The other (better?) half had a short holiday in Sydney with her sister recently, and came back bearing gifts of chocolate.
The “Delicaseys” range were apparently what was available at the local shops, so she had to buy some. I’ve been doing a little reading of their web site – which does not tell you a great deal about each, but the photographs are fantastic!
The gift for the two teenage vultures was the Orange Bliss – and according to the web site this is the original product that got the show on the road, some 10 years ago. Casey writes:
“Through years of self-taught experience, I’ve managed to learn about the properties of chocolates and how to infuse it with specific flavours. In the beginning there was only one signature flavour, Orange Bliss, which was sold at Manly markets.”
Because this was a present for the vultures, I’ve been greatly restricted in how much I can try – but of course the camera doesn’t eat any so photos are not a problem – apart from the long suffering looks and the sighs of “Oh do you have to do that?”
Chocolate orange can range from excellent to awful depending on the chocolate, and the orange, how the two are married together.
Being packed in a paper sack, these do get a little knocked about in transport – as the white scuff marks show. However, that’s a minor matter and easily overlooked.
The first thing that smacked me around the mouth on tasting this was that the orange flavour has gone through the chocolate – it’s intense, floral, and fantastically delicious. The chocolate is pleasantly dark, which is good because too much sweetness would not work with orange.
As the chocolate melts away it exposes the candied orange inside. This is something that can also be messed up easily if the orange is too small, too crunchy, or too sweet. This is none of those. The orange inside is generous in size, full of flavour, not too sweet, and still soft. It’s hard to describe the texture of that orange – perhaps a little like a cheddar cheese (but obviously with none of the flavour!). This candied orange is exemplary – great flavour, great texture, great “bite”.
If I’d been allowed to, I would have scoffed the lot in a single sitting. These are marvellous, fantastic, excellent. I can’t recommend them enough. Get some and try ‘em!
Something a little different from Zotter (although since when is anything Zotter have done not a little different). This time though, we have drinking chocolate.
The drinking chocolates take the form of five differently flavoured bars (Bourbon Vanilla, Bitter Classic, Cinnamon Banana, Nut Nougat and Birds Eye Chilli) which you simply melt into hot milk.
I started with the Bourbon Vanilla, which is actually a lightly coloured white chocolate with flecks of vanilla in.
The instructions call for melting each bar into 100ml of hot, frothy milk. Unfortunately, I don’t have any cups that small, so I ended up with a half-filled mug. The result resembles something close to a chicken cup-a-soup, rather than looking like hot chocolate, but thankfully doesn’t taste of chickens at all.
The flavour is more vanilla than chocolate though, and it’s very pleasant. Not too sweet, and surprisingly creamy. On a “proper” summer’s day, this would quite nice chilled as a milkshake.
Next up, I tried the bitter classic flavour. This is simply a 79% dark chocolate with a touch of chilli. It’s very different from the white chocolate vanilla variety and not at all sweet. But when added to milk, it becomes a delicious, warming drink and the cocoa flavours really come through. The touch of chilli doesn’t really come into play until you stop drinking and notice that your mouth is still warm. Very nice.
Because I can only handle two hot chocolates right now, I’m going to leave this review here. Suffice to say I’m really looking forward to trying the other flavours.
After I e-mailed the nice people at Sugah! my review of their Anise Almond Clusters, they sent an e-mail back threatening to, and I quote, “inundate me with chocolate”. And then a few weeks later, they did just that. A great big box of their stuff to consume and write about, so here’s we go with their Nova Scotia Concoction. It is clear from the large blue box emblazoned with a rampant lion that this is something created to be as Nova Scotian as possible. Or to put it another way, something for the tourists.
As with all the Sugah! products, everything inside the box is clearly stated on the outside of the box, something which cuts down on surprises. So I was expecting local cranberries, blueberries and caramel infused with sea salt because they told me that’s what was in there. One little complaint – they say on their boxes that they use all natural ingredients, yet they use artificial vanilla extract. Not that big a deal, and very easy to fix.
The rampant lion thing continues inside, with the three colours of chocolates all featuring that same motif. The white chocolates have the cranberries inside, and it’s a good match. The tartness of the cranberries nicely balances out the sweetness of the white chocolate, and it is pretty yummy even to someone like me who isn’t the biggest fan of the white stuff.
The blueberries go with the dark chocolate, and they aren’t quite so successful. The chocolate is fairly mundane, but still has enough flavour to overwhelm the blueberries which just end up adding some texture to the whole thing and that’s about it. It isn’t unpleasant, but isn’t anything to write home about either.
The real stars of the box are the caramels. The caramel is of the thick, chewy variety, and is wonderfully rich and buttery. It hangs around long after the chocolate is gone, and has just the right amount of salt to punctuate the sweetness periodically. A whole box of these would be a very pleasant indeed.
Considering the target audience, Nova Scotia Concoction is not bad at all. While it isn’t the most incredible gourmet chocolate experience, it is definitely a lot better than most opportunistic tourist fodder is, especially those caramels. But Sugah! have some much better stuff than this waiting in the wings and I should know because I’ve aleady eaten some of it.
Information
- Buy it online from:
- Contains dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate.
- Filed under assortment, blueberry, canada, caramel, cranberry, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, sugah, white chocolate.
This is one of the Chocolate & Love own branded bars that I picked up at their recent tasting session in central London.
It’s one of those strange chocolates that can’t decide if it wants to be dark or milk. It’s a 55% cocoa solids bar and describes itself as “organic dark truffle chocolate” which isn’t a term I’ve heard before. A quick glance at the ingredients shows it contains milk fat.
The ingredients list is also a little odd in that it lists the brand names of the two kinds of cane sugar used (“SYRAMENA” and “SUCNAT”). I’m not convinced this is necessary, and the fact that the brand names sound entirely unappetising doesn’t help much either. A quick Google search reveals they are made by a company with an equally unappetising sounding name – “Pronatec” – who specialise in producing organic and fair trade products.
The Pronotec web site also happens to list a range of chocolates under the name Amarrú, including what looks like this exact same bar in differently branded packaging. Make of that what you will.
As you can see, it’s a nice looking bar though. It’s well made and has a good colour to it.
And the taste is quite pleasant too. It’s quite sweet and creamy – thanks to that low cocoa percentage and added milk fat – but that means it’s should appeal to a wider audience.
The “crushed diamonds” are actually small pieces of cocoa nibs scattered throughout the chocolate. They give the chocolate a nice texture, and initially at least, add a little richness to the bar.
But as the chocolate melts and you’re left with pieces of nib in your mouth, they quickly become very bitter and have an almost chemical flavour to them. Being organic, I doubt there are actually any chemicals involved, but that’s how they taste. I usually like the rich, bitterness of cocoa nibs, but I didn’t find this pleasant at all.
So while I like the initial flavour and crunch, this chocolate very quickly goes downhill. It’s not something I could recommend.
It seems a little odd to me that Chocolate & Love say that they want to feature the best of the best in their online shop, yet their own brand doesn’t quite make the grade. Perhaps they should concentrate on getting the best chocolates into the shop, because I don’t think this does much to help their brand.
