From Waitrose’s “Seriously Chocolatey” range comes this rather stylish little black box of chocolates. Inside are little balls of dark chocolate with a soft white chocolate cream and lemon filling. Unfortunately, there’s only 70g of them. That’s barely a mouthful.
I’ve always been a bit of a fan of real citrus flavours with dark chocolate. It’s a combination that can be wonderful, but is easy to get wrong and often ends up a sickly mess, particularly when mixed with cream.
But the mix of Sicilian lemon, white chocolate and cream works very well here. It’s neither too intense or too creamy, and the hint of white chocolate brings the flavours together with a bit of sweetness.
You don’t get much dark chocolate for your money as the shells are very thin, but what you do get is quite good. It’s 70% cocoa solids and the slight bitterness complements the sweet filling nicely. But you don’t get long to savour the flavours before it melts away to reveal the smooth and light, lemony filling.
But I just can’t get past the fact that 70g isn’t enough. I polished this box off in about ten minutes, so if you’re planning on sharing, you’ll just have to plan ahead and buy two boxes instead. And then send one to me.
Well Christmas is over and done with, and the next vaguely-chocolatey-holiday is just around the corner. Yes, handily squeezed in just before Easter comes St Valentine’s day.
This 170g offering from Thorntons is, frankly, part of their old school ‘cheap and chearful’ range, rather than the high quality products we’ve come to love recently. It consists of two hollow chocolate ‘birds’ and a single truffle chocolate. I’m not sure why you just get one – unless Thorntons have a secret plan to get couples everywhere to fight over chocolate on Valentines day.
The chocolate here is… basic. Although its decorated with milk and white chocolate, the birds are predominantly a 30% milk chocolate, which is “acceptable” rather than outstanding. It’s more milky than chocolatey and tastes like generic Easter Egg chocolate that’s been moulded into bird shapes.
The heart shaped truffle was surprisingly nice, Very sweet, but very soft and creamy with a distinctly buttery flavour. Perhaps not surprising, given that “butteroil” and “butter” appear high up on the ingredients list. As does vegetable oil, unfortunately.
So, while all in all this might be a fun and inoffensive little Valentines gift, I do find it a little depressing that Thorntons seem to be being pulled in two totally different directions. While head chocolatier Keith Hurdman continues to create some amazing high quality products, there are clearly elements of the company that want to stick to their cheap and cheerful products made with cheap and not-so-cheerful ingredients.
Frankly, I think that’s an outdated view and there’s no reason why something like this couldn’t be made with quality ingredients and presented in more stylish packaging. It might end up costing a couple of quid more, but this is intended purely as a gift for a loved one and I’m quite certain people would pay that little extra for a gift that’s a little more memorable.
UK readers will no doubt have seen the West Cornwall Pasty Company concessions stands on numerous stations and high streets throughout the land. I was in Fulham just before Christmas, and happened to fancy a (proper, hot) pasty, so I stopped off at one of their kiosks. I was a little surprised and somewhat amused to see this for sale alongside the more traditional (and not so traditional) pasties, so I bought one.
Once again we’re in the ‘novelty/souvenir/joke’ category with this item. However, the information on the packet told me that County’s (who made this item) are in fact chocolate makers in their own right, and their chocolate pasty appears to have been stickered with a West Cornwall Pasty Co. sticker, so perhaps this is more widely available.
It’s also not cheap and nasty chocolate – with 35% cocoa solids it stands up well next to many other milk chocolate products. The makers claim that this is made from premium grade beans and just a dash of bourbon vanilla, so it sounded promising.
I had to take a very sharp knife to this little beast in order to extract a mouth-sized chunk, and when I popped it into my mouth I was pleasantly surprised. Soft, full bodied milk chocolate with that hint of vanilla. Not too sugary and with a good mouthfeel, good body on the cocoa flavours, and a clean finish. It is indeed pretty good quality stuff – something of a relief as this isn’t the cheapest novelty chocolate in the world. There again, as we all know, you pay for what you get, and I’m happy to say that this rather unusual item is worth buying if you’re looking for something a little different in the way of a chocolatey treat. I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy another chocolate pasty, but I’m definitely going to keepo an eye out for more County chocolate products in future.
Time for another strange bar from my box of weird and wacky chocolate-related presents. This time, a Cherry KitKat. Or at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is because my Japanese is non-existent and I’m relying on the instantly recognisable “KitKat” logo and the picture of a cherry. So all in all, I’m relatively comfortable with my initial hunch, although not quite so sure about the references to Jin Nakamura’s latest hit single ‘Ti Amo’ and the Breaktown website. Probably something to do with the code printed inside the box.
Anyway. Cherry KitKat. The most obvious exterior difference is that the wafery goodness is hidden inside a box which cracks rather satisfyingly down the middle. And inside there are two very pink foil packages, each with a two finger bar inside. Now, I don’t know about you but I find it tough to stop at just two fingers of KitKat so this did seem a little weird at first but after tasting this, it makes a lot more sense.
The KitKat itself is pretty much your run of the mill KitKat with the obvious difference that it is coated with a pale pink chocolately layer that houses most of the cherry flavour. There is also some cherry cream between the wafer layers too, so that translates into a good deal of cherry. And that would be ok if it wasn’t for one thing – the almost overwhelming sweetness.
This thing is so sweet I had to stop after two fingers and keep the other packet for later; maybe that’s the whole idea. Or perhaps you are supposed to share with a friend. Either way, it would be tough to eat the entire thing in one sitting. Definitely not one for the diabetic in your life.
That said, the cherry is a pleasant change, even if it isn’t consistent with every mouthful almost like there are little intense pockets of flavour hidden throughout. But it does give me a taste for more of these flavoured KitKats and I do have a birthday coming up next month. Fingers crossed.
