Ook Bar will serve as teaching tool and fundraiser for students
Dark, roasty and with a hint of earthy complexity – the newly launched Ook Bar isn’t just a sweet treat; it’s a celebration of NAIT’s culinary spirit.
Two years ago, Culinary Arts instructors Curtis Jones (Culinary Arts ’08) and David Whitaker (Cooking ’83) travelled to Meulan, France, just outside Paris, to visit the chocolatiers at Callebaut’s Cacao Barry lab. Their goal was to create a versatile chocolate blend that would be unique to NAIT as a teaching tool and a product for sale.
In March, that journey culminated in the first bars hitting the shelves for purchase at the Artisanal Food Market.
“They have a whole wall of [cocoa bean] samples with different characteristics,” says Whitaker (pictured above) of the renowned Callebaut facility. "We got to taste chocolate from those different beans and get ... an understanding of all the different taste profiles we could incorporate into our chocolate.”
Callebaut offered the opportunity through its former “Or Noir” initiative, a program that met the needs of chocolatiers and chefs looking to create high-quality, bespoke chocolate blends. For NAIT, the result is a blend of 50% Mexican and 50% Ecuadorian chocolate.
“We wanted a crowd pleaser,” says Jones (pictured below). “And I wanted something with fruity notes. So we combined the fruitiness and the florals, and it has this little bit of earthiness to it.”
NAIT ordered 500 kilograms of the chocolate, or enough to make 50,000 Ook Bars.
But all that chocolate will lead to more than just bars. It’s also serving as a teaching tool for Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry Arts students who will learn from instructors about chocolate-making, flavour notes of custom chocolate, and how to work with it.
“It’s a story of single-origin chocolate and the possibilities of how to come up with your own blend, your own custom flavours,” says Jones. “We talk with students about that and where these flavour notes are coming from.”
Students will also learn about the intricacies of working with the material, including the process of tempering – melting and cooling to align fat crystals to ensure proper texture and snap – and moulding. They'll also help prepare bars for sale.
Overall, it’s rare insight into working with master-crafted chocolate.
“When people talk about confections, everybody thinks about chocolate,” says Rodvie Barnachea, a second-year Culinary Arts student. “It was cool seeing how it’s created from the start – and then ... eventually serving it to the public.
“The whole process was awesome to see and learn about, and that’s exactly what I wanted to learn going into this program.”
Experiences like this can lead students to exciting, rewarding careers, say the instructors. Master chocolatiers may travel the globe.
“Those are the experiences you can have as a student,” says Whitaker. "Go where you want to go.”
In the near term, Montreal may be one of those places. Part of the proceeds from sales of the chocolate will go toward sending one student each from Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry Arts for an intensive, week-long class at the Callebaut Chocolate Academy.
Ook Bars are now for sale in the market and Ernest’s, NAIT’s on-campus restaurant, in a variety of flavours:
- dark chocolate
- dark chocolate and toffee
- dark chocolate and hazelnut
- dark chocolate and sea salt
- dark chocolate and cocoa nibs
The bars will cost $12.
The chocolate will also be available as tempered pistoles, or large round chips, at the market.
