Here at Chocablog there’s been an awful lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about Cadbury’s and their tendency to punt out the same old safe as houses CDM, but with some new ‘other’ ingredient thrown in to create something different,
Well imagine my shock when I saw this. Four bars of 72% cocoa ‘Luxury’ chocolate. Of course I had to be waaay over the other side of the planet at the time, so I have no idea whether or not the UK or Europe will see this, but I took some heart from the fact that on the back of the box is written ‘Made by Cadbury Poland for Cadbury Trebor Bassett’ which to my mind implies that there may be some chance of this being released into continental Europe, if not the whole Union (which includes England, Mr. Cadbury Trebor-Bassett).
As you can see from the pictures, upmarket equals gold. Gold boxes, gold bar wrappers, gold foil – everything glows as you work your way to the bar.
The chocolate itself is dark, divided into squares very reminiscent of the classic Lindt bar. The chocolate itself has good, full cocoa aromas with hints of wood and leather. In the mouth it’s smooth, rich but never really bitter in the way that a lot of high cocoas content bars can be. The top notes are not really that toppy – this chocolate is almost like a ‘beefy’ milk chocolate with more sophisticated flavour base. After tasting my mouth was clean and uncoated, and definitely ready for more.
I liked this quite a lot. It doesn’t stand out by being unusual, but by offering a very pleasant taste experience. This is soft and gentle enough to entice milk chocolate eaters over to the Dark Side, yet it retains enough complex cocoa flavours to appeal to the more sophisticated chocolate lover. I’m not able to guess at a potential UK retail price, but I’m pretty sure that if Cadbury’s pitched this at the same level as supermarket ‘Finest’ brands they’d find themselves with an awful lot of customers.
Footnote: I’m also surprised that the same company which has failed to produce anything new or original in the UK for quite a few years has released this into the Middle East. While the UK in particular has undergone something of a chocolate revolution, Cadbury’s seem to have done absolutely nothing in terms of producing innovative or exciting new products. One would imagine that a company with a world class position and reputation would have been on top of the trend towards artisan made or higher quality products and responded accordingly with their own range of similar products. Instead, I tend to think of Cadbury’s as either resting on their laurels or sitting on their hands. My own personal hope is that this is possibly the start of that response. Whether the desire to expand into the connaisseur market is there (or even worth the effort) is debatable, but I enjoyed finding something this good from Cadbury’s. More like this, please!
According to the packaging:
“The term dragée (from the french to dredge or sprinkle) describes the painstaking process of creating a coating layer by layer. Since only the very best will do, these dragées have been made for Waitrose by a continental Master Confectioner using quality ingredients sourced from around the world.”
So now you know.
Frankly, I think it’s more likely that a marketing person somewhere just found a foreign word they thought would look cool on their packaging. These are really just dried cherries with some flavouring and extra sugar dipped in chocolate.
The “dark chocolate” coating is smooth and shiny (thanks no doubt to the glazing agents listed on the ingredients), but has virtually no flavour of its own. That’s probably down to the fact that it’s only 45% cocoa solids.
If you let it melt away in your mouth, eventually you get to a sweet sugary coating that surrounds the cherry. But there’s still no real flavour until you bite into the fruit.
The cherry itself is quite tart and tasty, but it’s very dry. It’s almost crunchy, rather than the plump, juicy fruit I was hoping for.
My overall impression is that these are “sweets” rather than real chocolates. I’m quite happy to munch on them, but I still feel I’ve been conned by the pretty packaging with the foreign words I didn’t understand.
So rather than buying these, I’d recommend making your own chocolate dipped fruits. It’s easy, and the results look so much better.
Aussie Chocabloggers Ashleigh and myself made the happy discovery that we both live in the same city. We and our respective families have met up a few times, found each to our liking and decided to have a blind dark chocolate tasting. Interspersed with conversation, two kittens, a curious dog, great food, greater wine and furthering friendships.
Ashleigh’s lovely wife Marie and my husband Love Chunks snuck off to render the following chocolates into smaller, completely unrecognisable pieces. After all, it can be quite easy to identify a chocolate from the shape or pattern imprinted on it, so all kinds of creative knife work (think shaving, slicing and not snapping where the usual lines are) was required.
There were twelve dark tastes to pick from – Lindt 70%, 85%, Lindt 70% with chilli, Green and Black’s 70%, Schwarze Herren 50%, Whittaker’s 72%, Cadbury Old Gold 70%, Cote d’Or 86%, Lindt pear 70%, ‘Luxury’ brand gluten and dairy free 70%, Organic with Cayenne 70% and Nestle Heaven truffle.
