It was 11pm. The delivery was the next morning.
We had been making our 90% dark chocolate ganache — a piece we were proud of, one that had taken time to get right — and something was wrong. The surface had gone matte. Streaky. The kind of wrong that you notice immediately and hope, for a moment, that you're mistaken about.
We were not mistaken.
What Happened
The first thing you do when a ganache goes wrong is try to understand why. Matte, streaky surfaces on a chocolate ganache can mean several things: a tempering issue, a temperature problem during setting, moisture contamination, or — the one you don't want it to be — something wrong with an ingredient.
We tried to rescue it. When a ganache has gone wrong in the setting stage, there are sometimes things you can do: gentle rewarming, re-emulsification, adjusting the temperature of the environment. We tried what we could. It didn't work. The batch was not right, and it was not going to become right.
So we started again. At 11pm, the night before a delivery, we made the whole thing from scratch.
While we worked, we traced the problem. The cream — which had been within its expiry date, which had looked and smelled fine — had gone bad. Not obviously, not in a way that would have been caught by a normal check, but bad enough to affect the emulsion. The proteins in the cream had begun to break down in a way that disrupted the ganache's structure. The surface told us what the smell hadn't.
Fresh cream. New batch. The ganache came together correctly this time — smooth, glossy, with the deep, almost black colour that 90% cacao produces. We packed it at 2am and it went out on time.
What 90% Actually Means
Most people, when they hear 90% dark chocolate, assume bitter. Aggressively, unpleasantly bitter — the kind of chocolate that is eaten for health reasons rather than pleasure, that requires a certain amount of willpower to finish.
This assumption is understandable. Most 90% chocolate on the market is exactly that: intensely bitter, with a dryness that coats the mouth and a finish that lingers in the wrong way. The high cacao percentage is achieved by removing almost all the sugar, and the result is a product that tastes primarily of the absence of sweetness rather than the presence of cacao character.
Our 90% Dark Ganache is different, and the difference comes from the cacao itself. The beans we use have a natural sweetness — not sugar sweetness, but the inherent sweetness that comes from well-fermented, carefully processed cacao with genuine flavour complexity. At 90%, with almost no added sugar, that natural sweetness becomes the dominant note rather than a background one.
The result is a chocolate that is intensely dark — the cacao is present and unmistakable — but not bitter in the way that most people expect. There is depth, there is complexity, there is a finish that is long and evolving. But there is no harshness. No punishment. No sense that you are eating something that is good for you rather than something that is good.
This is what surprised people when they first tasted it. And it is why they came back.
Why It Became a Best Seller
The 90% ganache found its audience among people who had given up on very dark chocolate.
They had tried the 85% and 90% bars from larger brands and found them unpleasant. They had concluded, reasonably, that high-percentage dark chocolate was not for them. And then they tasted ours — often at an expo, often reluctantly, often with the expression of someone who expects to be politely disappointed — and something shifted.
The most common response is a pause. A moment of recalibration. And then: "This isn't bitter." Not as a compliment, exactly — more as a statement of surprise. As if they had expected one thing and received another, and needed a moment to update their understanding.
That moment of surprise is the product working. It is the cacao's natural character coming through without the bitterness that poor processing or low-quality beans would produce. It is what happens when the ingredient is good enough that you don't need to hide it behind sugar.
The batch we almost threw away at 11pm — the one that sent us back to the beginning with fresh cream and a delivery deadline bearing down — is now one of the pieces we're most proud of. Not because of the drama of that night, but because of what the product turned out to be.
The drama just made us pay closer attention to what we had.
What We Learned
Two things, both obvious in retrospect.
The first: ingredients that are within their expiry date are not necessarily ingredients that are right. Cream, in particular, can begin to deteriorate before any obvious sign appears. We now check more carefully and more often. The expiry date is a ceiling, not a guarantee.
The second: a batch that goes wrong the night before a delivery is not a reason to send something that isn't right. It is a reason to start again. This is not a comfortable decision at 11pm. It is the only decision that is consistent with the standard we want to maintain.
The customer who received that delivery the next morning received a ganache that was made correctly, from fresh ingredients, to the standard we intended. They didn't know about the night before. They didn't need to.
The chocolate was right. That was the point.
Try the ganache that almost wasn't: our 90% Dark Ganache, made in Ambur, Tamil Nadu, from cacao that doesn't need to hide behind sugar. 🍫
