced 3D chocolate printer went from idea to reality recently when the mycusini home 3D chocolate printer started shipping in Europe.

Priced at €298 (~$320), the mycusini is the only chocolate printer on the market today shipping below the $2,000 price point. The product debuted on Kickstarter in June and went on to raise €20,000 (~$22,185 USD). Originally, mycusini was scheduled to ship by the holidays, but the product is weeks ahead of schedule and, according company spokesperson Gerd Funk, regular orders for the Kickstarter were all fulfilled at the end of last month.

Part of the reason Print2Taste, the company behind the mycusini, has been able to get the price so low is that they first developed a professional 3D chocolate printer, the Procusini, in 2015. Since that time, the company has continued to iterate and improve on the Procusini (currently in its fourth generation), including the development of the “choco” ingredient capsules that are similar to the ones used in the mycusini.

As I wrote this past June:

“So how does the mycusini work? Basically like all 3D food printers: by extruding small amounts of material (chocolate in this case) layer by layer. The major downside to the mycusini is it, at least initially, requires the use of custom-made “Choco refills” as the printing material, which are essentially crayon-shaped chocolate cylinders that fit into a stainless steel dispensing cartridge. A single-source supplier is never ideal, and being reliant on a small startup out of Germany for chocolate refills likely means potentially long wait times before you can start printing your next confection.”

While I still would prefer not to rely on a proprietary refill system, I think it would be worth the investment for those who are attracted to the idea of creating elaborate chocolate designs. Because of its low price, I could see the mycusini as a low-risk way for some chefs or chocolatiers to dip their toe into the 3D food printing waters.

So what would you print with the mycusini? The software allows you to freehand draw designs or pick from a pre-designed template, of which there are over 200 designs created by Print2Taste’s in-house chef. According to the company, in the future mycusini users will be able to upload their own designs created through CAD software and shared on an online marketplace.

Like I said, I could see some takers in my home for a product like the mycusini, but because the product is only shipping in Europe, I’ll have to wait before I put it on my holiday wish list.

For those of you living in Europe, the mycusini might make a good last-minute holiday gift for the chocolate nut or aspiring chocolatier in your life, especially since the product looks be on sale through the holidays at €250.

SKS Hot Seat: CocoTerra’s CEO on Why You (Yes, You) Should Make Chocolate From Scratch At Home

When you think about things you can make at home — bread, pasta, juice — chocolate is probably not something that jumps to mind. It’s a complicated, time-intensive process that takes skill and special equipment to master.

But what if there was a machine that could do it all for you? CocoTerra is a new startup lowering the barrier to entry to home chocolate making with the world’s first countertop chocolate-making machine. The device lets even the most basic home cooks create their own bespoke chocolate in just two hours.

We were so intrigued by this idea that we chose CocoTerra as one of the finalists for the SKS 2019 Startup Showcase, which just happened this week. In between giving out (very tasty) samples of chocolate, CocoTerra CEO Nate Saal sat down in the SKS Hot Seat to answer a few rapid-fire questions on his device, the potential of personalization, and how he envisions the future of the food ecosystem.

Check out the video below! And keep your eyes peeled for more videos from SKS 2019 coming your way soon.

SKS Hot Seat Interview: Nate Saal of CocoTerra

Nestlé Upcycling Cacoa Pod Leftovers Into New Chocolate Without any Added Sugar

Nestlé has created a KitKat bar that combines two things we love here at The Spoon: chocolate and upcycling. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Swiss candy maker has developed a way to use leftover material from cocoa plants to sweeten dark chocolate with no additional sugar.

How is this confectionary wizardry possible? Bloomberg writes, “The food company is using a patented technique to turn the white pulp that covers cocoa beans into a powder that naturally contains sugar.” Traditionally, this pulp has been thrown out, but by upcycling it, Nestlé can sweeten the bars without adding more sugar. This 70 percent dark chocolate KitKat bar will have “as much as 40 percent less sugar than most equivalent bars with added sugar,” according to Bloomberg, and will go on sale in Japan this fall.

