I think the box that came with my chocolates from Wiseman House was positively the biggest of any other chocolate offering container I have previously received; that certainly brightened my afternoon. The unpacking revealed promising contents, as well. The pretty truffles I will save for next time, starting with toffee and hot chocolate. If this is perhaps too heavy for one review, it is because I fear how long I will take to write out individual comments and do very much want to comment on these items.
I love it when I get toffee samples, as I’m a fan of toffee, but hardly ever buy it myself. There are two kinds here. The first is a half-pound, six-piece clear bag of Almond Toffee that sells for $14, which I find perfectly reasonable. The format is a 2 in./6 cm. toffee square covered in milk chocolate and rather finely ground almonds. Despite the fineness of the almonds, they’re stuck on well and don’t make much mess either in the bag or during eating. There’s a bonus of even more almond pieces blended into the toffee. Yet even with such almond-centric traits, all elements have balance. There is much crunch, but it’s still creamy. This is because the chocolate (just called “Belgian”) is of good quality that shows. The almonds bring with them a taste of salt. The toffee has the proper crunch, clarity, and flavor. Nicely done.
In a smaller bag with an orange-patterned cloth ribbon typing it up are two pieces of Pecan Toffee. These pieces were slightly bigger, more like 2 1/2 in. This time, it’s 58% Belgian dark chocolate that coats the toffee. A pecan half is set in the corner of each square, with smaller bits flowering out from it. I like this look; it’s unpretentious, but also detailed and thoughtful enough to show that the pecans weren’t just slapped on. This does mean, however, that you only taste the pecans in less than half the square. That’s a downside for me as I like the warmth they add–it provides a connection between the dark chocolate and the toffee. I prefer the way that the milk chocolate blends with the toffee; however, if you’re a Belgian dark chocolate fan, this format does allow you to focus on that factor while still getting enough toffee and pecans.
I was excited to try the Sipping Chocolate: drinking chocolate instead of plain hot chocolate mixes usually isn’t easy to come by. The design of the 16 oz. box is in keeping with Wiseman House’s minimalist look; the brown box with gold lettering doesn’t overdo anything. In the ingredients, interestingly, are Belgian chocolate, American milk chocolate, and Venezuelan chocolate. All chocolate, no junk.
The chocolate is in small pieces like tiny pebbles, tempting me to dig in with a spoon. What the directions call for is whisking a cup of the chocolate into a cup of boiling water and serving in espresso cups. Even if you don’t have espresso cups, you’ll want to take that as a guideline to not serve yourself too much. Having such a high chocolate content, this really is a beverage for “sipping.” I’m hesitant to say it has bitterness as there is a good amount of creamy flavor; the fact of it is that all three of the chocolate types blended in have their influence.
This drink is rich, but with lighter and darker notes. It’s one to take in slowly, also being thicker than hot chocolates. It’s a great experience, just note that you have to be okay with the darker, more intense side of chocolate to enjoy it.
One of the perks of writing for Chocablog is that I get introduced to so many companies. I like the tone of Wiseman House: they don’t remind me of anybody else and they approach chocolate maturely. I’m looking forward to trying more.
Benoît Nihant is a new name to me. A Belgian bean-to-bar chocolate maker and chocolatier, his chocolate was one of our new discoveries at Chocolate Unwrapped this year.
I got to try several if his creations at Chocolate Unwrapped, but this was probably my favourite – a 50 cocoa solids milk chocolate made from Madagascan beans with fleur de sel.
The front of the pack helpfully also tells me that it’s made from Trinitario beans, is stone ground and conched for 70 hours. If only all chocolate labelling were so clear.
I love the fruitiness of Madagascan beans, and nothing sets that flavour off like a hint of salt. Indeed, the Mast Brothers 72% Madagascan With Fleur De Sel is still one of my favourite bean-to-bar chocolates.
