A box with chocolate inside is a wonderful thing to find at your door when you get up in the morning, even if it’s already expected. In my excitement, I had to get the photo shoot done and try some before anything else. It seemed like a sign that the chocolate was for breakfast, but who wants a review taken on an empty stomach? So it sat there taunting me all morning while I found other things that needed to be done first.
The irony of this is that (please, Kath, don’t hurt me for my confession!) I’ve been more or less staying away from Lindt lately. I thought I’d found that the overall taste was always good, but that the chocolate itself didn’t have enough attention. Can someone tell me where I got that idea from? I must have had a Swiss prejudice that I’ve since gotten over because now I can say that everything about this bar is delicious.
First, the size of the pieces. Instead of the nine too-big squares, this one is broken into thirty perfectly-sized rectangles. It’s mostly the raisins that pop up on the light brown face, with the hazelnuts and walnuts on the back. The smooth, sweet, and rich smelling chocolate (31% cacao) has a wonderful caramel flavor that gives way to the nuts and raisins. The sweetness of the latter is evoked by the milk chocolate, and I always love the flavor of hazelnuts. The best way to eat it is to let the first layer of chocolate melt to get its taste in full, then begin slowly chewing for all the textures provided by the nuts and raisins.
I can’t stop eating it. Where is my self-control? Suffice it to say that my Lindt prejudice is over.
There are a lot of ‘art’ connotations with chocolate. We talk of the art of the chocolatier, I’ve seen sculptural displays of chocolates in Qatar, and there are even paintings made with chocolate in a gallery in Prague. So how about a box of chocolates modelled on a Japanese calligraphy set?
I have have already commented on the aesthetics of Jean Galler’s creations, and if anything this takes the philosophy of product design even further. A beautiful crved box is home to twelve filled chocolate sticks and three pots of ‘ink’ to dip them in, yielding a possible twenty four flavour combinations.
The chocolate sticks themselves have some unusual flavours. There’s a saffron stick, a Cardamom stick, one flavoured with Yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit with a grapefruit tang) , Ginger, Vanilla and Coconut, and finally Strawberry and Balsamic vinegar. A fairly eclectic mix in their own right, but then there are the ‘inks’.
The three tiny pots are home to another set of intriguing flavours. Kalamansi juice (a lemon like fruit), sweet orange and cocoa nib, and matcha (Japanese green tea) and poppy seed.
Here’s a video of M. Galler himself talking the viewer through the concept and contents of the box:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqW_h2kySpU
It only seemed right and proper to share this rather splendid looking box of chocolates, so I enlisted the services of a lovely Japanese lady, selected for her ability to authenticate the Matcha and Yuzu flavours. After exhaustive testing, we concluded that not only the Oriental elements authentic, but that the whole thing is an absolute marvel.
The flavours used to fill the sticks are subtle yet strong and at times utterly sublime. From the musky tang of saffron to the citrus zing of the Yuzu, by way of a laughter-inducing Cardamom stick which concealed it’s flavour in popping candy, this is a box of delights for the adventurous palate. Highlights included the vanilla and coconut stick which was so milky smooth it almost tasted like Milky Bar chocolate, and the amazing Strawberry and Balsamic stick.
Naturally all of the flavours go extremely well with the ‘inks’, and there’s a lot of fun to be had offering a new combination to your co-taster. It can become almost like a game, selecting flavours for someone else to try and seeing their reaction. I was reminded of Dom’s review of the Hotel Chocolat set that came with a blindfold. Well to my mind this would be much better suited to a game of blind tasting by candlelight.
Whether you’re planning a quiet night in for two or looking for a memorable climax to a dinner party, I cannot recommend this box highly enough. It could be a sophisticated treat to be enjoyed with a coffee or the source of sensual entertainment for lovers, and I loved every minute of it (and not just because of the company). It’s not cheap of course, but if you were looking to impress then this will do the job admirably. Just buy one. Now.
Testing the next two products in my Lush chocolate product bag required some forward planning, but the verdicts are now in. Here we have a romance-inspired massage bar and a fresh chocolate face mask.
The Soft Coeur is advertised as a massage bar for couples. It’s made with honey and cocoa powder, making a chocolate honey centre which you can apparently smooth over the other person (or yourself, if so inclined). They say the experience is quite sticky, though I personally didn’t find it that much different from some of their other massage bars.
Soft Coeur smells very sweet – a candy smell, rather than chocolate smell. It’s quite a rich bar and like all massage bars, needs some warming up before you can see what it does.
Apparently, you’re meant to break it in half and use the brown, chocolatey centre for the massage, as well as the white cocoa butter bit. I must admit I found that quite weird to work with. It smears brown on the skin and your hands in a manner which I didn’t find entirely appealing, although it is perfectly edible and smells lovely.
Supposedly that is actually the point of the bar and it’s meant to be similar to the experience of using actual chocolate or honey on the skin. I guess if you’re into that, you’ll find it quite fun and significantly less messy than the alternative.
The Cupcake was a bit more problematic for me to test, as it’s for oily and/or teenage skin, whereas I have sensitive skin. I did, however, find a friend with the right skin type who also happened to be a fan of everything chocolate.
Here is what she had to say about the experience:
The mask smells amazing the minute you open the jar (Once you’ve worked out that it’s a screw-top and doesn’t just pull off). It’s like lovely thick minty chocolatey gooey mud, which is quite cool on your skin and feels as if it may contain menthol (it doesn’t, though it does contain both peppermint and spearmint oil).
It was very tricky to wash off – I had to sort of scrape it off. It made my face feel really nice and the pores almost invisible, so it obviously works. My face tingled for a while afterwards — probably from the peppermint oil — so this mask would probably be a bit much for sensitive skin types.
It’s been a while since I’ve had any Galaxy, so I thought I’d give this one a go. If you don’t know Galaxy, it’s a smooth, sweet, creamy milk chocolate sold by Mars in Europe and roughly equivalent to Dove in the US.
Somewhat annoying, the wrapper doesn’t give the percentage of cocoa solids in the chocolate, but it does give the percentage of milk solids (14%) and the percentage of cookie pieces in the bar as a whole (8%). In this day and age, manufacturers really should be giving us these numbers so we can make informed buying decisions (before cramming it into our faces without reading the label anyway, of course).
The front of this bar is divided into these rather sexy, curvy chunks with a single letter ‘G’ embossed upon them. This is obviously designed to further enhance the sexy, indulgent image that Mars like to promote Galaxy with, and I think it does the job quite well.
The top of the bar may be smooth and shiny, but the underside is studded with the outline of lots of small pieces of ‘cookie’, as you can see.
And those cookie pieces are the downfall of this bar. Rather than adding an exciting texture, they’re exactly the right size, shape and texture to get forced painfully into the roof of your mouth when you bite into a piece. Most of the time it’s just a mildly annoying texture, but every now and then you’ll get a piece that just hurts.
The problem is that the crunchy texture invites you to bite, but the pieces are too small and you end up almost having to chew it. But chewing isn’t exactly the most indulgent way to consume a creamy milk chocolate. You could wait for it to melt, but then you’re just left with a mouth full of small, biscuity rocks.
And that cookie doesn’t add much in the way of flavour either. The Galaxy chocolate completely overwhelms any flavour that may be there. But having said all that, this is still quite a moreish bar – providing you can get through it all without doing yourself an injury. If only those cookie pieces were a little big larger or softer, I could easily see myself picking one up again.
From what I’ve heard, this particular variety of Galaxy is only available in Tesco, so I’d be interested to hear if you’ve found it elsewhere.
