I’m not sure how widespread Marich is. Their products did make it to a shop in the microscopic ghost town of Jerome, Arizona, but seeing as they’re based out of California (like nearly every other U.S. chocolate company, it would seem), that isn’t the greatest distance to have traveled.
Their origins are actually in Holland, where Marinus van Dam worked on candy-making. His sons have since taken over.
There’s one thing I love about this. Unless you consider the lime green particularly bold, there’s nothing too daring or crazy about anything on the box. The only words are the quick description on the front and the ingredients, along with a brief company history. So I had to smile when I lifted the top flap to find in bold, plain letters, “Quick… While Nobody’s Looking.” Not over the top, taking over, but just a subtle, unexpected detail.
Now for the “Premium California almonds in a buttery toffee glaze and creamy milk chocolate.” Since the almonds already taste a little like peanuts, once you add the sweetness and saltiness of the toffee layer, there’s a slight Reese’s Cup flavor going on. The milk chocolate seems smooth with some vanilla flavors, the almonds clear and fresh, though their real work is done as a pair.
They do have the addictive quality of small crunchy, sweet, salty, chocolatey, chewy things. Although I’m not rushing out to find more Marich products (most of them seem to be chocolate-free candies, anyway), I’m pleased to have tried these.
This attractive bright yellow box on the shelf of my local Budgens caught my attention, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Inside the box are two layers of eleven bite-sized pieces of Cadbury Flake in six different varieties.
Nice enough to look at, but certainly not spectacular. In fact, the first thing I noticed was how dull the chocolate looked. I’m guessing that’s partly down to the fact that this box was fast approaching its Best Before date, and partly because that’s just the nature of Flake.
Each of the different varieties is given an evocative name… “Escape”, “Dream”, “Delight”, “Charm”, “Indulge” and “Classic”. Unfortunately, the chocolates don’t quite live up to their names. In fact, they all taste exactly the same – like Cadbury Flake.
There is some dark and white chocolate in here, but they have a major impact on the texture or flavour with the result that it quickly becomes a very boring box of chocolates. I ploughed my way through one of each variety, but simply couldn’t face any more than that. It’s just too sugary, dry and dull.
There may be hardcore Flake fans (and people with an affinity for yellow boxes) out there that will love this, but I can’t recommend it for anyone else.
Jessica Walker chocolates have been available in supermarkets and department stores for a few years now, but I’ve never bothered with them before. Mostly the reason for my avoiding tem was because they’re often packaged as chocolate stiletto heels or in cutesy handbag shapes and seem likely to be aimed at the Gimmicky Girlie Gift market.
The box, confidently called the ‘Signature Collection’ was at least a step in the right direction by moving away from the novelty packaging and towards celebrating the chocolate itself.
Delicious assorted milk plain and white chocolates, it said on the back. And this rather peculiar quote from whom I assume is their fictional figurehead, Jessica Walker: “More than a mouthful is too much of a commitment.” What the….?
As you can see, they looked nice enough, if a little unassuming for a box of what appears to be entirely milk chocolate except for some tiny white stripes. The heart was just their milk chocolate and the other flavours were lemon twist, chocolate truffle, burnt toffee truffle and Turkish temptation.
For such varying flavours, it was disconcerting to slice them open and see almost exactly the same fillings inside. The plain chocolate heart and chocolate truffle were impossible to tell apart and the burnt toffee truffle had the most miniscule hint of brown sugar –and that was only because I was concentrating really REALLY hard.
The lemon was a real lemon. Jessica Walker describing this disappointment as a ‘zesty lemon flavour’ is akin to comparing a dead sea lion to a wild, party animal sure to be loads of fun. I couldn’t taste lemon at all and believe, I was trying. As for the Turkish Temptation it was a real fizzer. One had no Turkish filling in it all but was just full of mooshy buttery chocolate mush and the other had a crusty, sugary jelly jube inside that emitted a faint rose flavour. If I was blindfolded, the only flavour I’d even have the tiniest chance of guessing would be the Turkish Temptation and calling it ‘temptation’ is really pushing it.