This is a little different to the Mast Brothers bar – for one thing it’s a milk chocolate, and for another, the salt is added to the chocolate itself, rather than simply being sprinkled on top. The result is a consistent flavour, rather than an instant salt-hit, and I think I prefer it this way.
The texture is soft and a little grainy, but the flavour is really good. There’s a little bit of the fruitiness you’d expect from Madagascan beans, but it also has caramel, liquorice and a hint of Marmite thanks to the salt. Yeah you heard me. Marmite. Overall, a rather enjoyable experience – I just wish the bars were a little more than 50g, as this is the kind of thing I could nibble on all day.
This is the second of Paul Da Costa Greaves’ ‘FYI‘ bars I’ve reviewed, and this time we’re in the realms of seduction (apparently) with a 73% cacao bar which contains ginger, Jasmine Green Tea and Goji Berries. The self styled ‘Chef, Spiritual Healer and Chocolate Therapist’ (busy man!) has once again used primarily Organic and fairly traded ingredients to bring us a unique combination of ingredients in a chocolate bar.
For a bar with such a lot going on inside, it has a fairly neutral chocolate aroma, with only the slightest hint of flora/fruit aromas. As you might expect, the first flavour to appear when tasting is the ginger. The warmth is almost immediate, but unlike a lot of ginger chocolates it tends to stay fairly low key, as the Jasmine Green tea lends softer, floral notes to the mix. The Goji berries are there at the end – tiny fragments of bright citrussy fruit making for a clean, lightly acidic finish.
All things considered I thought the balance of flavours was done really well. Each element is evident and the overall effect of the combination is very pleasant indeed. it’s an unusual set of flavours but in combination they work very well together, and the chocolate is rather moreish. What I do take exception to is the ‘blurb’ on the packaging. Someone cranked up the ‘pretentious foodie guff machine’ to eleven for this bar.
I quote:
“Karma comes to mind as the Green Tea & Jasmine enlighten you.”
and if that wasn’t enough, try this for size –
“The melting chocolate escapes and fills your eager mouth, as the tip of your tongue splits lasciviously with slight flicked zeal, it glides slowly across moistened lips, making way for that full on goji berry experience.”
Now as far as I can tell, that isn’t even English. It is most definitely the worst kind of twaddle, and the sort of thing that is guaranteed to turn me into my old English Master. No, no and no. That sort of pretentious nonsensical foodie garbage is the stuff of satire. There’s really no place for it.
So, great tasting chocolate, sensibility – offending packaging blurb. I can only hope someone has another look at what’s written on FYI’s product range and decides to save us from further abuse of the English language.
The thing about touring a whole bunch of chocolate shops in one day is that by shop number six, it is all getting a little overwhelming. And that is what happened by the time I got to Artisan du Chocolat, but one bar caught my eye on the shelf because it had a puppy and kitten on the wrapper and who doesn’t like puppies and kittens? Exactly. Luckily the bar in question is actually flavoured with Mandarin and Mulled Spices rather than what the photo suggests – it is a limited edition bar to raise money for the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.
I’ve always been a fan of orange in chocolate, so this blend of mandarin and spices seemed like a home run to me, at least on paper. And with all those flavours in the mix, I wasn’t particularly bothered about the chocolate being too dominant but it is rather lovely – creamy and the perfect base for the assorted spices, and coming in at 35 percentage-wise. The bar itself is only 45g and as has been noted here before, that makes for a very, very thin bar.
The confusion comes with the balance of all the flavours. The back of the box lists cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg, black pepper and vanilla but someone went a little crazy with the cloves. It is all about the cloves, at least initially and by the time they make way for the slight hint of mandarin, all the other spices have more or less disappeared too. It isn’t unpleasant by any means, but it is a bit disappointing considering the flavour explosion I had imagined prior to unwrapping the bar.
Anyway, no matter what the chocolate tastes like, it is all for a good cause and the puppies and kittens will thank you no matter what.
