The Ultimate Dish
The Ultimate Dish
Beyond Candy: The Art & Soul of Craft Chocolate with Moksha Chocolate’s Founders
In today’s episode, we chat with Jen and Michael Caines, the husband-and-wife team behind Moksha Chocolate, a bean-to-bar craft chocolate company based in Boulder, Colorado.
Jen and Michael take us inside their world of small-batch chocolate making, from sourcing transparently traded cacao and understanding terroir to roasting, winnowing, grinding, and tempering with meticulous care. They share the unexpected path that led them from education, horticulture, and engineering to running a thriving chocolate company, as well as the challenges and joys of building a business together. They also explore the science of cacao, the rise of ceremonial chocolate, the benefits of functional mushrooms, and the tasting rituals that help people appreciate chocolate as a fine food rather than candy.
Join us as Jen and Michael show why artisan chocolate deserves to be savored and valued, reminding us that great chocolate is crafted with intention.
TRANSCRIPT
Kirk Bachmann: Hello everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish! Today, we have a very special holiday episode featuring not one, but two incredible guests: Jen and Michael Caines, the husband-and-wife co-founders of Moksha Chocolate.
Moksha Chocolate is a bean-to-bar chocolate company based right here in beautiful Boulder, Colorado that’s redefining what craft chocolate can be.
Michael, an Australian transplant with experience as a horticulturist, chef, and network architect – I have to ask him what that is – is the master chocolate maker behind Moksha’s extraordinary creations. [He] meticulously controls every stage of their process — from roasting and winnowing to grinding and tempering — to highlight the rich, complex flavors of single-origin cacao beans.
Jen, with over a decade of experience in education, co-founded Moksha in 2019. She leads sales, marketing, and hosts unforgettable chocolate-tasting experiences, sharing the story behind their ethically sourced cacao with every customer.
Together, they’re on a mission to educate consumers that craft chocolate is a fine food, not candy. From ceremonial cacao to functional mushroom-infused bars, they’re creating chocolate experiences that are as memorable as they are delicious
Get ready for a conversation about the art and science of bean-to-bar chocolate making, the importance of ethical sourcing, and why craft chocolate deserves a place at your holiday table.
And there they are! Good morning! Good morning, good morning. How are you guys?
Jen Caines: Good morning.
Michael Caines: Good morning. Overworked, haha.
Kirk Bachmann: I labored through that long intro there. My gosh! There’s so much. So much. The first thing I want to say [is] people will figure out really, really quickly that we’ve met and that we’re friends. I have to say before I forget: on more than one occasion, your boy, Soren, has been zooming around the plaza here where the school is. Anytime that I see him with his friends – I try never to embarrass him – but I always say hello, and he’s always so sweet. I just want you to know that because not all children are sweet, but Soren is.
Michael Caines: Yeah, they gang up on Abo’s, I believe, and don’t buy pizza. So next time, just remind him to buy a slice.
Kirk Bachmann: They and thirteen hundred other students. It’s unbelievable.
Michael Caines: All not buying pizza.
The Holidays at Moksha
Kirk Bachmann: It’s crazy. It’s crazy.
So, it’s the holiday season. I’m going to let you guys talk first. We have a lot to cover today, but what are you working on right now? What’s the energy feel like at Moksha during the holiday season?
Michael Caines: My side of Moksha is the production. What I’m doing is as many things as I can humanly do in such a short amount of time. At the moment, we’re working predominantly on the inclusion-type bars, single-origin, and single-origin included bars. They’re everything from bars from Tanzania or Dominican Republic – typical single-origins expressing unique flavors – or things that are really augmented, like ginger and lime bars, or things with inclusions like dehydrated blood oranges. The one that I finally got around to making, which is a peppermint bark bar. Now, peppermint bark is really common. You find it everywhere, but making a peppermint bark bar with two layers of chocolate together that actually stay together is really quite a process. Just to make a batch, it actually took me the whole process of a day, almost ten hours, to get everything ready to be right. So, for me, it’s just long hours producing bars that people love. And then, Jen, you do everything else.
Jen Caines: This week, I’ve had three tastings already. A lot of corporate groups are booking holiday tastings. Earlier in the week I was at Google. Last night, I did a chocolate tasting for a holiday party for a Girl Scout group.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh wow!
Jen Caines: I know. Tonight, I have a birthday party. It’s a really fun time of year to do tastings. I also, of course, have a lot of markets. I have two markets this weekend, one in Boulder, one in Denver. So, we are just going all out. It’s our busiest time of year, but it’s also, in my opinion, the most fun time of year. I love doing all these markets and tastings.
Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it. And you definitely are the marketer as you grab the bars and show it. Feel free to do that the whole time. It’s really funny. Just getting prepared for the show, we work with Noelle really closely on the script, but I also spend a lot of time scouring the internet and watching videos and other interviews and stuff. I was watching one from three years ago. It was live. There were two gentlemen and you, Jen. It was the holiday season. They were asking you questions. The funniest thing: I watched it for maybe three or four minutes. The interviewer was great; he had a lot of great questions. But there was this other gentleman, and the only thing he did the entire time was stuff chocolate in his mouth. He was just eating the entire time!
Jen Caines: That was very funny.
Chocolate is NOT Candy
Michael Caines: I want that guy’s job! Oh my gosh!
We have a big script, and we’re going to really break the story down, but I thought as I went through the script a few times, without getting into all the detail, could we just share the mission – your mission – at a very, very high level? Then I’d love to dive into how this whole venture came to be. What is your mission with this beautiful chocolate?
Jen Caines: Do you want to start?
Michael Caines: I think you.
Jen Caines: The origin story original – we’re going to get into the origin story – it was all about really helping indigenous and poor farmers in Peru. Since then, we’ve branched out and we work with ethically-sourced or transparently-traded cacao from all over the world. But the mission, really, is to explain what artisanal chocolate is, or craft chocolate, and for consumers to pay more for craft chocolate. Like you said at the beginning, when people call our chocolate “candy,” I honestly feel insulted. I want to change people’s perception of artisan chocolate, of chocolate in general. I want people to learn that chocolate is an artisanal, fine-flavored food. It’s something to be savored. It’s something to learn about and to pay more because it’s better for small business owners, like ourselves. It’s better for farmers, and it’s better for the environment to pay more for craft chocolate rather than going to the grocery store and buying cheap commercial chocolate.
