Welcome to the 5th Annual Chocster Awards, the time of year where we pick some of our favourite chocolates and squeeze them into arbitrary and entirely made up categories. Ignore all other award ceremonies you may see today, because this is the one that counts!
The only criteria needed to qualify for an award is that a chocolate must have been reviewed on Chocablog in the last 12 months.
The Chocsters is our own take on what’s been hot (and what’s been…. not) in the last year of chocolate reviews on Chocablog. Like most awards, the winners are a purely subjective choice, and most likely wrong. Feel free to argue and suggest who we should have picked in the comments!
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Best Dark Chocolate
Soma Chuao 70%
Michael & I both reviewed this amazingly light and fruity bar from Canadian bean-to-bar chocolate maker Soma. We both agreed it’s divine, and one of those bars that you really do need to try for yourself to appreciate just how good chocolate can be. |
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Best Milk Chocolate
Theo Creamy Milk Chocolate
Deanna fell in love with this organic, fair trade 45% milk chocolate from Seattle-based Theo. You will too.
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Best Assortment
Cocoa Mountain Selection
These perfectly balanced truffles from north west Scotland’s Cocoa Mountain are made with stunningly fresh local ingredients and taste divine. Worth a trip to their remote cafe in Scotland for (although ours came by post!) |
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Best Handmade Chocolates
Raffaella Baruzzo Sicilian Lemon Slices
We fell in love with Raffaella and her amazing crystallised Sicilian lemons chocolates at The Southbank Chocolate Festival last year. A must try. |
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Best Hot Chocolate
Jaz & Juls Organic Grenada Hot Chocolate
Delicious flavoured hot chocolates made with chocolate from The Grenada Chocolate Company. What more could you want? |
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Best Chocolate Experience
Chocolate Ecstasy Tours
A city walking tour may not seem like the most indulgent experience in the world, but when you’re exploring some of the world’s best chocolate shops, it’s an experience every chocolate lover has to try. |
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Best Newcomer
Katie Christoffers – Matcha Chocolat
It seems like Matcha Chocolat has been around forever, but it’s less than a year since we first wrote about them. Katie has consistently impressed us with her amazing tea-inspired chocolates and focus on quality. |
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Best Everyday Chocolate
Choceur Plain Chocolate With Roasted Salted Almonds
Just because it’s cheap, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. This 56% dark chocolate with almonds from Aldi contains just 4 ingredients and won’t cost the earth. |
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Weird & Wonderful Award
Nikkyuh Blackgarlic Chocoball
Who says chocolate and fermented garlic don’t go together? Well… we do. But we do like the fact that someone is trying these things! |
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Chocolate Raspberry Award
Cadbury India Temptations Raisin & Apricot
There are many, many contenders for this award every year, but the judges decided the (dis)honour of the award for the worst chocolate of the year goes to this oily creation from Cadbury India which we tried and (de)tested only this week. Nice one, Cadbury. |
Once again, we’re a little sad to report that none of this year’s winners could be here in person to receive their awards. On the bright side, at least you don’t have to sit through the acceptance speeches, and can go and watch the Oscars® on TV instead.
I spotted this bar as I left India last year, and to be honest my main reason for purchasing it was to see if Cadbury India were using palm oil and other nasties in their confectionery.
There’s a little marketing blurb along the thin edge of the packet which reads “Inspired by the fine art of chocolate making, Cadbury brings you a chocolate that’s crafted to perfection.” This is almost immediately followed by the heading “COMPOSITE CHOCOLATE” above the ingredients, which seems a little at odds with the preceding claim.
A look at the ingredients list doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. There’s no mention of cocoa content, and with almost 53% sugars per 100g and 27g of fat (of which 16.1% is saturated) there really isn’t much room in there for good quality cocoa.
The shiny packaging and paper sleeve perpetuate the illusion of quality until you reach the gold foil and reveal the chocolate. The thin, sweet smelling bar studded with raisins and pieces of dried apricot wasn’t exactly tempting me, and when it came to tasting, there was little in the way of pleasant surprises. This is a sugary, oily confection in which the raisins are a welcome source of natural flavour but the apricot pieces are tough little cubes that prove quite a challenge, hanging around being tough to chew and delivering little in the way of interest or big flavour.
For me, the best thing about this bar was the fact that Cadbury India have at least admitted to producing ‘composite chocolate’. The marketing waffle on the packet is little more than a joke, and the contents aren’t even average any more. To me, this bar sums up all that is wrong with mass-produced chocolate. Cheap, unhealthy ingredients masquerading as something special and really fooling nobody. Wrong on all levels and worthy of mention only so you don’t have to waste your money on this rubbish.
The last thing I brought back from the San Francisco Chocolate Salon was this 51 gram bar by The Tea Room. Out of their selection of various teas, I chose the Maté and Cacao Nib bar. Though perhaps not in tune with the simple look of much packaging today, I quite like the fonts and designs used here, even the shade of orange.
Inside is a 72% cacao bar, which could use a little of the box’s style as its mold is boring and ordinary. The chocolate is on the bitter side for its percentage, with marshmallow notes. The nibs are a smaller size than usual, more grain-sized. An interesting way of adding just a small touch of taste and texture.
It’s the tea flavor, though, that isn’t quite as I would wish. It’s neither very strong nor recognizable. Unless you’re putting a real effort of focus in, it can pass off as one of the chocolate’s flavor notes. That’s disappointing coming from a company named The Tea Room. Just to be sure, I shared some with a frequent maté-drinking friend, who agreed that there is little of its taste to be found.
Perhaps I chose the wrong bar, but it wasn’t the most impressive show: I would expect the tea to be given center stage. Tasting without expectations, though, it’s pleasant enough.
Update: This competition is now closed
It’s competition time again. This time, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Chocolate & Love, the luxury online chocolate boutique to bring you a selection of fine chocolate bars from around the world worth over £30.
This competition is for our Twitter followers, but if you’re not on Twitter already, it only takes a minute to sign up.
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To enter, just follow Chocablog and Chocolate & Love (so we can let you know if you win!), then retweet a link to this page.
You can click this link to tweet now if you’re logged in to Twitter.
This competition is open to UK residents only. One entry per person.
The competition will close at 12 noon GMT on Monday 28th February 2011, and a winner will be picked at random and notified by direct message on Twitter.
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Update: This competition is now closed
