The area of the city I live and work in has a large Italian population that emigrated out from the 1950s onwards, and we South Australians are eternally grateful for their contribution to our culture and community. The supermarkets’ delicatessens are therefore fully stocked with the most delicious salamis, proscuitto, olives and pastas. However, on the sweet side of things, Italy is only half-heartedly represented in our shops with stale-ish sponge fingers for tiramisu chefs and dry hazelnut biscotti for dunking in cups of coffee.
Therefore I was mildly excited to see this Italian brand of chocolate in the supermarket near my work. Bianco Cuore, Al Latte. In English, the flavour is translated as ‘Milk Chocolate with a cereal filling.’ Not quite so appetizing perhaps, but my assumption was that it would be a rice crispie or biscuit type of inside, and seeing as it was lunchtime and I was hungry, I was very much looking forward to testing it for you, dear readers.
Upon opening the block, the obvious signs of oil smears on the foil was disconcerting, and it was with a sinking heart that I read on the back that ‘vegetable compound’ was in the list of ingredients. Damn. Still, I pressed on: after all, it was chocolate, it was new to my taste buds and I’d had to shove an elderly Italian Nonna out of the way to get it. (Luckily she wasn’t quite five foot tall compared to my five foot seven and it was on the highest shelf, so it was an easy victory).
Well, my haste and lack of good manners paid me back in full. This chocolate was gut-wrenchingly, soul-suckingly awful. Overly oily and sicker-than-sickly sweet with a very strong taste of condensed milk, it has been the only chocolate (apart from anything labeled ‘compounded’) that I struggled to not hawk back up onto my desk.
The nightmare of receiving a sugarless carob Easter egg during my mother’s health-nut days in the eighties were a pleasant memory compared to this shocker masquerading as imported, quality chocolate. The so-called ‘cereal filling’ had neither crunch nor identifiable flavours. It resembled a form of cream long past it’s use-by-date with an unnatural, somewhat disconcerting additional tang included.
Thoroughly depressed, I broke the remaining block into squares and tried passing it out during our team meeting in the afternoon. All present eyed the chocolate with suspicion: Why on earth was MillyMoo sharing chocolate around when she normally inhaled it with the wrapping still on? Despite their misgivings, the lure of free chocolate won them over, and all reached for a square.
The looks on their faces were priceless. Helen went grey; Catherine ran into the kitchen to spit it out and Jude remarked that, “This serves me right for ignoring my high cholesterol restrictions.” The others ate it politely, the agony clearly etched on their faces.
It was unanimous – Bianco is bad, bad bad!
At last I have managed to track another of the elusive bars in Lindt’s Petits Desserts series. These bars seem to be like rare jewels – I have located one in Holland, one in Belgium, and now this one in London. If you’ve read the reviews of the Crème Brûlée, Tiramisu and Dark Truffe Cake, you’ll know that I was more than a little excited when I came across this bar. I wasn’t quite dancing with excitement, but it was close!
So, Lemon Meringue Pie wrapped in milk chocolate – can they pull it off? Silly question, really.
The chcolate is (of course) that wonderfully smooth Lindt milk chocolate we know and love, but it’s the filling in these bars that makes it all worthwhile. In this case, a wonderfully tart lemon cream filling with tiny little fragments of biscuit and meringue floating around in it. Once again, the Lindt chocolate wizards have managed to create a creamy filling which accurately recreates a classic dessert in a Lindt style. The creamy filling has just the right amount of lemony sharpness. and once again they have managed to find a way of ensuring that every mouthful contains an evenly distributed amount of meringue and biscuit.
Eating a square of this is a delight to the tastebuds – just like popping a square of chocolate in with a sliver of Lemon Meringue Pie.
Of course, as it was bought in the UK and not Europe it was horribly expensive, but luxury comes at a premium, and this bar sits well with the rest of the Petits Desserts range. Still not my overall favourite of the four I have tried (that honour still goes to the Crème Brûlée bar) but this is a great example of Lindt’s creativity and ability to create a fantastic eating experience. Highly recommended.
I’ve been having a hard time finding new and interesting chocolatey Halloween ideas this year. My usual research methods weren’t turning up many ideas that we didn’t cover last year.
But then I just started adding “…cake” to lots of Halloween related Google searches and came up with this.
Of course I should have known that somebody would have made a Zombie Cake – and documented the process in detail. This is the Internet!
Isn’t it just beautiful?
If you do make one of these – or something equally scary, do let us know. We’d love to see what you come up with!
Despite the recent truffle kerfuffle, we like Hotel Chocolat. Not only do they make some of the finest cocoa products known to mankind, but they like to send them to us here at Chocablog so we can tell you just how good they really are.
Liquid Chocolat is the name of Hotel Chocolat’s new drinking chocolate. It comes packaged in a plastic bottle with a snazzy looking front label with gold highlights (matching the lid) which not only tone in very well with the brown hues of the contents but also give the whole thing that touch of ‘posh’.
Now when I was but a mere slip of a lad, one of life’s great pleasures was a 10p cup of hot chocolate from the machine at the swimming baths on a Saturday afternoon. These days I reckon the same beverage wouldn’t be as welcome. Indeed, I rarely partake of a cup of drinking chocolate these days, as I find the added sugar makes the whole thing too sickly, so when I saw that this stuff promises to be ‘not too sweet’ my curiosity was well and truly aroused.
Unscrewing the lid and removing the seal revealed the contents – different coloured flakes of pure chocolate which gave off a wonderful cocoa aroma. Definitely not your average choccy drink.
The ‘recipe’ is hidden under the back label, which peels away to tell you how to get the best from your purchase (or sample, as the case may be). I’m not sure about this idea, because unless you’re very careful to replace the label you’re likely to lose half of the instructions. having said that, making cocoa is not rocket science. There’s also a link to a web page which offers an interesting variety of alternative uses for this stuff, from chocolate soup (?) to chocolate paint (kinky!) and winter warmers (rum, whisky, brandy choc).
So, down to business. Five (yes, five) spoonfuls of choccy flakes were added to a mugful of milk in a saucepan and the whole lot was gently brought to the boil, then allowed to simmer for a minute while I whisked it. It wasn’t too long before the milk turned a satisfyingly chocolately brown and the smells of cooking cocoa wafted skywards. It smells delicious.
As it was my first taste I decided against adding any alcohol (tempting as it was) so as soon as my minute was up, I turned it out into my mug and gave it a stir. The first taste confirmed that Hotel Chocolat were (of course) correct. It isn’t that sweet at all. Instead what you get is a subtle yet rich chocolate taste without any of the cloyingly sweet aftertastes other drinking chocolates can have. I’m now looking forward to trying out some of the variations suggested on the HC web site.
As you’d expect, this stuff isn’t cheap. Hotel Chocolat produces premium quality goods, and as with all good things there’s a price to pay. Having said that, it is exceptional. A great treat for yourself or for your chocolate-addicted loved ones.
