Iain Burnett – The Highland Chocolatier

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on February 15 2012 | Leave A Comment

Iain Burnett is one of the (many!) excellent chocolatiers that we somehow haven’t managed to get around to reviewing in six years of writing about chocolate. Trained in Belgium, Switzerland and France, Iain is an artisan chocolatier with a stack of awards to his name. Last year alone he took home a total of five Academy of Chocolate Awards for his creations.

His chocolates look as good as they taste, so for this particular review I’m going to keep the words to a minimum and concentrate on showing you the pictures!

First up, this selection box featuring 20 chocolates. It’s a great looking box, with a nice magnetic catch to keep the chocolates inside safe with a minimum of fuss.

As you can see, there’s a good mix of chocolates inside. Some of the flavour highlights are: Raspberry, Orange & Clove, Ginger, Garden Mint, Marzipan, Lemongrass and Lime and Espresso,

The flavours are varied and some work better for me than others. The raspberry truffle has a hint of black pepper for a little heat at the end, which was quite nice. I’m personally less keen on spices like clove in my chocolate as I think it can be a little overpowering.

The Garden Mint was a strange one, having the exact same flavour as Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum. When I first tried this chocolate, it was quite cold, having just been delivered, and the texture of the truffle inside was quite firm, adding to this rather odd effect.

My favourite of this box though was the chocolate covered dark Velvet Truffle, made with 70% São Tomé chocolate.

Which neatly brings me to the second box I received. Milk chocolate Velvet Truffles, dusted in cocoa rather than being enrobed in chocolate. Sounds simple, but they’re extraordinarily good.

With a perfect cuboid shape and a box designed to fit 18 chocolates without any extra packaging, they certainly look distinctive. And they look even more distinctive individually.

They taste… amazing. They are the smoothest, meltiest, most wonderful plain chocolate truffles I know.

There’s only one way to eat them. Just let one of the cubes sit on your tongue and let it melt slowly. First the cocoa powder releases it’s intense chocolate flavour, then as it melts, the flavour becomes smooth, sweet and buttery – but none of that chocolatiness fades. They’re simply divine.

So while the selection box is good, these simple unflavoured truffles are to die for. They’re sold primarily as wedding favours, but I recommend buying them in bulk then just keeping them to yourself. These aren’t for sharing.

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Comments On This Post

  1. One of Ian’s chocolates – his Assam & Green Tea Cardamom – was one of my absolute favourites during the judging for the Academy of Chocolates awards last year. I absolutely loved it and had intended to place an order from Ian in the following months, making sure to include several of these amongst others from his collection. Unfortunately, the website didn’t seem to have much detail about which chocolates were currently in season and would be included in the selection boxes, which put me off. I meant to email directly to find out more, but never got around to it. Definitely a case of ensuring your website isn’t doing you out of sales, as I’d definitely have placed an order at that time, had there been more detail available.
    Maybe this year…

  2. they sound kind of like an upscale meltykiss – I’m wondering (but sort of doubt) if there are additional oils added to the truffles

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