Lil hottie is @bunoborna's favorite - and this week's #texturetuesday!
There's a lot going on here, but not in the overwhelming-too-much-going-on way. There are a couple different things that are playing different roles, and so it's important to take a second to step back and break them down!
So, here we go:
- Vietnamese Cinnamon is best described, we think, by the spice masters at Penzey's. Long short, it packs a punch! It's not that subtle, hanging out in the background wallflower-type of cinnamon. It's smack you across your face cinnamon. It's in the front row. This is important because by employing this spicy punch, we back up the character of the not-so-spicy-chiles that are working in the forefront. This magic trick makes it difficult to place where the different sensations in your mouth are coming from when you taste a Lil Hottie!
- Have you met Spice Trekkers a.k.a. Epices de Cru? We met them and fell in love with their beautiful high quality spices through our friends at Zingerman's Mail Order! Arbol chile is special because it's so versatile. It's not too hot and lends itself to a wide variety of flavors. This is important because even though our cinnamon packs a punch, we don't want to overpower that with heat. The goal is to complement it!
- Then, we make a spiced honey caramel with juuuusssst the right amount of Mike's Hot Honey, a chile infused spicy honey from no other than Mike himself. We ran across this ingredient when we ran across Mike and a small food maker's thing in New York. Chill vibes and excellent quality? We're basically friends for life.
- To make matters more confusing, we use both dark and milk chocolate in order to create more dissonance on your pallet! The dark chocolate helps to spread the flavor (and the heat) while the milk chocolate and the cream complement help to cool. Just as soon as you feel one, there's the other!
Overall you're getting heat, you're getting cool, you're getting a punch of cinnamon and a soothing spice. It's confusing, it's delicious and its texture is something else. It's the kind of Bon where you can take a bite into it and you can see your teeth marks ever so smoothly before it melts into bliss.
Check it out in the Bon Builder and "Bon" appetit!
