I first came across Aneesh Popat (aka “The Chocolatier”) at London’s Southbank Chocolate Festival a couple of years ago. At that time, he was just starting out and had some quite unique flavours – including his famous “baked bean” chocolate. I have to confess, that wasn’t really my thing, but I was impressed with his other flavours.
What sets Aneesh part though is his distinctive style of water ganache based chocolates. Where most chocolate ganaches are made with cream, Aneesh uses water. That’s more difficult to do because chocolate and water don’t naturally mix well, but when done properly you end up with a chocolate that puts flavour front and centre. With no cream, butter or preservatives to get in the way, you get to taste more of the natural flavours in the chocolate.
I caught up with Aneesh at the BBC Good Food Show a couple of weeks ago and he gave me a few chocolates to try. They’re all quite small, round and distinctively finished with flecks of colour. As you can see, they are all quite similar looking and I made the mistake of not writing down the chocolates I was given. But with a bit of detective work, I think I’ve managed to identify them!
Here’s some of the stand-outs from my selection.
Salted Caramel
This is an interesting take on the salted caramel that has the texture of a ganache but the flavour of a caramel. It’s sweet, yet subtle and light. Very tempting.
Clementine & Clove
A deliciously warming chocolate that’s Christmassy and citrussy with just the right amount of clove.
Cinnamon & Vanilla
Another warming ganache, this time in a white chocolate shell. The soft, smooth centre has a great flavour balance. Again, it’s not too sweet, not too spicy.
Beetroot & Red Wine Vinegar
As the name suggests, this one is a bit unusual and packs a bit of a punch. It’s tangy, intense, and works really rather well. Certainly not one for those who love subtle flavours, but I enjoyed it!
Chilli & Lime
This chocolate looks innocuous, and when you pop it in to your mouth, the first flavour is a rather citrus but pleasant citrus note. Then the chilli hits you, and it’s pretty intense – certainly one of the strongest chilli chocolates I’ve had lately. A little too much for me, but proves the theory that Aneesh isn’t one to do things by halves.
Overall, I really like Aneesh’s chocolates. He’s not shy with flavour, and that does mean that they won’t all to be everyone’s taste, but I think that’s a good thing. I love the texture of the ganaches – they’re soft and light, and the size of the chocolates is just right.
It isn’t that I’ve been actively avoiding Michel Cluizel’s chocolate up until now, I just haven’t had many opportunities to sample his wares. Even when I’ve been in France, I’m more often mesmerized by everything Valrhona and so it wasn’t until I went shopping in Eastern Canada a few weeks ago that I finally picked up one of his bars.
My ignorance of all things Michel Cluizel meant that I wasn’t sure where to start, so I went to one of my comfort zones and selected the Plantation Mangaro 65% bar. It is a single origin bar using beans from Madagascar. It has already come in for some praise in the past, winning 1st prize at Salon du Chocolat back in 2003 and a Great Taste award in 2008 so that fact alone let me know that this was likely going to be a tasty bar of chocolate. And it is.
It is a lovely looking bar – a rich mahogany shade with a wonderful sheen, and a design which mirrors the design on the packaging. The chocolate snaps nice and cleanly, and the texture is incredibly smooth. From a purely technical side, there’s a lot to be impressed about and that’s without even considering the flavour.
Simply put, yum. There’s a lot going on here with the typical fruity and berry notes from the region which slowly retreat leaving hints of lemon and the merest suggestion of ginger. The balance of flavours is really great because it doesn’t taste sweet even though it is merely 65%, and the added vanilla simply smooths out any rough edges without treading on anyone’s toes. Really, really good stuff.
Based on this, I’m kind of kicking myself for not trying some Michel Cluizel chocolate sooner. It is easily the equal of Valrhona’s Manjari bar which is the archetypal Madagascar chocolate, and that is high praise indeed. Search this one out – you won’t be disappointed.
