A friend gifted me with this pretty, knowing my adoration for chocolate. I don’t think I had ever had it before, so the first thing I noticed was the pink. I can’t help but admire what a gentle, yet royal shade it is.
I’ll admit, I have a nostalgic fondness for Ghirardelli. I’m not sure that they ever come up with any terribly new and exciting ieas, but they always seem safe and nice. This chocolate has one of those sweet/dark smells. The raspberry filling is very sweet, but is tempered by the chocolate. It has a slight milky creaminess reminiscent of a cherry cordial.
Oftentimes, so much sweetness turns out to be a bad thing. But here, it’s fine. Plus, Ghirardelli doesn’t call it by ridiculous, off-the-mark names, and I appreciate that. It’s simply a nice little raspberry square to treat yourself with.
BoingBoing TV have posted the third and final part of their tour of the TCHO chocolate factory in San Fancisco. Not so much a tour this time, more of a taste test…
As with part one and part two, it’s definitely worth a few minutes of any chocolate lover’s time!
The re-launched Old Gold range of Cadbury dark chocolate varieties is kicking some serious chocolate butt in the supermarket world and deservedly so. I was particularly happy to see that they have also made an Old Gold peppermint block, because their stock-standard Dairy Milk Peppermint (with a fluoro snot green coloured filling) is just excruciatingly awful.
This chocolate cousin, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of awful. Awesome, in fact. This isn’t because Cadbury are using their 70% dark chocolate because they’re using their 45% standard Old Gold dark stuff, but because it matches up with the peppermint filling extremely well.
Even Love Chunks, who isn’t as fond as peppermint and chocolate as I am, enjoyed this. The peppermint is stronger in flavour than the green fluoro snot encased in the dairy milk block, so it cuts through the dark and remains as a refreshing after taste long after the chocolate has melted and disappeared. As such, I wouldn’t recommend eating this during the day – it is instead designed to have late in the evening after a hearty meal and should not be eaten with a glass of wine unless you actually prefer not having any tooth enamel left.
If you’re watching your fat intake (as I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing anything about it other than watching it), then you may be slightly pleased to find out that this block contains 20.7 grams of fat per 100 grams. Let’s not go into the sugar content but just reassure ourselves that the peppermint filling is taking up the space that is normally reserved for the fat in chocolate and yet it still tastes delicious. Oh OK, if you’re still anal-retentively concerned about the sugar, then here’s the grim fact – it constitutes a whopping 59% of the total ingredients.
Damn. Oh well, if you’re still determined to eat a 100g of this stuff (and yes, of course I did), you may be pleased to discover that you have also eaten 3 whole grams of protein. Must be from all those milk solids and egg white.
This is the other item I bought from the makers of the lovely Pear & Chocolate jam I found in Spain a while back.
Had my Spanish been up to scratch, I would have known that ‘crackania’ are almonds, and ‘coco’ referred to the coconut that they had been rolled in after being coated in chocolate, but as it was I liked the enigmatic styling of ‘The Pot’ and picked ‘crackania al coco’ because I really wasn’t sure what awaited me once I popped the lid off.
As it turned out, it was this – a collection of white chocolate coated almonds rolled in coconut shavings (with a nice little pile of coconut in the bottom of the tin). A somewhat unusual method of packaging, but I already knew that Chocolat Factory were a little strange anyway.
My initial reaction was one of mild disappointment – more bland white chocolate, boorrrrrinnng. However, I was in for a shock. The addition of coconut and a little extra ‘aromas’ and ‘epices’ meant that what could have been quite run of the mill ended up being a very pleasant surprise indeed. The combination of the coconut and almond worked remarkably well with the white chocolate, and I detected a hint of salt in there to balance what might have ended up being yet more overly sweet white chocolate. The almonds were crisp and seemed to have been lightly caramelised so that once the white chocolate/coconut exterior had gone, I was left with a completely different tasting caramel/almond complex to taste, and it was definitely a case of these chocs saving the best for last.
Based on my (thus far) limited experience of Chocolat Factory products, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ll be trying to track more of their products down when I next visit Spain. Which is in September, so hopefully I’ll have time to fill a small sack with more of their stuff. I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye out for anything made by Chocolat Factory.
They seem to be yet another fresh, young company with a flair for producing slightly unusual, mildly humorous products.
