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PHOTOS: KEN JAMES, CAPTION: SENA CHRISTIAN
Karla McNeil-Rueda launched Cru
Chocolate, a cottage food business, with
her partner Eddie Houston in 2016. Their
chocolate-making process begins with
farmers shipping 150-pound bags of dried
cacao beans to the couple’s Roseville home.
They then roast the beans in their garage
(a finished batch smells like brownies),
and Houston picks out suboptimal beans
(bottom left). McNeil-Rueda and Houston
next remove the shells and grind the
remaining cacao nibs, refining them into
liquid over the course of several days
(pictured above, in Cru’s test kitchen) — the
only added ingredient is organic unrefined
sugar. Then they pour the chocolate into
stainless steel pans and let the flavors
settle. After about 30 days, McNeil-Rueda
tempers the chocolate (bottom right), using
spatulas to move it around on a cool surface
to achieve the desired crystallization for
shine and snap. She then pours the chocolate
into molds and, with Houston, packages
the finished bars by hand. McNeil-Rueda
says making chocolate gives her a way to
connect with both her ancestors and with
the indigenous knowledge still possessed
by the farmers Cru partners with today.
She says only about 200 people handmake
chocolate in the United States. “Mostly the
industry has been in the hands of three of
four corporations,” she says. “We’re the first
ones in the Sacramento area.” n
March 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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