Follow these 2015 Chocolate Awards Winners
August 3, 2015
Have you been following national and international food awards to see if your favorite chocolate bars and goods made the cut?
There are a LOT of awards out there for chocolate in 2015, with new competitions popping up every year. And, there is a growing focus on food quality and ethical practices as a basis for these awards.
Ready to see what the best of the best created this year?
Without further adieu - here are the winners!
The Good Food Awards
Created in 2010, The Good Food Awards aims to recognize chocolate makers who lead the way in new quality and ethics standards. It was organized through the efforts of food producers, farmers, food journalists, and independent grocers.
More than 100 winners are selected and honored at a special ceremony in San Francisco each year. This year's winners in the chocolate category were picked from all over the U.S.
Acalli Chocolate, Louisiana. Winning product: El Platanal 70% Dark Chocolate bar.
Black Mountain Chocolate, North Carolina. Winning product: Mountain Milk Chocolate Bar. Made with goat milk!
Charm School Chocolate, Maryland. Winning product: Coconut Milk Chocolate Bar. It's vegan!
Patric Chocolate, Missouri. Winning products: 67% Madagascar, Black Licorice Bar & PBJ OMG.
See the full listing of 2015 awards winners here.
The Southern Living Food Awards
Southern Living Magazine puts their test kitchen to the test each year to come up with their favorite new artisan products. They taste over 300 products, and this year, came up with 24 favorites, and 22 runners-up.
Three chocolate products were included in this year's winners:
Adam Turoni of Chocolat's Wildflower Honeycomb Chocolate Bar. This bar looks almost too beautiful to eat. Made in Georgia, the bar oozes with with raw wildflower honeycomb.
Art Eatables was featured as a runner up for their Small-Batch Bourbon Truffles.
Another runner up, for their Fleur de Sel Pecan Toffee, was Lambrecht Gourmet. Made in Arizona, this toffee is like biting into a chocolate pecan pie, topped with sea salt.
Follow this link for the full listing of winners.
Prevention’s 100 Cleanest Packaged Food Awards
At Prevention Magazine, their focus was on clean eating, in an effort to provide us with a list of truly healthy picks which measured up to nine standards:
1. No more than 10g added sugars
2. No genetically modified ingredients
3. Low, or zero synthetic and artificial ingredients
4. Organic or sustainably sourced ingredients
5. For seafood - sustainable per Monterey Bay Aquarium criteria
6. Toxin-free or eco-friendly packaging
7. Made without excess sodium
8. New to the market within the past 18 months
9. Taste absolutely delicious
One chocolate product made the cut in Prevention's snacks category.
Lily’s Salted Almond and Milk Chocolate Bar - made with no added sugar and sweetened with stevia, this bar has 20% fewer calories than traditional bars but the same great taste. Find them at lilyssweets.com.
See details of all winners at prevention.com.
The SOFI Awards
"SOFI" stands for Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation. This year's winners were selected from 2,715 entries.
The awards, now in their 43rd year, are open to members of the Specialty Food Association.
Winners in the chocolate category:
Handmade in Harlem, NY, Laurie and Sons made the cut with their Dangerously Delicious Black Licorice Chocolate Toffee made with organic sugar, fresh creamery butter, natural ingredients and no corn syrup, preservatives, or food coloring.
The Blood Orange Olive Oil Brownie Kit by Sutter Butter Olive Oil Company combines a packet of double fudge brownie mix and Belgian chocolate with their extra virgin blood orange olive oil. Talk about a taste explosion.
Finally, Hot Cakes from Seattle, WA was prized for their Dark Decadence Organic Molten Chocolate Cake. It's baked right in the mason jar, and made with only three ingredients, chocolate, sugar, and eggs.
Read about all the 2015 winners here.
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The International Chocolate Awards
Founded in 2012 by a group of international partners based in the UK, Italy, and the U.S. who collectively have years of experience running chocolate awards.
There are now competitions held in a growing number of countries, including Italy, USA, UK, and Germany.
Their mission is to help chocolate makers and cacao farmers succeed at producing the world's finest chocolate.
These were the 2015 ‘best in competition’ winners for their Americas competition:
Soma Chocolate, made in Canada with a bean-to-bar philosophy, won the plain/origin dark chocolate bar category.
Chocolates El Rey, with their concept of an all natural, fair-trade, single-origin cacao from Venezuela, took first place for the plain/origin milk chocolate bar category.
See all of the Americas chocolate winners here. There are quite a few!
Hopefully this listing of 2015 awards winners gives you an idea of whom to follow in the chocolate world today. Whether you're looking for premium ingredients, bean-to-bar, organic, or simply healthy, there's a chocolate maker out there waiting to impress you.
Photo: "LuMaxArt Golden Guy Trophy Winner" by Scott Maxwell is licensed under CC BY SA 2.0 / cropped from original
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