I have an obses­sion to admit to: Sahale Snacks’ Dauphine snack blend. I posted about this product a while back (see the link) and since then, Sahale has dis­con­tinued the product. At first, I thought it was just hard to find. I searched every­where. I tried to order from Amazon. I tried to order it from Organ­icDi­rect. I walked around to all the little gro­cery stores in all the upscale neigh­bor­hoods. I tried super­mar­kets in other towns when I was trav­eling. No luck. Even­tu­ally, my fiancee wrote to the com­pany and learned that they stopped making it. Men­tion of it has been taken from their website.

The Dauphine blend is a fas­ci­nating mix: wal­nuts mixed with banana chips, coconut, ginger, blue­ber­ries, lavendar, and white pepper. From Amazon, where the product is still listed (though unavail­able) I was able to grab the actual ingre­dient infor­ma­tion from the packaging:

Wal­nuts, Dried Blue­ber­ries (Blue­ber­ries, Apple Juice Con­cen­trate, Sun­flower Dill), Banana Chips (Unsweet­ened Bananas, Coconut Oil), Coconut Flakes (Unsul­phured), Organic Evap­o­rated Cane Juice, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Dried Ginger (Unsul­phured Ginger Root, Sugar), Spice, Sea Salt, Nat­ural Vanilla Extract.

Okay, so I now know what’s in it. How hard can it be to dupli­cate it? Not for retail pur­poses, of course. It’s for per­sonal use. Like I said, I’m hooked.

Most of the ingre­di­ents can be easily pur­chased. Wal­nuts are easy. I can get those at the super­market. Dried blue­ber­ries, while expen­sive, are the kind of thing that Whole Foods will carry. Banana chips are inex­pen­sive and sold in many places. Coconut flakes – as opposed to the sticky sweet stuff people bake with – it a little less common but can still be found at Whole Foods or other nat­ural mar­kets. Dried ginger (espe­cially crys­tal­ized ginger) has become pretty common. My dad mixes it into his ice cream. How about cane juice and tapioca syrup?

By asking the oracle and poking around a few dif­ferent web­sites, I am finding that evap­o­rated cane juice and sugar are not all that dif­ferent. The dif­fer­ences are in the amount of pro­cessing and the results of that lack of pro­cessing (more molassas, varying levels of fruc­tose and glu­cose, trace nutri­ents, etc.) on the end product. I could prob­ably use a good organic Turbinado sugar and not have to go find some exotic sweet­ener. Like­wise, tapioca syrup appears to be another sweet­ener alter­na­tive for per­sons or pro­ducers who don’t want to use corn syrup or who are looking for a neu­trally fla­vored sweet­ener that is pro­duced in a manner con­sis­tent with vegan food rules. One web­site I vis­ited sug­gested that tapioca syrup could be used as a sub­sti­tute for honey or maple syrup, so I could con­ceiv­ably sub the other way. I have honey in my pantry and maple syrup in my fridge. No need for another sweetener.

The tricky ingre­dient in the list is “spice”; this word could cover a mul­ti­tude of sins. The pack­aging for the product says that lavender and white pepper are included, so I have that to go on. White pepper is often used in my kitchen. Lavender? Not so much, no.

My fiancee and I received some won­derful spices from good friends as a Christmas gift. They are from Pen­zeys, and I have enjoyed using them. Since they’re a name I know, I gave their web­site a try. Sure enough, a search for lavender yielded this: Lavender, 40z. bag, $8.95. It’s not cheap. Reminds me of buying saf­fron (another spice from flowers). But this is the one tricky ingre­dient sep­a­rating me from my Dauphine. Time to order some flowers.