St. Croix Chocolate Company won a Silver Award for its new Burnt Cinnamon and Bourbon bar in the International Chocolate Awards World Finals competition announced over the weekend from Florence, Italy.
The award recognizes the bar as one of the world’s best. In addition to a layer of bourbon caramel, it features a ganache filling made by infusing flame-charred cinnamon sticks in cream, then surrounding the filling with brown butter milk chocolate.
SCCC also won Bronze in the World Finals for its Macadamia bon bon (in the caramels with combined chocolates category). The chocolate had earned Gold in the Americas regional division in September to earn the right to compete in the World Finals.
The International Chocolate Awards are the largest craft chocolate competition in the world. Judging is done by highly trained chocolate professionals who score each product on characteristics such as flavor, texture and balance.
"I'm so pleased, and really proud of what we have accomplished,” Dochterman said. “It’s a huge achievement to compete on this level, and excel. We're so grateful to the International Chocolate Awards organizers, to our staff, to cacao farmers, bean-to-bar chocolate makers, and especially to all the wonderful people who saw us on TV and in the newspapers and supported us and wished us well! We have absolutely loved connecting with so many new fans! We will always work hard to make sure our fine chocolates are among the very best in the whole world,” Dochterman said.
Former SCCC employee Nathan “Fox” Eisinger and Scandia, Minn. beekeeper Cathy Mackiewicz, attended the awards ceremony in Florence and accepted the SCCC awards. Mackiewicz and her husband Mike produce much of the honey used in SCCC creations.