“Gorgeous Heart – Fruity Affair” is a silly name for a silly chocolate. Brilliantly silly, that is. A successor to last year’s ‘Heart Strings‘, this giant 650 gram heart comes in very similar packaging, laced up down the middle and finished with a bow.
Unlace the box and open the doors to reveal the beating heart inside…
OK, so it’s not actually beating, but I’m fairly sure the boffins at Hotel Chocolat are working on a way to make that happen for next year’s product line up.
Just like the ‘Heart Strings’ heart, the packaging is stunning. It’s not just the quality of the materials, it’s the thought that’s gone into the experience of opening the box and revealing the chocolate inside. Something most people take for granted is really important for a Valentine’s gift, and Hotel Chocolat have got it spot on.
Last year, my heart was broken when it arrived, but this year it turned up completely intact. I can only assume the delivery guy who smashed my heart in a jealous fit of rage last year has been fired. Shame. But the fact is, the only way to eat something like this is to smash it anyway. Not that I mind – it all ends up broken in my tummy anyway.
The milk chocolate is 40% cocoa solids and is as smooth and creamy and delicious as you’d expect from Hotel Chocolat. The fruitness comes from swirls of 28% white chocolate flavoured with strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrent. Each bite tastes slightly different, as you get different quantities of the swirls with every mouthful. Those swirls are quite sweet and tangy, but they only go down a couple of millimetres, so the overall experience is quite subtle.
The decorative balls are fruit and white chocolate shells filled with praline, and while they’re impossible to remove from the chocolate, I’d be quite happy with a bag of them on their own. The fruit and nutty praline make an excellent combination.
Of course, there’s another surprise when you turn the heart over. Not only is there a beautifully embossed design, but it’s pressed with tiny beads of caramelised puffed rise. This gives parts of the chocolate a nice crunchy texture, but I’m not entirely convinced by it because most of them fall out and end up all over the you and the floor the moment you lift it up. Perhaps Hotel Chocolat just want you to get a bit messy with your fruity affair.
I’ve said it before about Hotel Chocolat’s Valentines products and I’ll say it again. If you love a chocolate lover, get them one of these. I seriously doubt either of you will regret it.
We found this rather generous 300 gram box of goodies some time ago, and it has been sitting in The Stash ever since, waiting for an opportunity. Trouble is, The Stash is growing, and causing household friction: “Use up some of that chocolate so we have room for other things!” OK – who needs telling twice?
The box says this is “Luscious Berries – Selected Exotic Berry Flavoured Fruit Pieces Coated in Milk, Dark and White Chocolate”. Inside the box is a bag with a LOT of little balls in – white, light and dark – all slightly glossy – that’s the glazing agent 904 – whatever that is.
There is no special aroma – something we really should expect with a product like this, which means it must be Taste Test Time. Of course, I haven’t just done a taste test myself, I’ve passed them around the family. The universal reaction is “wow!”, followed by “fruity”, followed by “what flavour is it?”
If you know the flavours, then you can tell them – or perhaps if you have an exceptional palate. For us mere mortals, reading the side of the box is essential – strawberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in milk chocolate; blueberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in white chocolate; and raspberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in dark chocolate. My emphasis on “flavoured” – that means go read the ingredients.
After finding out the flavours, I can pick the blueberry – which is subtle at the best of times (like scoffing down a punnet of blueberries) – so this is a pretty big achievement. I really can’t tell the strawberry, it’s just fruity. I think I can pick the raspberry. Without knowing though, I really would struggle to pick them.
A check of the ingredients shows that the fruit stuff is apple puree, dried apricots, and dried apple with a mere 2% actual berries. The chocolate blends are shown as the milk chocolate being 28% cocoa, and the dark 49%. Not very dark, really – enough to show it’s a different colour.
Don’t get me wrong about the downsides (not much berry in spite of the name, and the dark not being very dark) – these are very very edible indeed. The family come grazing by to vacuum up a few more each pass by, and as I write this I have to keep sampling. Because they contain a fair amount of fruit, eating the 300 grams in a sitting is likely to have unpleasant consequences. But it’s tempting to try.
If you put these out for a dinner party, or BBQ, as a nibble, starter, desert, post-desert whatever – they will go down very well indeed.
Guest Chocablogger Nastash Faria returns with some more South African treats…
Baker’s is a company that was established in 1881 in South Africa. When South Africans think biscuits, we think Bakers. A favourite of mine are the Baker’s Romany Creams, so imagine my absolute joy at finding mini version of my favourite chocolate biscuit, covered in chocolate!
Utopia in the snack aisle of my local supermarket. Romany Creams are a chocolate coconut biscuit sandwich with chocolate in the middle. These little fellows, on the other hand, are the reverse – instead of biscuit around some chocolate, they’re chocolate around some biscuit. In other words, perfect.
The chocolate is lovely, not too much shellac and the shell is neither too thick nor too thin. It’s just good old nomming quality milk chocolate, in perfect proportion to the biscuit it covers. The biscuit itself is actually what makes this perfect – the texture is not only biscuity, but a little coconutty too, so it crumbles perfectly. When you’re a black abyss into which chocolate can always be thrown (like me), you’ll find that the more of these you eat, the better. The tastes that exist in the biscuit part are not always immediately apparent, but they do accumulate as you munch your way to obesity. They are slightly salty, slightly malty and have a hint of golden syrup. In fact, the taste is ever so slightly reminiscent of Milo.
One of the best things about this is that the taste lingers, so although I can still guarantee that you will eat the entire pack, you could probably stretch it out over the course of about 2 hours. At 75 grams, you needn’t be ashamed of yourself, until you remember how little biscuits way and how filled with bad things they are.
I consoled myself with the fact that I didn’t buy the 1 kg tub. I take my victories where I can get them.
Another pressie from the travelling friends, this box purports to contain a flavour of Singapore by way of these curious little ‘cakes’ of milk chocolate which also contain roasted macadamias and crisped rice.
There are eighteen pieces in total, each one about eight or nine grams in weight. There’s no indication of coca content, and the nutritional breakdown informs thew consumer that four of these little chaps will provide you with almost a quarter of your RDA of fat!
Further oddness surrounds their origins. Apparently these are made in Hawaii, USA and imported into the country. I’m assuming these were purchased at an airport or somewhere similar, as they have that ‘tourist souvenir’ look to them.
At first bite they’re not too unpleasant at all. The nut pieces and crispy rice work well to break up the chocolate, and the chocolate isn’t too sweet. A second bite had me rethinking my opinion though. Like a lot of American produced chocolate they soon came across as being very fatty and sugary, with ‘high fructose corn syrup’ and ‘malt flavouring’ striking me as principal culprits in the slightly sickly taste I was getting.
They’re certainly not moreish, at least not to me. One was enough, and the second one ‘to be sure’ just confirmed that what I was eating was not in any way high quality chocolate. I know that I could be accused of being spoiled, but the chocolate in these is probably of lower quality than your average high street chocolate bar, making them something to avoid in my book. I’ve always been wary of confectionery branded as a souvenir, and these confirm why.
