I picked this little egg up from Artisan du Chocolat’s stall at the London Chocolate Festival on Friday – a freebie for remembering their ‘magic word of the day’.
They come in milk and dark chocolate varieties. This is the milk chocolate version – I also scored a dark chocolate one on Sunday but scoffed that on the spot, so we’ll just be looking at the milk one for now! It’s just over 4cm long and as you can see, from the outside doesn’t look anything special.
Even once you’ve removed the wrapper, there’s nothing to distinguish it from any other chocolate egg. Slightly bigger than a Mini Egg. Slightly smaller than a Creme Egg with odd dimples top and bottom that let the egg sit horizontally. Still nothing spectacular though.
Until you get inside. The soft, creamy milk chocolate shell is filled with the most deliciously light fondant ganache. The white part is vanilla and the orange centre is a deliciously light and floral passion fruit. The dark chocolate version is vanilla and orange.
Tasting them individually, you really get a sense of the fresh flavours. I was particularly fond of the fresh Tahiti vanilla and could quite easily eat it by the bowlful. On its own, the passionfruit is tangy and refreshing, but sampled together with the vanilla, the flavours seem much more subtle and work togther wonderfully. The milk chocolate is rich and smooth and brings everything together perfectly.
You’re certainly not going to get the same sugar rush from this as you would from a Creme Egg and at £1.49 each, they aren’t cheap at all. But as with so many things in life, you get what you pay for. Or in my case, you get what you know the magic word for. Yum.
From Kettle Confections comes this red box of Chocolate – Orange Almonds Nougats. I’m loving the Minnie Mouse style it imparts, as well as the fact that it is tied, once again, with a real fabric bow. What we have inside are (I think) a dozen nice-sized pieces of nougat. An outer wrapping of clear plastic compliments a handmade touch. Twist that wrapping off and you’ll find another tightly holding onto the rectangular bodies of the nougats. We all have our slow moments: after reading my warning in more than one place, I started to try to peal this wrapping off. I thought, this is horrible, they can’t all be this hard to unwrap. Then I remembered the truth of the matter. Oh, yes, this is rice paper — no need to unwrap it. I knew that.
Of course, the rice paper is used to prevent just such a scenario occurring with an inedible wrapper; it also makes these nougats that much more entertaining. Bite into the crinkly wrapper, and behold, it disappears. It’s like magic.
Moving along, nougats like these were very welcome to me. I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen (in person, that is) or tasted nougat outside of a candy bar. Milky Way and 3 Musketeers are all good and well, but not so much as these. The flavor here is much fresher, the texture more lively. More chewy and gummy than just fluffy and squishy. There is a good amount of slivered almond in here, adding to the texture fun. Almonds aren’t my nut of choice (it’s the hazelnuts I go for), but these are wonderful.
At first, I didn’t notice either the chocolate or orange tastes. Then, as I was trying to describe a tangy or fruity taste, I saw I’d found the orange. Coming from orange oil, it avoids the artificial, but is kept with a minimum influence. It just adds a nice spritz to the flavor. The chocolate is even harder to detect. I’m sure the difference would be apparent side-by-side with a non-cocoa nougat, but as it is, I think there is more a simple chocolate feel alongside the sweetness.
Kettle Confections also has a couple more flavors, with a new Chocolate-Covered Pistachio Cranberry, and plans to have the Chocolate-Covered nougats available in bar form, as well. Despite their handmade feel and preservative-free state, the shelf life of these nougats is three months. That’s great, only I don’t expect mine to last the day, let alone three months.
Two days ago I bought a house. As you can see, it’s not a very big house, but with London property prices the way they are, it’s all I could afford. The house in question was purchased at the London Chocolate Festival and conceals nine chocolate praline quail eggs from the ever wonderful Rococo.
I love the packaging of these. Inside the house, the bag containing the eggs is wrapped in beautifully printed tissue paper and almost looks like it might be hiding some upmarket fish and chips. But no, it’s definitely eggs. Beautiful eggs.
If Cadbury Mini Eggs had grown up in the nice part of town and been sent to posh private schools, this is what they’d grow up to look like. Looking just like real quail eggs, they have a beautifully decorated sugar shell – so much nicer than the Lindt Mini Eggs I looked at the other week.
And the inside is much nicer too. Underneath the delicate shell is a thick layer of milk chocolate which is almost indistinguishable from the praline centre. There’s a wonderful combination of textures from the crunch of the shell to the smooth, creamy centre. I almost feel guilty biting into them… but not guilty enough to stop myself.
At £6 for 100g, they aren’t cheap. But they are good value, purely for the joy they’ll bring someone when you present them with a little house of eggs on Easter morning. Highly recommended!
Yesterday I popped along to the London Chocolate Festival on the Southbank for a nose around. I ended up spending way too much time and money there, and I enjoyed it so much I’ll probably be going back tomorrow!
There’s a great mix of familiar faces and people I hadn’t heard of before, and it’s well worth a visit if you can make it to London this weekend – just be sure to take plenty of spending money! It’s running until Sunday 28th March and you’ll find it behind the Royal Festival Hall, a short walk from Waterloo Station.
But rather than listen to me going on about all the lovely chocolate and lovelier people, I think you should just watch the video and look at the pictures. And then get there, pronto.
