Conspiracy Chocolate’s mahjong set unites good luck and tastiness for Chinese New Year
The local Hong Kong chocolatier – known for its Coa and Bakehouse collaboration bars – launches its 13 Orphans mahjong set for the Year of the Horse
Local craft brand Conspiracy Chocolate – known for its Coa and Bakehouse collaboration bars – is reimagining this cultural staple through a lens of fine cacao, launching a 13 Orphans chocolate set that is as much a work of art as it is a festive treat. The set is named for a hand in the popular game.
While most chocolate is melted down from heavily sweetened, mass-produced industrial blocks, Conspiracy Chocolate belongs to the “less than one per cent club” of producers that make and finish their chocolate in the same facility.
“Most of the chocolate you buy, you get from a chocolatier,” explains co-founder Amit Oz. “A chocolatier buys chocolate. We are a chocolate maker,” he stresses.
This year’s mahjong set is a labour of love.
Conspiracy sources its beans from a single farm in Vietnam before fermenting the dried cacao and then roasting it “the way you would coffee beans”. The skin is removed from the beans (and saved for making tea) while the nibs from the inside are ground for five days before being aged for one month.
“That aged chocolate then gets used for different products such as the casing that we will drip around the chocolate and the fillings,” Oz says.
