Now that we’ve had the recent Cocoa Farm query cleared up, let’s get on to more interesting and important matters, such as their new Shiraz chocolate wine barrels.
Cocoa Farm is rapidly becoming known as THE chocolatier in Australia who actively pair up and celebrate one of our proudest products – no, not Hugh Jackman – our wines – and clever wineries and cellars now stock up their products as well as supermarkets and gourmet stores.
These individually-wrapped chocolates are actually a blend of milk and dark chocolate with 36% cocoa content, so there’s still enough to keep the Dark Side Dwellers interested and it shouldn’t scare off any milk chocolate fans either. Cocoa Farm’s own description of these ten gram barrels is pretty well perfectly written to attract any proud red-wine loving chocaholic worth their salt (or cocoa content):
“Sun ripened vine fruit bathed in a bold peppery Australian shiraz then combined with our rich blend of Cocoa Farm chocolate and crafted into a wine barrel shape to make them feel at home.” Very cute and very compelling…
The ingredients are fairly standard for the actual chocolate part, although, being a more milky chocolate there is more sugar than cocoa butter. What impresses me more is that they’ve added real Australian shiraz to the mix as well as grape seed extract, grape skin extract, natural vanilla and shiraz wine-infused currants. Nothing scary here.
How do they taste? Delicious. As soon as the wrappings were off I could smell the distinct red wine whiff of Shiraz and to my surprise the sweet and milky-ish chocolate was an excellent pairing for the booze-blown currants and the fruit-and-wine effect might be lost if it was drowned in a darker and bitterer chocolate. (I can’t believe I just wrote that!)
However, if anyone’s wishing to get all silly (known as ‘tired and emotional’ here in Australia) on them, you’d have to eat more than even I could manage, because there’s only 0.85% alcohol per 100 grams. Could be worth a try though.
Gingerbread cookies always seem to be a bit Christmassy to me than mint flavored candy canes. They are equally “holiday”, but mint itself is around all year. For me, gingerbread only comes in once a year.
Quite naturally then, I found these seasonal Starbucks truffles to be just the thing for December. The packaging is similar to the usual Starbucks packs, with solid colors on the box. The warm, tangy smell made me worry that they would taste just like the Chai Truffles, but they’re definately their own.
The ginger taste is dominant, giving way to the sweetness of the milk chocolate, which is the same one used before. Cinnamon lingers on as the aftertaste. Much too sweet and lovingly Christmas-like for my original chai-comparison. It wasn’t until I looked back at the box that I remembered the espresso. Its flavor is in there, but it sometimes gets more or less covered up by all the others.
Not all frilly like some holiday offerings, yet somehow I appreciate that here. It lets you buy something sophisticated-looking, not saying I necessarily by frills, that still tastes a little different.
Back in December I brought the chaps home from cricket, and picked up a screw through a back tyre of the car. Of course we didn’t find this until Saturday afternoon when leaving out for a Christmas function: “What’s that strange click-click-click noise?”
After changing to the spare wheel, on Sunday we gave the wheel that I’d removed a jolly good cleaning, because it was filthy with road grime and this is supposed to be bad for alloy wheels. Cleaning up a wheel covered in grime has only one outcome: you get covered in it as well.
ANYHOW all this led us to a trip to the local super-hyper-mega-mart discount department store to try and buy a brush made for cleaning wheels. They do exist. We didn’t find one though. But as happy circumstance would have it a detour via the chocolate aisle turned up something new: Kinnerton Luxury Dark Chocolate. It claims to be “Delicious for cakes and desserts” which seems sacrilegious to me. What’s wrong with just plain eating it?
Also, the label proudly proclaims it to be free of nuts, dairy, gluten and eggs. This then, is one for those who have various food allergies and who can’t eat almost all other products, because most plain chocolate is processed on equipment that also processes chocolate with nuts, eggs, and so on.
Interesting, this is an import from England – which means it should be available in the UK. I think I vaguely recall seeing it in supermarkets there.
A check on the back (yes, I really am an ingredients freak) shows that it’s about 50% cocoa solids. And no milk? How do they do it? Unlike many of the under 70% chocolates, this is a nice satisfying dark colour, and breaks with that nice satisfying “crack” when you snap a piece off.
So, wozzit like then? Satisfying! Actually, very nice. Not too sweet, not too bitter. Melts slowly. This compares very favourably with other good dark chocolates. I still don’t get the “cakes and desserts” thing. Perhaps they mean it to be used as a cooking chocolate, but really, that would be a waste. I’ve gone through half a block since opening the pack and keep coming back for more, and more, and more. It’s gooooooood.
Highly recommended, and for those with food allergies who might otherwise not eat chocolate, this one seems well worth considering. Check your allergy first and if the things NOT in it are your trouble, then give this a go.
Now, where did I leave that block?
Fazer are (perhaps) the best known Finnish chocolate company. In my pre-Chocablog days I have bought Fazer chocolate while in Finland, but I have never seen these liqueurs before. I picked these up in a TK Maxx, of all places – further proof that chocolate is EVERYWHERE.
These particular chocolates have quite a tasty dark chocolate outer coating, but alas – it conceals the ubiquitous sugar shell, so as soon as the shell breaks and releases the cranberry vodka (which you will either love or hate) and the vodka is gone, you’re left with a mouthful of sugar. I’m sure some people are perfectly happy with this arrangement, but it’s not to my personal taste. I much preferred my Eastern European Vodka Fig chocolates, mainly because they were sugar free.
I’m still not 100% convinced about vodka and chocolate either. Something about combining the two strikes me as a little unnecessary, taking away from both rather than producing something new and harmonious. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would disagree, but that’s the beauty of humankind, isn’t it?
