One of the nice things about World Market is that, besides the occasional snow-cone or cookie samples, there are always coffee and/or tea in the back of the store. Perfect to pick up while browsing the chocolate shelves, not to mention effective in selling products. This Chocolate Jasmine tea was one of their samples for a while; having very much enjoyed it, I picked up a tin to bring home.
Zhena’s Gypsy Tea – you have to love that name, and the tin? Its background of world maps completes the gypsy feel, and its much preferable to the regular cardboard box as it’ll keep the tea fresher longer. The label-rundown includes Fair Trade Certified, USDA Organic, Kosher, and gluten and allergen free (the round sachets are also termed “eco-friendly”). Good start. This particular tea blossoms from a partnership with World Market. Though it’s labeled as green tea, there is also some black tea in it, along with “dark roasted cacao and jasmine blossoms.” The result is refreshing.
From when you pop open the tin, which is a charming nest for the tea’s aromas, and get hit by the chocolate’s presence, to the first brewed up, everything works in calm symbiosis. Especially for having the additional flavors from the green tea itself and the jasmine, the chocolate side holds its own remarkably well. I would have expected it to fade more in their presence. It also has such an enchanting, inherent sweetness to make it just the tea to brighten your day.
Understandably, not everyone may be looking for tea in the middle of summer, but I still recommend giving this a try. You can always have it iced, after all. It’s still nice cold — just slightly less endearing.
Wow. I suspect that there might be some coffee in this here chocolate because I can smell it before I even open the bar and I feel more awake by just looking at it. Impressive. Or maybe that has something to do with the fact that the wrapper states that it has been infused with massive amounts of Sugah’s Fog Burner coffee, ensuring nobody gets caffeinated by accident.
Good thing too because this really isn’t a very subtle at all – it slaps you in the face with coffee flavour immediately and there really isn’t much room for the chocolate to join the party. It’s just a mere 54% and could use a little higher percentage to balance out the coffee without too much sweetness. It comes close to getting it right, but it isn’t quite there.
What is really great about the bar is the texture – it isn’t really, really smooth by any means, so it won’t be a favourite of those who like their chocolate conched within an inch of its life. Some of the graininess comes from the bits of coffee which are also sprinkled on the back of the bar, but for some reason it just works.
Ultimately though, this is all about the coffee and if you like it strong then you will like big bold bar.
Freia is a long established Norwegian chocolate manufacturer, with a shop in Oslo since the late nineteenth century. Rebranded in Sweden and elsewhere as Marabou (due to existing copyright problems), Freia was bought out by Kraft some years ago. The shop still sells handmade chocolates under the Freia name but the bars and pre-packaged chocolates are all branded Kraft as well.
Sad to say that this ‘premium’ filled dark chocolate bar doesn’t carry information about cocoa content, and the passion fruit element is actually a mixture of passion fruit juice and banana puree mixed with sugar and crystallised. Thankfully the fruit flavour is nowhere near as aggressive as a certain German passion fruit bar I reviewed a long time ago, but everything about this bar is sweet. The filling is sweetened, and the fruity ‘bits’ add more sugar to the taste. The chocolate is slightly greasy, with very little in the way of depth of flavour. The finish is mainly fruit and not much cocoa although I could detect elements of dark, slightly bitter chocolate sitting between the sweetness of the filling and the extra sweetness of the fruity pieces.
I’ll be frank. This bar did nothing for me at all. None of the elements were in any way exceptional and it offered virtually nothing in terms of good flavour. The fruit was dulled by virtue of the way it was presented and the chocolate (with lovely extra vegetable fat) left me wishing I hadn’t popped a piece in my mouth. I just wanted a clean palate, and to forget this one altogether.
This bar is at best dull and at worst an appalling attempt at quality confectionery – the sort of thing British consumers might have considered sophisticated in 1972. I didn’t even keep the remainder to offer to friends and colleagues. It’s in a hotel bin in Portugal.
We’re always being sent chocolate to review here at Chocablog, so when the good folks at Prezzybox.com asked if they could send us something, we didn’t think twice about it. We weren’t expecting kitchen gadgets!
This “Chocolatiere” costs £19.95 and does just one thing; it melts chocolate without the hassle. No saucepans of boiling water on the stove top, just a simple pot nestled inside a heated base. Plug it in and go.
The pan is a little on the small side, holding a maximum of 250g of chocolate. I would have preferred something bigger, but I do like the fact that the whole thing can be put away after use and takes up very little cupboard space.
The base has two temperature settings, cleverly named “1” and “2”, which the instruction leaflet tells me roughly correspond to around 43C and 60C. It recommends melting the chocolate on setting 2, then keeping it melted in the pot on setting 1, but in reality, you’re probably going to burn the chocolate if you do that (something I tried and succeeded at), so I recommend keeping it on the low setting and adding a small amount of patience into the mix.
The instruction leaflet does have a few recipes that involve putting other ingredients into the pan which makes the 60C setting useful, but I would have preferred a lower range myself.
The melting pot comes with a variety of (somewhat flimsy) tools including forks for dipping fruit and truffles, a plastic spatula, plastic skewers and some very thin polycarbonate moulds. Despite the sharp spiky things and base that gets quite hot, this is clearly aimed at kids – or at least for kids to use with adult supervision.
Despite coming with chocolate moulds, one thing that is completely omitted from the instructions is any information about tempering. If you want to make chocolates with a shiny finish and a nice ‘snap’ to them, then the chocolate needs to be tempered. The process involves cooling the melted chocolate to around 27C (depending on the kind of chocolate), then reheating to around 31C.
The single temperature control on the melting pot doesn’t make that easy, particularly if you don’t have a thermometer, but by taking the pan out, stirring, and briefly adding it back, I was able to achieve fairly decent results. Probably more by luck than judgement though.
Despite its shortcomings, I find myself loving my little chocolate melting pot.
Although it’s not big enough and the temperature controls aren’t accurate enough for serious use, if you just need to melt a small amount of chocolate for a recipe or make chocolates with the kids it’s perfect. Personally, I think I’ll just be taking this to barbecues and setting it up next to a supply of good quality chocolate and a bowl of fruit for dipping. It’s significantly simpler than setting up the chocolate fountain that requires four tons of chocolate and added vegetable oil to get going.
Yes, it looks a bit cheap. It’s more of a toy than a serious tool, but considering it’s under £20, I think it’s great value, and something that I know will see regular use.
