Back in 2008, I was given a bar of chocolate from Toronto’s Soma Chocolatemaker as a birthday gift. I didn’t really know too much about them, but the bar – their Dark Fire 66% – sounded interesting with its promised mix of cinnamon, chilli, ginger and other special spices. It turned out to be more than interesting – it was spectacular. I somehow managed to ration myself so it lasted a couple of days, and I even saved the wrapper so I could sniff it to remind me of the good times we spent together. And then I gushed about it to anyone who would listen (and quite a few people who wouldn’t…) for the next week or so. I was hooked. Naturally, I dropped plenty of hints that I would love some more, and this Christmas it paid off.
Their Exploration Box features four samples of their so-called microbatch bars, made in smaller quantities than many bigger companies. The samples aren’t huge – just eight squares – but more than enough to get an idea of what to expect. And it isn’t really a box either – the foil-wrapped squares are rolled in a funky-looking bamboo mat, but it makes for a unique way to present the chocolate.
The chocolate isn’t the glossiest around, but that might be down to the fact that it did travel before it reached my hands. Looking at the four kinds unwrapped in turn, we have Cocoa Latte 60% (top left), Green Tangerine 65% (top right), Dark Fire 66% (bottom left) and Black Science Madagascar 70% (bottom right). But let’s get to the tasting.
Cocoa Latte 60% – this one has a surprisingly high amount of cocoa for a milk chocolate, but one taste leaves absolutely no doubt because the dominant flavour is a rich creaminess. That’s about it though, making it a little one-dimensional. It would probably make good truffles because it could benefit from another flavour or some texture.
Green Tangerine 65% – the lack of a strong orangey smell suggests that this might be a little too subtle for its own good, but that isn’t the case. The tangerine flavour is accompanied by bursts of sweetness that are really surprising, and they mask the bitterness of the chocolate until the very end. Not your typical citrus chocolate at all, and really good.
Dark Fire 66% – again, the negligible aroma belies what lies ahead because the cinnamon appears almost instantly and continues to warm while the chilli slowly builds in intensity before taking over. The spices and bitter chocolate then dance around together before slowly fading away, leaving a lovely smouldering sensation in your mouth for quite a while afterwards. Just as good as I remembered.
Black Science Madagascar 70% – despite being the highest percentage in this collection, it isn’t the darkest in colour suggesting that this might not deliver on the 70% potential. But it does. It has lots of fruity notes, with cherry dominating, and it both starts and finishes strongly without much of a lull in between. Surprisingly, not a bitter chocolate at all.
And so that makes two very good chocolates, one good and one that I can take or leave and my potential obsession with Soma Chocolatemaker continues…
This year, Hotel Chocolat and Thorntons sent us similarly sized boxes of chocolate hearts, so rather than do two reviews, I thought it would be fun to put them head to head and see who comes out on top – and who leaves broken hearted.
Let’s start with the packaging. For a Valentines gift, that’s really important. This isn’t just a gift, this is a gift for the person you love, so a cheap looking box just isn’t going to cut it.
The Hotel Chocolat box (above) is, as you’d expect, rather pretty. Lots of pink, a pretty design, and – importantly – a nice solid feeling construction.
The Thorntons box on the other hand, doesn’t show the same design flair. A red box with clear plastic cut-outs showing the chocolates inside, which just feels cheap and flimsy compared to the Hotel Chocolat box. A clear win for Hotel Chocolat here.
Once you get inside, the Thorntons box redeems itself a little. While I’m still not a fan of the clear plastic, the arrangement is quite pleasing with a larger heart surrouned by 12 smaller ones.
I still prefer the Hotel Chocolat box though. The arrangement isn’t particularly exciting, with 15 hearts arranged into three simple rows, but somehow the plastic just feels… higher quality.
Now we get to the actual chocolate. A quick glance at the blurb on the back of the boxes reveals an all too common story:
Hotel Chocolat: Dark chocolate: 70%, milk chocolate: 40%, white chocolate: 29%
Thorntons: Dark chocolate: 60%, milk chocolate: 30%
Looking at the ingredients, the Thorntons box seems to contain more sugar and vegetable oil than the Hotel Chocolat box, although it’s difficult to do a direct comparison here because the fillings are different.
While the Thorntons hearts are simple described as “a selection of chocolate truffles, pralines and caramels”, the Hotel Chocolat ‘Melting Hearts’ have individual descriptions – ‘Chocolate Mousse’, ‘Coffee Praline’, ‘Milk Praline with Cocoa Crispies’, ‘Macadamia and Coconut’, ‘Orange Praline’, ‘Gianduja’, ‘Caramel Praline’, ‘Pistachio Praline’ and ‘Sticky Toffee and Banana’.
As you can see, size-wise, the individual hearts are very similar (Thorntons on the left, Hotel Chocolat on the right). Each Hotel Chocolat heart is decorated with a coloured stripe or dot, while the Thorntons hearts are a little more plain.
