Atole Culture
At Cultura Chocolate, located within the Westwood neighborhood of Denver, Damaris Ronkanen is serving a line of traditional atole in conjunction with her bean-to-bar chocolate.
A selection of four of Cultura’s Atoles. Illustrations by Bashel Lubarsky.
As a child, Damaris Ronkanen traveled to Puebla, Mexico to visit her grandmother— she’d return to Denver dreaming of their time spent in the kitchen. “She would make everything from scratch,” explains Ronkanen. From tamales to mole, it was the use of local ingredients and indigenous recipes that had the largest impact on her.
One recipe in particular, a blend of cacao and masa in a hot beverage called champurrado, inspired her to start her own company, Cultura Chocolate. Located in the Westwood neighborhood of Denver, Cultura preserves the area’s Latin-American cultural history, highlighting Mexican ingredients and recipes in order to create a space for the community. “I always wanted to create chocolate that resonates with Mexico,” she says. So Cultura was born with a collection of chocolate bars and drinking chocolates with a focus on single-origin cacao. After a handful of years growing the business, Ronkanen was able to purchase a molino to grind corn and make masa on-site, adding corn-infused chocolate to her repertoire. “A focus on chocolate beverages and corn nixtamal honors a lot of traditional techniques,” Ronkanen explains.
The masa is mainly found in a line of atoles, a comforting, thickened beverage typically served with breakfast or after dinner, or for holidays like Día de los Muertos. Similar to Cultura’s drinking chocolates, the atoles are sold fresh by the cup and in dehydrated mixes, both online and at their on-site cafe. In conjunction with the atole, Ronkanen sells bean-to-bar chocolate that captures the flavors and ingredients of the drinks themselves. Here’s a breakdown of four of her signature atole flavors.
ATOLE NEGRO
Most commonly drunk during Día de los Muertos, Atole Negro swings in a much darker and maltier direction. It’s blended with a mix of burnt cacao shells (a great way for Ronkanen to utilize scraps from the chocolate-making process), star anise, cinnamon, vanilla, and piloncillo.
TAXCALATE
A “pre-Hispanic-inspired” drink from the state of Chiapas, Taxcalate atole is composed of 70% Mexican dark chocolate blended in water with heirloom toasted red corn for its rich and complex flavor. The atole is lightly sweetened with a tiny bit of cane sugar and spiced with achiote and guajillo chiles, making it more dark and vegetal, with a pleasant, sour funk.
PINOLE
The Pinole starts with toasted heirloom yellow corn for a bright. buttery flavor. It’s then sweetened with cane syrup and spiced with Ceylon cinnamon. The sweetest and lightest in flavor, but the most distinct in texture, the Pinole retains some of the corn's natural grittiness.
CHAMPURRADO
Cultura Chocolate’s Champurrado blend started with Damaris’s grandmother's recipe. The typical atole-making process begins with nixtamalized corn cooked down in water or another liquid of choice until thick and creamy, creating a luscious blank slate for other flavors. In this case, the Champurrado is infused with dark chocolate, Ceylon cinnamon, and sugar.
