As I mentioned last week, Thorntons recently sent us some of their latest blocks to review, and this little pink box contains one of those very blocks – a Madagascan 32% milk chocolate with freeze dried straberries. It’s marked as a Limited Edition, but that strikes me as a bit of a marketing gimmick more than anything else.
Inside the box, the square looks just like the others in the range – although there’s no gold or silver foil here, back to the same old rather cheap looking plastic wrapper, unfortunately.
Click on the photo to enlarge it and you might be able to make out the odd tiny fleck of strawberry. A little disappointing perhaps – that is, until you turn the bar over….
The underside is packed with fairly substantial chunks of brightly coloured freeze-dried strawberry. Significantly more than I was expecting.
The chocolate is smooth, creamy and quite sweet, with just a hint of strawberry flavour. It’s quite nice in its own right, but there’s no escaping the big pieces of strawberry in every square.
As with all freeze dried strawberries, they initially have a slightly cardboardy texture that comes to life as they hydrate in your mouth. As they become softer, they release that tart, tangy hit of fresh strawberries. On their own, that would be too much, but with the sweet milk chocolate, they work really well.
The way to eat this bar is definitely to let each square melt slowly on your tongue. The flavours and textures both change as the chocolate melts away, and it’s really rather nice.
I’d still rate the Macadamia block above this one, and the (soon to be reviewed) Tonka bean bar at the top of this particular pile, but at £1.79 this is certainly worth checking out if you happen to be passing your local Thorntons.
This is one of those ‘experience packs’ that they’ve started selling in gift shops and supermarkets across the UK. Moon Estates are the people that will sell you a piece of the moon among other things, and as you can see it offers the lucky recipient the chance to have their selection placed on the ‘Chocolate Foundation’ database – whatever that means.
So, as the lucky recipient it was my task to select my ten from the forty on offer. There were a couple of new twists on familiar flavours and a couple I thought I’d try as ‘benchmark’ chocs. I also tried to mix up the flavours (although I avoided chocolate covered fruits, nuts, and coffee beans and all of the marshmallow and fudge, which accounts for a whopping forty percent of the catalogue!) and included only white and dark chocolate because frankly the milk chocolates weren’t as interesting.
The rest of the tin contains a little book a few sheets of paper with some chocolate facts and recipes, a rather unconvincing scratch and sniff notepad, and a certificate from the ‘Chocolate Foundation’ confirming me as a chocoholic. Ho hum.
So, what did I choose?
Well, from the white chocolate selection I took a Whiskey truffle and a Womersley Golden Raspberry with Geranium Truffle.
The Golden Raspberry and Geranium truffle was rather lovely. An initial burst of floral sweetness, reinforced by the white chocolate, was quickly followed by the slightly tart and tangy raspberry, cutting some of the sweetness and rounding off the whole thing with a very enjoyable burst of summer fruit flavour.
The Whisky Truffle was a more complex affair, a balancing act between the sharpness of the whisky and the sweet white chocolate. I’m not a great fan of Scotch whiskey but I did find this promising. Unfortunately it didn’t quite develop enough for my liking, with the whiskey not quite reaching its full potential.
My dark selection began with a Lemon Truffle. It delivered exactly what was promised – smooth lemon flavour in chocolate. Well balanced, not too tart and a smooth filling with good mouthfeel.
The mint chocolate was, according to the catalogue ‘one of the best mint chocolates we’ve ever tasted’ and therefore a definite candidate for tasting. Mint and chocolate (like coffee and chocolate) is so often done badly that it’s probably a public service to track down a half decent mint chocolate. This one packed a proper minty punch, almost to the point of overpowering the truffle centre. The mint was there from the first bite, and lingered long after the filling and shell were gone. Possibly a little over the top for some, but definitely minty without being too sweet and sickly.
A Plymouth Gin Truffle was chosen to see how they fared against Cocoa Bean’s Gin & Tonic Bar, and I’m afraid on this occasion I wasn’t overly impressed. There was some flavour there, described as delicate in the brochure but perhaps a little too delicate.
A Womersley Balsamic Cherry Vinegar Truffle had me intrigued as soon as I saw it. It had a quite unusual, slightly tart flavour to it (as balsamic chocolate tends to) and to be honest I would have liked to have had a second one to hand to ‘continue’ the flavours in order to see how they developed. It was definitely an enjoyable combination, but I wanted to build on the experience and see whether it went fruity or vinegary when concentrated.
The Raspberry (Womersley, naturally) with Lavender Truffle was outshone by the Raspberry and Geranium Truffle with white chocolate. Lavender is something of an odd flavour still, and this combination just didn’t offer the refreshing burst of citrussy, floral top notes that it’s fellow had delivered earlier.
I had my forebodings about ordering both the dark Chocolate Violet Cream AND the Rose Cream, but I haven’t had a rode flavoured chocolate since another Cocoa Bean bar, and I used to love Parma Violets as a child, so my final two selections were certainly going to deliver big on flavour.
The Violet cream wasn’t too unpleasant but still conatined way too much sugar for my liking, and the violet flavour quickly overpowered any chocolate that might have been attempting to impress my palate.