An amusing sidenote to this story is that this discovery seems to be a bit of serendipity. Nestlé said it hadn’t set out to reduce the sugar, but was focused more on developing new ways to make chocolate using more of the cocoa pod. But we know that the company, facing consumers who are more health conscious and rising obesity rates, has been working on reducing sugars in its products. A little over a year ago Nestlé debuted a process of restructuring sugar that gave it more surface area and thus required using less of it while maintaining the same level of sweetness.

And Nestlé isn’t alone in looking to satisfy our global sweet tooth without sacrificing flavor. Israeli startup DouxMatok raised $22 million last month for its technology that uses silica to help sugar diffuse more efficiently in our mouths, so less is required. And in May, Singapore-based Nutrition Innovation raised $5 million for its Nucane, which is a lower glycemic sugar made via a different type of processing at sugar mills.

Nestlé said its new process could expand beyond dark chocolate and into milk and white chocolate as well. Even sweeter than the reduction in sugar is the reduction in food waste. Hopefully other companies will have cravings to follow suit.

Meet mycusini, a Chocolate 3D Printer for Under €200

Sure, 3D printing chocolate in your kitchen may not be practical, but it’s certainly cool, right?

At least that’s what I’ll try to convince my wife if and when the mycusini, a new chocolate 3D printer for the home, ever makes its way stateside. The mycusini, which is currently on sale as part of a new Kickstarter campaign from German startup called Print2Taste for €198 (about $225), is expected to start shipping to backers by the end of year.

Like many, I’m a bit skeptical when it comes to crowdfunded hardware projects nowadays, but the folks behind the mcusini have already proven they can deliver. Print2Taste got its start with the Bocusini, a food 3D printer that launched on Kickstarter back in 2015 and shipped to backers pretty much on time. Since that time, what was essentially a group of food researchers from the University of Weihenstephan-Triesdorf has established themselves as a legit 3D food printing startup, taking their original Bocusini and making a professional edition called the Procusini.

All that experience finally led them to think about creating a true home 3D printer.

“With our many years of experience in the professional field of 3D food printing, we want to make the benefits of this amazing technology available to everybody,” said Print2Taste’s Eva Schlosser. “With mycusini, consumers will get access to the creative world of 3D Choco printing at a very attractive price.”

So how does the mycusini work? Basically like all 3D food printers: by extruding small amounts of material (chocolate in this case) layer by layer.  The major downside to the mycusini is it, at least initially, requires the use of custom-made “Choco refills” as the printing material, which are essentially crayon-shaped chocolate cylinders that fit into a stainless steel dispensing cartridge. A single-source supplier is never ideal, and being reliant on a small startup out of Germany for chocolate refills likely means potentially long wait times before you can start printing your next confection.

In case you’re wondering why you can’t just use your own chocolate, it’s because the “Choco” is designed specifically by the company for printing and, according to the company, isn’t technically chocolate. From the Kickstarter:

“mycusini® 3D Choco is a chocolate grease glaze. This means that instead of cocoa butter, other vegetable fats, such as coconut fat, are used so that curing takes place more quickly and thus higher objects can be produced. 

This recipe seemed to make more sense for practical use compared to a chocolate that first had to be tempered in a tempering device and then does not cure quickly enough when working with the mycusini.”

The company indicated they are working on a true chocolate refill (presumably using cocoa butter), but they have not given a specific timeline.

You can see mycusini in action below:

mycusini - easy creative PIRI - Schokoladendrucker - 3D food printer - 3D Drucker Schokolade

The company promises to start shipping the mycusini to backers before Christmas, but if you’re like me and live in the States, you’ll have to wait. That’s because the mycusini is initially only available in Europe, New Zealand and Australia. No word yet on if and when the it will ship stateside, but I’ve reached out to Print2Taste and will update this when I learn more.

