There’s nothing I enjoy more than discovering a fresh chocolate maker that I haven’t come across before, so I was delighted when the postman tried (and failed) to squeeze this little box through my letterbox.
Luckily the chocolates and the postman both survived the ordeal, and I get to bring you a review of some rather good looking chocolates.
Nicky Grant is a patissiere and chocolatier from Cornwall who uses local Cornish ingredients whenever she can. That includes Cornish sea salt in the caramels and the fresh cream in the truffles. That, combined with the absence of preservatives should give them great flavours (we’ll see in a moment!), but also means they only have a shelf life of a week. If you’re going to buy these, you’d better eat them quick.
The chocolate in my selection were:
Champagne Heart
A white chocolate heart with a dark chocolate Marc du Champagne ganache.
The flavours and texture of this were simply beautiful. The ganache was creamy and smooth, and the Marc de Champagne was subtle, but definitely added something to the chocolate.
Honey & Cinnamon
Cornish wildflower honey and cinnamon in a milk chocolate ganache in a marbled milk chocolate dome.
A firmer, glossier ganache than the Champagne Heart, but another wonderful chocolate. The combination of flavours is nigh-on perfect, with the warmth of the cinnamon and honey complementing each other, yet somehow managing to enhance the rich, dark cocoa notes too.
Raspberry Truffle
Raspberry puree, raspberry brandy and honey ganache in a milk chocolate shell, dusted with cocoa powder.
Another winner. The raspberry has a nice edge, without being overpowering. It’s light and fruity, and the milk chocolate still comes through.
Cornish Seasalt Caramel
Salted caramel in a dark chocolate shell, dusted with cocoa powder.
Wow. Underneath the deliciously dark cocoa powder is a deceptively thin chocolate shell, meaning you get a lot of caramel here. And again, it’s amazing. Almost liquid in texture, with just a hint of salt. This has instantly become my new favourite salted caramel, beating Paul A. Young’s version for me.
Praline log
Hazelnut praline with roasted pine nuts, cocoa nibs and wafer in milk chocolate, topped with praline.
Interestingly, this one has actually been made in a long log shape, then cut into slices, so the sides of the chocolate are open. That, combined with the wafer made for a slightly drier chocolate than the rest, but still very nice. The filling remains light and nutty, and the wafer pieces add a little crunch. Perhaps not my favourite, but still a wonderful chocolate.
Dark Truffle
A 73% Venezuelan dark chocolate with a Cornish cream ganache in a shape that resembles a Hershey’s Kiss.
A simple but very well flavoured chocolate. The subtle fruity flavour of the chocolate and the flavour of the cream both come through, making it neither too rich or too sweet. Very nice.
To sum up, these are some of the nicest fresh chocolates I’ve had in a very long time. The flavours are all perfectly chosen, and the chocolates have been beautifully made.
I’m trying to think of negatives, but the only two minor points I can think of is that the cocoa powder coating on some of the chocolates tends to cover the non-coated chocolates, and left my white chocolate heart looking a little messy, and that the box design is a little plain. They’re well presented, but as Nicky comes from a graphic design background, it would be nice to see a little of that artistic flair on the boxes. These are chocolates that deserve to be shouted about.
If you only buy one box of chocolates online this year, I’d highly recommend clicking the link below and treating yourself to some of these. They’re simply wonderful.
This week, I am in Edinburgh where a friend has tipped me off to the existence of The Chocolate Tree, a local place selling handcrafted certified organic chocolates. I grabbed a few of their interesting-looking bars to try. £5 got me three little taster bars of 48g each (the bigger 100g bars are £2.40 each).
This first one of the bars I tried is quite exciting for me, as I am quite partial to milk chocolate, but most of the chilli chocolate I’ve seen is made with dark chocolate. Even though I prefer milk chocolate, I find that the dark chocolate flavour sets off the spicy chilli flavour nicely, so I was curious to see what would happen here.
The packaging is very simple and the Celtic design looks slightly hippie-ish, in keeping with both the handcrafted and organic theme. The labels look significantly less slick than your average artisan chocolate and not even in a conscious pseudo-rustic way. If I saw these side by side with the more expensive bars, these would probably not be my first choice.
I was quite taken by the design of the bar itself, though. When I first looked at it, I thought it might not be a bar at all but individual, disconnected squares held together by the cellophane wrap. When I opened the packaging it turns out this was, in fact, a solid bar with the squares forming a sort of deliberately mismatched, displaced whole. Pretty.
The chillies in the bar are apparently of the bird’s eye variety and crushed. Unlike some of the other bars in the lot I’d bought, there weren’t any visible traces of the chillis, so I didn’t expect there to be much of a kick to the bar. I was so wrong.
