Just in time for holiday shopping, Ritual Chocolate has released their first-ever milk chocolate bar, breaking from 15 years as an all-vegan brand.
The move was a decision based on demand and opportunity, said co-founder Anna Seear.
“We’ve always said for years that we love pulling people over to the dark side,” she said with a laugh. “I think there’s definitely a space to do really good-quality, simple, clean-ingredient, high-quality milk chocolate. So that’s what we’re really excited about sharing.”
Since its beginnings, Ritual Chocolate has specialized in single origin dark chocolate, showcasing flavors found naturally in cacao sourced from countries like Ecuador, the Phillipines, Madagascar, Peru and Belize.
Seear said her priority is to source ethically for high-quality ingredients, especially as they expanded with more flavorings and toppings. They also began using oat milk in more products for lighter chocolates, keeping the brand vegan like its owner.
But as Seear herself has evolved, so has Ritual, and she realized they can continue to operate within those plant-based values while still incorporating dairy to meet the demand of their audience.
“I was a vegan for probably over 15 years,” she said. “Now I only really eat dairy and meat if I know where it’s coming from, if I know that the animals have been humanely raised, I like to go as local as possible, so you can just feel good about it.”
When it came to sourcing milk powder, that’s what she looked for, and landed on California’s Alexandre Family Farm which produces A2/A2, pasture-raised, grass-fed milk as a certified regenerative organic farm.
“They’re a family that’s really trying to do it right. … That was a huge piece of the puzzle for me,” Seear said. “We started doing some test batches with the milk powder — they use a whole milk powder — and it was just so flavorful and high quality, and it really felt like something we could get behind.”
After playing around with different blends of the product, Seear landed on a 46% cacao bar, which is still darker than traditional milk chocolate.
“We wanted something where you could really taste the cacao, but then you could also really taste the flavor of the milk as well, and it wasn’t overly sugary,” she said. “A lot of milk chocolate that you’ll find out there is like 30% (cacao) or below.”
Seear said there’s a Ritual Chocolate signature milk chocolate bar coming soon, but they decided to release their first one as a holiday special: The Cranberry Orange Bar, infused with orange essence and topped with dried cranberries.
“(It’s) a good intro, just see what people think, and it’s been really well received, which is fantastic,” she said.
In addition to the milk chocolate bar releasing in the new year, a soon-to-be released Deer Valley Resort collaboration bar will also be milk chocolate, planned to be available at the resort in early December.
The cranberry orange milk chocolate bar is available for purchase online at ritualchocolate.com or at their headquarters in Heber City.