One of the many tempting offerings from Hotel Chocolat this Easter, the Serious Dark Fix Egg is, as one might expect, aimed at those who prefer their cocoa content in the 70th percentile. The shells (extra thick as always) are HCs 72% dark chocolate blend, and unlike the egg I tried last year, there are only six different types of chocolates inside the egg, this time packaged in little black paper bags.
The outer packaging has moved on from last year as well – a luxurious looking black box with HCs cocoa pod graphic printed onto the cardboard in a raised, shiny covering, topped off with a highlighter green card band which details the contents. Inside the box, the egg is concealed by another piece of the same lurid green card, this time with a keyhole cutout. I’m not sure what the thinking behind this was – either it’s another piece of HC humour or maybe somebody in their packaging design department is still feeling a little kinky after designing the Secrets and Desires box. Anyway, I found it a little superfluous myself.
The egg itself is cast from deliciously smooth 72% chocolate, with notes of citrus giving way to a smooth, dark cocoa flavours. Any lover of dark chocolate should treat themselves to some of this – whether it’s in the form of an egg, a slab, or some of their chocolates. It really is a wonderful thing.
Among the six different chocolates contained within the bags, you will find a quintet of ‘nutty’ pralines and chocs, each of which is a mini masterpiece. There’s a Noisette praline which has been reinforced with extra cocoa solids, giving it an amazing melt-in-the-mouth feel, and a smoothness that’s hard to believe. The Délice de Chocolat has Sicilian pistachios and Italian hazelnuts blended in a praline filling, and delivers a complex flavour combination with the pistachios providing a superb top note over the smooth, buttery praline and crisp roasted hazelnut flavours. The Trois Noisettes is perhaps the simplest of the six – three hazelnuts bound together in caramel and coated in 70% dark chocolate, but the combination of crisp, tasty hazelnuts, dark cocoa and the burnt sugar taste of the caramel make it a surprisingly complex blend. A Gianduja which promises butter-soft texture and delivers just that, and a Badgi praline topped with a single Italian Hazelnut make up the quintet, which leaves the sixth, and perhaps the most interesting treat in the egg.
The Cocoa Pod Bunny and Easter Chick chocolates give you the opportunity to sample rare single estate cocoa from Papua New Guinea, and at 72%, these two chocs pack a lot of flavour. As you pop a piece into your mouth, the initial flavour of the melting chocolate is a much lighter citrussy note than the HC house blend, melting away into a delicate, bittersweet high note with an incredibly smooth mouth feel. The final taste is light, fresh, and fragrant. Quite different from the other chocolate use in the egg and its contents.
By now we all know that Hotel Chocolat have established themselves as purveyors of some of the finest cocoa-based products in the world. What they continue to do is to come up with new and interesting blends and flavours for us to enjoy. This egg in some ways reduces the number of options for teasing the palate with a variety of flavours. Where something like the Seasons Collection gives you a wide range of tastes, blends and looks for the product, this collection of deeply dark, delicious delights is centred round the cocoa itself, and so the chocolatiers have had to be somewhat more exact in their choices of complementary flavours. Of course, they’re equal to the challenge and have created some more stunning works of art for the lovers of all things dark to enjoy.
Originally known as ‘Death by Chocolate’, Cocolat is a South Australian owned and operated company based at Balhannah in the Adelaide hills that specialises in hand made chocolates, cakes and desserts. They have two dessert cafes that I have been regularly frequenting – one at the airport (thus catering to hungry and/or homesick-but-departing South Aussie travelers) and the other in Rundle Street; hub of the Fringe comedy, theatre, busking, burlesque and juggling action. Many’s the time I’ve required a chai latte and a truffle or two after witnessing a particularly entertaining show. Judging by their packed tables well into the night, so do a lot of other midnight oil-burning chocophiles.
I will write later about their selection of cakes (such as their original ‘Death by Chocolate’ which was also my brother and sister-in-law’s fantastic wedding cake) and truffles another time: today it is their Easter fare. I bought a bag of their little Easter shapes – bunnies and chicks – because they came in white, milk and dark chocolate, and their Speckled Eggs because, well, they looked really pretty.
Unfortunately, neither the bags, the brochure on the counter or their website gives any information on cocoa content, fat or what other ingredients are in any of their chocolates or other products, so I’ll be writing this on taste and feel alone.
Even more unfortunately, I did not enjoy two thirds of the chocolate shapes. To be fair, white chocolate has never been my cup of tea and besides, it isn’t really chocolate, but I just didn’t enjoy it. The dark chocolate tasted suspiciously like the cooking chocolate that’s commonly available everywhere and is mostly used as a ‘coater’ for other stuff such as dried fruit. Out of the three, only the milk chocolate tasted nice. Yes, ‘nice’ is a very ordinary word and I guess that’s exactly what it was: just OK. Nice, not mind-blowing and certainly not worth the rather inflated price.
