Lindt Carrés

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on August 30 2010 | Leave A Comment

I can’t recall ever having reviewed a box of Lindt chocolates before, which is remarkable considering the amount of their products we’ve collectively muched our way through here at Chocablog.

Recently, I was in an airport somewhere in Europe (it may even have been Heathrow, when I think about it) and spotted this box. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but I liked the look of it and so it came home with me.

Once I’d slipped off the band from around the box and removed various bits of sellophane and sticky tape, I was met with this:

Interesting – the gold coloured corrugated paper concealed the product, but I could see what flvours I was about to be exposed to. Five varieties of chocolate awaited my pleasure. Time to see what’s in the box.

How’s about that for presentation? I don’t know about you, but I was impressed. Yes, they may be ‘factory’ chocolates, and Lindt may be a huge multinational, but they still know how to present their product. I haven’t seen anything as eye-catching as this in a long time. The other thing I must note here was the smell – the aromas of milk chocolate, sugar and fruit wafting up from the box has my taste buds tingling in anticipation. Only one thing for it – time to get stuck in.

The ‘Noir’ chocolate was (unsurprisingly) filled with a dark truffle centre with cocoa nibs. Still quite sweet and creamy, the thick milk chocolate shell delivered most of the initial taste, with the cocoa nibs and truffle filling bringing up the rear. There’s too much sugar in this one to be able to really get to grips with the more complex cocoa flavours, but it’s still quite pleasant.

In Lindt world ‘A’ is for Stracciatella (of course). If you’ve ever had Stracciatella ice cream you’ll know that it’s a variation on chocolate chip – a creamy white vanilla ice shot through with layers of thin chocolate shards. The shell on this chocolate was the darkest of the group, and the centre was indeed a creamy white truffle with fragments of dark chocolate inside. The vanilla-and-cream flavours were good and strong, and the overall taste wasn’t too sweet. A good balance and a very good imitation of ice cream in a chocolate.

The nougat centre was a slightly more caramel coloured effort, with enough tiny pieces of nougat there to keep the tongue amused for a while. Good balance of flavours and lovely chewy little fragments of nougat.

Number four is the caramel chocolate. Not soft, gooey, runny caramel but a caramel flavoured centre with what can best be described as caramel dust floating around inside it. Again, this is quite a sweet chocolate but it certainly delivers the flavours it promises.

Last in line was a Noisette chocolate, chock full of hazelnut pieces which were suspended in another dark filling. The hazelnut flavours were there at first bite and persisted throughout.

So what was my overall opinion of this box? I’d say it was (as are most of Lindt’s products) very well made. It delivers the flavours it’s supposed to, and the presentation is superb. As is so often the case though, these chocolates are very sweet.

There’s not much in the way of complex cocoa flavours to be had here, but for your average chocolate buyer (or as a present for someone you’d like to impress) you could do a lot worse. Lindt’s chocolatiers are very good at what they do, but what they don’t do is produce the purer, more rarified chocolate which fascinates me and many others. What they do do is create chocolates that appeal to most consumers, and this box has enough in the way of taste and presentation to give it mass appeal. Just don’t think of it as posh, because these days you ned a lot more than a fancy box and a collection of slighty-too-sweet milk chocolates with slightly unusual fillings to cut it.

Information

You might also like...

Comments On This Post

  1. Ana

    I tried two boxes (smaller boxes, five of a kind in the box) of similar-looking chocolates from Lindt some six- six and a half years ago, but the flavours were different. The boxes were called Nouvelle Confiserie; the first one of them had Caramel(milk chocolate), Stracciatella (white), Giandujotto (milk), Biscotti al Limone (dark) and Orangenblute (milk) chocolates; the second one was summer-themed and it had Apricot (white chocolate), Strawberry (milk), Passion fruit (white), Raspberry (dark) and Lemon (milk) chocolates. I thought they were great! They looked gorgeous, so beautifully decorated on top and they were really tasty 🙂

  2. Dom (Chocablog Staff)

    Ana, I’m impressed you remember a box of chocolates form six years ago so accurately!

  3. Ana

    Well, some boxes are just too pretty 😛 so I keep them and use them to store small things like guitar picks. 🙂 So I still see those boxes every day. 😛

Leave a comment




Chocablog: Chocolate Blog