When I first crossed paths with Sugah’s clusters, I was impressed by both the no nonsense approach to packaging (which I still love) and their ludicrous size – I could barely fit one in my mouth comfortably and believe me, I tried several times. And none of that has changed now I’m crossing paths with them again. The only thing that has changed is the combination of nuts and other stuff mixed into the chocolate.
First up the Rocky Road Clusters, with their promise of homemade marshmallows. And on that front, they really do deliver – big gooey chunks of sweetness that are the real stars of the show. The pecans pieces help to stop it from turning into just a sugar-fest because the milk chocolate is a little on the sweet side too, meaning that the overall effect is good enough to keep you gnawing through a couple of them. More than two might be pushing it for a single sitting though.
The Chipotle Pistachio Clusters are a bit more complicated, and all the better for it. It helps that they don’t go for subtlety when it comes to the chipotle – there’s a real fire to the chocolate that builds as it melts and then sticks around post-cluster. There was no subtlety when it came to the number of pistachios either and so there’s a lot of nuttiness packed into each cluster although they are, sadly, not salted. A little touch of salt would have helped to pass the time until the heat kicks in but even without it, these are worth checking out. Just be prepared to bite them in half for comfort’s sake.
I was lucky enough to be given this amazing creation on my Chocolate Ecstasy Tour of Chelsea chocolate shops at the weekend. We took a detour from the usual tour route to visit Claire’s pop-up patisserie in Harvey Nichols. We even got a chance to chat to Claire herself – but I’ll tell you about that when I post my full write-up of the tour!
A lot of Claire’s creations are inspired by childhood memories and nostalgia, and this is clearly no exception. It’s like a McVitie’s Jaffa Cake on acid. But where you get a thin disc of orangey jelly in the off-the-shelf version, Claire gives you an entire mountain of light, tangy orangeyness to contend with.
And she’s managed to capture the childhood experience of your first Jaffa Cake perfectly. The soft base, delicious dark chocolate, and thick orange jelly have been recreated with wonderfully fresh, fine ingredients (including 70% Amedei Toscano chocolate) in a way that manages to bring those childhood memories flooding back. It’s like having your Jaffa Cake virginity taken all over again.
Of course, the problem with McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes was always that once you had one, you had to eat the whole box in one go. One of the downsides of having one of the country’s finest pastry chefs make them for you is that you only get one per box. So the only negative thing I can say about this is that I want more!
Claire Clark’s pop-up patisserie in Harvey Nichols will only be around for a couple of months, so if you want to try her creations for yourself, I recommend getting down there now.
Taking a look at the first half of Ritter Sport bars I received, my views were favorable. The second half, however, I am not finding so enjoyable. Three of these bars contain nuts; two are dark chocolate.
Working on the milk side first, we have a Milk Chocolate with Whole Almonds.
“Roasted almonds from California” to be exact. Turning the bar over, you can see about thirty of them sticking out of the back. Pretty basic. So, too, their taste. I’m eating it quick enough, but nothing is really interesting me. I’ve tasted the milk chocolate before; the nuts are like an addition of texture, and I thought the biscuit made a better addition.
Milk Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts is the same story. Readers will know that I like hazelnuts and chocolate (though I do prefer a creamy form), but this bar didn’t excite me. The disbursement, also, of the nuts is too random. My first square had no hazelnuts at all, while the others were packed.
As you’ll notice by now, my comments are growing progressively worse. On the Dark Chocolate with Hazelnuts, the nuts were placed in a near figure eight. The corners were scanty, while the lines on the “eight” were thick. Now, readers also know that I tend to be pickier with dark chocolate. Ritter Sport’s dark chocolate puts in mind the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Lover’s Bar, though that one was up there at 85% cacao. This one is, naturally, much sweeter. I personally think the hazelnut/milk chocolate combination works much better, but if standard dark chocolates are to your taste, you may like this one.
The last bar is a plain 50% Dark Chocolate with cocoa from Papua New Guinea. I’m assuming it’s the same chocolate as in the Hazelnut bar. Frankly, I don’t like it by itself at all. It has some good chocolaty flavors, but they’re entirely eclipsed for me by the sugary goopiness. I’ll either give the rest away (sweetly saying, “I think you’ll like this,” of course) or put it in a recipe. For those who like sweet dark chocolate only.
There is my two-sided opinion on Ritter Sport. They can make some tasty chocolates, but also some boring ones. These four fell into the latter category.
It’s been a year since Simon reviewed Burnt Sugar’s Gooey Caramels, which he found at Borough Market. I found this ‘chewy’ variation in Waitrose, so things are obviously going well for the Burnt Sugar guys.
These chewy caramels seem to use the same 55% dark chocolate as the ones Simon found, so the real difference is the caramel.
It took a significant amount of effort to cut a caramel in half for the photograph above. These are the kind of caramels that start off quite hard, then slowly become chewy as they warm in your mouth, releasing their flavours along the way.
At least, that’s the theory. I’ve had some very bland caramel in the past. But the ingredients lists here contains ingredients like cream, golden fair trade sugar, muscovado sugar, golden syrup, treacle, balsamic vinegar and sea salt. That’s a lot of good stuff in one little caramel.
Thankfully, you can taste many of those flavours too. It starts off slow, but as you chew, you can really feel the golden syrup and treacle flavours building. It’s very pleasant indeed.
The chocolate is a little bland though. Apart from being a bit of decoration, it doesn’t add much. I would have preferred a thicker, higher cocoa content chococolate – they’re sweet enough to be able to take something darker.
But for chewy caramel lovers, these are definite winners. I would still class them as ‘sweets’ rather than serious chocolate (there’s a lot of sugar in various forms in there), but I did end up quite enjoying them. At £1.99 for 110g, they’re pretty good value and probably slightly too more-ish than is healthy. I think that’s a good thing.
