Camelot – or Camelicious?

Want a Camel Milk Chocolate?

Strolling through the Chocolate Show some years back in Manhattan (and munching as I went) I thought I had seen it all – chocolates with a hundred different flavors,  chili chocolates, chocolates mixed with bacon, even chocolate beauty lotions, lip glosses and potions. – until I came to the most unexpected – camel milk chocolates!

I took a double turn: camel milk chocolates – how could that be possible, it sounded almost like an oxymoron! Camels – those endearing funny-faced ships of the desert – so often the butt of jokes are now the creator of desserts, of high-end gourmet chocolates? As chocolate lovers surged around, every single last piece of this delicacy was gone – sold out!

I had to satisfy myself by emailing the Al Nassma Chocolate Company in Dubai to get some more information. Apparently it’s the first company in the world to produce camel milk chocolates, and Martin van Almsick, a chocolate aficionado who was affiliated with the Cologne Chocolate Museum, worked together with experts from Europe on creating these luxury chocs, and they are only available in Dubai as of now.

The headquarters of Al Nassma are, appropriately enough, next to Camelicious, a camel farm that provides all the milk for the chocolates and which I was told belongs to the Sheikh. Later surfing the web, I saw on the Arab American News.com site a picture of the camels being hand-milked at the farm.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you what camel milk chocolates taste like but they come in 5 different flavored bars, including local spices, dates, Macadamia nut, orange, 70% cocoa and whole milk. The pralines range is filled with pistachio, nougat and coffee cream. Another interesting fact – the chocolates are halal and have no preservatives or artificial flavors.

“However, the jewel in the crown is the gold wrapped chocolate camel embodying the source of Al Nassma, the camel and its milk,” gushes the press release which also reports that the first retail shop has opened, with a camel milk chocolate fountain, right next to Camelicious Farm.

Camelicious?  I love the name. Sounds something right out of Alice in Wonderland, or maybe Arabian Nights…

(This article was written in 2009. Updated in 2017.)