These Finnish chocolate buttons were sent over by a Doctor – Doctor Sam Thompson from No Nuts, Just Chocolate. Dr. Sam specialises in selling nut-free chocolates, and these chocolate buttons from Dammenberg are guaranteed nut-free, kosher, and gluten free.
They come in three ‘strengths’. There’s a Milk version at 34% cocoa, a Dark at 55%, and X-Dark at 72%. Here in the UK we tend to think of chocolate buttons as something for children. Obviously things are different on the Continent. (I can’t see many kids scoffing handfuls of 72% cocoa buttons).
The milk version is definitely the sweetest of the three. It has great cocoa flavours and melts quickly with a good mouthfeel. The cocoa flavours keep on building right up to the last, making this an extremely moreish little treat. They’re probably as good as any milk chocolate I’ve had recently.
When I tasted the Dark buttons the first thing I noticed was that the sweetness of the Milk version was gone. The cocoa flavours are much darker, with a pronounced bittersweet edge. The cocoa is quite subtle at first, and as the chocolate melts you start to taste the deeper, woody flavours. They’re very different to the Milk version, and to my mind they’d be a good ‘bridge’ for the milk chocolate lover who wants to try something a little darker.
Top of the shop (in terms of coca content at least) is a 72% cocoa button – the X-Dark (which sounds like some sort of secret weapon). These buttons have a sharper aroma with a distinct leather-and-wood smell. In the mouth they pack a deep, dark punch which softens as the cocoa starts to release more of its flavours. The overall taste is strong, slightly sharp cocoa highs with a soft, clean finish.
I enjoyed all of these chocolate buttons. The Milk ones are very good, sweet milk chocolate and the X-Dark delivers some excellent flavours. To me, the Dark buttons seemed unnecessary. They don’t have the soft, full cocoa flavours of the Milk buttons or the full-on, sharp, complex tastes that the X-dark have. Tasting them in order of cocoa content worked just fine, but when I tasted a Dark button after the X-Dark there was very little there.
I’m not fully aware of how much of a market there is for this sort of chocolate in the UK, but I can only assume that there is demand for nut-free products, and if so then this range of chocolate buttons might well be worth checking out.
There must be something about wafers – something in the air, perhaps, or just a time for coincidences. The delightful Kath found the Kägi-Fret Coco and I’ve also reported on the Candy Canes Choklad Wafers recently.
So far, we seem to have a score of 1 out of 2 – Kath liked hers, I thought the Choklad Wafers were pretty ordinary.
With today’s discovery of Prince Polo, it will be interesting to see where we end up. I bought this one because the bright gold packet leapt out and smacked me around the eyeballs. A colour like this is hard to miss. That and having them piled up in a shop at the checkout meant that escape was impossible. And the name is kind of quirky and appealing as well. I wonder if there ever was a real Prince Polo, and what perhaps did he look like? Checking Mr Google leads me to think its just a name, but I am informed that this is Poland’s top-selling candy brand – owned now by Kraft, and it seems to have been made since 1955 (Doh! Hence the “od 1955 roku” on the label.)
At 39 grams, the pack is very light. There is almost no weight to it at all. Opening up, though, does reveal quite a pleasant surprise: there is actually a decent amount of chocolate covering the wafer.
Breaking the bar apart is a bit of a challenge, the wafer is very light but surprisingly tough, and so it squashes down a bit before breaking. That said, the effort is worthwhile – we can see a reasonable amount of filling between the layers of wafer. There is not any special aroma, so I was wondering what it would taste like.
The answer is: it’s pretty good. The chocolate is quite pleasant, nicely chocolatey, not too sweet (ah – mercy – thank heavens for that) and it complements the wafer well. The wafer is light, and very crunchy, and the filling is pretty good too. My major complaint about this wafer is that it isn’t big enough. It seems a larger size, marked “XXL” is available. At 52 grams that seems hardly to qualify as XXL to me!
The wafer score now reads 2 good out of 3 tried.
In addition to the four slabs I received, Anita from Camaya also enclosed this small box of twelve assorted truffles and ganaches, complete with a menu listing the full range of Camaya chocolates. There are twenty seven available in all, so I had a chance to review just under half of the range.