Michael Caines: Just to say, it was just more of a selfish way to go and spend a month a year on a farm in the jungle getting filthy, learning to ferment, learning to dry, learning to import, learning to export. For me, it was a whole experience. Those are the pursuits that I wanted. Out of that came what we both have together, which is this whole new story and part of our life.
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. Really well said. It’s interesting. I don’t know that I ever deliberately thought about not calling chocolate candy. I’m guilty of that as well, but when I read that, it made total sense. Also, I can remember this past spring, being up in the mountains with Michael and our boys for scouts. Michael always graciously brings some chocolate with. I can remember just sitting around the camp there and experiencing – that’s the best word I can use – experiencing the chocolate and the flavor and the taste. Little bites, versus just devouring food to stop the pain in your stomach because you’re hungry. It’s a great experience, and I love that.
And I think it’s a perfect segue to start at the beginning. How did the company come to be? This is a husband and wife venture – not always easy – meaning you work together every single day. Not trying to cause any conflict here, but I know that that’s not easy. And Michael, you have such an interesting background: horticulturist, chef. I’ve seen you cook. I know you can cook. Tell us about what a network architect is, and how do you go from those diverse experiences to becoming a master chocolate maker?
The Journey to Chocolate
Michael Caines: I grew up in a farming community as a child, so I always had that in my background. I actually went through design school at university for a year and decided that wasn’t right. Moving into horticulture and a form of native ecology taught me a lot about farming practices and about land and plants, everything that fits together on that agricultural side. After that, obviously, I wanted to gain new experiences, so I moved into kitchens for a number of years, starting as a dishwasher. Then, I went through, obviously, onto the line and worked there for a number of years.
To sort of solidify my life and move on from there, I became a network architect. So basically what I was was Layer One and Layer Two. Layer One’s the equipment, and Layer Two is the connectivity. I worked predominantly on the equipment side of vertical telecommunications. That’s where I really found I had an aptitude for engineering in that respect. That’s one of the most important parts. People probably don’t realize that if you’re going to get into a business where there are lots of machines spinning, there are lots of things moving, there are lots of things grinding, every other day is a maintenance day. Having that background of being able to fix things really taught me a lot of skills that I’ve used ever since.
For me, it was really when Jen’s brother called me and said, “Do you want to buy a cacao farm in Peru?” that it really took off. Of course, I said, “Yes,” because, well, why wouldn’t you? Then I broke the news to Jen. You can probably see how reluctant she was from here.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh! Then, Jen, you spent a lot of time in education before you started the company. What inspired you to not slap Michael and walk away?
Michael Caines: Who says she didn’t?
Jen Caines: It’s very hard to be a chocolate maker, to be a solopreneur. It was just evident from the beginning he could not do this by himself. You can’t make a product and sell the product. The timing was right to make the move. I was teaching at the International English Center during Covid, so obviously my job became redundant. I was trying to do both things for a long time. It just felt like the right time to make the move.
I honestly did not know what I was getting myself into. I’m kind of glad I didn’t know how hard it would be to be an entrepreneur. We just jumped in. It actually really suits my personality. I love doing this now, but I don’t have a business degree. I never planned on starting a business. It all came to be, and I really enjoy what I do now. Through the chocolate tastings, I can learn a lot of my educational experience when I’m educating my customers. Even if it’s just at a little market, constantly, when people are tasting the chocolate, I try to give them as much information as I can.
Kirk Bachmann: I’ve always felt and I’ve always shared with our educators that additional education or experiences are super, super important because they are better teachers when they are learning themselves. Did you find that?
Jen Caines: Definitely.
Kirk Bachmann: You were learning every single day, so you were maybe trying even harder than you would have had you been an entrepreneur initially. Right?
Jen Caines: Yeah, absolutely.
A Marriage of Business Roles
Kirk Bachmann: I have an idea, but our audience doesn’t, but what’s it like working together every single day? How do you balance the business partnership with the marriage partnership?
Michael Caines: You really don’t. I think that’s what you’re getting at. Work is consistent, and work is life, to some degree. We definitely have moments in my sense where I’ll just say, “Not working! Don’t talk to me. Go away!” The idea that I’m overloaded. Obviously, for me, that’s where I express that I’ve worked too much already, and I know you have more things you want me to do or you need to do. I don’t now, how do you…?
Jen Caines: Again, it is very delineated. I walk in the factory, and he’s like, “Get out of here!”
Michael Caines: I sit down at the computer, she’s like, “Get out of there!” We do have very strict demarcation. I make; she sells. I try not to do the books, but I will have to talk to the accountant. There are things that crossover in all different areas.
Kirk Bachmann: What I’ve noticed, though, just to give Jen a little more love here is that in addition to just selling – I have the website up right here. I’ve seen you in action. You’ve really educated yourself in the art of this process as well. You speak as if you are in the factory with Michael.
Jen Caines: Everyone always tells me, “This tastes amazing!” and I’m like, “I can’t take the credit for the taste, but yeah.”
Kirk Bachmann: You can take partial credit. I guess the question, then, is, how do your roles compliment each other?
Michael Caines: I’m best kept in rooms away from the public, I suppose. The reality is, and I say it all the time, all I do is make. Yes, I make great things. I do try and make the best looking and most interesting product that I can, but there is so much more. When Jen says she realized I couldn’t do it solo, Jen’s like three people: marketing, sales, education. There are so many roles there, and there is so much that’s required. Every time she walks in, she’ll be cleaning a little piece of equipment so she can quickly grab an Instagram video because that will be today’s steam that she has. Then there’s all of the ones she’s planning when she’s doing marketing calls with a friend of ours who is advising us on things. The reality is, my job is fairly easy.
Jen Caines: No, it’s not.
Michael Caines: It’s very laborious. It definitely takes a lot of time and effort, but putting it in its best perspective is what happens over here.
