Naive are our new favourite Lithuanian bean-to-bar chocolate makers. I don’t think there’s many bean-to-bar chocolate makers in Lithuania, but even if there were, I think Naive would be at the top of the list.
I love the elegant simplicity of the packaging, the beautifully simple bar design, and of course, the wonderful chocolate.
As you can see from the wrapper, this is a 63% dark chocolate with orange & cinnamon. It’s made with a relatively short 19 hour conche time, and uses Naive’s house blend of beans. A quick email to Naive later, and they’re happy to tell me that this is a blend of Haitian and Ugandan cocoa beans. I really do like chocolate makers who are as open as that about where their ingredients come from.
As you can see from the back of the photo above, the other thing this bar has is nibs. Lots of nibs.
The chocolate doesn’t have a perfectly smooth texture, thanks to the cinnamon and shorter conche time, but it’s packed with flavour. There’s an orangeyness that complements the natural fruitiness of the chocolate and just a hint of spice. The nibs give it a great crunch, and I particularly like how they’re swirled over only about half the area of the bar, so it’s easy to break off a piece without nibs if you don’t want to be awake all night!
I know orange and chocolate together isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this chocolate to be very moreish. Without thinking I’d be breaking off another piece, letting it slowly melt, crunching the nibs and going back for another piece. It’s delicious and very easy to eat.
As with the rest of the Naive range, it’s still not easy to get hold of in the UK but worth seeking out. You can pick their chocolate up from the Real Food Market and Fernandez & Wells.
As I explained in my previous review, a good friend recently returned from a trip to New York with a huge stash of Mast Brothers chocolate, having followed my recommendation to track down the store in Brooklyn. As a thank you, I was permitted to sample some of every bar that was purchased, many of which are not yet readily available in the UK. Regular readers will know that some bars are available in the UK from Paul A Young’s shop in Soho, and even then it’s not widely advertised. This is a well kept secret that’s not so secret any more.
This is a 72% bar, and like most Mast chocolate there’s no indication of bean origin or varieties used. This is a little odd when you consider that the Brothers offer a bean variety tasting in store where customers can sample half a dozen or so individual bean varieties.
What’s immediately noticeable about this particular bar is the acidity. As soon as a piece of this bar hits your tongue you’re hit with vibrant citrus and green wood notes. The chocolate itself has a smoother texture than the Conacado bar, and that acidity just keeps on coming. The nibs are best kept to last. Let the chocolate melt away before biting down on them and you get to finish the taste experience with deeper, earthier cacao flavours which are a surprising contrast to all of that nature waltzing over your palate.
For a 72% bar it’s surprisingly ‘light’ but with a very long finish. The cacao lingers on the palate beautifully, making the nib nibbling process that little bit more enjoyable as the new earthy flavours join in with the last of the original chocolate.
I found myself liking this a lot, despite my initial surprise at just how vibrant and acidic the chocolate was. I definitely thought it had more going on than the Conacado bar – but it still isn’t my favourite Mast Brothers bar. We can only hope that now the Brothers have expanded their store and prodcution area that they can produce enough to start a small supply line to the UK in the not too distant future. The world would be a better place for it.
Yes it’s time to taste more Easter Eggs. It’s a tough life, isn’t it?
What we have here is a selection of four 60g milk and dark chocolate eggs from Lucky’s. Made with Valrhona chocolate, the milk chocolate versions are a healthy 40% cocoa solids, while the dark chocolate ones are a more modest 60%.
Lord Dark Toffius
As you might guess from the name, this is a dark chocolate egg with a toffee – well, caramel – filling. As with all these eggs, the filling is actually inside the shell, sandwiched between two layers of chocolate.
Despite being dark chocolate, this is quite sweet, primarily because of the sticky toffee shell filling. There isn’t much of it, but it’s pretty good.
Sir Namon Chai
This is a milk chocolate egg with a ‘spiced’ ganache filling to the egg. Unfortunately, nowhere on the box does it say what the spices are. The ingredients simply list them as “ground spices (not irradiated)”. Which is a little odd. Nice enough, but a little too sweet for me.
Monsieur Coco Noir
A dark chocolate egg with coconut marshmallow in the shell. I quite enjoyed this one! The marshmallow isn’t too sweet, and it’s very easy to eat most (all) of the egg in one go.
As you can see from the picture above, actually breaking into these eggs isn’t easy. On every attempt at cutting the eggs neatly, they broken into many sticky pieces. So really the only way to eat them is in one go…
Duke Of Nutting Hazel
Milk chocolate egg with hazelnut praline. Very sweet and nutty, with a little bit of crunch from the large pieces of nut in the praline. Tasty and sweet. Reminds me of a Snickers, particularly when tasted at the same time as the caramel egg.
Overall, an interesting collection of eggs, but as is often the case with Lucky’s, the price is still high for what they are. At £6.99 for a 60g egg, you’re paying about 12p per gram of chocolate, and despite the use of Valrhona, I’m not sure they can be called fine chocolate – especially as Valrhona itself seems to be having a lot of quality issues at the moment.
If they were sold as confectionery at half the price, I’d recommend them more, but as it stands, they’re borderline. Recommended only for those with deep pockets who want to give something a little different this Easter, and really only for those with a sweet tooth.
Let me start at the beginning: I love the Wild Ophelia packaging, and there is nothing so refreshing as that feeling.
Making one of my rounds through the shelves of World Market, I paused at this previously unseen line. Four or five bars sat there waving hello to me. I got that feeling where your eye starts to curl up into a smile and you know this find can be special. It would have been easy to gather up all the bars like a bouquet: their colors and designs complemented each other so well. But as they’re in the upper price range at $5 for 57 grams, I started with just one. Obviously, it was the expressive cowgirl style of the packaging that got my attention. Living in the Southwest and seeing many blandly, badly designed tourist items, products that hold their own Western look are lovely to find. And if done correctly, the combination of Western with feminine is just fun. The bar I chose is very simple, though still in-your-face, in design, with its Western lettering in bold pink sitting on a reddish-brown background with the outline of a chili pepper and the company logo. Somehow, too, the range gives off the aura that it uses natural ingredients.
It turns out that that is something Wild Ophelia strives for. But what I’m more interested in is that the collection is created by Katrina Markoff of Vosges. I missed this line on the back when I was still at the store because the front won me over enough that I only made a quick glance at the back for the ingredients list. On the Wild Ophelia website, Katrina writes that the line “was born to teach the world how to engage with American food in a meaningful way.” I’m certainly all for a goal like that.
Though I hadn’t yet read this statement, at my first bite I wanted this chocolate to have character; it couldn’t let me down after all the faith I’d put in it. The chocolate is at the fairly low 62% cacao and has added ancho and chipotle peppers, cinnamon, and cayenne peppers. Sometimes, I admit, chili chocolates bore me lately–some companies seem to focus more on heat than flavor. Or the particular chili flavor they use isn’t one I much like. But the New Orleans chili bar does offer something. It isn’t insignificant that there are four types of ingredients, cinnamon included, adding to the spicy flavor. What’s also interesting is the way this flavor combines with the fairly sweet chocolate: it isn’t the random counterpart, but part of the mix. The peppers and cinnamon draw off of the chocolate’s sweetness. What is the level of spiciness, you ask? Medium or medium-high, I would say.
So I’m still intrigued. I would certainly, six years ago, have rather purchased this bar at a store selling pottery and other such Southwestern items than one called Route 66 (or something similar)–that one was terrible, while this one is expressive. Now I only have four left to try.
