MARYSVILLE — Strita Supreme Chocolat is the real thing: A chocolate factory where organic dark chocolates are made from scratch, starting with cacao beans imported from the Philippines.
That’s why the shop’s website proclaims: “We MAKE chocolates not melt.”
“Some companies, they buy it by the blocks and they melt it,” said John Henry Baylon, who runs Strita Supreme Chocolat, which opened in 2012, with wife Remy Crain. “We’re a maker, we make it.”
The proof is in the bags of raw cacao beans on display in a corner of the shop. If a chocolatier can’t show you cacao beans, chances are he’s not a true maker, Baylon said.
Unlike many chocolatiers, Baylon, 46, is also experienced in growing and harvesting cacao beans. He was in his early 30s when he started planting cacao trees with his father on land once owned by his great-grandparents in the Philippines. His father has since died and Baylon inherited the farm, which is run by cousins and where 6,000 cacao trees grow.
The “Strita” in Strita Supreme Chocolat honors his father. It’s a contraction of Santa Rita in Samar province, in the southeastern portion of the Philippines, where his father was born and where the farm is located, Baylon said.
The shop’s location at 10208 State Ave. in Marysville might seem an unlikely spot to get a chocolate fix. A psychic business is housed in one half of the building and next door is Planned Parenthood. Yet if the former is about spiritual health and the latter, female health, Baylon said his business is about health for all through eating dark chocolate.
“I want to show people what the real stuff is all about,” he said, adding, “Health is wealth.”
Cacao beans have been called a superfood, with studies revealing various health benefits from eating dark chocolate every day in small amounts.
Dark chocolate is known to be rich in flavonoids, antioxidants that boost the immune system, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease. And the darker the better, because darker chocolate contains more of the healthful beans.
The best chocolate is at least 70 percent cocoa and free of additives, Baylon said. His chocolate is organic and natural, with no added ingredients. That means no milk, which studies have shown reduces the antioxidant benefits of chocolate. Neither are there genetically modified ingredients. And there are no fillers, like the flour products some companies use in their chocolates, so everything is gluten free.
Strita chocolate contains only cocoa beans, cocoa butter — released by the cocoa beans during grinding — and cane sugar.
“If you want the real stuff,” Baylon said, “here’s the real stuff.”
The shop is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily and visitors can taste a variety of chocolate products. Dishes of the healthful beans and nibs — the inside of the bean referred to as cocoa after roasting and grinding — line the glass counter of the small shop along with covered glass jars of chocolate samples. In the display case below is an arrangement of chocolate bars for sale.
Cocoa content of the 1.8-ounce bars ranges from 50 to 100 percent, with bars at the higher end priced at $4 each and bars with 50-75 percent cocoa content costing $3.50 each. Flavors include rock sea salt, wild ginger, lavender, lemongrass, roasted chili, forest blueberry, orange, peppermint and cinnamon.
With no added sugar, the 100-percent chocolate bars are an acquired taste, Baylon said, but are actually good for diabetics.
In fact, participants in an Italian study who ate a small portion of dark chocolate every day saw their potential for insulin resistance drop by nearly half, according to Women’s Health website. The reason, said the study’s lead researcher, is that flavonoids in dark chocolate increase nitric oxide production, which helps control insulin sensitivity. Other Strita Supreme Chocolat products include small boxes of molded chocolate truffles for $7.50. Shelves behind the counter hold bags of chocolate-covered nuts and fruits, including tropical mango and rock salted mango. There is even chocolate-covered jerky, using jerky supplied by a local company, in flavors like teriyaki, chipotle and sweet red chili.
Baylon and wife Crain, 52, live in Everett, where Baylon works in Boeing’s quality department to fund the chocolate shop and his fledgling import/export business, Strita USA Enterprise. In addition to cacao beans, he is working on importing dried fish, a Filipino breakfast tradition, and medicinal teas, such as moringa and mangosteen, by sometime this summer or fall. He is also hoping to import alternative-medicine supplements, to be available wholesale, within a year or two.
In the Philippines, where he and Crain grew up, chocolate is a way of life. Baylon said he learned chocolate-making from his aunt and grandmother, and remembers waking up in the morning with cacao trees outside his window. The art of chocolate-making is practically in his blood.
“It’s different, what you experience and what you learn from school,” he said. “Experience is a lot more intense.” Spanish and Portuguese explorers first brought cacao trees — botanically known as Theobroma cacao, Greek for “food of the gods” — to the islands from Central America in the 16th century, where they quickly took root and flourished, often growing in the shade of coconut trees.
The trees grow in the band of regions 20 miles north of the equator and 20 miles south of the equator, Baylon said. With its 7,100-plus islands (7,101 at high tide and 7,109 at low tide, Baylon said) the Philippines lies within that band.
Every Filipino drinks hot chocolate made in the ancient Mayan way, Baylon said. Known as tablea tsokolate (Spanish for tablet and Filipino for chocolate) the hot drink is made by dissolving pressed dark-chocolate tablets in boiling water, then vigorously stirring with a wooden beater held between the palms called a batidor. The drink is made both with and without milk and a little sugar can be added to taste.
Baylon and Crain make the tablets and sell them in a tube labeled tabl’ea.
“Whether you’re poor or you’re a very rich guy, in the Philippines, the people have tablea in their kitchens,” Baylon said. “That’s just the main food they have.”
Champorado, a breakfast food of sticky rice and chocolate, with perhaps a bit of sugar and condensed milk thrown in, is another Filipino tradition, he said.
For Baylon and Crain, making chocolate in the old, traditional way is a labor of love.
She loves eating chocolate and she loves making it, Crain said.
“Especially if you get the product the way you want,” she said, “it makes you happy.”
It’s a time-consuming process, Baylon said.
“Making chocolate is not the next day,” he said. “It takes 20 days to make chocolate.”
Once the beans are roasted, often for several hours, the nibs are removed from the shells by a winnowing machine. The nibs are then ground into a paste called chocolate liquor, though there is no alcohol involved. It is a thick liquid consisting of cocoa solids — the chocolatey part — suspended in cocoa butter — natural fats present in the beans.
Conching grinds the cocoa solids and sugar crystals into finer and finer particles over several hours to several days. Knowing how long to conch is part of the chocolate maker’s skill, as it affects the taste, smell and texture of the chocolate.
The last step before the chocolate is poured into molds is tempering — controlled heating and cooling to form the right kind of crystals that give chocolate a shiny finish and good “snap” when broken. Without tempering, the chocolate would have a matte finish and melt in the hand.
Tempering is difficult, Baylon said, but the good thing is that it can be done over and over with no harm to the chocolate, until the chocolate maker gets it right.
As passionate as they are about getting it right, they are also passionate about dark chocolate’s health benefits.
“All the benefits that you get,” Baylon said, “you don’t get that from McDonald’s.”
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