Jen Caines: You can have a great product, but someone’s got to sell it.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s a perfect marriage or collaboration.
Michael Caines: Yeah, because in respect to the chocolate, that’s one thing, but with the functional mushroom stuff, we fall into the consumer-packaged-goods segment. Because of that, there’s everything. You think of any company you see on the shelf at Whole Foods, and that’s a whole business in itself. The nice chocolate you get to eat is literally just for the people we meet day-to-day.
Jen Caines: And also being a female business owner has really been advantageous for me. These guys, the functional mushroom chocolate, you won’t find it at Whole Foods, but you will find it at the St Julien. I work with spas all over the United States. As a woman, I just walk into a spa and I’m welcome.
Michael Caines: Me, not so much. Yeah, the door definitely opens a lot more for Jen being who she is.
The Meaning of Moksha
Kirk Bachmann: That’s great. That’s great. What about the name, Moksha? Hopefully I’m saying it the right way. It’s beautiful. What does it mean, and why did you choose that name?
Michael Caines: The term, if you were Indian, you would hard pronounce the ‘o.’ So it is “mawk-sha,” but we definitely say “moke-sha” because we’re sort of lazy. The Hindus and Eastern philosophy have a very different idea of who gets to go to heaven. When you die, you don’t go to heaven; you keep being reborn. Being reborn, practicing life after life until you get it perfect is the wheel. That’s samsara. The term “moksha” means freedom from samsara. When the Buddha sat under the banyan tree and ascended to heaven, leaving his body, his form, but keeping his spirit, his soul, that’s attaining moksha. You become form without body. Basically, the intent is, if you eat our chocolate, you go to heaven.
Jen Caines: Another way is freedom from the cycles of suffering. Freedom.
Michael Caines: Life is suffering. The single form of Moksha for us came from a meeting with a friend where in the book, “The Island,” they take their moksha, their medicine. A lot of the things in cacao are very medicine-like. Phenylethylamine is like oxytocin. Anandamide is a neurotransmitting fatty acid called the “bliss molecule,” so there’s definitely a lot of comparison. So for us, the fact that MokshaChocolate.com was still available as a website was a revelation.
The Process of Bean-to-Bar
Kirk Bachmann: Wow. Yeah. That’s a whole other episode, by the way. I just texted Noelle, we’ve got to get an episode number two, here.
Let’s dive into what makes your company so special. You’re a bean-to-bar chocolate company, which means you control every step of the process. Michael, can you walk our viewers through the bean-to-bar process? What does that journey look like from the moment the cacao beans arrive to that finished bar? I know I’m simplifying this, but perhaps just give us a high level.
Michael Caines: No, it’s fairly simple. There’s a whole lot of work that happens before it gets to me. That is, to some degree, more important because it comes first. What the people who handle the beans do from the moment it’s picked to the moment I receive it in a bag will define the characteristics of the cacao. A lot of the fermentation processes really define the flavor profiles. A lot of the bacteria that are prevalent in different fermentories in different areas will again change the flavor characteristic.
But when it comes to me, it’s in a bag. It’s dried, and it’s in a stasis. It will sit like that without moisture or high temperatures for pretty much as long as you need. What I do is I take it out. The first step is roasting. The roasting process can be very complicated with very expensive equipment, or it can be very easy with a one-hundred dollar rotisserie oven that you bought off a government auction website from the Adams School District, which I did.
Kirk Bachmann: You just threw that in there.
Michael Caines: Just a fan-forced oven in your kitchen is just fine. The first step, most importantly for me because of the fermentation process, is the kill step. Most people in a kitchen will understand. You have to kill the bacteria. Fermentation is a really crazy bacteria process. The kill step will also allow the seed coat to crack away from the seed because what we’re dealing with is a seed that has a testa – a seed coat – around it. When it heats, it expands, and it will crack the seed coat.
The next thing I need to do after cooling it down is crush it, and then winnow it. The winnowing process is just there to remove that seed coat, or the chaff. What I’m left with is nibs. Nibs is the beginning of chocolate. Grinding the nibs in the simplest machine is a melanger. A chocolate melanger can be anywhere from a two- to three-kilo model on a tabletop to a ten- to a hundred-kilo upright-type device that you might see in a kitchen anywhere that grinds any type of seed product. The grinding process will generally take anywhere from one to five days, depending on what you’re looking to make.
Sometime during that process, you’ll add other things. When you add those other things, whether they be milk or milk alternatives, or sugar alternatives, that’s the moment when cacao becomes chocolate because it is not chocolate until you’ve added something else. Right up until that moment, it’s going to be cacao. All the steps that go on there can involve all sorts of augmentations, but it’s a very simple process, and you can literally do it on your counter at home as long as you’re willing to listen to a machine go, “Rr-rr-rr-rr-rr” for three days. It will drive you crazy.
Kirk Bachmann: Taking a step back, then, do you have limited control before that product is in the bag, as you mentioned, and then you receive it? Is there a certain product that you’re looking for, or a style, or a flavor before it gets into that back? Or are you limited to what you receive and then create your magic?
Michael Caines: For one example, we work directly with a fermentory called Zorzal. Zorzal’s a bird sanctuary in the Dominican Republic. They’re probably one of the highest if you are looking for standards of ethical cacao. The thing is that last year’s cacao had this citrus flavor. All of a sudden, when I bought a half a ton this year, it was totally different. We had a little bit of communication backwards and forwards, and it turned out that they changed. They’d moved their systems. They’d changed their process. Of course, we’ve learned to love the new cacao.
Jen Caines: They also mentioned this idea of terroir when it comes to all these different environmental aspects that you can’t control. They also mentioned it was a rainier season.
Michael Caines: The temperature and the humidity.
Jen Caines: What happens in the country, we can’t really control. That’s why we work with really trusted farms that have their processes down. We would have to go to every farm; it’s what we did in Peru. The fermentation is just essential for the fine flavor of the cacao.
Ethical Sourcing
Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely fascinating. Along those lines, Michael or Jen both, what does ethical sourcing mean to you? Why is it so important? It’s obviously important in the world of food, but specifically for what you’re trying to produce.
