Here we are again, the great Coffee/Chocolate debate rears its ugly head once again. An often used but seldom-perfected combination, coffee and chocolate seems to be one of the really tough flavour pairings. Bought in Vienna, this bar has excellent Fairtrade and Organic credentials, with the majority of the ingredients being both. It’s a milk chocolate bar with a coffee cream filling made from actual real coffee, so I was optimistic.
The milk chocolate used in this bar is a fairly hefty 35% and it does have some promising flavours. However these are soon obliterated by the overpowering and slightly sickly coffee flavour contained within each square. When I say sickly I mean just that. Eating more than a couple of squares in succession would have been too much for me!
A glance at the ingredients gave me a clue as to why – 38% fat and 50% carbohydrate – hardly healthy stuff then.
Regardless of whether you’d be able to hear your pulse slowing as you ate a whole bar, I just found the coffee didn’t work. Too rich, very like the old coffee Revels we all knew and hated, and as such, best avoided – by me at least.
Just recently, the Lady Of The House and I visited the Adelaide Central Market. In our small town, this is the place for fresh food and Strange Things. Many of the stalls sell chocolate goodies, there are chocolate fountains, and so on. But chocolate was not the purpose of our visit. We actually went to buy Olive oil, and some really nice properly cured ham, and grapes, and olives, and cheese… but I digress.
We might not have set out to buy chocolate, but the place selling that really nicely cured ham was also selling strange imported chocolate. As you do. I couldn’t resist. Lousy willpower. I didn’t even really check what I was buying. It was chocolate, I hadn’t seen it before. What other reason does one need? Okay???
After taunting me for a few days, it was time to open Wawel Danusia, and see if she was as attractive inside the packet as her photo on the outside would suggest.
Today, I’m not even trying to translate the Polish, I’m just eating. So the first thing impression was MINT. The aroma is quite strong, causing me to take another look at the pack. Ah hah! Mint leaves pictured. That explains it.
Based on appearances, this should be a mint chocolate bar with a few segments. Just breaking one off for a taste should do.
Nope. Fail. This reminds me of a giant After Dinner Mint – the kind that were such a big thing about 20 years ago. I have no idea why this is marked with the lines, inviting your to break it into segments or pieces, because it does not so much break as crumple into pieces, leaving a sticky white minty goo everywhere.
The minty goo is not unpleasant, there is just rather a lot of it, it’s very minty and sweet, and it gets everywhere. This, then is not something for sharing. Unless you are sharing it with a Main Squeeze or a Very Good Friend… if you get my drift. My intention was to try a piece and get the rest of family to cast an opinion. But it made such a sticky mess that I had to eat the whole thing myself. What a shame.
This is sweet, sticky, minty, and very retro. The chocolate gets lost in the mintiness, so it’s purpose really is to act as a carrier between the mint goo factory, and you. Unlike the old after dinner mints, this is a lot bigger. Imagine about 4 of those mints to a single pack, and once you start you have to keep going – or share intimately. If you like mint, seek this out. If you don’t, then don’t.
It was my husband and daughter who visited this place on an outing together. They liked the chocolate mousse pie so much that they phoned me to tell me about it. Actually ‘taunting’ is probably a better word because they didn’t buy any to bring home, nor any of the chocolates that they tried and loved there either.
Situated in Hub Arcade just off Little Collins Street in the heart of Melbourne, Chokolait is a fairly unassuming shop that has only been around for a couple of years, but has already been discovered by chocoholics, coffee drinkers and specialised walking tours.
They use Belgian and Swiss couverture as the base for all of their desserts and chocolates and have dark, milk and white/milk blends on hand to try. Two of them are Callebaut (Belgian) but I couldn’t guess the Swiss one – I’ll just have to revisit and keep trying.
We didn’t have time to stay for coffee or cake so I chose a selection to take home and try:
Berry egg
This is a lovely dark chocolate that reveals a mousse with mixed berry flavours inside. It is a more sophisticated version of Nestle’s ‘Mixed Berry’ club classic block.
Strawberry milk chocolate truffle
Nice Belgian milk chocolate that encases a flowing pale pink strawberry fondant. Very sweet and a nice foil to the bitter coffee I was tasting these with.
Passionfruit (white with red hearts)
This tasted just of a very nice creamy milk chocolate with buttery centre to me; the actual fruit flavour was negligible.
Milk caramel
Delicious. The caramel is a solid, brown sugar kind that isn’t chewy or dribbly. Perfect texture and divine flavour. My favourite of the lot.
Egg Nog
Being a lover of the actual drink, I was wondering how this would translate into chocolate. The answer is rather well, in fact. Nice creamy, spicy flavours throughout the soft white chocolate which makes me wonder why other chocolatiers aren’t trying this.
Short black
This dark shell of chocolate covers a slightly lighter and much creamier coffee filling inside. Rich and mousse like, it is my equal favourite and one of the best coffee-themed chocolates I’ve tried in a very long time.
Cherry liqueur
This is a classic done particularly well. Dark chocolate, soft fondant base inside cushioning a real glace cherry and coughingly-strong liqueur. All the flavours combine and then release themselves individually to create several sensations across the palate. These might be too much for some people, but I find them devilishly moreish. Can this be an equal top three favourite?
Caramel egg
Same filling as the standard chocolate, but larger and therefore even nicer.
I’ll definitely be returning to try the coffee, the very famous mousse cake and to find out more from Ross, the owner, chocolate maker and generous giver-out of free tastings.
So I was up in Cambria, California for a couple of days while visiting the gaudy Hearst Castle, finding myself just as charmed by the tiny town of Cambria as the treasure trove castle of ’20’s. Naturally then, I had to sample some of the local chocolate confections. This one was by a shop’s register along with some huckleberry lollipops and spreads.
The fist-sized fudge “cupcake” looks like it’s just bigger than a regular cupcake. Upon slicing it open, you can see that the inside part is softer and creamier. I think the huckleberry is only in this part, though I could be wrong. It’s hard to resist fudge; this one’s almost like frosting with the soft filling. I’m glad to see that whoever made this (the tag actually doesn’t say) didn’t succumb to using artificial vanilla. Consequently, the plain fudge has quite a strong vanilla taste.
And something reminds me of honey… the huckleberries. Considering the other items the fudge was next to, they’re obviously the defining factor here. I’d imagine they were grown close by, too. Now, the honey. Honey is sweet, right? But its sweetness is a flavor in itself, and it’s golden: its very flavor is smooth and heavenly. It’s the same sort of thing going on in the fudge, only translated to delicious huckleberries.
Now I sit here, cutting off bit after bit with my knife, contemplating how much of a sugar rush I would get if I ate the whole thing at once. Maybe I’d better not. Don’t make any special missions to Cambria for it, but it is an enchanting town, so if you’re already there, this is a nice fudge to pick up.
