Can I love these Theo Chocolate people even more? This is a fantastic range of flavors. It doesn’t seem to get too in depth about the mystic flavors of the cacao bean; it just tastes amazing.
I was able to notice the milk chocolate’s pleasing color, rather dark, more this time with the absence of the hazelnut bits. The chai aroma is noticeably lighter than the Starbucks Chai Truffles. Those, though nice, were a bit of a shocker, so I thought this could be a pleasant change.
It was. The chai comes off sweet and warm, giving the already 40% milk chocolate an even darker feel. They melted together in a blessed union. And about that “melting”… I was so happy to find a slow-melting milk chocolate. I mean slow. Not all darks manage to stick around for this long, and many milks melt right when you touch them. However you prefer to eat your chocolate, this tastes just as wonderful.
Now I find myself wondering how many more Theo products I can find. Whatever the flavor, I think they’ll pull anything off. So whatever you come across, get it. It’s sure to be great.
No, that’s not the name of my Fantasy Boyfriend. Being barely able to master my mother tongue – English – I’ll come out and confess to you that I have no idea what Aus Fruchtigen Williams-Christ-Birnen actually means (“From fruity Williams Pears” — Dom), but the picture shows a pear, a lindt segment and a glass of wine on the front, so it’s all good from my point of view.
This is another block brought back from Europe by the Adventurous Ashleigh and Marvellous Marie for us to sample together. They have a relative living in Germany who said it was a very popular flavour available there, and both Ashleigh and Marie said that they saw Lindt available even at vending machines in railway stations – now that is commuter travel done right!
As with a toddler’s nappy during a long haul flight, there was a bit of leakage. Marie was concerned but I assured her that meltings, sugary whiteness or leakage was never going to deter a chocablogger with the whiff of Lindt already assailing her nostrils.
The outside was of course Lindt’s classic milk chocolate which is always creamy and a treat all on its own. However this aint no sedate and safe milky treat for the kiddies or nannas wanting to leave their dentures out and have something pleasant to gum on, no way. It may start off innocently enough with the superb milk chocolate which normally doesn’t cover anything too demanding in the taste sensation department. Not so in this case. After the chocolate had melted enough for the filling to emerge, my tongue and taste buds were treated to pear pieces lurking in a syrupy liqueur that had quite a kick to it.
Most liqueur chocolates I’ve tried are coated in dark chocolate, so this is something different and it works. The pairing of creamy and sedate with strong and aromatic produces a surprise in each mouthful. Lindt haven’t put a foot wrong yet, except that it’s not available in Australia.
I know that a three day old yoghurt has more culture than most Aussies, but I reckon we could handle some of this fancy schmancy magermilchpulver Williams-Christ-Birnen stuff – we did invent the disposable wine bladder bag after all.
No, it isn’t a typo, these really are vodka and fig pralines. Well, to be more accurate, they’re pralines that are filled with a fig-infused vodka. (I did say figs had suddenly appeared with surprising regularity, if you’ll pardon the pun)
I picked these up in Hungary, but judging from the blurb on the box they should be available in at least ten countries. Elysberg is a German manufacturer and their slightly eccentric web site is (thankfully) in English. I’m not too sure about the remark regarding sweet fruits softening alcohol so it’s pleasant “even for a sensitive woman’s tongue” mind. There’s also a veritable mine of information about the healthy properties of figs (but very little about the dangers of excessive vodka consumption) and they even include advice on how to grow your own fig tree.
The chocolates themselves come in a plastic tray, presumably to protect them in transit because – joy of joys – these alcoholic little treats have no crunchy sugar interior to keep the booze away from the chocolate. Hooray!
So what do they taste like? Definitely alcoholic for one thing. The fig vodka wastes no time in warming up your tongue, but it’s not harsh in any way (of course, I do not possess a “sensitive woman’s tongue”) and the chocolate is very soft on the palate. At 54% cocoa there’s enough dark bittersweet flavour to blend well with the initial hit of alcohol, and the finish is a pleasing combination of the two tastes. Of course the subtleties of the cocoa flavours do tend to get lost in the alcohol, but I was very happy to be eating a liqueur chocolate which didn’t contain 50% sugar by weight. These were certainly unlike anything I’ve come across before, and I was glad I picked these up.
On our recent trip to Europe (oh, how I like the sound of that, as if we do this sort of thing every few months, darlinks, rather than every 20 years) we scoured the supermarket shelves looking for a wee spot of chocky a bit out of the ordinary.
Europe varies widely – the big global brands might be omnipresent but what they offer varies from one country to another. This, and translating back to English only makes the hunt more exciting.
In Berlin we found Lindt Edelbitter Mousse Fig + Caramel. According to my sister, who lives there, the various Lindt fruity things are seasonal – depending on the availability of the fruit that goes into them. Naturally, we had to purchase a suitably impressive pile to bring home. And bring them home we did, surviving trains, plains, taxi rides, and Australian customs.
So it was with great anticipation that today, on the oldest sons 15th birthday we had a gathering of the clan and with much ceremony, opened the one of the spoils of travel – in this case the aforementioned Lindt. On first impressions, this is a nice dark 70% chocolate , well suited to a warm afternoon with a gathering of family. The dark chocolate is fine, slightly sweet, slightly bitter, and gradually, deliciously, melts. Inside this is the mousse and fig / caramel. The consensus from the gathered family was varied – yes, it’s definitely figgy. But there was something missing.
Whilst it has a presence of fig, the flavour is small and overwhelmed by the chocolate. And the caramel? Not sure where that ended up. I have a theory – anything apart from a plain chocolate needs to be consumed in one of two ways – either crunch it up fast to gather all the flavours together, or let it melt slowwwwwwly so the flavours emerge gradually, one after another.
So perhaps this is a crunching chocolate rather than a slow-melting-and-sucking chocolate? But no, the manner of the eating didn’t really make a huge difference.
If you ever walk near a fig tree during summer, you get a blast of figgy smell – something in the leaves long before the fruit becomes even remotely ready. Something that says “hey. watch and wait. great things are going to be happening here soon”. And when you have fresh figs, they have a flavour beyond compare.
I had hoped this chocolate would capture some of the smell and some of the feeling of figs and summer. We can’t blame temperature, it was a lovely day and the bar had been out in it all afternoon. All in all, the reality did not quite match the anticipation. We know Lindt can do wonderful things with chocolate. In this case, it needs something to give it a bit of an oomph, a lift.
Blame it on the figs, perhaps.
