S'mores Cupcakes

In honor of the cooler weather, the return of Sunday football and campfires everywhere, I've been working on a new fall cake flavor. It's the perfect slice of heaven to brighten up your cozy evening at home on the couch, or add some flavor to your tailgate parties. The cake is a moist and delicious graham cracker pound cake that is designed to reflect the sweet and nutty flavor of Nabisco's classic grahams. It is stuffed full with a smooth and creamy dark chocolate ganache and topped with a toasted marshmallow frosting.

I went classic with the garnish and snapped off a piece of a Hershey's bar to place alongside a graham cracker. I usually prefer to 1) garnish with something either homemade or fresh and b) not use Hershey's chocolate in general but I made an exception for this one. Hershey's bars are just oh-so-s'mores-y, plus within the past year Hershey announced they are moving towards being fair trade which makes my certified chocolate loving heart very happy. 

But before I garnished, I toasted that gooey marshmallow frosting to give it an almost brǔleéd finish. 

  

And here's a shot of the chocolate lava center just in case you still needed convincing. I personally believe that s'mores don't taste as good unless you get them all over your face. The cupcake version is no exception!

Reflections on Fair Trade Chocolate

A year ago this week I did the craziest, coolest, most notable thing that I had done in my life (uhh..still). I flew to Lima, Peru in search of answers about the fair trade industry, and then spent three days on an organic cacao farm in the middle of the jungle. I have never learned so much in one short week, or had one individual make such a lasting impression on me as my dear farmer, Carlos. Now, it's a year later. I can still remember how I felt during my stay in Peru and the emotional 'high' I came back to the States with.

This week I have been  re-reading my original post about my trip and remembering all of the things I learned and all of the wonderful people that I met. Fair trade, as opposed to 'organic', is not a buzz word. It is not a marketing ploy, it is a trading system regulated by organizations like the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the United Nations. It is a system put in place to protect the people who do not have the resources to protect themselves in an international market. Crops like coffee, chocolate and sugar cane biologically cannot be grown in certain areas of the world, yet they are consumed in every area of the world. This is where the problems start.

I could go on and on about the importance and ethical arguments, but that's not what this post is about. This week is about remembering Carlos and his family, his community in Echarate, Peru and the kindness they showed me: a random American girl with a college education and an iPhone. Fair trade is a hard thing to understand and shell out the money to support if you haven't seen its effects first hand. Which is why I'm reminding myself of what I learned, but most importantly who I met and who is still affecting my daily life one year later.

Fair Trade and Organic Ingredients

Taking a brief detour from cakes today to talk about the importance of fair trade ingredients. I know, I know. You've heard all the hype and seen the shelves full of products sporting 'fair' lables and 'organically grown' claims. It's easy to assume that the extra money they ask for in exchange for those products gets lost somewhere along the supply chain and never really makes it to the farmer. When you're in the store deciding which brand of coffee to buy to feed your daily addiction, or which ingredients to buy in bulk for your bakery, it's even easier to have a 'cheaper the better' kind of attitude.

Now I'm a poor college student, and if you look in my pantry (ahem, cabinet...) there is a 100% chance you will find some kind of snack chocked full of preservatives and bad-for-me things. Pop-tarts are my shameless weakness. I've always thought that eating organic and using all-organic ingredients in my cakes was a great idea for that far away day when I have disposable income to burn at Whole Foods. That is, until I got the opportunity to travel to Peru for Spring break this year. I've been writing my thesis all year on the cocoa trade in Latin America, and received a grant from my school to go to Peru and investigate the feasibility of fair trade cocoa there. Suddenly,  'disposable income' took on a whole new meeting.

I know what you're thinking: "Here's comes the sermon about only buying fair trade." I don't do that myself, and until I do, I will never claim it to be the only right option. I just want to clear up a lot of the speculation about buying fair trade and organic, simply because I had the fortune of meeting someone who grows fair trade cocoa for a living and he completely changed my perspective. Meet Carlos Valero, cocoa farmer extraordinaire:

He grows organic cocoa classified as 'fino de aroma' in the jungle of Echarati, Peru. He took me in for a few days and taught me everything he knows about growing cocoa: 

Like fertilizing his trees with organic compost and minerals,

harvesting the pods and splitting them open to free the cocoa beans inside,

drying and fermenting the beans,

hand picking only the best ones to de-shell and toast in a kettle over an open fire,

grinding them by hand to form a paste, 

molding the paste into chocolate bricks,

and finally, melting the bricks and adding spices to make the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever had.

In the wise words of Carlos, he makes, "Chocolate pura, como nuestras vidas." Pure chocolate, like our lives. Carlos has everything he could ever want because of his organic cocoa farm, and he still lives below the standards that most of us would consider 'normal'. After meeting him, touring his farm and neighboring ones that were significantly worse off, I realize how important organic and fair trade produce is to the farmers who grow it. They are more organized, more educated, and very passionate about delivering a quality product. 

So whether your reason is wanting to put fewer chemicals and preservatives into your body, doing your part to further the development of agrarian societies, or simply because you believe it is the right thing to do, I hope I made you think twice about buying fair trade and organic today! I promise to use only the best quality, non-slave labor, organic cocoa in all of my cakes in order to start doing my part. As I become more successful, I hope to add free range dairy and egg products to that list, as well. Buying fair trade and organic is a small price to pay to make a big difference in the lives of many, including yourself!