Meet CocoTerra, an All-In-One Craft Chocolate Machine for the Home

Over the past few years, there’s been a steady procession of all-in-one food making machines marching their way into our homes. From beer-brewing appliances to flatbread machines to cheese making robots, there’s been no shortage of interesting new appliances to help us make different types of food or drink.

However, despite all the innovative new food makers coming to market, one category that’s been fairly bereft of innovation is chocolate…at least until now. That’s because a new startup by the name of CocoTerra is planning to introduce a new countertop craft chocolate maker that compresses chocolate-making from a process that normally requires a handful of different machines and a good half a day into a couple hour exercise on a single appliance.

CocoTerra’s eponymously named chocolate maker, which debuted this weekend at the Bay Area Maker Faire, takes the user through most of the chocolate making process: grinding, refining, conching, tempering and molding.

Those familiar with chocolate making will notice that the one step that is missing from above is the roasting of the cacao beans, and that’s because the machine couldn’t quite fit the entire process into one appliance. CocoTerra users start their chocolate making sessions by putting in roasted cacao nibs which they can purchase online at Amazon or through the CocoTerra app. For all but the most hardcore wannabe chocolate makers, I think skipping the roasting and winnowing of the cacao beans is fine, but true gluttons for punishment who want to go truly bean-to-bar can add a Behmor roaster and Champion Juicer down the line.

You can watch the CocoTerra in action below:

The device is the brainchild of Nate Saal, a former networking technology executive who first started working on creating a home chocolate making appliance over five years ago. In that time, the company has filed for patents (they have been issued one in Japan) and started working with noted product design firm Ammunition (previous clients include Ember and Cafe-X) to finalize the product.

I asked Saal who he thought the audience was for his chocolate making appliance, and said there were two main targets: First are those who already make chocolate at home the old-fashioned way but who could use the CocoTerra to experiment with new recipes and and to make chocolate must faster than the traditional method. Second are those who know nothing about making chocolate but would be use a machine like the CocoTerra who automates the process and makes it more approachable.

I think it’s this second audience that represents the biggest opportunity. After all, while chocolate is universally loved, it’s something hardly anyone makes at home because the process is just too complicated and time-consuming. If the CocoTerra can make the process of creating craft chocolate as easy as, say, making bread or ice cream, there might be a fairly big opportunity down the road.

Saal told me the company plans to sell the appliance as well as their own line of ingredients such as the cacao nibs, as well as a lineup of accessories such as chocolate molds.

“We not only want this to be a chocolate making system, but also a chocolatier system as well,” said Saal.

For you craft chocolate newbies, chocolatiering is what happens when you turn chocolate into a finished confection through the process of adding nuts, adding cream or sculpting it into an interesting shape.

If this all this sounds great to you and you’re ready to become a chocolate maker (or chocolatier), there’s just one problem: you’ll have to wait a little while. That’s because the CocoTerra team hasn’t announced the ship date.  While Saal wouldn’t give me any hints as to when exactly the product will be ready for consumers, my guess is sometime in 2020.

Pricing is also still a mystery, but the CocoTerra will probably need to be under $500, and hopefully it prices in at $299 or less.  Higher than that and I think they may have trouble convincing those who are chocolate-making curious to make such a big investment.

Ethos is a Chocolate Valentine to GMOs

No matter your feelings about Valentine’s Day, the holiday is a great excuse to eat chocolate. I’m partial to dark chocolate peanut butter cups myself, but maybe this year I’ll branch out and take a bite out of Ethos Chocolate, a new line of chocolate bars on a mission.

