The first of my finds at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon is the one I was most keen to try, a box of chocolates from Amano. I would have liked to try all the flavors, but decided that I’d better stick to the smallest of the three boxes as I still had a plane ride back home. Here are the six out of ten flavors that I got in this little black box:
Raspberry Ganache with Guayas Chocolate and White Chocolate – Set in the space dome shape with shading from white to red on the top, it has a white chocolate outside with the dark ganache inside. The raspberry has a citrus taste, and the white and dark aspects of the chocolate flavor level each other out with sweet and rich.
Tangerine Ganache with Ocumare Milk Chocolate – This is the single milk chocolate I had, in a delicate shape — in fact, all of them are rather sleek-looking. Tasting the plain milk chocolate first, the tangerine on the inside hit me strongly for a second before calming. It works if you like tangerine in chocolate.
Yuzu (Japanese Citrus) Ganache with White Chocolate – A pretty yellow and green paint slash decorates its pale face. It is more to my liking with a low-key, barely citrussy, more herbal taste, which adds a zing to the sweet and mellow white chocolate.
Dos Rios Palet D’Or – If you didn’t catch on to that “or,” it means there’s gold in here — just a tad sprinkled on top to make it special. And it is special. To-die-for or burst-into-tears special. Because Amano Chocolate is so wonderful with flavor notes, when you put that into the further stage of a truffle, the result is everything. It’s bitter, it’s rich, it tastes of nibs and berries, and is the flavor of the night sky if I could pick it up and munch on it. I’d love to see a box with just the three plain truffles (the others are Ocumare and Madagascar) at some point.
Key Lime Ganache with Guayas Chocolate – Looking like a cute magical toad with its green, white-dotted skin, I do believe there is a bit of silver sprinkled on this one. Biting in, you get the rich chocolate and the tangy, springy lime; yet neither is it too strong.
Cinnamon Ganache with Guayas Chocolate and Candied Pecans – A semi-lego-like shape here. And did someone mention the holidays? Because that’s what I’m picking up in here. There is cinnamon, fresh and true, in a quantity of dark chocolate, with that piece of pecan covered in warmth to add in a bit of earth.
Not bad beginnings in the truffle world at all. Amano knows what’s important: using real ingredients and getting complex flavors going.
If you’re not seriously into chocolate, you may not have heard of Chuao, where the beans in this Hotel Chocolat bar come from It’s actually a small village in Venezuela, but those in the know say the surrounding plantations produce some of the finest cocoa beans in the world and it’s a bit of a big thing at the moment.
In the past couple of years, more and more fine chocolate producers have been making bars made from Chuao beans, which is great, if a little perplexing given that it’s such a small place. I’ve heard that many chocolates marketed as Chuao may be made from beans from a much wider area, but as the name isn’t protected, it’s difficult to know for sure.
The blurb on the inside of the bar mentions the “Chuao region”, so although it’s not stated, I would assume these are from a wider area than the village itself.
The format of this bar is exactly the same as the rest of The Purist range – a beautifully curvy slab with the Hotel Chocolat logo. There’s no chunks, but the bar is thin enough that it’s easy enough to break small pieces off.
My own bar had a few bits on the surface, spoiling the glossy look somewhat. That didn’t affect the flavour though. And a very nice flavour it is too.
Like most Chuao chocolates, it’s smooth and mellow and not bitter at all. There’s a hint of fruitiness, that reminds me of a Madagascan chocolate, but it’s not quite as zingy or fruity. This is more laid back and subtle.
I do like this bar, but it’s by no means my favourite. I recently tried a Chuao bar from Canadian chocolate make Soma, and that was lighter and more delicate than this. But the great thing about Hotel Chocolat’s The Purist range is that you can pick up two or three bars of similar cocoa percentage and compare them side by side. There’s even two bars in the range where the only difference is the conch time, which I’m really looking forward to trying.
My latest from the good people of Lindt was a package including their two newest bars, Black Currant and Roasted Almond. The look and format is the usual Lindt Excellence style; both are dark chocolates, though the Almond comes in at two percent less than the Currant’s 49% cacao.
Being friendly to currants and chocolate, I started with the Black Currant bar. Unsurprisingly, the “black currants” are made up of black currant juice, sugar, apple, pineapple pulp, etc. The bar smells good, though — fruity and chocolaty in one. Its flavor is deep, with the dark fruit flavor coming in. The “currants” are not big pieces; the added “slivers” of almonds take up about as much space. Initially, I was concerned about them coming to interfere with the currants, but they really are simply slivers. The only better term would be splinters. So I can’t say that they deter from anything; they only add the slightest crunch.
After this, I’d expected the Roasted Almond bar to be much the same, just without the currants. But it’s very different. The chocolate, whose flavor now has less to compete with, has notes of coffee. There are more almonds, too. I find myself enjoying it more than the usual chocolate and nuts mix. The size of the almonds being so small and thin means that there is no texture conflict, yet you can still taste them.
The chocolate in general, as well, works for me, even at its awkward middle cocoa content. It’s steady enough to earn my respect, working at the right level to sit as a complement for the other flavors. Two nice bars from Lindt for your chocolate-munching moments.
Twice a year, the Loblaw chain of grocery stores (which I suppose would be the Canadian equivalent of Tesco’s) unleashes their newest creations onto the market under their own President’s Choice label. There’s normally all kinds of goodies, but the Christmas batch usually has more than its fair share of chocolate goodies just in time for the Festive Season. And rather than wait for them to appear under my tree during the remainder of December, I was more than happy when Loblaws decided to play Santa and send me a lovely gift of all their new boxed chocolates.
The first box I was drawn to was their Belgian Chocolate Mousse Cups because they looked so elegant. The slightly too tall design of the chocolates along with some nicely flavoured mousse centres seemed like a really good combination. But after looking at the box, I wasn’t quite so optimistic because right up near the top of the ingredient lists were both palm and coconut oil. Hmm. Not the best start.
Despite that, the chocolates aren’t too bad. They do veer on the sweeter side of things, but the balance of flavours in the mousses are handled quite well. Running through the five varieties, we have:
Dark Chocolate Cup with Espresso Mousse and Lemon Mousse – the initial citrus tones gives way to a relatively mild coffee mousse, before the lemon comes back again with the disappearing dark chocolate shell. Not bad at all.
Milk Chocolate Cup with Ginger Mousse and Dark Chocolate Topping – probably the worst perpetrator of the too much sweetness syndrome that the box suffers from. A real shame too because the ginger doesn’t stand a chance and lurks in the background, never threatening to take the spotlight.
Dark Chocolate Cup with Vanilla Mousse and Dark Chocolate Ganache – the vanilla mousse is the star here and provides just the right amount of contrast to its darker co-stars. The nuts on top provide some welcome texture too.
Dark Chocolate Cup with Pistachio Mousse and White Chocolate Mousse – it is hard to distinguish between the two layers of mousse visually, and that is also true taste-wise too. The good news is that the pistachio flavour is the one that wins out.
Milk Chocolate Cup with Hazelnut Speculoos Mousse – the creamy mousse is jam-packed with hazelnut flavour and the little bits of Speculoos biscuits give the chocolate some crunch and hints of cinnamon. Still a just a touch too sweet, but definitely the best in the box.
So all in all, not a bad collection especially if you have a bit of a sweet tooth that dictates your chocolate tastes. Plus nobody is really going to complain too much about such an attractive quintet.