Michael Caines: For me, the most important part, there’s a lot of factors. The farm gate prices, which is the amount of money that stays inside the farm gate. We really want to make sure people are paid properly. The reality is at the end of the day, being able to work directly, whether it be with at worst case scenario an importer who has a lot of information about where the cacao comes from, but in the best sense, directly with a fermentory or a farming community or a co-op because not only do you get a better price when you’re working closer to the source, but you know that that money is going directly into that community. You know the money you’re paying – it can be anywhere from ten to twenty dollars a kilo, which is a lot of money – and if a lot of that money is getting absorbed by a bunch of rings around the initial source.
To be honest, with us, the idea of cacao slavery, which does come up in the supply chain, it’s not really an issue. Not for us. We don’t source from a lot of those places. Our sources come from areas a lot closer to where we are: South and Central America. Those areas, we can trace a lot closer to the source.
Jen Caines: About seventy percent of the world cacao supply comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast. That’s generally where they have, unfortunately, some labor practices that are unethical and an inferior cacao product as well. The ethical cacao or the transparently traded cacao is better for the workers, but also tastes a lot better. It’s all about buying the best quality, fine-flavored cacao as well.
Michael Caines: Yeah, it’s consistency. If you’re working with a cooperative who has centralized fermentation, you get a much more consistent product. This comes back to what we were talking about before where I buy a half a ton. The first time I roast it is going to be a process of me understanding what I’ve got, what the characteristics are, and maybe fine-tuning that a bit. Then, I’ll use that process and that system that I’ll work out through the whole batch. That might be ten thousand bars or more. Once I learn where it’s at, then I can know right to the last bean, it’s going to be the same.
Getting People to Slow Down and Savor
Kirk Bachmann: One of your missions is to educate consumers, as you are us now, that the craft of chocolate is a fine food and not candy, as I said earlier. Jen, this is such an important message. What’s the biggest misconception that people in general have about chocolate when they first discover your beautiful product?
Jen Caines: The first thing I do is I always just want to get the chocolate in people’s mouths. Again, this misconception that you should just eat it. Gulp it! I’m always like, “Stop. Slow down. Take a breath. Put it in your mouth. Really let it melt. Close your eyes.”
Kirk Bachmann: Educate them on what they should be looking for. You mentioned terroir. It’s like learning how to taste wine, as well.
Jen Caines: It is. I always talk about [how] there are so many similarities. When you taste the chocolate, the beginning, the middle, the finish, it’s just like a fine bottle of wine. It has length. It has depth. When I do my chocolate tasting, all the flavor profiles they might taste.
Whether it’s a tasting or just at a market, people are just constantly. They taste it and they’re like, “Whoa! That tastes amazing!” Because the average person really has never even tasted craft chocolate. Craft chocolate is just an absolutely different experience than conventional chocolate. Regular chocolate you buy at the grocery store, when you look at the ingredient list, often sugar is the first ingredient. When you look at our bars. This is a Zorzal Estate, and you read the ingredients, there are three ingredients: cacao, cocoa butter, and sugar. That’s it.
The misconception is that all chocolate is created equal. When you experience it and you taste it, you understand the difference. The wonderful thing about craft chocolate, it’s not designed to eat the whole bar. This is a ninety-gram bar. It’s designed so you just eat a little bit, and you’re good. Commercial chocolate is designed…
Michael Caines: I can eat this one.
Jen Caines: Except for our white chocolate is a little…
Michael Caines: I could eat that.
Jen Caines: But an eighty-percent, single-origin from Ecuador, you’re not going to eat the whole thing. Commercial chocolate, they get the fat, the sweet, the salty. They design it for you to eat the whole thing. This is designed to savor and to enjoy. It will last a long time because you don’t want to eat the whole thing.
Michael Caines: Well, it’s like when we’re camping in that lovely little lakeside campsite. I remember the dust as it rose and covered your tent. We sat around. There were probably eight to ten of us. One bar more than satiated everyone with an experience. When you think about that, when you think about ten people all having a small amount and having a conversation about how unique it is or how it makes you feel, that’s quite an experience. For you to experience that every day with a new person all the time. Having all of those people, or some of them at least, return and say, “Last time I had this one. Do you have it?” It’s a whole memory, a sense experience.
Jen Caines: Not to mention, we’ll get into the neuroscience of it all. What’s happening, it’s similar to – we’ll talk about drinking cacao, but it’s a similar sensation when everyone is eating dark chocolate together and bonding in a certain way.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s beautiful. One of the things that, as Michael was talking there, I’m reminded sometimes in a weird sort of way [of] caviar tasting. Same kind of thing. You sit around the table and just have a little bite, and you talk about where that particular egg came from and why it tastes that way or another way. Or wine. Wine is even a more reasonable explanation.
Jen, as the salesperson, I’m fascinated and curious as to how you go about helping people understand why they should try to afford more or pay more for a hand-crafted, ethically-sourced product, versus that sugar-rich whatever sitting on the shelf at the grocery store where you just consume, consume. How difficult is that? Or the minute they taste it, they understand?
Jen Caines: We’re really lucky to live in Boulder, to be honest. I think it would be a hard audience if I were perhaps in the Midwest. Luckily, Boulder, we have very health-conscious consumers. We also live in a very affluent community. Thankfully, most of my interactions, most of my customers are women. Women, for some reason, tend to like chocolate more than men. I don’t know why that is. To be honest, once they taste it and learn about it, it’s not a hard sell. I do think it would be a hard sell in other parts of the country.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s fair. That’s fair.
Michael Caines: It’s definitely a luxury, spending more than ten dollars on something where you can buy it for five. We get that. This is part of the sell, I think. Typically as a consumer packaged goods product, cheaper is always said to be better. I’ll just be honest, from my perspective – and I’ve always been very opinionated about this – if you make a product and someone isn’t willing to buy it at that price, then look for a better audience. Make the best product you can and find your market because at the end of the day, there are people out there that will appreciate that. I think this is what Jen does best, putting yourself in the right place and finding the right people who will see you for what you are.
