From Engineering to the Chocolate Bench
Manual auto transmissions led Fredrik Martinsson to chocolate. Before embarking on a chocolate career, he was working as an engineering project manager on manual transmissions for Ford and Volvo in Sweden. As the market shifted towards electrifying cars, manual transmissions became obsolete. His company gave him a year’s notice that they were shutting down, which gave Fredrik time to consider his future.
He was tired of sitting at a desk all day. While he liked project management in theory, he wanted to do something else - something with his hands. As a side business, he had been working with a local coffee roaster to produce an advent calendar, and he decided to add a chocolate advent calendar to his product mix. He called a chocolate maker in Sweden to see if they wanted to participate, and the maker said to him, “You’re making a bean-to-bar calendar, right?” Fredrik said, “What do you mean ‘bean-to-bar’? What’s that?”
His only reference point was the supermarket chocolate of his childhood. As he learned more about specialty chocolate, he fell in love with the craft of making chocolate and appreciated its positive impact on the value chain. But it was his first experience tasting craft chocolate – one that gave him a “wow” sensation - that was the catalyst to becoming a chocolate maker.
He founded Standout Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker based in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he uses his skills as an engineer and that "wow" tasting moment to create consistently delicious chocolate that reflects his Nordic heritage.
Chasing the "Wow"
Fredrik experiments with origins and roasting to develop flavors that make great chocolate. He says that when he chooses a new origin it doesn’t matter what the beans look like. Often the worst looking beans result in the most interesting flavors. He works with samples of cacao from around the world, roasting them to bring out their flavor. If he gets the “wow” sensation when he tastes a new batch, he adds it to the product assortment.
Fredrik prefers to work with cacao origins that provide quality control during post-harvest processing. For example, sorting cacao is a task that is better done at origin before the cacao is shipped – debris is removed and beans are organized by size. Debris removal saves his team time, and similar-sized beans roast evenly, giving Standout more control over flavor. Roasting for flavor results in great chocolate – it’s the hallmark of a great chocolate maker.
The Story Starts on the Wrapper
Standout's story starts on the wrapper. Pick up the Spruce Shoots bar and you'll see it immediately — "Nordic Nature" in small type just above the name: Spruce Shoots. For most Americans, spruce is a tree, not a food. But in Sweden, foraging spruce shoots in spring is something children grow up doing, a seasonal ritual that Fredrik still associates with walking through the forest as a kid. Standout's bars are rooted in Nordic ingredients and food traditions. Tasting through them together feels less like a chocolate flight and more like sitting down for a fika you didn't know you needed.
The Chocolate
Fredrik draws on two distinct threads in his work — single-origin bars that showcase what quality cacao can do when roasted with care, and inclusion chocolates rooted in Nordic heritage. The two single-origin bars our members received in this month's subscription box highlight cacao from Belize and Guatemala. The remaining three come from Standout's "Nordic Nature" and "Swedish Favourites" collections, where Fredrik pairs fine cacao with ingredients that are cultural touchstones in Sweden and across the Nordic countries — foraged spruce shoots, wild sugar kelp, a medieval cheese that predates modern Sweden. Each has a rich story that’s part of Fredrik's Swedish heritage and Standout’s brand DNA.
While I’ve provided some of my own tasting notes, below, I’d like to remind you that tasting notes are personal. What you taste may be completely different based on your own experiences. If everything tastes like chocolate, that’s fine! Take your time to taste mindfully. Whatever you do or don’t notice, all that really matters is that you enjoy yourself!
Maya Mountain Belize 70%
I taste notes of mango and sour cherry with a hint of nuts peeking through as the chocolate melts. The finish is chocolaty and pleasantly bitter. This would be a good chocolate to pair with cheese. I’d start by trying it with an aged Gouda or an aged goat cheese. We'd love to hear of pairings you discover.
Lachuá Guatemala 70%
I taste notes of tropical fruit, papaya, hints of citrus and graham cracker and an herbaceous finish with pleasant astringency. Just like wine, chocolate has tannins that can result in mouth-drying texture known as “astringency”. When I judge for the International Chocolate Awards, we can add or subtract points for bitterness and astringency. When in balance, astringency and bitterness can be pleasant, but they can also be intense and unpalatable. I like the astringency of this chocolate, which balances with the fruity flavor notes and is not overpowering. Try pairing this with aged goat cheese.
Spruce Shoots 66%
Spruce Shoots are used as a cure for depression during the long, dark winters in Scandinavia. This chocolate is a trip down memory lane for Fredrik. As a child he picked and ate spruce shoots at their peak while hiking through the forest. These spruce shoots are hand-picked in the forests outside Högtorp Gård in Södermanland, Sweden and paired with Öko Caribe cacao from the Dominican Republic. The taste is a pleasing combination of evergreen and bright cherry notes with a pleasantly bitter chocolate finish.
This is kind of a walk down memory lane for many of the kids in Sweden, because this is one of the things that you can actually eat in the forest. The spruce is the light green tip of the spruce, not to be mixed up with the pine. We get that a lot from US customers, that they think it should taste like pine, but it doesn't. What's interesting with the spruce shoots is that you think it should taste like the forest, but it's actually quite citric in the flavor notes, quite bright, to be honest. - Fredrik Martinsson
Sugar Kelp & Sea Salt 66%
Seaweed and chocolate are a surprisingly palatable combination when done well. While I’ve recently tasted a number of seaweed-chocolate combinations, this is the first seaweed chocolate that knocked my socks off. It’s perfectly balanced and the components complement each other. I find myself reaching for more. The Sugar Kelp and sea salt pair beautifully with the cacao flavor. The flavor comes in waves, alternating between lightly-umami notes of seaweed followed by the fruity flavors of Öko Caribe cacao from the Dominican Republic.
Caramelized Goat Cheese 58%
Fredrik identifies this as one of his favorite chocolates because of its local heritage. Dating back to Viking times, Getmese is a Swedish cheese made by boiling goat’s milk whey until it caramelizes. Each Nordic country has their own version - in Norway, they call it brown cheese and add cream to round out the flavor. The longer you boil it the harder it gets. When having a “fika” (coffee break) Swedes eat slices of Getmese rolled in flatbread. Fredrik points out that this is not a milk chocolate bar. It’s a dark chocolate bar with Getmese goat cheese. While the cheese is made with goat milk, milk powder is not added to the chocolate.
What Gets a Maker on My List
The first thing I do when evaluating a chocolate maker is taste their single-origin bars — these are the test of their skills. I'm looking for interesting and complex flavor notes that demonstrate their ability to choose great cacao and coax the most flavor out of it. If I like what I taste, then I look at their inclusion chocolates. Is the maker creating inclusions that tell the story of their heritage? Are they an innovator who likes to pair interesting ingredients with chocolate, and do their pairings work? Have they enhanced the natural flavors of great cacao with an ingredient that makes it sing? Fredrik checks every one of those boxes — and then some.
This month, Chocolate Explorers Club members tasted these bars live with Fredrik — asking questions, sharing reactions, and hearing the stories behind the chocolate directly from the maker. If that sounds like your kind of experience, we'd love to have you join us. Every month brings a new maker, a new origin, and a new chocolate community to share it with.
