I always love discovering new bean-to-bar chocolate makers. There’s probably around 250 artisans around the world making small-batch chocolate from the bean, and there are new makers popping up every week. Some, like Lillie Belle Farms, have been around for a while, but I’ve only recently had the chance to try them.
Based in Oregon, Lillie Belle was founded by Jeff Shepherd and named after his wife and daughter. They started making truffles 10 years ago (a lifetime ago in chocolate industry terms), but only started producing their own chocolate from the bean last year.
I picked up this 70% Madagascar bar from Selfridges in London. The packaging is distinctive and unique, but not entirely my cup of tea. There’s certainly no mistaking the maker, but when I’m paying £10 for a bar, I want unwrapping it to be part of the pleasure. It doesn’t quite feel like a high value product when presented in an environment like Selfridges, where it is displayed next to some beautifully packaged bars. And that’s a shame, because this bar is really rather interesting.
With hundreds of bars in front of me to choose from, what drew me to this one was the fact that it has been made with two different bean roasts.
Cocoa beans are (almost always) roasted as part of the chocolate making process, and the time and temperature of that roast has a significant effect on the flavour of the finished chocolate. Roast them too long and the chocolate will have a burnt flavour. Not enough, and the real chocolate flavours won’t develop at all.
The idea of using two different roasts is that the finished chocolate will take you on a journey. In theory, it should add an extra layer of complexity to the flavour, bringing out a full range of flavours within the bean. But it also adds complexity to the chocolate making process, and if the roasts aren’t timed extremely carefully, it could easily go wrong.
So did Lillie Belle Farms get it right? Well… almost!
The chocolate certainly has many of the wonderful citrus flavour notes that are common to Madagascan cocoa, and there are some wonderful hints of subtle red fruit. For me though, the higher roast is too high, and ends up masking some of those subtle notes with a strongly roasted, smoky flavour.
I’ve tasted several bars made with Madagascan cocoa that have a similar high roast recently and this is by no means the “most roasted”. It’s actually a pleasant flavour, but it does tend to hide rather than accentuate the natural flavour of the bean. Roast time is a very difficult thing to get right and not something you can change after the fact. It’s also quite a personal thing, so you could equally put it down to me having slightly different tastes to the chocolate maker.
That said, this is still a great bar and I’ll be picking up some more from Lillie Belle. They also produce a 50% milk chocolate with blue cheese, which I think I have to try…
It’s probably safe to say that most people love cake. And what better cake is there than a bespoke, custom-made chocolate cake like this one featuring a perfect representation of our Twitter avatar.
When Cakes By Robin got in touch to ask if we would like to try one of their amazing looking cakes, it was probably a little presumptuous to ask for one with our logo on it, but to say Robin rose to the occasion is an understatement. Our cake is a masterpiece in chocolate!
This particular cake measures about 7 inches square and is filled with deliciously moist chocolate sponge. But of course, being a custom cake maker, Robin will make you a cake in just about any size or shape, and her gallery of previous masterpieces shows a vast array of weird, wonderful and beatiful creations.
All Robin’s cakes have a distinctive look and feel to them. They are beautifully and expertly crafted, but always have a hand-made sugarcraft finish to them. If you’re after fine patisserie, then these creations may not be for you, but if you want a cake that truly looks as though it’s been made with love by a real person, then they’re a wonderful choice.
I have to say, I love my cake. It tastes great, and nothing really beats the thrill of having something made especially for you delivered to your door. Whether it be something special for a corporate event of a character birthday cake for a child, I can thoroughly recommend Robin’s amazing creations!
I think I may have mentioned before how much I like Pacari, the Ecuadorian “raw” bean-to-bar chocolate maker. Their unroasted cocoa has a unique, fresh, green and earthy flavour that regularly wins awards. It’s packed with healthy anti-oxidants and no other chocolate tastes quite like it.
This box of chocolate covered golden berries came from Selfridges “Chocolate Library“, where it is somewhat annoyingly marked as an “exclusive”. Annoying because they are simply delicious and it seems a shame to limit them to a single supplier – particularly one that is often a little on the expensive side.
The box set me back a hefty £5.49. That’s expensive, but you can put it into perspective when you realise that it’s the same weight (70g) and price as a standard Pacari bar from Selfridges. It’s still £2 more than other retailers like Chocolatiers charge for other products in the range though.
Of course, Selfridges have the overheads of running a very large physical department store to take into account, and I am regularly arguing that we should all be paying more for our chocolate. In this case, the discrepancy is a little uncomfortable for me though.
But back to the chocolate itself. These small, dried berries really pack a fruity punch that I think will appeal to anyone who loves fruity chocolate. The intensely citrus flavour is rounded off perfectly by the smooth 70% dark chocolate. But they’re just a bit too sharp to prevent you from eating the whole lot in one go.
I found that although the box looked small, 70g was enough to last me at least a couple of days – the same amount of time a good quality dark chocolate bar would last. They’re perfect for carrying around in your bag for a quick pick-me-up, and unlike most chocolate bars, the box is easy to close and keep the contents firmly inside, rather than rattling around your bag.
Thoroughly recommended – but I would love to see them more widely available!
Tesco might not be the first place you turn when you’re on the hunt for fine chocolate – it certainly isn’t for me – but as tastes change, more and more we’re seeing supermarkets jump on the ‘single origin’ own label bandwagon.
It’s something I have mixed feelings about. While it’s great that we’re all becoming aware of better quality chocolate, own brand single origin bars are often difficult to trace and made with lower quality cocoa in order to keep prices down.
So how does this little 71% bar made with Madagascan beans stack up?
First things first: the wrapper. It might be a minor point, but saying that the bar has been “made by expert chocolatiers” is a little irritating. Even Tesco should know that chocolate is made by chocolate makers. Chocolatiers are people who make filled chocolates & bonbons from that chocolate. Both are skilled artisans, but they’re not the same thing.
That aside, it’s a nice enough looking bar with a nice, simple ingredients list to boot; Cocoa Mass, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract. The one thing that tends to mark this kind of single origin own brand chocolate apart is that very rarely will you find nasties like added vegetable fats.
The flavour notes on the wrapper describe it as “Predominantly rich cocoa throughout with notes of fresh fruit and a hint of honey”. Those notes may be a little vague, but they are quite accurate. It’s unusual for a Madagascan bar in that you don’t get the normal blast of citrus flavour notes from it. Instead, it’s more subtle, rounded and gentle.
For me, that immediately makes it less interesting than your average Madagascan chocolate. While there is a hint of fruit to it, it never really makes its presence known. What you do get is a rich, chocolatey flavour with some roasted flavour notes and a smooth, buttery texture. It’s certainly not spectacular, but it is actually quite pleasant.
On face value, I’d recommend giving it a go, but there is one little fly in the ointment; the price.
Although I can’t find this particular bar on the Tesco website, the other bars in the range are retailing at £1 for a 100g bar. At that price, I have to wonder where the money is going, if the farmers are getting a fair deal, if it’s being made in a huge automated factory and to what extent “expert chocolatiers” were involved in the process.
Assuming everyone is getting a fair deal, then it’s worth trying this bar. It’s not a world beater, but it’s above average for an own label chocolate bar. If nothing else, it would make a great dark chocolate to bake with.
I have reached out to Tesco to confirm who makes this bar from them and will update this post accordingly with their response.
