Chocablog is 4 years old today! Hooray! 4 years! Pretty soon we will be old enough to go to school and before you know it we’ll be in detention for snacking behind the bike sheds – and other illicit activities no doubt!
Back in 2006, I certainly had no idea I’d still be doing this – and loving it – four years on, so I’d particularly like to thank all the contributors and chocolate makers that made it possible. But most of all, I’d like to thank you for reading, commenting and contributing to Chocablog. It makes it all worthwhile!
If you love Chocablog as much as we do, please take a moment to become a fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. We update both regularly and they’re great ways to keep in touch.
And yes… that is our actual birthday cake… I’ll be reviewing it soon. Seriously.
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High quality Belgian
chocolate gifts and e-chocolate from Soufflon
I may be getting spoiled by all the toffee I’ve been trying lately — I don’t consider getting spoiled by the chocolate because, after all, a necessity can’t spoil you. This box of Toffee Pecan Clusters came to me from Sweet Signatures, who have an array of products like cookies, brownies, chocolate-covered graham crackers, and clusters like these.
Their box is only simple gold with a simple gold bow. Not the most eye-catching; it could use more pizazz. Lifting its lid, curiosity came to me. The sticker on the top sheet reads “To enjoy… remove tray and push up from below.” As I set this aside, six large clusters looked up to greet me. Set in gold, they are stuck a bit against the sides of their circular nooks, which is why you have to give them a push from the bottom to get them out.
These clusters come in all three shades, white, milk, and dark. My set, though, is split between both the latter two. Their size is something — I measured a diameter about 2.5 in./6 cm, with a 0.75 in./2 cm. thickness. Not too bad; they’re almost like miniature desserts. If you chop them up, you’ll see quite a bit embedded in the chocolate. Pieces of Heath bars provide the toffee element, alongside chunks of pecan. You get a different selection in each bite, with the toffee giving off its caramel flavors and the pecans their sweet/earthy tones. Both are average, but coupled with the asymmetrical texture, have a tasty effect.
Given the large size of the clusters, even after all the pecans and toffee, there is plenty of space for lots of chocolate. The dark chocolate has a fudgy, brownie taste, while the extra milkiness of the milk chocolate holds hands more with the toffee’s flavor. I’m having a hard time deciding which I like more. I’ll have to go with the milk clusters only because, ironically, I get less of a sugar high with them just a couple bites in.
Sweet Signatures has that comfortable small chocolate company feel, but their prices don’t seem to reflect that. A box of six clusters is $17.50. Yes, they’re big and they taste good, but good enough for nearly $3 each? No. At half the price I would feel better about them.
Buy Sweet Signatures Toffee Pecan Clusters Online
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A “Chocolate Granola Hamper” is the best way I can think of to describe this great prize Dorset Cereals have provided for this competition. It’s three boxes each of Chocolate Granola and Chocolate Granola with Macadamia nuts, a Dorset Cereals bowl and a rather nice jute bag.
If you saw our recent review, you’ll know how much we liked these granolas. Definitely a prize worth having!
To be in with a chance of winning the competition, simply subscribe to our daily email updates and answer to the following question in the entry form below.
And if you’re stuck, you’ll find the answer on Dorset Cereals Web Site.
How many different types of mueslis do Dorset Cereals make? Is it..
Please make sure you read all the rules before entering your answer in the form below.
Entry Form
Competition Rules
Rules
- To enter, you must be subscribed to our email updates service and use the same email address in the entry form above. You can unsubscribe afterward if you like, but you must be on the list on the competition closing date for your entry to be counted.
- One entry per person only.
- The winner will be picked at random from correct entries and notified by email.
- Chocablog staff writers may not enter.
- The competition is open to UK residents only.
- The competition closes on Friday 19th March 2010.
- The judges’ decision is final.
- Rules are subject to change without notice (if we’ve forgotten something because we’re a bit slow)
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Buy Beautiful
Chocolate Gift Baskets full of Ghirardelli, Godiva, Belgian and other fine chocolates.