The chocolates all have a quite distinctive look to them, as you can see.
So, what did I receive?
First one out was a white chocolate ganache with lemon, reinforced with a hint of limoncello. The tartness of the lemon was balance nicely by the soft sweetness of the ganache and white chocolate shell. Soft in the mouth, the lemon flavours were sharp and clean. A good counterpoint to white chocolate.
The other white chocolate ganache was a cardamon and cream blend. The cardamon flavour was there from the first bite, infusing the sweet creamy filling with its distinctive flavours. If you like cardamon, you’ll love this.
A milk chocolate with Tonka Bean was next up. I’d tried Tonka Bean before in a Stainer chocolate bar, and quite liked the flavour. It’s a distinctive, slighty nutty flavour which works very well with milk chocolate.
A basil and lime concoction provided some interesting subtle flavours. I’ve tried both basil chocolate and lime chocolate before, but I’ve never seen them combined. Both flavours are quite subtle – there’s no citrus blast or overpowering taste of basil, and the two work together surprisingly well. Top marks for bravery.
A real standout was the Sesame Crunch. Caramelised ganache with sesame brittle in dark chocolate. Burnt sugar and sesame flavours combine with the dark flavours of the cocoa to give a mouthwatering caramel/nut/cocoa hit. Delicious.
The Tanzanie proved to be a little disappointing. The dark cocoa flavours were there but the centre seemed to be lacking in moistness. It was a little too chewy compared to the previous ones. Possibly a storage or transporting issue, which was a shame.
A Mace and Lemon ganache had some interesting flavours. Both dark and milk chocolate were used to make this subtley flavoured concoction, which didn’t pack the lemony punch of the white chocolate ganache with lemon, but came across as a more delicate, cakey sort of flavour combination.
The ginger ganache was a lot less upfront than I had expected. The warming ginger flavour came through very slowly and never detracted from the dark cocoa flavours. Perhaps not strong enough for some people, but you could tell there was ginger there alright.
The dark chocolate and spearmint ganache was a bit of a let down. Not much mint flavour going on at all, but the ganache was soft and full of cocoa flavour.
The three truffles I tried were definitely the runts of the litter. From the menu I ascertained that I had been given a Malt Whiskey truffle, a Menthe truffle, and an Amaretto truffle, but the flavours just failed to make any sort of impact. I had expected much more flavour from these three, and I was disappointed to discover that two of them were indistinguishable from each other! Maybe they weren’t as fresh as they could have been, I don’t know.
Overall, a good selection of ganaches but with a slightly patchy performance. Based on the slab tastings, I know that the chocolate Camaya use is of a good standard, but I’d say that some of these chocolates need a bit of work to get them up to the high standard that’s expected from handmade premium chocolates.
Yes it’s Chocophile time again. That time of the week where we find interesting people and question them about their chocolate eating habits for no apparent reason!
This week, we have singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton. He may like eating people’s brains, but does he cover them in chocolate first…?
Chocophile:
Jonathan Coulton
- Occupation:
- Singer / Songwriter
- Web Site:
- www.jonathancoulton.com
Interrogation Begins:
- Milk, dark or white:
- Dark, but milk will do!
- Your guilty chocolate pleasure:
- You can’t beat a chocolate souffle (though you have to, in order to
make it)
- Favourite childhood chocolate:
- Whatchamacallit spent a lot of time in the spotlight
- Fruit or nut:
- Both – Chunky, for the win.
- Crunchy or chewy:
- Crunchy
- Crunchy. Chewy is too time consuming.
- I try to be good – only once in a while do I break down and buy an
ENTIRE CANDY BAR.
- Give or receive:
- I won’t even dignify that with a response!
- Least favourite chocolate:
- I was excited to try the bacon chocolate bars, but I think they
don’t work as well in the mouth as they do on paper.
An interesting selection of answers! The subject exhibited a noticeable expression of guilt when avoiding the ‘give’ or ‘receive’ question, which we all know can only mean one thing…
We were also a little flummoxed by the ‘Whatchamacallit’ answer, but it turns out this is actually a real chocolate bar.
Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to run further tests on this particular subject. We must establish once and for all whether bacon flavoured chocolate is an effective weapon against zombies…