Jen Caines: What I’m doing right now with my holiday markets. I’m not popping up at the local YMCA, but I will be at the Clayton Hotel in a couple weeks. We are a luxury brand.
Michael Caines: It’s the reality.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s so well said, though, and it’s really, really good advice for someone who is exploring this idea of developing a product and entrepreneurship.
Jen Caines: I think people are always just telling you, “Scale, scale, scale.” Scaling does not always work for everyone.
Ceremonial Cacao
Kirk Bachmann: Can we talk a little about ceremonial cacao? I’m sure that’s a topic that many are not familiar with. First of all, what is it? And how does it differ from regular chocolate if you will?
Jen Caines: Show him your paste.
Michael Caines: We have three products in this particular range. We have what would be called ceremonial cacao, which would be cacao paste. They have this term that they started using, ceremonial grade cacao. People won’t admit it, but where that comes from is ceremonial grade matcha. In the form of matcha, it’s a particular type of the leaf, the small leaf, and it’s ground in a particular way. The ground part, being very, very fine, is where the grade term comes in.
Now, borrowing that phrase and making it ceremonial grade cacao, which is, in any respect, a very recent wave. Yes, cacao has been used for centuries, if not millennia, but the whole idea of using it in a way for a spiritual journey, that literally comes down to what we would call a hundred percent cacao. A hundred percent cacao, with the fat included.
I suppose there is really one thing first; we should say what cacao is. Cacao is basically two things. It can be broken up into three different things. The main component in cacao is cocoa butter, the fat component. That’s up to fifty percent of the cacao seed. The other fifty percent is made up of about thirty to thirty-five percent of cellulose. The cellulose is just literally plant material.
Now, in that remaining fifteen percent is a whole bunch of things, everything from phenylethlamine (PEA), anandamide (a neurotransmitting fatty acid), theobromine. There are hundreds of different chemicals that have different effects on the body, including antioxidants, like catkins that fall into the phenyls and the phenolic groups, the phenols, the polyphenols. There are probably a hundred different phenols and polyphenols. All of these things have different effects on the body.
What people are doing is they are taking cacao in in a particular way. This is the same as when a group of people eat it together and have this connection because the phenylethlamine, the PEA, is just like oxytocin. Oxytocin is the chemical that, in women, they produce when they have a baby to body them to the child. You think about everyone sitting around eating a chocolate bar together, getting high on those drugs, those chemicals. They have a process in the brain that when it comes in, it actually creates a virtuous loop where it produces more serotonin in the brain. You’ve got these chemicals that are very effective because they are being digested into the body because of the presence of the fat, cocoa butter. It’s a medium-chain triglyceride that is being broken down in the smaller intestine and absorbed into the blood and unpacked in the liver. Because of that, chocolate is a very effective delivery method for these particular chemicals that are in such a small amount in the cacao.
When you’re drinking pure cacao without anything, you’re getting more of the good stuff. You’re absorbing more of it effectively. Literally, when you’re talking about something like ceremonial cacao, you’re talking about people sitting around intentionally ingesting these particular chemicals, and then doing things. You probably know more about that because I just make it.
Jen Caines: I always say, you don’t have to sit around and have a ceremony. I just drink it in my coffee every morning because I know it’s an absolutely superfood. There’s a lot of nonsensical marketing around it.
The other thing you didn’t mention, ceremonial cacao, we believe it obviously has to be ethically traded. I just think it’s a great alternative to coffee in the afternoon. And I always have customers who can’t do sugar. “Well, I’ve got something here for you.” You want to get all the health benefits of dark chocolate, but you don’t want to eat dark chocolate, go for cacao.
Traditionally, cacao was made with cinnamon spice, water. When I do a cacao drink for a tasting, I don’t ever put sugar or milk in. I like to prepare it like the Mesoamericans drank it traditionally because it’s only been within the last couple hundred years that we made chocolate. Cacao, through the millennia, has been a beverage, not a bar.
Michael Caines: What would be typically considered because I always make it too thick. What I’m making, I’m making an emulsion. It’s a ganache. It really is.
Mushrooms and Chocolate
Kirk Bachmann: Which I can relate to. I should say to our audience that there will not be a quiz at the end of the podcast, by the way. Brilliant information. I was going to go into the health benefits. I think you touched on that beautifully. Can you touch a little bit on the incorporation of functional mushrooms in some of your chocolates, and which mushrooms are you using? What benefits do those provide?
Jen Caines: I’ll just go through it quickly because we could talk for an hour about mushrooms, but we won’t do that.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s episode number three.
Jen Caines: If you ever want to hear [about] mushrooms. This is our bestseller. This is eighty percent Cordyceps & Lion’s Mane, so the cacao is a super dark chocolate. These also have coconut sugar, so it has a beautiful earthy flavor. Lion’s mane everyone is taking these days for brain health. Great for ADHD, anyone with dementia, but just brain fog. A lot of middle-aged women going through menopause feel like they’re having brain fog. They are like, “Yes to lion’s mane.” Also, cordyceps is the energy mushroom. Athlete’s really discovered it for energy. It’s always fun to do a functional mushroom chocolate because most people have seen “The Last of Us,” and we can make jokes about zombie mushrooms eating us alive. There’s a lot of lore around cordyceps boosting libido, so that’s always a fun topic.
Michael Caines: It’s for mornings. It’s for get-up-and-go.
Jen Caines: Yeah, this is a great one to eat in the morning. I think it’s also a great alternative to coffee in the afternoon. We talked about cacao with the theobromine as the stimulant. A lot of people think that cacao has a lot of caffeine; it doesn’t. This stimulant in cacao that is so energizing is called theobromine. Also, theobroma is the cacao genus, and it means “food of the gods,” which is aptly named. Anyway, that’s Cordyceps & Lion’s Mane. Really great for energy and focus. This is our daytime blend.
Turkey Tail Maitake & Chaga: all of these mushrooms are wonderful for inflammation. Turkey tail is a natural prebiotic.