It’s time for the final review of our week of Japanese chocolates (’Thank God!’, I hear you cry), and it’s only fair we end with one more KitKat. This time, a pretty little pink number.
Once again, we have a heavily scented, coloured white chocolate bar. This time with the wonderful aroma of fake strawberries. You know the kind of thing – cheap strawberry candies or those nasty mass produced supermarket milkshakes. That’s not to say it’s an unpleasant smell, just an unnatural one.
The smell – and the taste – is that of artificially flavoured strawberry candy or bubblegum. There’s none of that fresh citrusy tang of real strawberry anywhere, although I’m sure someone will come along to tell me it’s made with 100% pure strawberry juice. I can’t read the ingredients, so I can’t say for sure.
There’s nothing detectably ’sparkling’ about it either. No fizz that I can pick up. And definitely no glitter. Perhaps the word ’sparkling’ means something else in Japan… like ‘absolutely not sparkling at all’, perhaps.
There is a very slight hint of tartness that comes through at the end, but I put that down to a chemical aftertaste as it’s still nothing like a real strawberry. The overall feel of this bar is that of a crispy-fake-strawberry-flavoured milkshake. I’m sure there’ll be kids who would go for it, but it’s not my thing.
So that’s it for a week of Japanese strangeness. This isn’t my favourite bar of the week – that honour would have to go to the little chilli KitKat bites I tried first – but it’s not the worst either.
It is, however, the pinkest. And in Japan, that’s very often all that matters.
Buy Nestlé KitKat Sparkling Strawberry Online
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After a week of strange and wonderful flavours (and a huge amount of sugar) it seems fitting to close my Japan Week with something a little more sophisticated, and I am very lucky to have been given this rather lovely little box of handmade treats from Awaji Shima, an island in Hyogo province which (I am reliably informed) actually produces the oranges used to make these chocolates.
As you can see from the packaging, these are definitely a more upmarket product. No huge text sprawled over the wrapper, no funky illustrations, just a simple ballotin wrapped in textured ivory paper which conceals a gold box.
Inside we find pieces of candied orange peel dipped in proper, real, actual Belgian dark chocolate, which probably makes these rather expensive to buy. We’ve seen versions of this before on Chocablog, most notably the truly awful efforts of Kshocolât, so I knew I wasn’t in for any amazing new taste sensations, but on the other hand, the contents of this box were definitely the most grown up thing I’ve sampled all week, so I was quite excited.
Poking my nose into the box for that all-important first sniff, I was rewarded with a healthy blast of rich, dark cocoa aroma with a subtle undercurrent of citrus from the candied peel. Once bitten the chocolate has a tendency to want to part company with the peel, so I allowed it to melt on my tongue before I tackled the peel. It’s classic Belgian dark chocolate – slightly bittersweet with a good dark flavour. Small pieces of sugar from the peel mingled with the melting chocolate before I bit into the peel to find out what the overall flavours were like. Each piece has been cut in such a way that there’s enough soft fruit under the peel to give a great mouthfeel. The soft, zesty citrus of the orange mingles with the chocolate to proiduce a slightly tart combination. After the chocolate and soft underside of the peel had gone, I was left with a sliver of slightly chewier orange peel to play with. The flavours of these Japanese oranges are not as sweet as expected. Imagine the finishing notes of a proper dark English marmalade and you’re getting close. These are certainly nowhere near as sugary as I had expected, and I found the combination of flavours beautifully balanced, with the tart orange finishing things of in a most satisfactory manner.
These little slivers of citrus and chocolate prove that good quality chocolate can be found in Japan, and that as a nation they’re not all addicted to sugar. Of course it would be foolish to make that assumption anyway, but after a week of wacky KitKats and overly sweet milk chocolate it was lovely to discover that fine chocolate makers are at work in Japan. I look forward to sampling more products like this (although it’s hard to say when that might be).
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