Amella caramels are each made with cocoa butter and fruits or vegetables and hand-dipped in chocolate, creating a rather unique product. Equally special are the small rectangular boxes they come in. Their design is old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and the material used has a handmade feel.
I received a sample of each of their three caramels. Starting at the white chocolate end of the spectrum, we have the Carrot Cake caramel. The top is white chocolate, over a beautifully dark orange-colored cocoa butter caramel, with pecan pieces and carrots. It has a definite carrot cake smell and tastes like that’s what you’re biting into. The caramel is nice and chewy like a heavier cake. The white chocolate lends sweetness to the mixture, and while the pecans are soft enough that they’re not very crunchy, they do add a pleasant taste and texture. I found myself sad as I closed the box on the two remaining Carrot Cakes, but there were more to try.
The Passion Fruit caramel is dipped in milk chocolate. I’ve finally realized that I don’t like passion fruit, yet it was perhaps all the more clear after making this discovery that this is a high-quality product. Though the bite is too much for me, the passion fruit has a strong tropical fruitiness. It’s a very fresh flavor. Their flavors are meant to work as one unit, but what I can taste of the chocolate and caramel as individuals is good.
Moving both up and down the choco-spectrum is the Black Forest. The caramel has Amarelle cherries and 70% dark chocolate, but is dipped in white chocolate, which is in turn sprinkled with bits of dark chocolate. These all seemed to have extra trouble pulling away from their papers, maybe from the extra melting quality of the added chocolate? Anyway, this one turned out to be my favorite. I usually do love chocolate caramels since caramel is already a fun thing and having chocolate only makes it better. There’s a standard tart/sweet effect here with the cherries and white chocolate, with the dark chocolate bridging the gap between them. I think there’s a little too much white chocolate, but once it melts away, you can still reach the richness of the dark chocolate. It’s just how any good dessert should be, yet so often isn’t. You don’t want the taste to go away, so you settle into a chewing/sucking combo to get the most out of it. One piece can go such a long way.
Amella has come up with a way to reminisce over other edible experiences while still embracing a new take. Definitely recommended.
Another little box of truffles from the Cocopia range, I chose these for tasting because I always had a thing for black forest gateau as a child. In fact I have a vague memory of there being some form of chocolate with black cherry in it when I was smaller. (Answers on a postcard…)
I’m not sure these earn the epithet of ‘Luxury Artisan Chocolates’. After all, they’re a couple of quid a box and they’re sold in Tesco, and I think we all know that isn’t the sign of a true luxury artisan product, don’t we?
Opening the box revealed half a dozen quite attractive looking truflles, made with a 70% cocoa dark chocolate shell which houses a dark truffle centre filled with chopped cherry. A quick sniff upon opening the box confirmed that there were indeed cherries (and natural cherry flavourings) around, which was a promising sign.
Obviously, being factory made chocs these were never going to have the whisper-light freshness of something from a true artisan chocolatier, but they did a pretty good job of delivering what had been promised. Slightly sweet, cherry rich and with good chocolate flavours, they didn’t disappoint in that area. The truffle filling was well balanced and didn’t cloy the palate at all either.
I think these are more your posh pocket money present chocolates. Something to buy your first serious girlfriend or a slightly upmarket Mothers Day gift from a small child or teenager. Artisan they may not be, but they’re not half bad for the money.
Oh what promise these start with. A name like Orange Bliss means something special, something out of this world!
HOWEVER, I’m sorry, but a maker called “Ultra Fine Foods” doesn’t have much of a ring to it, and I find it puts me off a bit. The name just seems a bit pretentious.
Ignoring that, I felt the need, the need for… chocolate. And these little goodies were sitting in the kitchen patiently awaiting their fate. Time to suck ‘em and see if reality met the promise of the name; and especially after my last experience with the Kaoka Noir Orange, which was pretty damn good.
So I was looking forward to trying another Orange choc creation. Sadly, I have to report these chaps are a disappointing. The chocolate is fine. The orange isn’t. By this I mean the orange just isn’t there.
These guys a pale imitation of the revered Fruchoc. The Fruchoc is a very regional, very local creation, and I’m reliably informed that they are sold in the State of South Australia, and nowhere else. About 67 million of them are sold each year, and absent South Aussies who are pining for their Fruchocs have to content themselves with buying supplies by mail order.
Clearly, somebody else is trying to muscle in on the act by making an imitation. They failed.
These little chaps are about the size, shape, colour, and construction of the Fruchoc. But the execution has not quite made the grade. The chocolate, as I said above, is Ok. Good in fact. But the fruit in the middle is just plain. Ordinary. Nothingy. The test is simple. Suck on a Fruchoc and let it melt slowly until only the fruit in the middle is left. Chew it: Flavour – Lots. Now suck one of these Orange Bliss things. Let the chocolate melt away. The fruit in the middle has a strange texture. I’m too polite to say what it makes me think of. Then chew it. No orange. Nothing really. Just stuff.
We are having no trouble ploughing through the packet, and the kids pronounce them to be “OK”. But these are nothing special.
Having recently visited and loved Max Brenner’s, it was time to try some of their chocolates that are displayed as reverently as jewellery in glass cases.
Lovely shop assistant Siwei had thoughtfully written a kind of tic-tac-toe inspired diagram that listed the flavours I’d selected, just in case I’d forget when I got home. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, as surely chocolates that aren’t exactly cheap would be easy to tell apart?
Just to be sure, though, they are:
Top row
Dark chocolate with raspberry, White and milk chocolate mousse, Praline mixed with roasted coconut.
Middle row
Dark chocolate ganache with lemon peel oil, Dark chocolate ganache with spices, Dark chocolate truffle
Bottom row
Luxury truffle (dark), Luxury truffle (milk), Praline cream mixed with peanut butter.
I very carefully cut each one of the nine little art works in half, not only to photograph but also to share with my husband Love Chunks and daughter Sapphire, who always know when it’s time to hang around nearby. However I need to apologise to Dom because my greed and need were too great to stop and take any further photographs.
Firstly, the negatives, which to be honest aren’t really negative. Yes, the luxury truffles (milk and dark) and the dark chocolate truffle sound nice but here’s a shout-out to posh chocolate makers everywhere – please STOP dusting them in cocoa. All it does it leave dust marks on my front, mess on my fingers and fill my mouth with dry and bitter dirt before any nice chocolate flavours emerge. So, three out of nine here were already little dust bombs (with two looking more like something my dog tends to leave in our front garden) that overrode the actual chocolate inside. Oh well.
Luckily the rest of the six were j-u-s-t fine. The four stand outs – and ones I’ll be buying more of were the dark chocolate with raspberry – fine dark filling with tiny raspberry seeds to remind me of the quality ingredients; Praline with roasted coconut – a triumph with the coconut shreds producing an extra crunchy toffee flavour; Dark chocolate ganache with lemon peel oil- delicious and delicate and Praline cream with peanut butter – a sensation of milk chocolate, peanut butter and a pinch of saltiness that was utterly delicious.
The dark chocolate ganache ‘with spices’ was nice, or OK. Nothing earth shattering and the milk and white chocolate mousse got the same reaction.
In summary, I can see that I’ll just have – yes have to, dear reader – go back and try them all so that I can formulate my own collection of stand outs. All without cocoa dust, of course.
