Just a quick reminder that our late summer Hotel Chocolat competition closes tomorrow (Friday)!
If you want to be in with a chance of winning Champagne and Chocolates for your loved one, you’d better enter quickly!
We’ll announce the winner here next week. Use the links on the right to subscribe to our RSS feed if you don’t want to miss it!
Conscious Chocolate is a young company producing a raw, healthy chocolate bars that can be eaten by anyone, regardless of dietary requirements. They produce handmade bars using organically certified Fairtrade ingredients, and the handmade touch extends to the packaging – greaseproof paper, recycled foil and recycled paper outer wrappers.
Emma Jackman (for it is she who makes the chocolate) has come up with a basic recipe for her bars, and produces variants by adding a variety of nuts, seeds, fruits and essences to her base, resulting in a total of ten different bars.
Emma lists her basic ingredients are as follows;
Raw cacao, Raw Cacao Butter, Raw Coconut Oil, Raw Agave Syrup, Raw Carob (all of which are organic), Himalayan Sea Salt, Cayenne Pepper (which activates the chocolate), Raw cinnamon, Raw Vanilla, and finally love.
Having sampled the Best Ever Plain Bar, I contacted Emma and asked her if she’d like to send me some samples, which she very kindly did, so here’s bar number two – the Superfood bar. This one contains Blue-Green Algae and Maca and cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cayenne in addition to the chocolate mix.
Maca is a relative of the radish and the turnip, and grows in the Andes. It has a reputation as an aphrodisiac and (obviously) a superfood. Blue-Green Algae has been popular as a food supplement for quite a while. There are plentiful sources of information about each of these foods on the internet, should you wish to learn more. Obviously what we’re really interested in here is how it tastes.
I ‘tested’ this one out on three people. Personally I found the bar to have a slightly earthy taste which detracted from the otherwise agreeable taste of Emma’s chocolate base. However, my two co-tasters were very much in favour and were happy to polish off the bar on my behalf. Proof that taste is very much subjective.
As mentioned in my first review, this stuff is actually very good for you. Because the ingredients are raw and organic and prepared at low temperatures, the final product is rich in antioxidants and magnesium contains 300 nutritional compounds, and the sugars are 85% fructose.
I have to say that I prefer the Best Ever Plain Bar over this one, but having looked at the rest of the selection I’m very much looking forward to cracking open the next one.
Conscious is apparently also available at London’s Borough Market, by the way, so now you have two reasons to head down to London Bridge!
The first thing that hits you when you see the Bournville Deeply Dark range on the supermarket shelf is the influence of Green & Black’s. The thick paper wrapper and clean design look so much more appealing than the standard plastic/foil wrapping.
And when you get it home, you find that inside that expensive looking wrapping is a an equally appealing foil wrapper… and a rather attractive looking bar of chocolate.
Even the shape of the chunks look nicer than the standard Cadbury fare. But if you cast your mind back to April, you’ll remember I didn’t have anything particularly nice to say about Cadbury’s “standard” Bournville chocolate. So is “Deeply Dark” any better?
The answer is emphatically yes. This is real chocolate – 60% with caramelised cocoa nibs and coffee, which add both flavour and a slight crunch to the bar. The coffee taste is strong, without being overpowering, and there’s a slight sweetness from the caramelised cocoa nibs. It is in fact, rather delicious.
But yet I’m torn. You see, this clearly isn’t Bournville. For one thing, it’s made in France rather than… well, Bournville. And it’s not Green & Black’s either. There’s no mention of the country of origin on the wrapper, and it’s clearly not organic, never mind Fair Trade.
It seems this is an attempt by Cadbury to push the Bournville brand up market, without having to use the expensive ingredients of the Green & Black’s range, and I’m not altogether comfortable with that.
But none of that changes the fact that this really is a pretty tasty bar of chocolate, and at exactly £1 for this 100g bar, the price isn’t bad either.
The second Australian Homemade item I bought when I was in Holland (they’re made in Amsterdam, not Australia) and one I was very much looking forward to, as I happen to adore macadamias.
Having sampled (and thoroughly enjoyed) their Honey Snapper bar, I had high hopes for these, and I was not to be disappointed.
They are remarkably similar to the Basini chocolate almonds from LIDL which I reviewed a while ago, except of course these are macadamias – possibly the best tasting nuts on the planet.
The chocolate is smooth, not too dark, and delicious, and each nut is lightly dusted with what seems to be icing sugar.
Foolishly I only bought home one bag, and their stay in my house was all too brief. Everyone who tried one wanted one more. And then one more.
I suppose I’ll have to wait for Australian Homemade to open up shop in the UK. Or get some more work in Holland.