After my recent review of Pump Street Chocolate’s Eccles bar, I was contacted and asked if I’d be interested in writing about some of their Christmas collection. And so it was that a few days later, a delicious delivery arrived on my doorstep.
This year, Pump Street Chocolate have several Christmas themed items, which they’ve organised into different collections to suit various tastes and budgets.
Each collection comes gift wrapped with a Christmas card. I really like this approach, as it simplifies the process of finding a beautiful gift, while adding variety and giving the whole thing a touch of class. Pump Street are known for their elegantly simple packaging, but these collections have a real wow factor which is sure to get a positive response from anyone lucky enough to receive one.
That said, if you prefer to keep things simpler, all of the Christmas products are available to buy individually as well.
The first item I received was this Father Christmas made from 65% Ecuadorian dark chocolate. It comes in this attractive – and sturdy – cardboard tube that kept it in perfect condition. I know from experience that packaging irregular shaped items to be sent through the post is no easy task, so it’s great to see that it’s as effective as it is beautiful.
What does it taste like? Well I can’t actually tell you that, because this little beauty is going to be part of my own Christmas this year. But I’m pretty sure it’s going to be delicious.
The other item I was sent was a collection of Christmas themed bars in this very nice box. It’s a simple cardboard affair with a nicely printed paper sleeve, but it feels like quality. Balancing that line between simplicity, sustainability and elegance is something Pump Street do oh so well, and this box is right on point. Most importantly, it also kept the four enclosed bars in perfect condition.
The bars are:
- Eccles 55%
- Grenada Milk & Nutmeg 60%
- Gingerbread 62%
- Panettone 70%
Of course, I’ve already reviewed the Eccles 55% bar, which is absolutely fabulous. Here’s a quick summary of the others:
Grenada Milk & Nutmeg 60%
A 60% dark chocolate made with cocoa beans from the Crayfish Bay estate in Grenada and flavoured with locally grown Grenadian nutmeg.
Gingerbread 62%
Made with Pump Street Bakery’s Gingerbread Cookies spiced with ginger, cinnamon and cardamom in a Jamaican 62% dark chocolate.
Panettone 70%
A traditional Panettone made with almonds and candied fruit in a 70% St Vincent origin dark chocolate.
All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending any of the Pump Street Chocolate Christmas collections for the chocolate lover in your life. But you don’t have to limit yourself to just the Christmas themed options; I would be happy to recommend any of their creations at any time of the year. They are unique craft chocolate gifts that taste as good as they look.
Thanks to The Foodie Bag for supplying the photography background and other equipment used in this post.
Pump Street Chocolate are one of Britain’s best known and best loved bean-to-bar chocolate makers. Started by father and daughter Chris and Jo Brennan in 2017 as a sideline to their village bakery in Suffolk, they have quickly grown to be one of the world’s most respected makers.
Being a spin-off from the bakery, they are well known for combining baked goods with their chocolate. In particular, their Sourdough and Rye bars take bread from the bakery and refine it into the chocolate itself. To combine bread and chocolate is no easy task, but Pump Street consistently manage to capture the flavour and texture of their bread in the chocolate, marrying the two expertly.
Combining an Eccles cake and chocolate is another matter entirely. A Pump Street Eccles cake contains raisins, currants, brown sugar and alcohol, all of which can potentially contain water – the enemy of chocolate! If you tried to simply grind one into chocolate, you’d likely end up with a thick, sticky mess.
I’m not entirely sure how they have produced this bar, but the chocolate itself tastes just like a traditional Eccles cake; bready and friuity with a hint of brandy, but you also get whole currants and raisins and just a hint of brandy. The result is very identifiably an Eccles cake, rather than some other kind of fruit cake flavoured chocolate. Each of the flavours – bread, fruit, spice and alcohol – are there and identifiable, but none of them detract from the chocolate.
I love this bar and highly recommend you check it out, along with the rest of the Pump Street range. The bakery series bars are always the most interesting to me, but Pump Street have proved themselves to be some of the best in the world, so you really can’t go wrong whatever you choose.
Thanks to The Foodie Bag for supplying the photography background and other equipment used in this post.
I never much cared for marzipan as a child. I think it was a combination of the texture and flavour that didn’t appeal to me. Although it could simply have been the fact that I was only ever offered bad marzipan.
Looking back at some of my old marzipan reviews, it’s clear I wasn’t much of a fan, well into adulthood. But over the years my tastes have changed. I’ve also been lucky enough to try much higher quality confections, and it’s fair to say I’ve come around to the marvels of marzipan.
Recently, a representative of Niederegger, one of Europe’s best known marzipan producers, got in touch to ask if I’d like to try some of their latest range and a few days later, a rather delightful box of treats arrived in the post. This chonky 125g monster immediately caught my eye.
Described as a ‘loaf’, I can see the resemblance , however to me it looks more like a tightly wrapped German sausage.
Once unwrapped, we can see it’s actually a rather unusual dome-shaped chocolate bar. Cutting through it reveals a thin chocolate shell and a whole lot of marzipan.