The speckled eggs had a coating that was thicker and harder than my poor teeth could handle. When the shell finally cracked, for a few awkward seconds it wasn’t clear if it was the coating or my own teeth that I was chewing. Sadly, this obscured the taste of the milk chocolate. It was in there somewhere, but over powered by the gobful of gravel that masqueraded as the crispy coating. Pretty to look at, but not to eat.
All is not lost, however. They have truffles to try (heaps of them) and they are particularly famous for their desserts so for the sake of good chocolate and you, dear readers, I’ll keep trying.
Another offering from Holland & Barrett’s range of ‘good things covered in chocolate’, and this time it’s cranberries.
The chocolate coating is identical to that used on the Goji/Wolf berries I reviewed at the back end of last year – 55% cocoa, shiny on the outside, slightly sweet and pretty tasty. It melts away from the cranberries fairly quickly, and mingles nicely with their slightly bittersweet flavour.
I suppose in some ways this whole nutritious fruit/naughty chocolate thing is similar to Kath’s comment on her chocolate bunny review. Of course, the goodness of the cranberries doesn’t cancel out the naughty chocolate, but the berries are good for you in a number of ways and will provide a slower energy release than just a mouthful of chocolate might. I was expecting the cranberries to offer less than they do in the taste department but they are actually quite sweet once chewed or a little while.
I’ve always enjoyed dried fruit, and tend to carry some with me when I’m travelling or working late, as it’s a great pick me up. Chocolate coated fruit is (of course) an alternative way of getting that energy with the added bonus of a good dollop of chocolate into the bargain.
If you like your fruit (I’m assuming that readers of this blog like their chocolate) then it’s worth checking your local Holland & Barrett for some of these. My own personal preference is for the slightly sweeter (and much chewier) Goji berries (despite the fact that they’re erroneously labelled as ‘Tibetan’) but I’d definitely buy these again just for the variety.
I’ve lost count of the number of times the postman has knocked on my door with packages from Hotel Chocolat. But this time my reaction was more “Oh.” than “Oooooh!” The box was much smaller than I had been expecting…
After ripping open carefully opening the outer packaging, I was greeted with this:
A rather nice black box with embossed decorations on the lid and a tasteful red band holding it together. The box is only slightly larger than the Green & Black’s egg I reviewed last week, but at 490g, this egg weighs nearly four and a half times as much. All the good stuff must be packed inside.
Opening the lid, you’re greeted with a simple “menu” of the chocolates inside and a red insert, which for some reason is in the shape of a keyhole. I imagine this is to give the impression of “spying” through the keyhole to the chocolates inside, but it doesn’t quite work for me.
And then came the first time I’ve been disappointed by a Hotel Chocolat product:
Removing the egg from the box, you’re left with two halves, individually wrapped with a bag of chocolates in each half. Except when I say “wrapped”, I mean half covered in (what looks like) Bacofoil. The chocolates inside are in a fairly flimsy paper bag and appear to have been forced inside the egg in order to get them to fit.
There’s no subtlety here. It looks to be a case of forcing as much chocolate as possible into the smallest possible box. Now normally I wouldn’t think twice about this kind of packaging, but it’s simply not up to the high standards Hotel Chocolat have set themselves. Whether or not this is a one off, or if it’s repeated on the other eggs in this year’s range, I have no way of knowing.
Anyway, after finally removing the rest of the wrapping, you’re left with two egg halves and two identical bags of chocolates. The chocs inside the eggs may be the same, but the actual egg halves are very different.
One half is the “Rocky Road” – thick milk chocolate with chunks of cookie and puffed rice embedded into it. The other is thick milk chocolate covered in a layer of Hotel Chocolate’s rather divine caramel chocolate. I really like this idea – and the chocolate is so thick, I can guarantee it’s going to last a while. In fact, it’s so thick, I had a bit of an issue breaking the shells into bite-sized pieces and ended up smashing them onto the kitchen counter.
Once you do get into the shells though, they are really tasty. I adore the caramel chocolate, so that would have to be my favourite, although I think I would have preferred it if it were solid, rather than a thin layer on top of ordinary milk chocolate. The “rocky” layer is of equal quality, but so far I’m finding it hard to eat as it breaks into such irregular shapes with unpredictable hard and crunchy bits.
Now we get to the small bags of chocolates inside. Each bag contains “Cocoa Crisp”, “Caramel Crunch Praline”, “Crispy Pecan Praline”, “Macadamia Turtles”, “Pod Bunny”, “Caramel Canapés” and “Easter Chick”. They’re all nice enough – they’re just a little…. boring.
They’ve obviously tried to take the crunchy and caramelly theme over to the actual chocolates, but I found them slightly boring – there just isn’t enough variety of taste. No unexpected fruitiness or alcohol hit. No surprises. And worst of all, the chocolates in one bag had been squashed so tightly into the egg shell that they’d fused together.
Now make no mistake, all the chocolate here is delicious and of the highest quality. But it just doesn’t quite have the same level of attention to detail as I’m used to from Hotel Chocolat. I would still be happy to receive this as a gift, but it just didn’t excite me in the way Hotel Chocolat products usually do.
