I have found (or been found by, as it is) a box of chocolates that I would honestly be excited to get as a gift or feel right about giving as one. On a day-to-day basis, I just don’t come across enough of these.
Coco-A, who are based in Toronto with a chocolatier in San Francisco, sent me a generous selection: a box of six truffles, one of six caramels, a set of chocolate-dipped spoons, and another set of truffles in a ceramic box. While I could do without the crown in the Coco-A logo, the vintage-esque lacey pattern and the deep blue color of the boxes I do like. The true enjoyment, though, began when I started to open the plain boxes.
First is the set of Vintage Keys spoons, which have a price tag of $31.50. That seems steep, but these are beautiful ceramic, not plastic, spoons and the chocolate (designed to stir up a cup of hot chocolate with) is quality without filler ingredients.
My favorite is the ceramic box. Not only is there a box of six truffles inside it, but the ceramic box will fit in with most people’s personal styles–I for one am quite glad to find a place for it on my shelves.
Both the caramels and truffles are in the same eight flavors: orange, smoked salt, cayenne, original, coco nibs, Hawaiian sea salt, sage, and champagne. I was pleased to find a handy chart with all the flavors in the box labelled; though I think this should be a necessity, not every box does have labeling.
Moving on, the caramels are of obvious fine quality, handmade with a fine flavor and consistency. Neither stiff nor free-flowing, it hits the right balance. The truffles have an extremely smooth and fine texture, perhaps too silky for my tastes. While I might prefer something a bit rougher, I can’t fault this style. The chocolate is made in Switzerland and has a rich and smooth taste. None of the added flavors come from artificial sources, either.
My own favorites were the Hawaiian sea salt, sage, and champagne, with the smoked sea salt being my least. For the most part, the flavors are well-balanced and a good mix between the usual findings and more unusual flavors.
The sets all have enough sophistication that they can serve for both personal and business gifts. While the ceramic selections cost extra, the added element of uniqueness is worth it.
Thorntons won four golds at this year’s Academy of Chocolate Awards. In addition to the Tonka bean block, three of master chocolatier Keith Hurdman’s fresh chocolates also won golds.
The chocolates will form part of Thorntons’ special 100th Anniversary ‘Wonder Box’, a beautiful limited edition box costing £100. But they were kind enough to send journalists this specially made gold-embossed box containing just the winning chocolates, so we could try them.
The three winning chocolates are:
Vanilla Caramel
A soft, gooey caramel with a smooth vanilla flavour and a hint of sea salt. Vanilla is often used to cover up bad flavours in chocolate, so it’s really nice to find it being used on its own merits. This is somewhat sweeter than some of the sea-salted caramels I’ve had in the past, but the caramel itself has lots of flavour and the dark chocolate takes a little of the sweet edge away. A really delicious caramel.
Raspberry & Rose
A beautifully soft and smooth filled chocolate in a perfect, thin dark chocolate shell. Bite into it and the first flavour you get is the rose, giving a hint of a Turkish Delight flavour, but very quickly the sharp, zingy raspberry comes to the front and takes over. The flavours are perfectly balanced and neither too sweet or too sharp. Another great chocolate.
Crunchy Praline
I’m not a huge praline fan, so this one didn’t really do it for me. But like the others it was beautifully made. It’s light and crunchy, and at least as good as the high-end French pralines I’ve had recently.
Overall then, three exceptional chocolates that are deserving of their Academy of Chocolate Gold Awards.
All of which makes the situation Thortons are currently in even more perplexing to me. It’s over two years since we first met Keith Hurdman and talked about the future of the company, and while some progress has been made, it’s been painfully slow.
Thorntons stores are still ugly and uninviting, they still have horribly branded franchise stores with staff who know little about the product, and worst of all, they’re still pushing the awful Continental range, in a bid to keep the ‘traditional’ Thorntons customer (most of whom are older than Thorntons itself now, I’m sure) happy.
Meanwhile, the chocolate market in the UK has undergone a revolution. The likes of Hotel Chocolat have taken over the High Street, and Thorntons are still pushing 70’s style chocolates from their tatty stores. That makes me particularly sad when the company has such talented people capable of producing chocolates as good as these.
It’s eight months since Jennifer and I launched World Chocolate Guide, our attempt to map and rate all the world’s chocolate shops & destinations, and today we added our 400th shop to the site!
The site lets you search for chocolate shops by location and keyword, filter your search results to show only those establishments that serve hot chocolate & cakes, and – most importantly – rate and review all your favourite chocolate places.
We also have an active chocolate blog (mainly updated by Jennifer), and those of you with iPhones or Android can even get an augmented reality guide on your phone. Just download the free Layar app and search for the ‘chocolate guide’ layer.
So now we need your help.
The most important thing you can do to help improve the guide is to leave comments and ratings on your favourite (and least favourite!) establishments. It only takes a second to add your opinion and help improve the listings. These ratings also help generate our top rated chocolate shop list.
The other thing you can do to help is to submit any shops missing from the guide, particularly if you’re the owner. You can add a shop with this simple form, which you can also use to submit corrections and photos for existing listings.
We’d love to build World Chocolate Guide into a comprehensive guide to the world’s best chocolate shops and patisseries. Help us promote the best chocolate in the world by getting involved!
This isn’t the first chocolate beer I’ve tried, but it is the first supermarket own brand version which has been ‘enhanced’ with chocolate. Morrison’s have added both chocolate and vanilla flavours to the beer. Not something I really thought well of, if I’m honest.
If you don’t drink a variety of beers you may think that stout is a thicker, more ‘chewy’ beer in the style of Guinness. This stout (and others like it) is very much more like a real ale, with a light body and a lack of any real effervescence, although you do get a decent head on your pint when you pour.
A good sniff does reveal chocolatey aromas, and these are backed up by the first mouthful. It’s a beery chocolate flavour, but chocolate nonetheless. I was nothing less than relieved to find that the additions made to the flavour of the beer were suitably muted. I did detect notes of vanilla, but the chocolate notes from the malt didn’t seem to have been obviously enhanced, and the beer was a well balanced brew with an excellent interplay between sweet, light top notes and sharpness from the hops. Served at room temperature, this beer was both tasty and refreshing.
I quite liked this beer, but found myself wishing I’d had a bottle of another, unenhanced beer to hand for immediate comparison. Although it is a supermarket own brand, I’m not entirely sure how widely available this beer is. You’ll just have to browse your local store and hope for the best, but if you see one, it’s worth taking home.