Ethos is part of A Fresh Look, a nonprofit coalition of farmers that want to pull back the veil on one of the most polarizing words in food: GMOs. The bars all have cacao from the Dominican Republic, with added beet sugar for sweetness. There are four flavors, all with inspiring yet semi-cryptic names:

  • The Optimist is the simplest flavor, with just cacao and beet sugar.
  • The Survivor features papaya, which was nearly wiped out in Hawaii due to a virus. However, they were saved thanks to genetic modifications that made the fruit resistant to the virus.
  • The Trendsetter is full of blended apples, and highlights how GMO farming created non-browning apples that stay fresh longer, thus reducing food waste.
  • The Hero has orange oil and draws attention to the detrimental impact of citrus greening disease on Florida oranges, and the GMOs that farmers are using to make them resistant.

Fittingly, chocolate is one of the foods that needs GMO technology more than most. With climate change (read: warmer temperatures, less water, and new pests), scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have predicted that cacao could go extinct as early as 2050. For choco-holics, that’s very bad news.

To give cacao plants a better shot, scientists are turning to GMOs to make them more resistant to pests and adaptable to shifting temperatures. In fact, the University of Berkeley and Mars, Inc. (of Snickers and M&M’s fame) recently teamed up to research how CRISPR could alter the DNA of cacao plants to make them survive hotter and drier climates. (No, CRISPR is not the same thing as GMO — but that’s a whole other post.)

I’m honestly not sure if this is pure marketing gimmick or if it could actually help make people more comfortable with GMOs.

The Ethos website has a lot of flash and jargon, but it doesn’t exactly feature a lot of GMO facts and figures, and the chocolate packaging doesn’t have any obvious “Made with GMOs” brand. In fact, it’s not even clear if the Ethos bars actually use genetically modified oranges, papayas, or apples (and as of yet there’s no GM cacao plant), though according to Business Insider they do use GM beets.

Maybe the point is to let the chocolates speak for themselves. There’s a lot of fearmongering around GMOs, despite the fact that they have been unequivocally declared safe by numerous scientific bodies. What better way to make something less frightening than with tasty chocolate? Once people are on a sugar high, then they can peruse the packaging to get their dose of pro-GMO messaging.

In honor of V-Day, Ethos is letting you send one chocolate to that special someone. Because nothing says love like ensuring that we’ll have chocolate for years to come.

Dessert Meets Tech and It’s Love at First Bite

It’s February 14, which means sappy love songs, heart-shaped chocolate boxes, and . . . 3D printing?

As Michael Wolf predicted in his prescient post “10 Trends Shaping the Future of Cooking in 2018,” dessert-tech is a market that’s growing fast. From intelligent ovens that speed up the cookie-making process to a whole mess of ice cream innovation, we’ve rounded up some of the sweetest (sorry) pairings in dessert-tech for your V-day holiday pleasure.

Desserts On Demand:

Some chocolate made-to-order ice cream from Solo Gelato.

Solo Gelato

This Israeli-based startup is basically applying the Keurig system to desserts. Currently, their capsules containing ice cream mixture are quite a bit bigger than the coffee pods, though the two systems work in a very similar way: after the Solo Gelato capsules are inserted, the machine “freezes and expels air” into them. Sixty seconds later, out comes fresh gelato. The company’s website also boasts a cloud-based database and “state of the art mechanical and cooling solutions.” Solo Gelato currently boasts a lineup of 24 flavors, with offerings including sorbet, traditional ice cream, and even boozy treats for the 21+ crowd.

Churned-to-order ice cream made with the freezing power of liquid nitrogen has been around for a few years. However, bringing on-demand ice cream into your home, Solo Gelato is hoping to “disrupt the ice cream industry” in the very way that coffee pods disrupted the coffee industry. (Side question: to what extent have coffee pods really done that?)

Tigoût

Another dessert company piggybacking off the Keurig model is the Argentinian startup Tigoût—though really, they’re more like a souped-up Easy-Bake Oven. How it works: pop two capsules into their designated slots in the top of the machine (I’m assuming one is liquid and one is dry ingredients, but no details are given). In just a few minutes (again, no details on cook time are given) you get a freshly baked pastry. According to LinkedIn, the startup is preparing to launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and has a patent in process.