This bar has a real kick to it. More than any other bar I’ve personally tried (though I’ve obviously not tried all of them). I class myself as fairly in the middle of the spicy food tolerance scale and this bar was not unpleasantly strong, but certainly poignant. The chilli kick was certainly noticeable with every single bite and blended remarkably well with the milk chocolate that was rich, sweet (but not sickly) and of blatantly fine quality and texture.
If I buy a flavoured bar of chocolate, I like to really get a hefty dose of the flavour that made me buy it, so I was really happy with this bar. All in all this is a lovely chocolate bar that’s unpretentiously packaged but really delivers where it counts. If you have a low tolerance for spicy foods and are looking for more of a hint than a wallop, though, you may find it quite challenging.
When faced with a wall of chocolate in a shop, most of which is unfamiliar, it is hard to know which ones to buy. My head says I should go for a flavour which I either like a lot or have never had before, but my heart usually goes in a completely different direction. I adore cool or unique packaging. I would love to say that it was my instinctive knowledge of quality chocolate that first drew me to Valrhona Chocolate, but really I just liked the black tin with the 18 little identically wrapped squares inside.
And that’s why I made a beeline to the Zaabär chocolate on the shelf – it just looked really cool. I didn’t know anything about the company, who turn out to be Belgian, but the lovely silvery boxes with their embossed scrollwork appealed to me. Then it just became a question of which varieties to pick up and I decided on the Ginger and the Star Anise from the not insubstantial Zaabär range which also includes Lemongrass, Curry and Coriander. I played it relatively safe in comparison.
The packaging is even better than I imagined. The box opens up like a book, with a small bar in each half. And better still, the bars are vacuum-sealed in foil pouches making them seem even more exotic and exciting. Basically, I was won over before I even tasted the damned stuff.
As it turns out though, the chocolate is rather good too. Tearing open a pouch lets the powerful aroma out, especially in the case of the Star Anise which initially smells so overwhelming that I was worried that there wouldn’t be much room left for the chocolate which is only 55.9% cocoa solids. Not that dark, but it turns out to be dark enough to balance out the aniseed ensuring that things never get too liquorishy. I am also a fan of the little crunchy pieces of the star anise scattered throughout.
The ginger bar is a bit more subtle, but still delicious. The chocolate takes to the stage first, but the ginger arrives soon after and builds up nicely thanks to the tiny pieces distributed through the chocolate. And even better, it keeps building to the point of tongue tingling and that, to me, is the perfect amount of ginger.
So maybe I do have good instincts after all because Zaabär chocolate is well worth checking out and that’s something I want to do in more depth after seeing the full range on their website. If they can deal with some of their more unusual ingredient choices as well as they do with this duo then they really could be a company to keep an eye on.
“I’d like a bar of chocolate, please… whichever one’s the biggest.” Wise words, spoken by Mr. Charlie Bucket just moments before unearthing his Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory.
The iconic Wonka bar itself can be difficult to track down (I myself have only had one); this spring, however, Nestlé (owner of the Willy Wonka brand) launched this line of bars along with a new Golden Ticket contest (which is now over). When I finally got to trying one of the bars, I decided to go along with Charlie’s first choice at the candy store – the Scrumdiddlyumptious bar. In my case, they were all the same size, but it’s the thought that counts.
Now, I don’t know whether or not this bar is wholly new (I would think it isn’t), but it’s the first time I have ever had it. The wrapper explains it to be “milk chocolate with scrumptious toffee, crispy cookie, and crunchy peanuts.” Sounds like there is quite a bit going on inside. Quite a bit on the outside, too. No doubt the flashy packaging is all part of the contest — at least I would hope such shiny wrapping wouldn’t be part of a permanent design if these stick around. The bar design surprised me with its simple, yet Wonka-esque elegance. A large “W” marks the middle, with eight small squares on the left and four bigger ones to the right. The smell? Peanuts.
I can see how Charlie would want to inhale this bar: the chocolate is so creamy, and all those pieces of toffee and whatnot are so small that they quicken instead of slow the munching process. It’s thick, really letting you taste the chocolate. I can’t say much in favor of the peanuts or cookie themselves; as a part of the whole, however, they do their job. And like I said, they’re small enough that they never entirely steal your focus from the chocolate, as I would have assumed from the description. That’s okay — more chocolate, to my mind, is only a good thing.
I may just be sad if there was only the one batch of these made, only to disappear after they sell out. Sure, there are always other candy bars, but Nestlé does things well — couple them with the novelty of Wonka and you have all you want.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1jmhbw3JHw
