Craft Chocolate in Adams County: A Feast for All the Senses

iStock.com/Natalia Marna

Joel Dar and Gila Kaplan-Dar didn’t start their careers in the world of craft chocolate. “Joel was a film producer before we became chocolatiers,” says Gila of her co-founder and co-owner of DAR Chocolate, which is based in Thornton, Colorado. “I still am DAR’s graphic designer, but for many years, I was an illustrator.”

The pair caught the chocolate bug during a two-year stint in Costa Rica, during which they learned how to transform cacao beans to bars, and they’ve been integrating their artistic sensibilities into what they call “art bars” since they launched DAR in 2016 and started making craft chocolate in Adams County. “There’s this occurrence in untempered chocolate called bloom,” Kaplan-Dar says.

It manifests as a harmless, flavorless white haze on the surface of the bar, and it can, she says, “create the most beautiful designs, like clouds or rocks.”

She initially took inspiration from those patterns when creating DAR’s packaging, but in 2020, she opted to “take the art concept to the next level and make it community-oriented” by partnering with artists to use their work on the cardboard boxes that house each bar of carefully crafted chocolate.

The result: A gorgeous variety of images, from the subtle tonal watercolor cityscape on DAR’s salted caramel milk chocolate bar to bright abstract figures on the dairy-free coconut milk chocolate bar.

Scrolling DAR’s website is a treat for the eyes as well as a temptation for the taste buds, with info about each artist as well as a link to purchase prints of the artwork used in packaging.