This 94g chocolate fish was a Christmas present. Not the kind of thing I’d usually buy for myself, even for review purposes. It’s clearly designed as a gift – a novelty item – rather than a quality chocolate product. It even has a stand so you can display it proudly on your mantelpiece. How thoughtful.
The dark chocolate is 60% cocoa solids, which is par for the course for something like this, but it also contains coloured white and milk chocolate, which the label informs me is 31% cocoa solids. Thankfully the ingredients list is nice and short and free from vegetable fat or any nasty additives beyond the colouring.
We’ve reviewed a couple of James’s products with mixed results. I found the chocolate piglets quite bland but the Ginger & Chilli chocs went down very well with my friends. I think this falls somewhere in the middle.
While it’s clearly a novelty, the chocolate is quite acceptable. It’s definitely not going to be to the true dark chocolate lover’s tastes as it’s quite sweet, but I think the kids would enjoy it. It has some nice cocoa notes, without being bitter in anyway.
But I have to wonder how many of these will actually get eaten. It’s very pretty, and with that built-in stand, it’s designed to be displayed. It’s nice enough to eat straight out of the box, but I’m not sure I’d want to eat it after it’s been sat on someone’s shelf gathering dust for a few months.
Still, it’s a pretty gift, and I have to thank my sister for buying me it. Even though I did tell her not to buy me chocolate for Christmas…
Coming in for the third and final part to my Valrhona goodies is Equinoxe, a range of chocolate-covered nuts and such. Being Valrhona, the packaging isn’t cheap or dull. There are three short cylinders, holding milk chocolate figs, dark chocolate crunchy pearls, and dark chocolate candied orange peels. Then there’s the black and cream Equinoxe box. Its top lifts up, a simple hinge, to reveal a classy arrangement. The light shine of the chocolaty goodness in four rounded beds, set against the black, made me feel like I’d just opened a jewellery box.
But let’s back up to that trio first. Each one has 75 grams. The 35% milk chocolate figs were rough-looking, but on tasting, I wondered why we don’t get more fig/chocolate combos. Similar to raisins, being chewy with tiny seeds, yet more unique. Not exactly sweet, not really tangy. Just moreish and delicious.
The crunchy pearls are very odd… and quite good. With such minute pearls, one wouldn’t imagine there’s space for the promised crunchy “biscuit cereals,” unless the 55% dark chocolate is a paper-thin coating. Yet they work. The crunch is there, with its deep, oat cereal taste. The chocolate is there, in an equal partnership. Maybe it was the breakfast suggestion (from “cereal”) that kept me thinking on chocolate waffles as I chewed. And chewed. And thought, they’re so small, I can have more. Small things are so deadly.
Similar to the 64% of the bar version, the candied orange peels use 66% dark chocolate. They are much the same thing, except that the chocolate receives less focus. The jelly candy texture seems to scare me — I think I’m wondering what it’s doing in my chocolate. Is it just me that these are my least favorite of the range? Probably.
Now we can return to that beautiful box, which has a total of 500 grams. Its four sections are home to dark chocolate (55%) hazelnuts and almonds, more orange peels, milk chocolate (35%) hazelnuts and almonds, and milk chocolate biscuits. The chocolate is thick, with the glaze kept to a minimum. The nuts are all good quality. Both milk and dark versions are nice, but I find myself leaning towards the milk circle once again. The buttery milk chocolate just feels like it was born to accompany these nuts, while the dark adds a strong guiding hand to them. I imagine you know how I feel about the orange peels now, right? Good if that’s your thing (really, even I can’t say they’re horrible), but it isn’t mine. The biscuits, however, I am enjoying. More delicate than the pearls, with milk chocolate instead of dark and “pure-butter biscuits” in place of the heavier, oat kind, they are also sweeter. Yet not overdone; it is a pure taste of pure biscuit and pure chocolate. The crunch is soft, as the biscuit center prepares to melt right along with the chocolate. I can see this box as the perfect thing for a small get-together. In a rush? It already has the presentation. And it has the balance of both milk and dark chocolate.
All much better done than your usuals. My only qualm came when I looked up the prices. I’m glad I didn’t have anything in my mouth or I might have met an early demise from choking. The small containers are $9.99 each and the box is $35.99. If you’re going by grams/ounces and comparing to a box of truffles, I suppose that is the regular price. But still. I’m very glad they came to me free of charge, and I will recommend them, provided you are quite aware that, well, you are paying for Valrhona.
As far as I can work out, these are being marketed as one of those little self indulgent treats for grownups, or as a lunchbox filler for kids, and before anyone asks, ‘Croc’ does not mean that I’ve been eating crocodile-filled chocolate bars – these are crocquant (crispy to you and me) bars filled with a mixture of praline and crisped rice.
They’re certainly a little treat – just over 20g of product divided into two squares.
As you can see, there’s a generous amount of chocolate covering these bars, which makes for a very pleasant mix on the palate. The praline is soft, rich and buttery with loads of nutty flavour, and the crispy rice adds that little extra crunch to the overall mouthfeel.
The filling is very light, soft and crumbly (as you can see), which means that a square of one of these bars isn’t around for long, and therein lies the issue, really. At a shade over 75p per bar, these are pricey little treats. Hardly the sort of thing you’re going to throw into Billy’s lunch box every morning, are they? Of course if your kids are called Penelope and Peregrine it might be a different matter, but I can’t see many parents spending more on a chocolate bar than they would on the other contents of a lunch.
There’s nothing wrong with these little bars per se, other than the fact that I can’t see where they lie in terms of a market. An occasional indulgence to have with a cup of coffee maybe, but certainly not a daily snack for your kids. Way too pricey for everyday consumption and yet somewhat insubstantial in terms of grams per pound? I suspect that these are not top of Galler’s sales charts. Like most people, I can countenance spending £12+ on a really good box of chocolates as a treat, but the best part of a quid for two bites of chocolate? Not me, at any rate.Winner on taste, big loser on price.
This is the second of the Ubuntu bars I picked up at the Taste of Christmas show in December. The format is exactly the same as the ultra clovey Orange Spice bar I’ve already reviewed – a small, solid block of undisclosed weight – and it uses the same 60% dark chocolate.
As with the orange spice bar, the chocolate is a little too sweet and a little too bland for my taste. I really want something darker and deeper, particularly with ginger, but there’s just not that much going on.
Unlike the Orange Spice bar where the clove flavour was almost overwhelming, there’s very little to see – or taste – in the way of ginger here. There are a few very small lumps and bumps in the base of the bar which I assume are ginger pieces, but nowhere near enough.
I know I’m a bit of a gingerholic, but I don’t think I’m alone. If you’re going to use it to flavour chocolate, there’s no point in being subtle about it. We want huge chunks of the stuff studded over the face of the bar, not 14 microns of ginger essence mixed with the chocolate (which is what this ends up tasting like). But there’s none of that intensity here.
Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky with my choice of flavours. I’m sure Ubuntu chocolate is made with love and care, but neither the over-intense Orange Spice or the bland Ginger bars have done much for me.
