Madelaine Duets

The Madelaine Chocolate Company are most known for their seasonal chocolates. You may have seen their chocolate bunnies around for Easter. This April, they introduced a new line called Duets. These round chocolates chocolates are filled on one half with one flavor, on the other with a second. I like the idea of having dual flavors, but “Made for two or just for you” I can’t picture. Sharing a box of chocolates is enough; why share a single chocolate?

The big, plain, white and purple box doesn’t speak volumes. Normally, though, they come in stand-up bags; this is just what I was sent to sample. Coming to the Duets themselves, we find four pairs, all in milk chocolate. If you did want to share one, I can say that it would be simple to do so. Just give a twist and a pull and the two halves split apart, though the fillings don’t each stick to their sides so easily.

I started with the Peanut Butter Caramel. The sticky caramel is a bit better than average, but the peanut butter was disappointing. It tastes creamy, oily instead of peanuty. Not bad, and probably more like most actual peanut butters on the market. The Milk Truffle White Truffle is a real duality. The milk truffle has an artificial taste, but I rather like the white truffle. It has a very small flavor of your average white chocolate to set against the milk chocolate shell.

The Raspberry Peanut Butter is the winning peanut butter and jelly combination, but in this case you end up with three elements of sweet put together, including the milk chocolate. The raspberry is a sweet, liquidy jelly tasting more of sugar than raspberry. Not my thing, and again, rather like the average jelly out in stores. The Raspberry White Truffle has the same problem — sweet without a very compelling element.

My opinion is that these are completely average chocolates and that there are better ones on the market. I would personally rather spend about the same amount on some Ghirardelli squares. That said, when I thrust a handful of Duets at my brother, saying, “Try one so you can tell me what you think,” he thought it was great. And when I started absentmindedly eating another, I enjoyed it. They’re good to eat, and it stops there.

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