Geminus, Inc., to my surprise, is a local company (to me, that is), coming out of Scottsdale, Arizona. The chocolate people usually don’t flock here too much; they must not be keen on their hard work melting away in the Valley of the Sun. Geminus, however, isn’t exactly a chocolate company: headed by Jovan Van Drielle, they make specialized items you can have your logo/name put on. As far as chocolate goes, they make custom bars, boxes, molds, and edible pictures. Their Chocolate Diamond Bark is what I was given.
From the outside to in, you can tell Geminus works to please the eye. In a gold wrapping is a plain brown box like those The ChocolateSmith uses. This one is completed with a thick, cream and brown polka dot bow, whose ends are finished with not a straight cut, but a ridged one. The brown tissue paper inside has a sparkle to it, sealed shut by a sticker label. Now the actual bark. Large pieces of chocolate are scattered with “diamonds” or rock candy and small, circular pictures, similar to what is printed on cakes. On the Geminus site, there is a sample bark dressed up for a wedding. It seems it would make a nice addition to a wedding table, a little sparkly while still not overdone, with pictures of the couple that can be eaten instead of stashed away and forgotten.
I first assumed this to be dark chocolate: its color is a middle tone that lends a bit more to dark. It tasted dark, too, at first, of a better quality than novelty chocolates tend to be. It reminds me slightly of the Original Beans Cru Virguna bar – sweet and pleasant chocolate. Then I realized that the flavor was also rather milky. This is, in fact, a combination of milk and dark chocolate. You get the best of both sides, making it something to appeal to most everyone. Its flavors are warm with cinnamon and coffee.
The diamonds come into a bit here and there. The effect is like finding salt in chocolate, only with sugar instead of salt. Little sections of crunch make for a break from letting the chocolate melt, without much influence on flavor. I’m glad to come across a chocolate whose unique looks I can compliment, then enjoy eating rather than finding barely tolerable.
If writing for Chocablog were a proper job, it would probably be the best job in the world. I mean… how many of you have a postman that brings you cake for breakfast with a friendly smile?
After seeing our cheap off the shelf Flake Cake that we celebrated our 4th birthday with, Abigail Phillips at The Cake Nest took pity and decided to bake us some proper cake. Awesome.
Thankfully, for the sake of my bathroom scales, Abi just sent a couple of slices of this chocolate cake, because it really is very good and if she’d sent any more I know I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.
Rather than being a light sponge, this is a denser, moister cake with two thick layers of dark chocolate icing. But rather than being heavy, that just makes this cake more satisfying. Combined with the rich dark chocolate flavours, it adds up to a slice of cake that leaves you happily full without being too sweet or sickly – something that was a definite problem with our Flake Cake.
Based on this small sample, I’d happily recommend you check out The Cake Nest if you’re looking for something a little more eye-catching and upmarket than the mass produced Cadbury cake I bought.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another slice to get through…
If you live outside of Canada, you may never have seen one of these, but I’m sure you can tell exactly what it is just by looking at the wrapper.
Yes, it’s a Cadbury Bounty!
I’ve not been able to find out much about this bar, and as far as I can tell it’s a Canadian-only thing, but I managed to pick one up in CyberCandy’s London shop.
As you can see, rather than the two-small bars of a Bounty, Cadbury have gone for the shockingly radical option of three bars. Nobody will be able to accuse them of copying now!
There’s no hint of the kind of chocolate used, although it looks a little darker than Dairy Milk. It does however have a full set of ingredients in English and French which describe it as “unsweetened chocolate” which doesn’t sound very Cadbury like, but the same ingredients list also mentions “…modified palm oil, modified vegetable oil, palm oil, vegetable oil…” which sounds much more like Diary Milk to me. So it could be anything.
Inside, it looks quite like a real Bounty bar, if perhaps not so pristine and white. In that sense, it’s more like the M&S version of a Bounty.
Like the M&S bar, it’s also not quite as moist as the real thing. That could be partly down to the fact that this particular bar embarked upon a long and arduous journey across the atlantic to reach my stomach, but I suspect it was made that way.
Still, this is quite edible and a tasty little snack. I think I prefer the three-bar format (I have TWO friends now), but it’s just not quite as good as the real thing.
Welcome to the 4th Annual Chocster Awards. Ignore all other award ceremonies you may see today, because this is the one that counts!
The only criteria needed to qualify for an award is that a chocolate must have been reviewed on Chocablog in the last 12 months.
The Chocsters is our own take on what’s been hot (and what’s been…. not) in the last year of chocolate reviews on Chocablog. Like most awards, the winners are a purely subjective choice, and most likely wrong. Feel free to argue and suggest who we should have picked in the comments!
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Best Dark Chocolate
Amano Montanya
Possibly our most prestigious award goes to Art Pollard and his team in Utah for this delicious 70% Venezuelan bar.
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Best Milk Chocolate
Hotel Chocolat Undiscovered St Lucia 42%
A rich 42% milk chocolate produced with beans from Hotel Chocolat’s own Rabot Estate on St. Lucia.
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Best White Chocolate
Planete Chocolat White Chocolate with Thyme
A rather moreish little block from Belgium picked up on Chocablog’s recent trip to Brussels.
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Best Everyday Chocolate
Thorntons Milk Chocolate With Tonka Bean
Inexpensive enough to pick up a block or two any day of the week, this Thorntons block with Tonka Bean was definitely one of our favourites this year.
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Best Assortment
Chococo Selection
Beautiful, simple, handmade chocolates with amazing flavours. What more could you want from a box of chocs?
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Best Range
Galler – Les Elementaires
This Earth, Fire, Air and Water themed range of chocolates look and taste stunning. But then we’d expect nothing less from Galler.
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Best Handmade Chocolate
Paul A. Young Chocolate Brownies
Paul Young makes some of the finest chocolates known to man, but these chocolate brownies were something else entirely. Not just worth visiting his shop for, but worth renting the flat next door to maintain a regular supply.
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Best Newcomer
Holly Caulfield
Holly – aka “Chocoholly” – may have been making chocolate for a couple of years now, but it’s less than a year since we first encountered her work. Her beautiful, exciting and delicious creations never fail to impress.
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Best Chocolate Experience
Karin Herzog chocolate facial
Chocolate that you can’t eat may seem like a crime, but this decadent 1.5 hour chocolate facial treatment at Kensington’s Bentley Hotel was an experience worth repeating.
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Weird & Wonderful Award
iMod Think Chocolate
Many of the chocolates we review fall into the “weird” category, but very view are also wonderful. This unusual iPod shaped Modican chocolate from Sicily certainly qualifies though.
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Chocolate Raspberry Award
Beacon Threesome
There were so many contenders for this – our worst chocolate of the year award – that it this was probably the most difficult category to judge. But after careful consideration, this appalling South African chocolate with an ill-judged name took the biscuit. We’re quite sure we won’t be having another threesome any time soon.
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Once again, we’re a little sad to report that none of this year’s winners could be here in person to receive their awards. On the bright side, at least you don’t have to sit through the acceptance speeches, and can go and watch the Oscars® on TV instead.