The Rose cream was both the wrong choice to end on and the perfect choice. Had I started this tasting with this little dayglo pink monster, it would have been abandoned as soon as I’d bitten into it. I can only describe this as resembling the distilled essence of an old lady’s chest of drawers. A screamingly pink filling which packed an almighty wallop of overpowering rose flavour which obliterated both smell and taste in seconds. I couldn’t get beyond the first bite!
Having seen the price of this selection (£26.74 / $45.03 / €32.30), I’d be more inclined to visit a good chocolate shop and pick your own fresh ganaches and truffles. The ‘extras’ aren’t particularly informative or useful, and I can’t help but feel that the chocolates were not at their best after they’d been sent to me by post. You could buy a dozen handmade truffles in a lovely ballotin for about half of the price of this set, and you’d be guaranteed better use of flavour and better ingredients. I can see how Moon Estates have spotted a gap in the gifting market for something like this, but I don’t think the vital part of the deal – the actual chocolates – justifies the price.
Having reviewed the Loving Earth Raw Organic Lucuma and Maca chocolate block previously, I was intrigued to try their smaller, 40 gram bars of raw chocolate, especially when their blurb tells me that this has up to four times as many antioxidants as normal chocolate.
First off, was the one in the green wrapper – Crunchy mint dark chocolate. As with them all, it is sugar free(agave syrup is used instead) and contains 72% cocoa solids sourced from a single origin (Satipo, Peru). When opened, it emitted a deliciously inviting, dark aroma.
Being raw, dairy free and sugar free means that it tastes quite different to any other dark chocolate peppermint I’ve had before. Different, but nice and refreshing. The peppermint oil doesn’t overpower the unique flavours of the chocolate which doesn’t melt as much as release its compressed mixture of ingredients and leave a cool mouth feel. Adding some cocoa nibs for crunch and a final kick is a particularly clever touch.
Secondly, the purple wrapper – Activated Almond and Purple Corn dark chocolate. Now that’s a flavour combination that I’ve never heard of before. Purple corn is a type of maize that is used as a syrup here and supposedly choc-full of antioxidants and other good things. The almonds are soaked in water to help activate their valuable nutrients. Somehow they’re dried and roasted again to regain their crunch, so there’s a fair bit of work involved in just the added ingredients in this bar. And it does taste crunchy, as well as dark, complex and earthy. It is lower in sweetness compared to the crunchy mint bar but that allows the almonds to shine through.
Finally, the red; Organic Goji and Camu dark chocolate bar. This one is my favourite. The goji berries aren’t inedibly dry and chewy like some I’ve tried in health food shops (either on their own or covered in chocolate or yoghurty stuff), but are sweet, toffeeish and combine lovingly with the 62% chocolate. Plus, at the end is an inexplicable white-pepper tickle on the taste buds which is intriguing and delicious. This is the sweetest of the three bars and it was gone before I could say, “Ooops, I’ve just had three bars or 120 grams of chocolate in one sitting.” Which, in my chocoworld, is a positive thing.
My friend and colleague Don has been visiting from Australia’s Deep North – in this case, it’s not as far north as one can go, but Townsville, in tropical Far North Queensland. Land of Bananas, Tea plantations, Coffee, Australia’s own Cocoa plantations, and Ginger.
Don also knows about my obsession with chocolate ginger – the ultimate match made in heaven. If you get a good chocolate ginger, you know perfection and care not about anything else.
The story goes that he was being dragged around Townsville by a wife and daughter, and happened upon a shop called “A Spoonful of Sugar”. And found they had chocolate ginger. And bought a wee liddle pack for me! And then brought it down on the plane last week when he came a-visiting for terribly serious work matters. I did some hunting on the web – the photos of the shop look pretty good. OK, really good. A kid could have a wickedly good time in there. Can I go there now? Please?
It looks like they must make the chocolate ginger themselves – the pack lists no ingredients, no nutrition info, just the name. Very similar to some other chocolate ginger I’ve had before from North Queensland. I hear that a lot gets sold through local markets – chokky ginger is something of a local cottage industry.
The best chocolate ginger I ever had came from a similar area, and I rated it 10 out of 10. Perhaps that’s because I remember it better than it really was. I’ll get some more of it one day.
To make a really good chocolate ginger, it must be root ginger, its needs to be crystallised or, better, a good glacé, it needs to be big, it needs a dark chocolate coating which is not sweet – there is plenty of sweetness in the ginger, and there needs to be lots and lots of that coating. Use a thin, sweet, milk chocolate coating and it’s horrible.
To check, I therefore had to chop on of these little suckers up:
Unfortunately the photo does not do justice. The piece is so big that you can only just fit it in your mouth (we are off to a good start). The chocolate is dark, and very thick – about 3 to 5 mm. The ginger is big, juicy, and luscious. Chopping it up inspires confidence. Then I tried it. The chocolate has an interesting taste, it reminds me a bit of something a little smoky, and it melts very slowly. Not too sweet. Is it compounded? Not sure. Don’t care. I like it. The ginger is fabulous – sweet, spicy, chewy, and complements the chocolate really well.
I’m really pleased with this one. The shop has a web store. I might have to order some for delivery in the mail. I’m giving it 9 out of 10.
