Hershey’s Bliss

I was planning on getting some Hershey’s Kisses to talk about the impact of their shape on the taste, but then I realized I’d never tried the fairly new Bliss range, so here it is instead.

I really like the coloring of these 36-piece bags, though the design is only so-so. Turn the bags over and you’ll find the words “chocolate for those who appreciate the everyday joys of chocolate.” Well, I’m all for eating chocolate everyday, but this could be worded a little better. It sounds more like it’s calling this everyday chocolate, not worth more than that.

To start with the size, I think the pieces should be just a little bit smaller. For melting purposes, the size combined with the square shape is too big to fit comfortably in your mouth, without really lending itself to eating in two parts. But that’s a minor complaint.

Back to shape. This is the same milk chocolate as the bar form, but it’s amazing how different the solid shape makes it, just like in Hershey’s Kisses. Yes, many of my complaints still apply, but the overall effect is much better. The caramel and light chocolate flavors have a greater place in your attention with the slower melting from the increased thickness.

The Dark Chocolate turns to a thick smooth liquid like Dove (Galaxy) chocolates, which, though some like, I still find a little weird. It tastes pretty black in its darkness isntead of having cool flavors working in, but I’ll admit that it isn’t as frighteningly sweet as some alternatives.

My point: the thing that makes these better than the bars is their shape. So if you like those, you’ll definately want to try these out. If you’re pretty indifferent to them, you’ll probably, like me, find these mildly enjoyable in their own way. It’s still the same stuff, though, so if you hate the bars, just don’t bother.

Gold Pralines of Prague

Gold Pralines have two shops in Prague. One is very close to the old town square, and sells a surprising variety of confectionery.

Of more interest to Chocabloggers (well, this one in particular) is their range of handmade chocolates, some of which come in quite unusual shapes. Their ‘menu’ has over fifty different chocolates to choose from, and they are all available to buy in the shops.

I tried seven different chocolates – specialities of the house and evenly split between dark and milk chocolate, with one ‘no chocolate’.

No chocolate? How so? Like this:

Covered in slivers of roasted almond, my first Gold Praline selection was the Almond Truffle. I had no idea if it contained light or dark chocolate, or what the consistency might be. As it turned out, those slivers of perfectly crisp almond concealed the most incredibly light chocolate mousse. It was whisper-light, full of delicate cocoa flavours, and vanished clean away in moments, leaving me wishing I had a bucket full of these to hand. A superb start.

‘Rembrandt’ was a dark chocolate and pineapple cream confection. Biting through the dark chocolate shell revealed a superlight, delicately pineapple flavoured mousse. Like the previous filling, it was only a matter of seconds before it was a wisp, a faint memory as the dark chocolate took over, infusing my palate with rich, woody cocoa.

Another unusual shape this time – a mainly milk chocolate snail shell was home to a dual layer of a light nougaty cream topped with a thick chocolate truffle.

Both tasted superb, the sweeter, creamy nougat cream melted away and allowed the darker, fuller cocoa flavoured truffle to take over. There was an excellent balance between shell and filling with the milk chocolate finishing things off nicely.

My next selection contains a truffle made with Becherovka, a Czech herbal liqueur and having sampled some in the past, I was quite keen to see how it would lend itself to a chocolate. As soon as my teeth cracked the dark chocolate shell, I could smell the unique aroma of the liqueur. At first I thought it was going to be overpowering, but once the filling began to melt the initial alcohol ‘hit’ softened off, allowing the sweetness of the filling and the bittersweet dark chocolate to round off the taste.

Next up was this whisky truffle – in the shape of a hat. Yet more ethereally light and mildly alcoholic mousse enrobed in a sweet, full flavoured milk chocolate. Not as remarkable as it’s predecessors, but nonetheless well thought out and with a good balance between the chocolate and the filling.

The final milk chocolate was this horse’s head.

The somewhat eccentric shape concealed a dark truffle and nougat filling which flooded my mouth with roast nut and chocolate flavours. The slightly thicker, coconut and nut texture of the filling enabled it to hang out with the chocolate for longer in my mouth, making for a very satisfying combination.

Having tasted the pineapple truffle, I had some idea of what to expect from the banana truffle.

However, what I found was a thick white cream filling, very much reminiscent of the long gone Fry’s Chocolate Cream, and infused with banana. The cream filling was VERY sweet, but as it melted away and the banana flavour faded, the dark chocolate base remained to finish the mouthful off with it’s delicious bittersweet cocoa notes.

Last up was the Diamond, a dark chocolate shell with a light, whipped centre. The filling is once again as light as a feather and it’s life on the tongue so brief that I just wished I had more of these.

Overall, a great selection of very well made chocolates.