Mind you, neither of us are pompous, self-important experts (thank goodness); just lovers and far-too-regular eaters of the stuff. Ashleigh was worried that his palate might have already become a little tired after several hours of barbecued lamb, chicken, red wine, champagne, home made red wine, lemon meringue pie, more red wine etc but I assured him that our readers would most likely prefer our non-laboratory-style way of proceeding.
I whipped out two silk scarves and – bear in mind, our families were present, so it was all safe and appropriate – we nervously put them on. Love Chunks gently placed pieces in our mouths in a much more fun and frivolous version of holy communion. After trying each piece, as you can see from Ashleigh here, actually identifying them was really bloody difficult.
Neither of us (yet) have the sophisticated tasting notes of Simon and were struggling to write down our answer/guess next to each of the twelve spaces. Were they smooth, gritty, sharp, bitter, buttery, dull, creamy or spicy? Ordinary or delicious? Zesty with a hint of coffee and a slight whiff of woodsmoke? A cheeky variety not encountered before but holding lots of chocolatey promise?
My daughter Sapphire looked on, both bemused and amused and constantly seeking reassurance that yes, we’d be sharing out the rest of the blocks of chocolate with them all.
Scores out of twelve were not much to be proud of, I’m afraid. The ones Ashleigh identified I didn’t and vice versa. It has left us both determined to study our subject matter even harder and with more dedication than before. Despite this reality check, there was one block that we both identified as being our favourite. Adjectives-in-common were “dark but creamy, not as gritty or as bitter as some ultra darks” to the very Kath-and-Kim “Noice, very very noice.”
And who was the Dark Horse that caused two esteemed Chocabloggers to rant so effusively? It was this:
Yes, it’s amusing that, like Nigel Tufnell’s “But it goes all the way up to number eleven” amplifier in the movie ‘This is Spinal Tap’, cute little Cote d’Or just had to beat Lindt’s dark 85 by one tiny percent. Amazingly, their cheekiness works because theirs does taste creamier, stronger and better. In fact, we both mistook it for a 70% due to tasting so smooth and still holding a hint of sweetness. Unlike the Lindt 85% and the very disappointingly bitter Green and Black’s, it was not as “strip yer mouth”, to use Ashleigh’s very fine descriptor. Cote d’Or 86% was a lovely surprise and most definitely our pick of the twelve we tasted.
A week or so before Christmas I went off to our local Vietnamese butcher. The Vietnamese butcher is an off-shoot of the local Vietnamese baker (logical, innit?), and along with really good choice and good customer service they have good prices. Hence the visit. The occasion was a pre-Christmas BBQ with friends and I wanted some sausages.
Now before you wonder if this is a review of sausages, bear with me as I string you along – the meaty part is coming. After buying them and few other odds and ends, as I was paying, I saw what was on the counter:
Seeing as I don’t read or speak any Polish, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but even I could figure out the meaning of “KAKAO” on the label. And the label does tickle my fancy a little anyhow: “o smaku waniliowym z kakao”, which just translates as “vanilla-flavoured cocoa”.
So what on earth had I bought? It turns out to be Vanilla flavoured Halva with coca powder. More checking, both using Mr Google and the back of the pack reveals this is a sesame-based Halva – popular in much of the Middle East and obviously in a few other places as well – such as Poland.
Because the labelling is all Polish, apart from a small amount of English, I’d guess this is made for the domestic Polish market. The sticker indicates that it’s a special import so availability might be a difficult one.
I’m pretty sure I’ve tried Halva before, but I don’t know where or when. So this was a bit of a novelty, and opening the pack revealed even more of a novelty than I’d been expecting:
It’s close to white. Where is the chocolate? The Kakao?
Well, it is there. By looking very carefully you can see it in a few very thin layers, as though it’s been sandwiched in there. Then the pack tells more of the story: the cocoa content is a mere 0.6%: so little you can barely tell its there. Being the ingredients freak I am, the other interesting things are that sesame content is 48%, then comes sugar. And wow, can you ever tell about the sugar when you try it. The first impression is sweetness. I really struggled to detect anything chocolaty at all.
The texture is both powdery and sticky at the same time – which is very unusual, and until now something I considered impossible. Not unpleasant, just unusual. The rest of the family were fairly noncommittal about this one, but in spite of the huge sweetness and barely detectable chocolatiness, I quite liked it.
Not something for every day, but an interesting and curious change.
