Conspiracy Chocolate’s mahjong set unites good luck and tastiness for Chinese New Year

In Hong Kong, the click-clack of mahjong tiles is part of the unofficial soundtrack to Lunar New Year. A staple at family gatherings, playing mahjong is more than something to do while making small talk with relatives you may not have seen all year. It can also represent a pursuit of good luck for the year ahead. Local craft brand Conspiracy Chocolate – known for its Coa and Bakehouse collaboration bars – is reimagining this cultural staple through a lens of fine cacao, launching a 13 Orphans chocolate set that is as much a work of art as it is a festive treat. The set is named for a hand in the popular game. While most chocolate is melted down from heavily sweetened, mass-produced industrial blocks, Conspiracy Chocolate belongs to the “less than one per cent club” of producers that make and finish their chocolate in the same facility. “Most of the chocolate you buy, you get from a chocolatier,” explains co-founder Amit Oz. “A chocolatier buys chocolate. We are a chocolate maker,” he stresses. This year’s mahjong set is a labour of love. Conspiracy sources its beans from a single farm in Vietnam before fermenting the dried cacao and then roasting it “the way you would coffee beans”. The skin is removed from the beans (and saved for making tea) while the nibs from the inside are ground for five days before being aged for one month. “That aged chocolate then gets used for different products such as the casing that we will drip around the chocolate and the fillings,” Oz says. For the Year of the Horse, the founders wanted a set that reflected their chefs’ favourite local desserts. The in-house chocolate is used to create a 64 per cent dark chocolate shell that carries natural notes of fruit and earth – the perfect canvas for traditional Hong Kong flavours. One filling is described as “a bit like tong yuan” with black sesame and ginger. Another, inspired by mochi sweets, features white sesame and coconut. A third combines the flavours of milk tea with almond in an elevated tribute to the cha chaan teng staple. For all the fancy flavours, the real innovation lies beneath the surface: the mould for each chocolate tile is unique to Conspiracy, designed by co-founder Celine Herren. “This has allowed us to develop our own shapes that aren’t available elsewhere, in a mould that other people can buy,” Herren says. Once the casings and the fillings are ready, the filling gets coated by a waterfall of chocolate – a process known as enrobing. At the end of this process follows another crucial step where the chocolates receive their mahjong details. “We handstamp every piece with a metal stamp, the same kind you would use for wax stamping. We get them from a local stamp maker,” Oz says. “This is a technique we’ve developed in-house. It’s a slow, very handmade process that gives us very unique shapes.” “And we’ve been working with calligraphers, designers and mahjong players to make sure they look very authentic,” Oz adds. The finishing touch is an edible gold spray to give the chocolates an appropriately fortuitous Lunar New Year look. But beyond the artisanal skill on display, there is a deeper philosophy at play. The 13 Orphans is one of the most difficult winning hands in the game to acquire – hence a great deal of luck is required to pick up all the tiles. Some complain that this means the set is an inauspicious one for Lunar New Year, the belief being that using too much luck at the start of the year will drain your luck for the next 12 months, or that winning with such a hand is only achievable by stealing luck away from other players. Oz and Herren say their set is designed to do just the opposite. “In mahjong, a player [who] wins with such a powerful hand, one of the luckiest, rarest, most difficult to gather hands in mahjong, tends to show humility and redistribute luck. These chocolates allow you to do that, symbolically sharing the luck with other people,” claims Oz. “Mahjong represents good luck and fortune, and it’s something that people get together to do, both of which are a very good fit for Lunar New Year,” adds Herren. “The set is a way to bring something to a gathering and share fortune, share good luck, share a good time, and share yummy flavours with people you love.”

Conspiracy Chocolate’s mahjong set unites good luck and tastiness for Chinese New Year

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The local Hong Kong chocolatier – known for its Coa and Bakehouse collaboration bars – launches its 13 Orphans mahjong set for the Year of the Horse

The local Hong Kong chocolatier – known for its Coa and Bakehouse collaboration bars – launches its 13 Orphans mahjong set for the Year of the Horse