Michael Caines: This one is a daytime which is designed for gut and immune health. We’ve had a lot of people report – specifically one person. I love their review. They had no idea. “I had an upset stomach and a friend of mine gave me this chocolate, and I couldn’t believe it, but it totally settled my stomach within ten minutes.” It was one of those perfect testimonials you really want. That’s literally why we designed that product. People with IBS report it alleviating symptoms. That’s what that’s for. That’s your daytime, when you’re on the go. You don’t want too much energy, but you want to be able to take care of your gut and immune health.
Jen Caines: Turkey tail has a really interesting use in China and Japan for treating cancer. A lot of people who have been diagnosed with cancer take really high doses of turkey tail. You can watch Paul Stamets’s TED talk all about that.
Then the last one is a Reishi mushroom chocolate. This is our evening blend or night blend. Reishi is a very calming mushroom. It’s known as the mushroom of immortality or the Zen mushroom. It’s a really wonderful mushroom for relaxation. Michael formulated this as a sixty-five percent dark milk, so it’s not too dark. It was interesting because the first time he made it, we thought we were going to do a vegan milk, but reishi mushrooms have triterpenes, which are very pungent. That’s how you know it’s working because it has this pungent flavor. We had to really work with the formulation to get it right so the reishi mushroom flavor didn’t overwhelm the flavor of the chocolate. It’s delicious.
Anatomy of a Chocolate Tasting
Kirk Bachmann: I’ve read, and you and I have talked about it. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but the tastings that you do with various people are one of the most favorite parts of your job, of your day. Can you walk us through what a tasting experience is like? Not only what happens, but what do you want to happen at a tasting? Let’s just say people come in. They’ve never been to one of your tastings before. What’s the best result that can happen?
Jen Caines: I always start the tasting giving people chocolate etiquette lessons because, again, as Americans-
Kirk Bachmann: Chocolate etiquette. Love that.
Jen Caines: I can do it right now. Basically, it’s very similar to wine. Similar to wine, you want to look at your wine, swirl it around. First we want to look at the chocolate. Look and see if it has any discoloration. The next thing you want to do, you want to listen. You want to see if it has a good snap. If it has a good snap, that means that it has been tempered correctly. You can explain what tempering is, but [snaps chocolate] do you hear that?
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. Yeah.
Jen Caines: That’s a good snap.
Kirk Bachmann: I have chills. I have chills. Wow.
Jen Caines: So then, after you listen, similar to wine, you really want to smell the chocolate. You want to prime your palate for what you’re going to taste. We have five different tastes, but we can smell thousands of different odors. The whole process of tasting chocolate really is an exercise in mindfulness.
Kirk Bachmann: Which chocolate do you have? Tell us what you’re…
Jen Caines: This is a seventy percent single-origin from Zorzal Estate.
Kirk Bachmann: So what do you smell? Tell us.
Michael Caines: A good little tool is if, on the back because there’s a texture on the front, is to use a little bit of your finger to warm up the surface to literally melt a little bit. That will help you get a little bit of the flavor. I’ve got the whole thing now. I know what it tastes like already. Now I’m getting all of this…
Kirk Bachmann: What are you guys smelling right now? And licking.
Michael Caines: You have to do it.
Jen Caines: I’m already getting the citrus.
Kirk Bachmann: Citrus. Yeah.
Michael Caines: This one starts very light and zesty. When you put it in your mouth, it will turn into a darker blue type. It will go from a yellowy orange to a darker blue or a green, which is more vegetal and more like you would imagine. The best thing about this is when you pull out the big wheel. “Oh, I’m getting the yellow stuff.” Colors are really…
Jen Caines: First you’re smelling it. You’re looking at your flavor. Again, I always tell people to taste chocolate in a quiet place where there’s not loud music or any other smells around. Actually, everyone thinks that wine’s the best pairing; it’s really not. Just doing some hot water, herbal tea so you can really get the fine flavors of the cacao is the best match.
Once you smell it, you’ve primed your palate, you’re salivating, you want to take a little nibble. You want to really suck on the chocolate. You take a little nibble, you masticate it, and you want to let it cover your whole palate. Similar to wine, you’re going to have a beginning, the middle, and a finish. Michael already described the different flavors that he knows he’s going to taste.
Michael Caines: Pushing it into the roof of your mouth and letting your mouth warm it up because what you’re doing, in some sense as a chocolate maker, is you’re engineering a substance that will express or melt-
Jen Caines: With the cocoa butter.
Michael Caines: -in a particular way. If a chocolate has too much cocoa butter, it will feel gummy. If it has too little, it will feel dry. You want it to-
Jen Caines: And cocoa butter is amazing because it melts in your mouth. It melts particularly right in your mouth. That’s where all the fine flavors come out.
Michael Caines: I think it’s the only fat that we have that I know of – well, there are other things that are similar in profile – but it’s one of the only fats that’s solid at room temperature but melts at skin temperature, in your mouth, specifically, being warmer. The reason it’s used so much in beauty products is because it does that particular great trick.
In your mouth as it starts to open up, it starts to melt. It starts to release all of those little particles because all of those little particles, whether they be cacao particles or sugar particles, are all still dry. None of those have dissolved. None of those have melted. None of those have done anything. The chocolate is literally just dry stuff and fat. Now, when I make chocolate, I’m engineering it again by refining it so that the particle size is small enough that you can’t feel those particles in your mouth. You can’t sense the texture.
Jen Caines: That’s something I hear all the time. “This is the smoothest chocolate I’ve ever had in my life.” I always do an eighty percent with my tastings, and people are constantly wowed because they have this perception they don’t like eighty percent cacao. “Oh, that’s way too dark.” Then they taste ours, and they’re like, “Oh. Wow! That was really interesting, and I really like that.” That’s because if you buy an eighty percent at the grocery store, you’re going to get some gritty, chalky chocolate. The texture is often all wrong, but Michael manages to make this chocolate so smooth.
Really, in the tastings, the chocolate speaks for itself. One thing about our chocolate and what you’ll find and why people really love it is, as Michael was saying, he’s teasing out the fine flavors of the cacao so he uses very little sugar. We do use sugar, but it’s not the first ingredient. I constantly find, even with other craft chocolate makers, there’s too much sugar.