I was given these two little bars at the press launch for The Chocolate Festival, which is coming back to London’s Southbank this December. Rococo Chocolates will be there, and they were kind enough to host the launch at their Motcomb Street shop. At the event, we got to sample some delicious brownies from Outsider Tart, some Christmas chocolates from Rococo, and these little “Bee Bars” that are so cute I just had to write about them.
They get their name from the bee design on the moulds, which in turn comes from a design book Rococo’s Chantal Coady found when starting the company 30 years ago. Rococo have made these bars for a while, but they’ve just updated the packaging based on the Moroccan tiles in the Motcomb Street garden and introduced these two new flavours.
The Raspberry Fizz is a 28% white chocolate with freeze dried raspberries and popping candy. I don’t eat a lot of white chocolate, but thankfully this one isn’t too sweet – and given these bars are only 20g a piece, it’s never going to get too sickly.
The pieces of freeze dried fruit also help cut through the sweetness a little, although being a fan of raspberries, I did think it could have done with a little more. The popping candy just brings a gentle fizz to proceedings. It doesn’t exactly explode in your mouth (unfortunately), but it’s fun and satisfies a sugar graving.
The Honeycomb Crunch bar is a simple 37% milk chocolate with pieces of honeycomb that, as the name suggest, add a bit of a crunch. Again, it’s fairly sweet, but I have to confess this little bar was gone in a matter of seconds and I really quite enjoyed it.
These Rococo Bee Bars are the perfect afternoon pick-me-up to carry around in your bag, and despite being simple, tiny bars I do have a bit of a soft spot for them. You can pick them up in Rococo’s shops in London and Chester, and I’m sure they’ll also be available to buy online very soon.
As I was meandering around the Speciality & Fine Food Fair in London a couple of months ago, my eye was drawn to the rather jolly graphics on The London Chocolate Company’s stand. Their eye catching little chocolate guard logo had me smiling before I reached the stand and after a brief chat with one of the founders – Jay Rawal – I came away with a couple of sample boxes.
The company was started after the London Olympics, but parent company Devnaa have been making chocolates since 2006. The couverture used is Callebaut, so my real interest was in the filling and flavour.
Described as ‘Smooth milk chocolate truffles infused with fragrant Earl Grey tea’, these are certainly fragrant. As I raised one to my mouth I was immediately hit with the bergamot scent of the Earl Grey Tea. It was subtle and sweet and suggested that the flavours contained within this little ball were not going to be backwards in coming forwards.
As I bit down through the thick milk chocolate shell the sweet flavours of the truffle centre came bursting out, flooding my mouth with a mixture of sweet and aromatic flavours. Happily the Earl Grey was well balanced and never overpowering, as Bergamot can sometimes be. There’s a lot of sweetness there though, possibly a little too much for my tastes but I’m known for not really having that much of a sweet tooth anymore.
The Salt & Vinegar Truffles looked like they were going to be a bit more to my taste. A dark chocolate shell lightly sprinkled with sea salt and a white ganache containing balsamic vinegar seemed much more like the sort of thing I would like.
These darker truffles were considerably less ‘in your face’ than their milkier counterparts with just a hint of chocolate aroma. The small amount of sea salt visible on the shell was another encouraging sign, and my first bite into the shell had that lovely sweet/salt combination going on. When it came to the filling though, I found myself wondering where the vinegar was. It’s a slightly sweet, very light ganache but it just seemed to lack the necessary bite to justify the name.
There’s no information about cacao content on the packaging, and I suspect that the couverture used is a fairly standard 35-40% milk and 60-70% dark.
The shock came when I went to their website for pricing information. At almost a pound a piece, these chocolates can only be described as overpriced. There are much, much better chocolates to be had for similar (or even less) money which makes these a triumph of style over content. I have a feeling that unless The London Chocolate Company lower their retail prices or up the quality of their chocolates they’re never going to be much more than a tourist souvenir.
