Just a quick reminder that our Christmas Competition to win 1Kg of Cadbury Dairy Milk closes on Friday, so if you’ve not entered yet you’ve only got 3 days!
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Good luck!
I found these interesting looking chocolates sat on the shelf directly opposite the cash registers at John Lewis, and had to make them mine. Yeah, I fell for that old trick again.
In my defence, they are particularly interesting looking chocolates. I actually had to double check to make sure they were edible, and not some unusual Christmas decoration / squirrel food combo.
As it turns out, these are milk and white chocolates, coloured and decorated to look like pine cones, acorns and other autumnal tree fallage. Clever.
There’s only nine chocolates in the box, but they are very big, and all have a thick, nutty, praline filling.
Unfortunately, they are way, way too sweet, have a funny smell when you open the box (as though they really had been made from random things that had fallen off trees), and the label on the back says “Alergens: Milk, Gluten, Nuts, Soya” in unnecessarily large letters. Helpful maybe, but not particularly inspiring.
All of which is a little bit of a shame, because they look so good. Had they not been quite so sweet, I would have been tempted to buy a few boxes and use them as edible Christmas decorations.
Oh well… I guess I’ll have to go chocolate shopping again…
“And God said, ‘Let there be Lindt’;
And there was Lindt.
And God saw that the Lindt was good.”
(And on the 7th day, God just stayed in bed and stuffed his face with chocolate.)
It’s been some time since I’ve been as excited by chocolate as when I first saw this box, sparkling on the shelf in John Lewis. A simple blue box with slightly metallic finish, embossed in gold with the words “Lindt” and “Precious”.
“Delicious assorted filled chocolates with stunning gold dust, pearl and diamond effects.
Someone in a marketing department, somewhere, had clearly put a lot of thought into how to appeal to my secret chocolate senses. I simply had to have this.
I’m such a girl sometimes.
For a split second, I contemplated giving this box as a Christmas gift. But then I wouldn’t be able to review it. And more to the point, I wouldn’t be able to eat it all myself. So, with some anticipation, I opened the box.
I was not disappointed…
There are 20 chocolates inside (4 each of 5 varieties), and they all sparkled like jewels. And I’m happy to report, they taste as good as they look.
I was slightly surprised how similar all the chocolates are. They’re all milk chocolates with variations of a soft, truffle style filling. I was initially disappointed that there weren’t more exotic tastes here, but then it hit me. Lindt want this box to appeal to everyone, so they’re not taking chances with unusual flavour combinations here.
The Precious Collection may be chocolate bling, but as bling goes, it’s quite tasteful. And more to the point, it’s utterly, utterly delicious. It’s sparkly chocolate heaven.
If you give a box of these to a loved one this Christmas, you can’t go wrong. Unless, of course, you’ve “accidentally” eaten them all beforehand. But be warned; the heartbreak of a loved one receiving and empty box of these would almost certainly count as a mitigating circumstance when said loved one stabs you through the heart.
Having recently reviewed (and been rather taken with) Hotel Chocolat’s rather posh Liquid Chocolat, when I spotted this on offer in a Tesco’s I thought to myself “What the heck. It’s winter. Let’s review some more posh drinking chocolate.” As the nights draw in and the temperature drops, I’m sure there are many of you out there who look forward to a big mug of steaming hot cocoa before bedtime, so I think it only fitting that I should check out some of the alternatives to that purple tin that lives in your kitchen cupboard.
For obvious reasons, the label caught my eye immediately. Who wouldn’t fancy 100% pure Belgian chocolate, especially if it came with a hefty dose of Pure Indulgence?
A quick glance at the company’s web site tells me that their drinking chocolate is widely available throughout the UK and in Europe, the USA and Australia. as well as a handful of other places. All good news – something you should all be able to get hold of. They also tell us that this stuff is made from pure Belgian chocolate – no added sugars, trans fats or other additives.
The contents of the tin seemed to bear this out – a bag of chocolate pellets, not powder, and with a cocoa content of just under 44%. However, a quick read of the other contents revealed that the sugar content of this product is 13.8g per 25g. That’s over 50% sugar!
I followed the instructions on the tin and made up a mug of this stuff, using 4 rather than 5 teaspoons of the pellets. I added hot milk to the pellets and stirred them into a paste, watching the milk turn all chocolatey (oops, sorry, wrong product) and having a good sniff of it as it melted. It did smell rather good, and I was looking forward to my first mouthful.
Then came the disappointment – this stuff is absolutely LOADED with sugar. As I sipped at the drink, all of the subtle cocoa flavours that began to spread across my tongue were completely stomped on by an overpowering sickly sweetness. If I’d been ten years old I’d probably have loved it, but if I had a ten year old, there’s no way I’d offer this to it as a bedtime drink – you’d have to strap the little blighter to the bed after this kind of sugar rush!
I can’t help feeling that this is an avoidable error. Surely all that is needed is for Drink Dark Choc to drastically reduce the amount of sugar in their chocolate and to add a simple “Add sugar to taste” at the end of the recipe instructions? Instead, what should be an ‘adult’ chocolate drink comes out tasting like a cheap confection, and one so sweet that I suspect the majority of purchases have been one offs, and that’s probably why it was going cheap when I found it. I can’t help but think that if this product is going to succeed with it’s target consumers (i.e. adults) then that sugar level is going to have to drop dramatically.
It my be cheaper than Liquid Chocolat, but I found it nowhere near as appealing.