These are embarassingly mundane, flavourless and ordinary. Imported from China, they contain 30% minimum cocoa solids yet cocoa is only third on the ingredients list behind the expected sugar and the not-so-delectable vegetable fat. Surely Jessica Walker can do better than this?
In Prague there is a chocolate shop called Viva! which sells fine Belgian chocolates, and it’s busy. Very busy. There’s a huge range of chocolate treats to choose from, but it was a sign one cabinet that started this review.
Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone has created a range of – as he put it – ‘funky’ chocolates. Perfect review material for this inquisitive palate!
I limited my choice to six items, splitting my selection equally between familiar (to me at least) flavours and a some that just made me want to try them.
A Pure Criollo ganache was my first choice. Lush, citrus flavours sitting over buttery, creamy vanilla and cocoa notes. A centre that melted away leaving behind only sweet, buttery cocoa notes that lingered in a very satisfying way. An auspicious start.
The next milk chocolate had me raising my eyebrows on sight. Who knew what it might do once I tasted it?
Yep, a chocolate ganache with fried onions.
The tiniest fragments of crispy fried onions suspended in another rich, buttery ganache. At first taste only a little of the bizarre onion taste was noticeable, then the chocolate come in, flooding the mouth with the delightful buttery textures of the ganache and its soft cocoa notes. However, what happens is that the ganache evaporates like mist on a summer’s morning and you’re left with a little bunch of fried onion fragments. Weird for weird’s sake? Possibly. Certainly an unusual pairing of flavours, but I hear tell of chocolate crisps, so possibly not that weird. Definitely not one for Valentine’s Day though!
Having tasted Cedar in chocolate and Christmas Tree chocolate last year, this seemed a logical progression.
May I present number three in the series ‘trees and chocolate’…
…Laurel.
Milk chocolate with laurel extract. I admit I had to wait a short while for this one. The fried onions were still very much in evidence and my mouth felt like I’d nipped out to a burger van mid-tasting.
This one was very sweet, with powerful evergreen top notes in the ganache. I would imagine the extra sweetness was in some part a way of countering the sharpness of laurel. When my palate did catch a ‘blast’ of the laurel, it came across as quite bitter, moreso than the Christmas Tree chocolate. On the finish it was definitely there to the very end, and I found the dying notes of the laurel weren’t as pleasant as I had hoped. Having said that, the bittrness decayed away soon enough
The Cola caught my eye because I’d already tried Cola Nut in chocolate, and so I thought it might be nice to see how this one stood up. As it turned out the taste had little to do with the natural flavour of cola nut – this one was trying to be the real thing. Sweet, tangy and somehow with a popping candy hint of fizz, this was intriguing to say the least. The juxtaposition of sweet, sticky cola and fine quality chocolate was slightly bizarre.
It’s been a good while since I tried Dark Sugars’ tobacco infused truffle, so it seemed the right thing to give this one a go. The tobacco flavour was more subtle than I’d expected but it was still in evidence. It was as soft and buttery as the other ganaches, and the tobacco flavour was more of a counterpoint to the chocolate.
You know you’ve eaten a lot of chocolate when you see a wasabe ganache and say “Ah, another wasabe chocolate”. I’d tried something similar in Belgium a year or so ago and the combination of flavours worked really well.
This one used a thin layer of bright green marzipan to contain the wasabe element, and it was the sweetness of the spice rather than its heat that came through. It put me in mind of some wasabe crackers I bought in Soho last year. There was a very slight element of the heat, but it never became chilli-hot. If you like that earthy semi-sweet flavour, this is definitely one to try.
Last one in the set was a potentially palate-cleansing milk chocolate ganache with lemongrass. The citrus notes are there as soon as it hits the tongue. Subtle and sweet, the blend of flavours was light and refreshing and the lemongrass came through beautifully, building up slowly to a summery, mousse-like peak. There’s more sweetness in this one than some of the others, but the lemon manages to cut the sweetness for a great balance. Lovely stuff.
So there you have it – some of the more eccentric flavours being produced by another noteworthy chocolatier. As I said, Viva! is a very popular place to buy chocolates in Prague, and it’s not hard to see why. I really enjoyed trying these (although the fried onion one may be perceived as being a bit much!) and if I’m ever in Prague I shall certainly make a point of visiting Viva! again.