Cutting into it and as you can see, it looks great. It’s a substantial feast, full of toffee-hazelnut marzipan goodness. And you’ll be pleased to know, it tastes great too.
Looking back, I think one of the things I didn’t like about the marzipan I had as a child was the ultra-smooth uniform texture that didn’t feel particularly pleasant in the mouth. This marzipan crumbles. It has bits. There’s stuff going on that just makes it more interesting that the overwhelming blandness of the cheap, packet marzipan that covered so many childhood cakes.
If I have one complaint it’s that the toffee flavour is a little subtle. The hazelnuts are definitely there, but the toffee is a little lost. That said, the flavour balance and level of sweetness is great. Not too sweet to be sickly, but sweet enough to mean that one bite is never enough. It took all my strength and courage not to eat the whole bar in one go.
Looking at the Niederegger website, there’s a few other flavours in the “loaf” range; Strawberry Cheesecake, Hazelnut Praline and Double Chocolate although they appear to be smaller 75g bars. I’ll definitely be seeking them out. I suggest you do to.
I don’t get a chance to review a lot of bean-to-bar chocolate these days. That’s partly because I don’t get sent chocolate for review quite as often as I used to, but also because a maker has to be pretty special to catch my eye in a world where new chocolate companies are popping up every week.
I’d heard of Fossa Chocolate when my friend Jess offered to send me a few bars, but I’d never tried them for myself.
Fossa are a small maker based in Singapore. They work closely with farmers, co-operatives and local ingredient suppliers to produce some extraordinary and unusual flavours. I’ve just got three to try here, but I can say right from the start that I’ll be seeking out more!
First off, I have to say how much I like this kind of packaging. It’s simple, elegant and plastic free. The bars are easy to reseal after you break a piece off, and you don’t have to wrestle with it to close it up neatly. The simple colour scheme adds a touch of class and makes it easy to tell the varieties apart.
I wanted to start my taste journey with the unflavoured dark chocolate; the 70% Indonesia Pak Eddy. The tasting notes on the bar say “Creamy almonds with notes of raisins and floral undertones”, but as we all know, everyone perceives flavours slightly differently, and there will always be minor differences between batches of craft chocolate anyway.
The bar has a great snap and a wonderful, rich aroma. It has a great melt too. A small piece on the tongue quickly and evenly starts to melt away releasing all its wonderful flavour. It’s chocolatey at first, but the more it melts, the more of those fruity, raisin flavour notes come forward. The balance is spot on, not too sweet, but not a hint of bitterness. Wonderful stuff.
Next up, I wanted to try the one I knew would be most challenging. “Salted Egg Cereal – Your favourite tze-char dish in a bar”.
I confess I didn’t know what tze-char was, but Wikipedia tells me that it’s a Singaporean term used to “describe a Chinese food stall which provides a wide selection of common and affordable dishes”. So, a local dish that will likely be much more familiar to Singaporean people. Although, I’m not sure if they would be familiar with it in chocolate bar form!
I’m not a big fan of the flavour of egg (eggs are best used in cakes, as everyone knows), and as expected I did find it a little challenging. It’s a flavoured white chocolate, a little softer than the dark chocolate, but with a very pleasant creamy, cereal aroma.
The first taste is of a pleasant white chocolate, but as it melts, you get more of the egg flavour and a decent amount of spicy heat. A quick glance at the ingredients tells me it does contain curry leaves and chilli padi.
This is a tough one for me to review, because I’m not personally keen on the flavour, but it is clearly very well made and well balanced. I think it will appeal to those a little more familiar with “the original” than me.
Finally, we have Honey Orchid Dancong Hongcha Tea. A quick glance at the Fossa website tells me:
“Mi Lan Xiang (Honey Orchid) is a dancong tea cultivated in the Phoenix Mountain of Guangdong Province.
This lot was hand-harvested from Zhen Ya village in Spring 2010. Made into a Hongcha (western black tea) and further aged for eight years, this tea is incredibly smooth and creamy with very low astringence. It has a characteristic lychee fragrance and red date sweetness. Complemented by the biscuity Kokoa Kamili cacao from Tanzania, it is a delicious bar to be slowly savoured.”
There’s a lot to love here. First off, I love tea flavoured chocolates. They’re difficult to make, but when done right can be truly wonderful. I also love lychee flavour notes in chocolate, and I truly love the Kokoa Kamili cocoa beans from Tanzania. I’ve worked with them myself, and they’re amongst my favourite in the world.
So does the chocolate live up to all that? Totally.
Those lychee tasting notes are spot on. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking this bar wasn’t packed full of real lychee fruit. But it isn’t; the only flavouring here is tea. And while there is a little hint of a more recognisable tea flavour toward the end, it’s that smooth, tropical fruit flavour that shines through. I love this bar. It makes me want to seek some of the tea to try on its own.
Overall, an outstanding little selection of bars from Fossa. Their range is quite large, so I’m looking forward to trying more soon. You should seek some out too.