Gold Pralines use Callebaut Belgian chocolate to create their shells, but the fillings are obviously the product of Czech chocolatiers.

It’s handy to know that Prague has something more to offer, as well as garnets, glass, artworks and absinthe.

Well worth a visit should you find yourself over that way.

Endangered Species Cherries & Raspberries

“Based in Indianapolis, Endangered Species Chocolate (ESC) was established in 1993 to increase awareness of endangered species and the need to do more help support the efforts made in their conservation. ESC ethically source their cacao from family-owned, sustainable forest plantations and pay the growers a fair price.”

At least that’s what their website says.

This is all very worthy but what is particularly interesting is that their Supreme Dark Chocolate (with the chimpanzee on the wrapper) is going on the shuttle Discovery Flight STS-119 as per special request from the astronauts on board.

Unusually, there was no inviting dark chocolate aroma when the wrapper was opened.

Even more unusually, the dark 70% chocolate with raspberries was surprisingly bereft of taste. If forced to wear a blindfold and have another tasting battle with Ashleigh again, I’d be confident that neither of us would be able to guess what kind of dark chocolate it was or what the tiny, chewy and dry things were scattered inside it. There was no discernible flavour whatsoever; it was like sucking on something sort of melty and moist but that was it.

The milk chocolate with cherries was a much nicer offering. Very smooth, creamy and sweet with a clear emphasis on milk. The cherries unfortunately were few and far between and had no discernible taste whatsoever. They could have been pgymy currants for all my tongue could tell.

So whilst it is admirable that Endangered Species are doing the organic, fair trade, sustainable thing in bringing their product to you in cute wrappers, the actual chocolate inside the wrapper is sadly very underwhelming. When you also factor in their statement that 10% of the net profits are donated to worthy causes, you might as well donate the full $6.95 cost of this bar rather than eat bland chocolate and only have 69 cents passed on to charity.

The Chocsters 2009

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Chocster Awards. Ignore all other award ceremonies you may see today, because this is the one that counts!

The only criteria needed to qualify for an award is that a chocolate must have been reviewed on Chocablog in the last 12 months.

In 2007 and 2008, The Chocsters caused a bit of a stir in the chocolate community (no, really! they did!). We expect this year to be no different, so without further ado, let’s get on with it…

	Best Dark Chocolate Cote D’Or Experiences 86% We’ve reviewed many great dark chocolates this year, but in our recent taste test, this is the one that came out top. Also worth a special mention was the Grenada Chocolate Company’s 71% bar.
	Best Milk Chocolate Milka Alpine Cream Again, we’ve reviewed many, many milk chocolates this year, and picking a winner was incredibly hard. A controversial choice, the Milka bar is very sweet, but it’s also incredibly creamy and smooth, which is what won it this award.
	Best Range Lindt Creation 70% Lindt produce a vast range of stunningly good chocolate, but this 70% Creation bars are consistently of such a high standard that nobody else comes close in our opinion!
	Best Speciality Chocolate Pralus Le 100% Criollo We’ve only reviewed two 100% bars so far, and this bar from Pralus was the best. We described it as “not to the faint-hearted”, but everyone should live on the edge sometimes…
	Best Newcomer Plush Fabulous Fairtrade This was a wonderful assortment of fair trade, organic chocolates from Plush that could have won in several categories (if we’d had a “Best Assortment” and “Best Fair Trade” categories.. but we don’t, so just the one award this year!)
	Best Every Day Chocolate Galaxy Amicelli A late entry, but already a firm favourite! These little bars of yumminess are great value and come in a box of 16 that might even last you a whole week. (Ours didn’t last a day, but you never know…)
	Best Handmade Chocolate Skelligs Baby Fig & Rum Skelligs are another company producing consistently great products, but these wonderful baby fig and dark rum milk chocolates were our pick from “the most westerly chocolate company in Europe”.
	Best Antipodean Chocolate Cadbury Cherry Ripe Double Dipped Our special award for chocolate from Down Under. The double dipped Cherry Ripe just pipped Cadbury’s revamped Old Gold range for this year’s award.
	Weird & Wonderful Award Hotel Chocolat Heart Strings Fighting off competition from Cadbury’s Creme Egg Twisted, Rustika’s Cedar Bar and Theo Bread & Chocolate, this giant heart proves Hotel Chocolat still have what it takes!
	Chocolate Raspberry Award Duc d’O Truffles The ‘Chocolate Razzie’ award for the worst chocolate we’ve tasted – and in this case seen – this year goes to these rather questionable truffles. Duc d’O fought off close competition from Nestlé Chocolate Log, Black Magic and Venchi Absinthum to win this coveted award!

Once again, we’re a little sad to report that none of this year’s winners could be here in person to receive their awards. On the bright side, at least you don’t have to sit through the acceptance speeches.