Tigoût also has an integrated app which allows you to order more pastry capsules, monitor your baking process and set alarms. As of now, Tigoût offers seven different types of dessert capsules ranging from chocolate fudge to a caramel “volcano.”

CHiP’s cookie oven promises fresh, homemade cookies in 10 minutes.

CHiP Cookie Oven

What if instead of having a warm, melty chocolate chip cookie in, say, an hour—taking into account the time to soften the butter, make the dough, shape it, and bake it—you could get your mitts on one in only 10 minutes? That’s the promise of CHiP, a smart oven that uses patent-pending convection cooking technology to speed up the cookie baking process.

For all the tech nerds out there, CHiP is also wifi-enabled and can integrate into your smart-home system. Customers can order cookie dough pods in a variety of flavors, including vegan and gluten-free options, which are clad in biodegradable parchment paper for easy insertion into the oven. Milk not included.

Less Sugar, Less Dairy

Healthier options are another big trend in the dessert-meets-tech sphere, especially when it comes to ice cream. Vegan, non-dairy, high-protein and low-sugar desserts are gaining popularity, as proven by the runaway success of HaloTop. The low-calorie treat, which became the No. 1 best-selling ice cream in U.S. grocery stores in 2017, and other ice cream brands are scrambling to cash in on the healthier trend. Plant-based desserts such as the coconut-based ice cream NadaMoo!, non-dairy Ben & Jerry’s, and a whole host of vegan ‘screams have been rising rapidly in popularity.

NadaMoo! is a coconut-based ice cream based in Austin, TX.

However, not all health-conscious ice creams come in pint form. Veru is a company that uses patent-protected flash-freezing technology to make ice pops that are low-calorie, additive free, and (apparently) still manage to taste good. They make use of our old friend liquid nitrogen to freeze their ice cream mixes to temperatures as low as -196 degrees Celsius in just seconds. This quick freeze allows them to preserve maximum flavor so that they can cut calories without sacrificing on taste.

3D Printing

Another pioneer in the frozen-dessert field is Pixsweet, an L.A.-based company that participated in the Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase last year. Pixsweet makes customizable, 3D-printed popsicles, so you can turn everything from brand logos to unicorns into edible pops.

The pop possibilities are endless!

Pastry chefs are another group embracing the edible 3D printing trend. One of the most popular, who has also become an internet darling, is Dinara Kasko, an architect-turned-pastry chef known across the web for her sculptural desserts (just check out her 555,000 Instagram followers). Kasko uses computer modeling software to make intricate molds, which she then 3D prints and uses to make her custom cakes. The popularity of her desserts and the customizable pops from Pixsweet suggest 3D printing might play a significant role in the future of dessert.

Dessert Meal Subscription Kits

It seems that no matter your lifestyle and dietary preference, there’s a meal kit for that. Now sweet lovers can sate their sugary cravings with Sweetbake, a food subscription service from Nestle (its first) that caters to those with a sweet tooth. For $35 per month, subscribers get two ready-to-bake kits—just add milk, butter, and eggs. At first glance, it’s like a fancier version of boxed brownies, only you get the added thrill of receiving mail. However, Sweetbake’s repertoire extends far beyond chocolate chip cookies; their kits have ingredients for everything from gingerbread biscotti to peppermint brownie cups.

One of sweetbake’s dessert subscription boxes.

They’re not the only company breaking into the dessert delivery kit sphere: companies foodstirs and SoBakeable also offer baking subscriptions. The latter even provides videos with recipes and baking tips for those who download the companion app.

What’s Next?

One dessert-meets-tech innovation we’d love to see at the Spoon is a home bean-to-bar chocolate-maker. As contributor Allen Weiner has pointed out, “the home chocolate market appears to be a large, untapped opportunity.” Tech entrepreneurs, smart kitchen gadget makers, and startup upstarts—we’ve got your next project ready for you.

Did we miss anyone doing exciting things in the dessert/tech field? Tell us in the comments!