The new Theo Chocolate cookbook: Prepare to drool

Theo Chocolate can be proud of the chocolate empire it has built in a short time, and now it has another reason to boast.

“Theo Chocolate is the first organic, fair trade certified, Fair for Life, Non-GMO Project Verified, bean-to-bar factory in North America,” said Theo’s Chief Marketing Officer Debra Music.

Did you get all that? Basically, Theo is the first organic, bean-to-bar chocolate factory in America that pays the cocoa bean farmers fairly. And if you haven’t pulled on a hairnet and taken a factory tour in Theo’s historic brick building in Seattle, you need to change that soon.

“It was the old Redhook Brewery. And then there was a period of a few years where, actually, the Burning Man community took over that building and made huge sculptures. I mean, when we took over that building, it was unbelievable what was inside of it!” Music laughed.

Now, after delighting people with chocolate bars covered with fig, fennel, and coconut curry, Theo has come out with its first cookbook. And it’s gorgeous.

“I think my favorite recipe in the book is that Salted Caramel Tart. It’s got this silky, creamy, vanilla custard and then it has this sort of salty, crunchy, cocoa nib crust and then salted caramel,” Music said. “It’s really sophisticated, but it’s really playful, kind of like Theo as a business.”

The book features 75 recipes, but not all of them are sweet desserts.

“Until you add sugar, cocoa is not sweet,” Music said. “Cocoa has all of these complexities of flavor that are really beautiful. It can be very fruity, it can be very cocoa-y, it can be very earthy. So we’ve always been longtime fans of incorporating cocoa nibs into recipes.”

“One of my favorite savory recipes in the book is our Honey Saffron Braised Chicken,” she said. “You infuse the couscous in that recipe with saffron and green olives and nibs. Really the sky’s the limit with chocolate. I think there is a lot of uncharted territory in savory applications of chocolate.”

Several local chefs contributed recipes to the book. The treat that has me coming back over and over is the Mackles’more, made by the Capitol Hill cookie shop, Hello Robin.

“So Robin developed a cookie that’s sort of like a deconstructed s’more. She hand makes the graham cracker and then she makes this beautiful chocolate chip cookie using Theo chocolate. It’s studded with marshmallow and then there’s this big, ample square of Theo chocolate that sort of melts on the top of it,” Music said. “It’s this layered, delicious, kind of over-the-top treat.”

A cookie on a cookie full of chocolate and topped with even more chocolate? Well done.

Nearly a decade after Music opened Theo with her ex-husband (that story is in the book), many more organic, fair trade chocolate makers have also opened shop in the U.S. And that makes Music and company very happy.

“We want to have a transformative effect on a multi-billion dollar global industry that, for the most part, is buying conventional beans and exploiting farmers and the land,” Music said. “So the more we can have a very robust category of brands doing the right thing, the more we’ve succeeded in our own right at Theo.”

The book, Theo Chocolate: Recipes and Sweet Secrets from Seattle’s Favorite Chocolate Maker, comes out Sept. 22. Click here to pre-order your own copy.