James Chocolates’ second offering for lovers who love chocolate comes in the form of these Strawberry & Marc de Champagne liqueur truffles, although in fairness they aren’t in any way Valentine themed other than by virtue of the fact they’re pink. On the outside at least. As you can see from the cross section, they are in fact a dark chocolate centre enrobed in milk chocolate and rolled in white chocolate flakes and freeze dried strawberry pieces.
The ganache at the centre of these truffles is a mixture of fresh cream and dark chocolate with strawberries and a hint of balsamic vinegar (a neat little touch to balance some of the sweetness and accent the fruit flavours). As you bite down the first thing that hits your tongue is the sweet white chocolate with hints of strawberry followed quickly by the darker notes of the centre, which delivers its fruit and alcohol payload before the 31% milk chocolate melts into the mix.
There’s 3% Marc de Champagne Liqueur in each centre, and it’s noticeable but harmonious. The alcohol never threatens to overpower the chocolate but there’s enough there to give you a good whiff of booze. They are still on the sweet side, but that’s really what to expect from white and milk chocolate.
Taken as a potential Valentine’s gift, these truffles would probably appeal to those who may not want to pay the premium which often comes with buying seasonally themed goods but want something distinctive and with a little more quality than mainstream chocolate. James’ distinct magenta and purple packaging will probably appeal to younger buyers, probably as an alternative to offerings by better–known companies.
Here’s a bit of Valentine’s fun from Chococo. A 125g dark chocolate heart with white chocolate cherubs and little sugar hearts and a selection of 16 fresh chocolates. Let’s start with the heart.
You can pick from other varieties of chocolate heart, but the lovely people at Chococo obviously knew I’d go for this dark chocolate one. It’s made from 73% Venezuelan dark chocolate, which may sound quite rich for what is essentially a novelty gift, but it’s actually very easy to eat. While the flavour doesn’t have a huge amount of character to it, it’s very enjoyable, and infinitely better than the kind of chocolate hearts you might find on your supermarket shelf.
The iridescent white chocolate cherubs and simple sugar hearts add a bit of sweetness to proceedings, and make it look really quite special. Certainly one of the most impressive looking chocolate hearts I’ve seen recently.
And then we have the selection box.
Presented in Chococo’s standard (and very stylish) chequerboard boxes, are sixteen fresh, handmade chocolates made with local ingredients including fresh Dorset cream.
I’ve reviewed several of these individual chocolates before, so I’m not going to go into great depth this time. If you’re interested, you can go back and read our other Chococo reviews for a more in-depth analysis.
Suffice to say, they look and taste wonderful and will put you in your Valentine’s good books for at least 24 hours. The freshness of the ingredients and care with which they’ve been put together is something that consistently shines through with Chococo, and this box was no exception to that.
If you’re looking for a Valentine’s gift to impress (and perhaps to share!) then you can’t go wrong with this gift set. It’s £25 for this box of 16 chocolates, or £31 for 25, and you can buy it online, which means the only effort you need to go to this Valentine’s day is to move your hand over to the mouse… go on… you can manage that…
They say that going shopping while hungry isn’t a good idea because you end up buying things you’d never usually pick up. So naturally, I do it all the time. And being the visual person I am, I inevitably buy things that look good on the box – I’m a sucker for a nicely composed, well-lit photo and that means I was really looking forward to cracking open my box of President’s Choice Chocolate Fruit Fancies.
These are lovely looking chocolates, especially considering that they are an off-the-shelf supermarket box. You really don’t expect to get something this classy for such a reasonable price. The vividly coloured domes look very appealing indeed and chances are I would have probably gone and bought a box based on the visuals alone even if I wasn’t going to write about them.
Do they match up in the taste department though? Well, not exactly. Or rather that all depends on how sweet your tooth is because these also are like quite a few of the President’s Choice offerings this year – a little on the sweet side. Much of that is down to the fact that four of the five varieties are made with white chocolate and that becomes the dominant taste, despite the fact that there is also a layer of dark chocolate ganache hidden inside each one. So while having a choice of Apricot, Mango, Bilberry and Strawberry fillings is nice in theory, they all taste very similar – fruity and sweet. They are still tasty, but in a one-dimensional way. The Kiwi one, which has a milk chocolate shell, is much better suggesting that there could definitely have been a better balance achieved between the inside and outside of the domes.
So it is another case of close but not quite there for President’s Choice. This isn’t the right box to sit and work your way through if you are looking for an intense chocolate experience. But I’m sure nobody would mind if you showed up to any social event with a box of these because they sure do look pretty.
Update: This competition is now closed
Win a Lucky’s Honey Time Luxury Chocolate Cake Gift Box worth over £30!
If you hadn’t noticed, Valentines Day is approaching fast, and this year we’ve managed to get our hands on something extra special for one of our lucky readers.
We’ve been down the rabbit hole and stolen The Queen of Hearts favourite cakes! This stunning fur-lined Lucky’s Honey Time Luxury Gift Box of chocolate enrobed cakes could be yours to share with your Valentine, but you’ll have to be quick because we swear the evil Queen followed us home!
We need to get rid of the evidence before she sets a Jabberwock on us or something equally horrendous, so we’re giving them away to one of our Twitter followers!
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 Lucky’s (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.
The competition will close at 12 noon GMT on Wednesday 9th 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
Small Print
This competition is open to UK residents only. Only one entry per person will be counted. Chocablog staff, mad hatters, white rabbits, march hares and cheshire cats are not eligible to enter. You shouldn’t give rabbits and cats chocolate anyway. It’s an awful waste.
