It’s been a while since we’ve reviewed any chocolate from Matcha Chocolat, so I was really looking forward to trying this new limited edition Valentine’s Selection.
The day after they were sent, they arrived in perfect condition at my door, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The box follows the same format as previous Matcha selection boxes, although this time the box of 16 contains two of eight different chocolates – in other words, it’s a great box for sharing with your partner.
The chocolates are:
Cardamom & Banana
Banana purée, cardamom and dark chocolate ganache in a dark chocolate shell.
Banana very often doesn’t work well with chocolate, but this ultra smooth puree is just perfect. The flavour is subtle and works perfectly with the spicy warmth of the cardamom. Fantastic.
Chestnut & Japanese Whisky
Single origin São Tomé chocolate blended with chestnut puree and Yamazaki 10 year single malt whisky and decorated with sesame seeds. This one has a very light texture and is packed with flavour. The whisky is strong without being overpoweringly alcoholic, and although the chestnut is more subtle, it does come through at the end.
Vietnamese Cinnamon
Madagascan dark chocolate with Vietnamese cinnamon. This one a Great Taste award last year and it’s easy to see why. A perfect flavour balance means you can taste all the fruity notes from the Madagascan chocolate whilst still getting a significant hit of cinnamon.
Matcha & Pistachio
White chocolate ganache with pistachio paste & matcha tea, dipped in dark chocolate and dusted with bright green sweetened matcha tea. Easily the most eye-catching of this selection, and also one of my favorites. The sweetened matcha dusting adds texture and flavour to this deliciously smooth pistachio chocolate.
House Dark Truffle
A simple dark chocolate truffle made with single origina cacao from São Tomé and dusted in cocoa powder. A simple, smooth and delicious truffle that’s packed with flavour. I could eat these all day.
Jasmine Pearls
Dark chocolate with jasmine green tea. This one won both Great Taste and Academy of Chocolate awards last year. I’m not a big fan of jasmine personally, but I know many people who simply love this chocolate, and I can see why it has won so many awards.
Ginger & Lemongrass
Madagascan dark chocolate with ginger and lemongrass. A gently warming flavour with a smooth texture. Once again, the natural flavour notes of the Madagascan come through. An impressive feat with a flavour as strong as ginger.
Yuzu
Another Madagascan dark chocolate, blended with yuzu puree in a dark chocolate shell with a textured floral pattern. A beautifully tangy, citrus ganache that melts in the mouth wonderfully.
There are some amazing flavour combinations in this stunning box of chocolates that look every bit as good as they taste. Matcha’s Katie Christoffers makes all her chocolates from her tiny kitchen by hand, yet somehow manages to produce a world class product. In my opinion, she’s one of the most talented chocolatiers in the UK and fully deserves the recognition of the awards she has received.
If you’re looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for a real chocolate lover, then stop looking now. You’ve found it right here.
There’s something about M&M’s that seems to drive people a little crazy. Last year’s opening of M&M’s World London, the largest candy shop in the world, is evidence of that. Way too loud for me, but the kids seem to like it.
I can’t say that they’ve ever really been my thing, but they offered to send us some special personalised M&M’s to try, and who am I to refuse such a generous offer.
My M&M’s sell personalised M&M’s all year round, but with Valentine’s day just around the corner, I opted for this Valentine’s themed pack. There are a total of 13 colours to choose from, but I went for a very Valentinesy red and pink combination.
You can add two lines of text to personalise your M&M’s, and the text gets printed on to the actual shell.
Unfortunately, there’s no choice of flavours yet – all the different colours are the same milk chocolate M&M’s underneath. I know several people who have a thing for some of the more interesting M&M flavours like peanut butter or pretzel who may be a little disappointed by that. For most people though, I think just the fact that they can have M&M’s with their name on will be enough.