The real difference though is the taste though. Eating one heart from each box and the quality of the Hotel Chocolat product becomes quickly apparent.
The Thorntons hearts are sweet and buttery and all quite similar. The Hotel Chocolat versions are rich, full of flavour and much less sweet. The cocoa flavours really shine through. The same goes for the fillings. Although none of the flavours are particularly strong, everything about the taste and texture of Hotel Chocolat’s hearts says ‘quality’.
Of course, some people will say this isn’t a fair comparison. For a start, at £11 for 170 grams, Hotel Chocolat Melting Hearts are more than twice the price of the £4.99, 210 grams Thorntons version. But that difference in price becomes very obvious when you compare the two side by side. Not only are you getting a significantly higher quality product with Hotel Chocolat, but you’re also getting more variety in a package that just looks and feels nicer. I know which I’d rather get as a Valentine’s gift (and that’s a hint, by the way).
Both sets of hearts are available to buy online from HotelChocolat.co.uk and Thorntons.co.uk.
Information
- Contains dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate.
- Filed under assortment, dark chocolate, face-off, hotel chocolat, milk chocolate, thorntons, uk, valentines, white chocolate.
I found this bar in my local Budgens supermarket (yes, I’m that posh), nestled in with the usual Nestlé and Cadbury suspects. We’ve never reviewed anything from Goldkenn, so obviously this had to go straight into my basket.
Goldkenn are a Swiss chocolatier with a rather flashy web site that suggests they specialise in this kind of liqueur bar.
Opening the cardboard box and removing the foil reveals a pleasant surprise. A thin bar with large ‘bubbles’, not unlike the Lindt bars.
The chocolate, while thin, is particularly nice. A 37% milk chocolate, it’s smooth and creamy without being too sweet. Once you break into a chunk though, you’re greeted by a fairly substantial sugar shell keeping the liquid liqueur from the chocolate.
I know Simon wouldn’t approve, but personally I don’t mind. There’s plenty of time to enjoy the smooth chocolate before getting to the sugar, and it adds a pleasant crunch to proceedings.
The liqueur itself is very thin, so I assume that sugar coating is actually quite necessary to keep everything from disappearing into a mush. The ingredients on the box describe it as “Grand Marnier extract”. I don’t really know what that means or how it’s extracted, but if you like Grand Marnier, then you’re sure to like this. The alcohol is quite strong, but not overpowering, and all in all the flavours work very well with the chocolate. Particularly nice to warm up on a cold winter’s evening.
An enjoyable bar that disappeared far more quickly than it should. I’ll certainly be looking out for more from Goldkenn.
OK, so we had the Elite chocolate with popping candy and we had the Elite milk chocolate with cream. Now, someone over at Elite must have said to himself (or herself) one day “hey, why not combine the two for some kind of super-chocolate?”
And that’s exactly what they did. Well, not exactly. First, they obviously had to make it irresistible to children. Introducing the Elite Fingers with popping candy.
From the moment you pick up the cardboard box this chocolate, or rather, these chocolates (as they are individually wrapped fingers) you can imagine the well-oiled wheels of the marketing machine at work. The bright pink cover with the happy cow pictures actually says in Hebrew “milk chocolate filled with lots and lots and lots of popping candy and dairy cream”. Show me a child that could resist such a statement and I’ll show you a very odd child.
You can tear off a strip at the top of the box to reveal the tops of the individually wrapped fingers (each with a different brightly coloured and beautiful design on foil paper). If that dose of cuteness didn’t get you, then the fingers themselves with their raised border and new variation on the cow relief theme will definitely make you go “awwww”.
And the taste? Well, it’s very sweet. The dairy cream is very much like our friend the biscuit chocolate (sans the biscuit), but possibly even sweeter. The sweetness sneaks up on you, so I found that I could eat a couple or more fingers quite easily and then suddenly be hit by the overly sugary aftertaste. It’s certainly the sweetest out of all their chocolates I tried recently, which is somewhat worrying considering how strongly it’s aimed at children.
The popping candy effect is definitely pronounced, but considering the packaging declares there are “lots and lots and lots” of the things inside, I’d have expected an even stronger effect. I do believe that the standard popping candy bar has more of them in.
All in all, I think this is a good chocolate bar for kids and their parents. It’s sweet enough for kids to like and they will love the fancy packaging. In my day, kids would probably collect and trade the individual wrappings, but nowadays I think they’d be more interested in the accompanying TV ad with giant 3D cartoon superhero characters whose mission is the figure out how to stuff “incredible amounts” of candy into the chocolate fingers. For parents, one would assume the fact that kids can have a single finger as a treat and can even pick their chosen finger out from the box without needing to take all of them out (which may lead to them wanting more than one) is definitely a good thing and makes up from the chocolate obviously having more than its fair share of sugar.
As for me, it’s the perfect, cute chocolate bar to have next to coffee, but don’t make the mistake of having more than a couple, or you’ll wish you’d had none at all.