Michael Caines: It already expresses. On that point, though, sometimes the sugar you use expresses in a different way. It will express sweet. It pushes forward as one of the first flavors. I find with a lot of the products that I make, there are some that do appear sweet because they are. Thirty-five percent of it is sugar, but the sweetness isn’t the first part of the palate, or I definitely try for it not to be. I try for there to be the smell of coffee. Something freshly roasted. Or I want astringency, or I want a bitterness. Maybe I want “that’s cherry,” or “that’s raspberry.” There’s definitely sugar there to carry the flavor. I find chocolate with coconut sugar to be really quite gross. I just think it tastes like dirt. No, I’m being silly. The sugar that I typically use is a raw sugar. I find that as a less processed sugar, it fits a lot better with my style.
Kirk Bachmann: You both know you’re fantastic, right? I have had a chill for like sixteen minutes. It’s unbelievably fascinating.
Jen Caines: I wish we would have sent you some chocolate to be tasting.
Michael Caines: Yeah, you should have some there.
Reviews and What’s Coming
Kirk Bachmann: I’ll be right over. I’ll be right over.
I have to share. I’m sure you get a lot of these reviews, but I wanted to share for our audience an example of a Google review. Absolutely glowing. One customer wrote, quote, “Best chocolate I’ve ever tasted. The flavors are incredible. You can taste the quality in every bite.” Another said, “Jen’s chocolate tasting was educational. It was fun. She’s so passionate and knowledgeable.” And someone else raved, “Jen and Michael are true artisans. Their attention to detail and commitment to ethical sourcing makes every bar special.”
When you read reviews or hear reviews like that, tell me how it makes you feel? What does that feedback validate for you? “We’re on the right path?” “We’re doing what we set out to do?” Yeah. Again, I’m not even eating the chocolate right now and I feel a calmness just listening to you. How do those reviews make you feel?
Jen Caines: I think it just goes to Michael’s chocolate-making, how meticulous he is at every step of the process. Obviously, this is who we are. This is our brand. We wouldn’t do it any other way.
Michael Caines: It also really reflects how Jen presents and the chocolate. The whole part about education. I’ve always said from the start, I think it was one of the first things I realized [is] the chocolate, one of the most interesting things – well, cacao because really we’re talking about cacao. Cacao is one of the most interesting and complex things that we eat every day and basically know very little about. When you start to educate, literally, she’ll always [say] “this thing is so gross.” This is a cacao pod, one of the ones I’ve picked up. It’s still full of seeds. When you hand somebody this, somebody asked Jen if it was an almond.
Jen Caines: I always have cacao beans, and everyone is like, “Are those almonds?”
Michael Caines: Oh, the seeds?
Jen Caines: Yeah.
Michael Caines: Oh, I thought you were talking about the pod. Oh, that’s hilarious. Sorry.
Jen Caines: But it is just amazing how little people know about chocolate.
Michael Caines: Almost nothing.
Jen Caines: Where does it grow? How does it grow? How many beans to make a bar? And it’s something that is in everything. I’m constantly saying, “Look. Chocolate should be revered. Chocolate is the food of the gods. We shouldn’t have chocolate cereal, chocolate this, chocolate that. Let’s eat chocolate more sparingly and eat really good chocolate.”
Michael Caines: I have people come into the factory, and they’ll come in and I’ll give them a tasting of five to seven different chocolates. Not only will they leave amazed, they’re also totally buzzed. They’ve just been pumped full of the most amazing chemicals. They walk out of the factory and leave those glowing reviews. So really, I’m sort of drugging them, [suggesting good reviews.]
Jen Caines: That’s part of the messaging as well. Everyone really should change the way they think about chocolate in terms just because of its health benefits. I recommend people eat at least an ounce of seventy percent dark chocolate a day for the health benefits, or drink it. Cacao.
Kirk Bachmann: You know, I don’t even fault people for the ignorance. Thank goodness we have you to educate us. As we’re approaching the holidays, perfect time. Chocolate is always a great go-to. What a beautiful gift. I saw on your Instagram that you were preparing some non-dairy white chocolate raspberry bars.
Jen Caines: Yeah, this one.
Kirk Bachmann: That one there. Yeah.
Jen Caines: Incidentally, we are an allergen-free factory. No dairy, no soy, no gluten. We do one pretzel bar occasionally.
Michael Caines: It’s just covered in raspberries.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s beautiful.
Michael Caines: Well, it’s tasty, too.
Kirk Bachmann: If I asked you what the holiday lineup is, does it feature that bar or a collection of bars?
Jen Caines: We have right now about twenty bars.
Michael Caines: The machines today, the little machine that I use to do smaller batches, it makes about three dozen bars. I do these tiny little batches. They’re all very personal. By the time they are produced, half of them are sold already and the other half go the next day. It’s a very quick process for us. Semuliki is a product from Uganda, isn’t it?
Jen Caines: Yeah.
Michael Caines: From a forest that’s called the Semuliki Forest. We just scored some of these beans. The Semuliki Forest beans taste like heaven, like caramel or chocolate. It’s absolutely amazing. Then there’s Itenez, which is a wild-harvested bean from Bolivia. They just popped up, too, somewhere. The Madagascar bean which is called Bejofo, which I put bee pollen on, which is absolutely amazing, comes from Madagascar. Every time I get a bag, I do a little dance around it because I know it’s maybe the last bag I’ll ever get.
At the moment, there’s a bunch of different things coming out, but they’ll come out today, tomorrow, or next week, and they’ll literally come hot off the presses and BAM, they’re gone.
Kirk Bachmann: Is that how you think about 2026? Is there something super specific that you’re thinking about, or is it all very serendipitous?
Jen Caines: A lot of it is seasonal. One bar I don’t have up here is our Pueblo Chile bar. We only make that during Pueblo Chile season.
Michael Caines: Which takes a month.
Jen Caines: The peppermint bark will be gone in January. We love to work with seasonal fruits. Michael just got a bag of Cara Cara oranges. They’re fresh, so he’s going to make some Cara Cara Orange bars.
