Since we last talked about Kshocolât, two things have happened; In February this year, the company went into administration (which doesn’t surprise me), then last month, a Welsh company bought their assets and brand (which surprises me a great deal).
It was somewhat of a shock when their new PR people offered to send samples, but I was intrigued enough to agree. Amonst the samples were these two tubes of “Strawberrettes” and “Orangettes”. Simon reviewed the Orangettes last year, and they don’t look any different, so I’m just going to talk about the Strawberrettes here.
First impressions are not good.
Second impressions are worse.
They smell horrible. The tube gives off a sickly sweet and entirely fake smell that makes me feel ill. Strawberries don’t have a particularly strong aroma, so I took a look at the ingredients:
Milk chocolate 50% (sugar, cocoa solids 33% (cocoa mass, cocoa butter), milk solids 16%, emulsifier: soya lecethin), concentrated fruit 16%, Sugar, glucose syrup, whey powder, gylcerol 2%, vegetable fat, pectin, acacia gum, glazing agent: Shellac, flavouring, citric acid, sorbic acid, color: carrot, blueberry and pumpkin extracts.
There’s one notable thing missing from that list: Strawberries.
Now there may be strawberries in the “concentrated fruit”, but you’d think they’d be mentioned by name. And with all that junk in there, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that these taste as bad as they smell.
For all I know, the chocolate may be fine, but there’s such a tiny amount of it and it’s coated in shellac, so you can’t taste it at all. All you get is a cheap, chewy, vaguely fruity candy covered in some shiny brown substance.
You may be able to get kids to eat them, but personally I find them absolutely vile.
But what shocks me even more is that Kshocolât still want to market themselves as a luxury chocolate brand. They’re not. In terms of quality and sophistication, they’re about three levels below Haribo.
I do hope Bon Bon Buddies (new owners of Kshocolât) didn’t pay too much money for the brand, because based on these, I’m not convinced it was worth saving. But I have a couple more items to review, so maybe they can win me over.
This simple, 40g bar of 72% dark, organic chocolate was thrust into my hand by Holly at the recent Speciality & Fine Food Fair. It’s a very simple bar, but one of my main reasons for wanting to talk about it is the design.
The packaging is spot on, featuring Holly’s artwork on a simple paper wrapper with a gold foil inner wrapper. It’s elegant without being overly fussy. It looks like a quality product, without being pretentious. And of course, it’s completely recyclable.
I do tend to get over excited by well designed packaging, but the design of the chocolate is rather good too.
No simple chunks here, but a pattern of curved lines with another of Holly’s designs embossed in one corner. I really like this. Who needs uniform ‘chunks’ anyway? They’re never big enough…
The chocolate has a dark colour with a nice glossy finish and a nice clean snap. It has a buttery texture in the mouth and melts nice and evenly, slowly releasing a range of flavours on the way. It’s perhaps a little bitter initially, but releases some lighter, fruitier notes toward the end. Still, it doesn’t have the natural sweetness that I crave, so I can’t say it’s really my thing. It is, however, another of those bars I’ll nibble at through the day, then end up wondering where it went.
Here’s another of Duffy Sheardown’s single origin bars, stone ground and hand made in Lincolnshire. As previously mentioned, Duffy is one of only three UK chocolate makers who import the beans and make.
I had the pleasure of meeting the Sheardowns at the recent Speciality & Fine Food Fair at Olympia, and he very kindly gave me this bar to review. He also let me try a couple of new arrivals he’d managed to secure (rare beans sourced from Honduras among them, but more about that another time).
The Star of Panama bar is a 70% cocoa creation, and like all of Duffy’s products the cocoa, sugar and cocoa butter are all organic and fairly traded. The chocolate has deep, dark reddish brown colour and the aroma from the bar has a lot of citrus high notes. On the palate it’s quite buttery but with a lot of depth. The ‘Taste Profile’ on the wrapper suggests ‘deep chocolate, buttered toast and warm chestnuts’ and it’s a pretty good description. As the chocolate melts there’s a real depth of rich chocolate and butter with more organic flavour which is indeed suggestive of sweet chestnut. Alongside the chocolate there’s a subtle sweetness which lingers as the chocolate melts away. It’s a clean, slightly bittersweet finish with a mouthwatering acidity and (again as suggested in the taste profile) subtle sweet almond notes.
Star of Panama is quite a ‘light’ dark chocolate – the cocoa flavours aren’t huge and bold and the blending of the cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and sugar has been done in such a way that there’s more sweetness in the overall taste than one might initially expect. It’s a very pleasant bar – so pleasant that during the course of tasting it I had to rein myself in a little so as not to consume the whole bar in one sitting!
Of course, due to the nature of the product and the size of Red Star’s operation, these bars aren’t the easiest to find. They can be purchased at Paul A Young’s shop in Islington and online, but you’ll need to make an effort to get your hands on this stuff. Having said that, effort has it’s rewards, and this chocolate is certainly worth tracking down.
This box of handmade truffles was sent to us by Ruth at Coco Bean, a small Welsh chocolatier. They come in boxes of six or twelve, and you can choose which individual truffles you want when placing your order.
As you can see, there’s a nice variety, although mine did arrive slightly the worse for having passed through the hands of the Royal Mail. Nothing too bad, but lots of flakes of chocolate in the bottom of the box suggests we probably didn’t get them at their absolute best.
The flavours are: Ginger, Ffion’s Mess, Orange, Hazelnut, Lemon, Banoffee, Coffee, Chilli, Champagne, Coconut, George’s Vanilla and Caramel. The chocolates are made with fresh ingredients and no preservatives, which is great, but means they only have a shelf life of two weeks. That just means you have an excuse to eat them more quickly.
There’s nice mix of dark, milk and white chocolates, so there should be something for everyone here, although in general, I did find them a little too sweet for my liking.
Standouts for me were George’s Vanilla – a fresh cream vanilla truffle that tastes just like a nice vanilla ice cream, and the dark chocolate Ginger Truffle, which wasn’t too sweet and had just the right level of ginger spicyness.
Overall, this is a pleasant box of fresh chocolates. Personally I find them a bit too sweet and a little old fashioned, but I know many people like that. As far as freshness and quality of ingredients go though, I’ve been spoiled by having recently tried the amazing Cocoa Mountain Truffles.
A few tweaks (lighter ganaches and a touch less sugar), and these could be improved significantly. As it is, I don’t know that I would buy them for myself – but I did quite happily scoff them all in the process of writing this review.