If you’ve ever had M&M’s before, you’ll know what they taste like. They’re sweet and creamy with a crispy shell. Too sweet for some (and the chocolate does contain added vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter), but the kind of thing that once you start eating, it’s difficult to stop. A significant portion of my box is already gone. I think I might sprinkle the rest on ice cream to serve to friends for an awesome ‘branded’ dessert…
But really, this isn’t the kind of thing you buy for yourself. You buy them as a gift, or for an event like a wedding or a party (the My M&M’s website also sells in bulk for larger events.
Despite me not really being an M&M person, there is something quite cool about having your message written on chocolate, whether it’s an expression of love or your company name. I want more. In different colours. I wouldn’t eat them, of course – I’d just decorate my home with them…
It’s my sad duty to report the death of the once great British chocolate making icon Cadbury. It will be buried on Monday following a short ceremony at “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” in Piccadilly Circus.
This is the coffin it will be laid to rest in.
Yes, that’s Philadelphia cheese with Cadbury chocolate. In the same tub.
But it’s not the product itself that symbolises the final, inevitable death of Cadbury, it’s what it stands for. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cadbury wasn’t just the nation’s best loved chocolate maker, it was a model for the manufacturing industry, providing the community with jobs, housing and recreation.
Today, it’s reduced to becoming little more than a logo to be plastered on other products made by Kraft, the multinational food conglomerate that bought the company just two years ago. This is the product we all joked would happen when Kraft first bid for Cadbury. And now it’s real.
“But wait!”, you may cry. “Chocolate flavoured cheese!? Cheese flavoured chocolate!? That’s innovative and exciting!”
Alas, this exciting new product launched which is officially launched on Monday seems to be little more than a repackaged and tweaked version of Philadelphia With Milka – something that’s been sold on the continent for a while. That product – little more than normal Philadelphia cheese with cocoa powder is almost exactly the same stuff as this with a slightly different label.
Now of course I can’t claim to be the biggest Cadbury fan in the world. In six years of writing about chocolate, my tastes have changed significantly and the UK fine chocolate industry has exploded. Couple that with Cadbury’s insistence on you using environmentally destructive palm oil in place of cocoa butter in their chocolate, and I’d rather get my chocolate fix elsewhere.
I’m told from those that have tried it that this product doesn’t actually taste that bad. But that’s not really the point. It just saddens me to see a great British institution reduced to being a sticker on someone else’s cheese spread – I wonder if anything in this product has been anywhere near a Cadbury factory.
It’s only a matter of time before we see Green & Black’s chocolate with Dairylea. Mark my words.
Those of you who have been following Chocablog for a while may remember that the original KitKat Chunky Peanut Butter got one of the worst reviews we’ve ever given on Chocablog.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that original wasn’t around for very long, and now Nestlé have come up with a new range of ‘chunky’ KitKats – Orange, Double Choc, White, and Peanut Butter is back in a new form.
So let’s start with the peanut butter version. It’s a similar format with a thick layer of peanut butter on top of the wafer and generally seems to be an improvement on the original. It’s very, very sweet, but it does at least taste of peanut butter.
The orange version has a slightly different format, with more wafer and an orange flavour cream between the wafer layers. It’s not quite as sweet, and although the orange flavour doesn’t taste much like real oranges, I preferred it to the peanut butter version.
The double choc Kitkat is similar to the peanut butter version with the layer of peanut butter replaced with what the wrapper calls a “chocolate flavour topping”. I always try to avoid anything that calls itself “chocolate flavour” as generally means “not chocolate at all”. To me at tastes mainly of sugar and milk powder.
Finally, we have the white chocolate KitKat. This really is mainly sugar and milk powder, and it’s way too sweet for me. I managed a couple of bites, but this one definitely isn’t for me. Hardcore sugar addicts may like it, but there’s no actual chocolate flavour.
I think part of my issue with KitKat Chunky is the size. I can handle the sweetness in normal KitKat format where I can just break off a small finger, but with a single chunky finger, the sugar overwhelms everything else. It’s also worth noting that the milk chocolate contains added vegetable fat, so it isn’t something I’d recommend even if I actually liked it.