Michael Caines: I got six bags.
Jen Caines: A lot of it is what’s in season.
Kirk Bachmann: That makes such sense.
Jen Caines: He did a fun [one] for the summer, this White Vegan Cheesecake Passionfruit bar. It really felt fresh, like summer.
Kirk Bachmann: I love it.
Michael Caines: Our main products are functional mushroom products, our CBG [Consumer Packaged Goods] brand part, that’s really what we’re doing. That’s really what 2026 is about. We’re hopefully going to announce some awards we’ve won recently for those products. Stay tuned on that one. That is our company. All of this other stuff is just me being a wag. The big machines spin, and there’s a whole table that’s got little machines on it. If there weren’t little machines on it, it would just be a lonely table. I have to do something while I’m waiting for it to grind, while I’m waiting for this, all the things in between. People love that stuff so much, but it is not the business. Our CBG business is what you’ve got to look for if you want to do this as a life.
Jen Caines: And these ones, we do not wholesale. Just direct to consumer.
Michael Caines: Every time, people, “Can I get those to sell?” I’m like, “Nah. No way, mate. Not a chance.”
Chocolatier vs. Chocolate Maker
Kirk Bachmann: That leads to a couple more questions. Before I get to where to find you, for culinary students, for interested, aspiring – and I’m not going to use the word “chocolatier” because you and I, Michael, had that conversation before. There’s a big difference between what you do and a chocolatier in the pastry sense. Could you remind me of that again?
Michael Caines: The thing about chocolatiers and pastry chefs is they are actually trained professionals. I’m just a monkey in a garage. In reality, I make chocolate. That’s why we call ourselves chocolate makers. Typically, what we would be if we were being derogatory towards chocolatiers, we would call them “melters,” people that melt chocolate. Literally what I do is up until one basic simple point. I do a lot of things around that, but chocolatiers are actually really highly trained. They really understand. They do everything from work with chocolate through to make caramels and ganaches, and you name it. Thousands of different things. You see that famous chocolatier, Guichon. I can’t remember his name.
Kirk Bachmann: In Las Vegas, yeah.
Michael Caines: He makes the gorgon out of chocolate. I would have no idea. Stop me there.
The thing I think from your perspective as a culinary educator, anyone involved with being a chocolatier or being a pastry chef should know how to make chocolate. Really, it is very simple. The only thing you need – and you can look for them on eBay. You can look for them on Amazon – two-hundred dollars for a melanger. A Premier two-liter, it’s called a Low-Pro, is the one I use. It’s got a grinder on one side and the motor on the other side. It’s a wider device. It costs you about two-hundred dollars, plus your oven as long you have an oven, a fan-forced oven. With an oven, some trays, and a grinder, you can make your own chocolate. Anyone who has a countertop that’s quartz or granite or any type of engineered stone, you can learn to temper on your countertop. You just clean it and off you go. Off to the races. A stove, a bowl, and you’re done.
Coming to a profession with the ability or a product turning up as a pastry chef, and you’re like, “Here’s the chocolate I made from these beans,” I really see that as such an asset for anyone looking to study any form of desserts, pastry chef, anything in that range. Being able to understand how to work with chocolate is so important.
Everyone says to you, “Tempering is hard.” It’s not. You just have to learn a technique. You have to spend some time. I literally had a friend of mine come in and say, “What about this? What about this?” I’m like, “Boom!” All of a sudden, he unlocked an amazing, for me, key that led me to now. You think about it, I’m making three dozen bars at a time, and I’m putting things on top of that chocolate. If it’s not tempered properly and all of a sudden it turns all white and shows temper marks, I’ve destroyed that whole thing. I can’t lose anything. For me as a chocolate maker, it has to be perfect every time because everything is on the line. Being able to be that confident with my temper, it’s really just learning your art, learning your craft. I think that as a person working in the dessert field, in kitchens, the idea of understanding how to make and temper chocolate, I just think it’s a fundamental.
Jen Caines: I really think there’s a lot of Michelin star restaurants who are not using bean-to-bar chocolate in their desserts. They are buying some Valrhona. Everything else is perfect, but why not have some amazing chocolate to work with.
I will say that a lot of restaurants have reached out to work with us, and we don’t sell couverture because it just doesn’t make sense financially for us.
Kirk Bachmann: You mentioned direct to consumers, how you work. If people want to try your product, attend a tasting, order some holiday gifts, where do they find you?
Jen Caines: So MokshaChocolate.com. Everything’s on our website.
Kirk Bachmann: There you go.
Michael Caines: There’s a tab specifically that says where Jen’s going to be. If you are local, there’s an events tab, and you can look at where she’ll be.
Jen Caines: It’s under About Us. Then there’s also a form you can fill out if you want to book a tasting.
Jen’s and Michael’s Ultimate Dishes
Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it. This has been absolutely spectacular. I apologize; we’ve gone over our time. But before I let you go, the name of the show is The Ultimate Dish, so I cannot let you go until you both share – or you share in unison – what the ultimate dish is in your mind. It could be a memory. It could be an actual meal. It could be the meal you prepared for us not too long ago. But what is the ultimate dish? And you can say chocolate.
Jen Caines: Should we say a mole made with Michael’s chocolate? He made this mole-
Kirk Bachmann: Oh my goodness! Chills again! Chills again.
Jen Caines: Incredible.
Kirk Bachmann: Is that it? You’re going to vote for that, too, Michael.
Michael Caines: I grow zucchinis every year, and every time I do, I make zucchini, carrot and walnut bread. Watching my son eat that for breakfast while he’s staring at his phone. It’s not quite an ultimate dish, but having that connection to the food you make, I think it’s an extra level.
Kirk Bachmann: I think that is the ultimate dish. That’s absolutely spectacular.
Guys, thank you so much. Happy holidays! I’m sure we’ll see you around. I know you’re busy. Thank you for taking the time for the show, and happy New Year as well.
Jen Caines: Yeah, thank you very much.
Michael Caines: You too. Our pleasure.
Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.