This is the ‘cream of the crop’ from the Etruscan Chocohotel’s Chocostore. At €8, a definite luxury purchase, and consequently something I had high hopes for, especially as I was very curious about the combination of 60% dark chocolate and coriander.
Unlike most of the products we buy today, this bar has very little to say about quantities and nutritional values.
It contains chocolate, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, GM-free soy lecithin, and natural vanilla. The packaging is also a little unusual, being a sort of silvered ‘bag’ which expands when cut open.
The deBondt web site is of little help, as it appears to be under development, so I have nothing to report on other products which may be available.
Anyway, down to the crucial part – what does chocolate taste like when it’s mixed with coriander? I’m assuming that coriander leaf was used in the process, as the wrapper suggests the presence of greenery, but I could be wrong.
On opening the packet and having that first big sniff, I was delighted to get a nose full of dark cocoa aromas. The chocolate itself is dark, and as soon as it hits your tongue you get a lovely subtle hit of cocoa flavours, followed almost immediately by a sweeter floral note, which must be the coriander.
There are tiny particles of something crunchy in the bar as it melts, so I must assume that coriander seed is used, and that these tiny bits are in fact the result of the seeds being milled for blending. The chocolate is quite bittersweet, and incredibly moreish. The combination of flavours is really something else, the sweet floral notes of the coriander blending wonderfully with the darker cocoa tastes to produce a quite unique taste. I love this chocolate!
Having tasted this bar, I will certainly be keeping an eye out for both de Bondt products and any other bars I can find with coriander in them. Highly recommended (even if it is a ridiculous price to pay for 100g of chocolate!)
When I was younger (and ate a lot more milk chocolate) I remember taking a trip to Scandanavia and seeing Dime (as we were still calling them) Balls on sale. I used to enjoy the occasional Dime Bar (whenever I was in the mood for picking lumps of toffee out of my back teeth) and so naturally I bought a bag or two home. That was quite a while ago, and I never did see them on sale in the UK – until I visited IKEA.
Yes, they’re selling Daim (as we now refer to them, being good Europeans) Balls (or ‘bits’, as they’re not really spherical at all) in the food shop, so for the sake of a little nostalgia and to see if I still liked them, I bought a bag. (Well, two, because I might have REALLY liked them , and IKEA is a fair old way from Chez Michalak.)
So, was my curiosity rewarded? There are two very obvious methods to consuming these little fellers. One, throw a handful in and chew them up. Two, slowly suck all the chocolate from each piece, leaving a collection of little toffee pebbles in your mouth, then chew them up (producing the ‘lumps in the teeth’ effect described earlier) .
Being something of a creature of habit, I found myself doing the ‘suck and chew’. The chocolate is the same as Marabou’s Milk Bar– creamy, sweet, not unpleasant – so once that was gone, I was left with a collection of VERY sweet toffee and almond bits in my mouth, and yes, they still attach themselves to your back teeth like barnacles to the underside of an ocean liner, leaving you with the option of prising them away manually or savouring the slow release of their flavour as they dissolve over an hour or so.
I prefer the ‘bits’ concept to the Daim Bar, primarily because I don’t think I could cope with the amount of sugar in a Daim Bar all in one go! Having the option to eat a few pieces and then re-seal the bag is far more to my liking. Good enough if you want to feel like a kid again.
Oh, and they’re great for decorating a cake with too.
This is another first for yours truly – a chocolate made with sheep’s milk and containing 10% hemp seed.
ChocoLina is an Austrian company offering chocolates made from sheep and goat milk, the goat’s milk products seemingly branded ChocoLisa.
The bar contains only 100% sheep’s milk , raw cane sugar, cocoa beans (36%) and Bourbon vanilla. It contains no soy lecithin or other emulsifiers, and is guaranteed GMO and artificial ingredient free. The company’s website, while a little patchy in the English version, does extol the virtues of non-dairy products, and presents a lot of evidence to suggest that the alternatives it offers are much healthier than chocolate containing cow’s milk.
The crucial point is, of course, does the stuff actually taste any good?
As you can see from the photo, it certainly looks like chocolate. It smells like chocolate, and has a lovely hemp seed aroma (and cute little lambs stamped into the bar). It’s also not cheap – this bar was €4.50 – so as with most ‘healthier’ niche products, the consumer pays a premium.
So what does it taste like, I hear you cry?
Well, it’s actually rather sweet (total carbs 42.6 %, of which 37.9% is sugar) with a very smooth consistency. The fact that it’s made with sheep’s milk gives it a slightly more ‘yoghurty’ flavour than a dairy chocolate and the hemp seed adds a nutty element. Different, but not so different that it would deter me from trying more of their products.
The website hints at darker bars but this was the only sheep’s milk bar I was able to find.
As a milk chocolate bar, it is quite palatable, but I would be interested to see how sheep’s milk would pair up with a higher cocoa content. As for goat’s milk chocolate, well, I’d be intrigued to see how they manage to get it to taste chocolatey!
Daim is a little bar (28g) with a long history. It was developed in the 1950s by Marabou who were acquired by Kraft in 1993. The bar is now Kraft branded, although it is still made in Sweden.
Until a couple of years ago, it was known as ‘Dime’ here in the UK. I’m not entirely sure why – if there’s one thing that annoys me it’s when the same products get different names in different countries for no apparent reason. I guess they figured we were just too stupid to be able to pronounce ‘Daim’ until 2005.
The bar itself is simply a thin, flat layer of hard, crunchy caramel covered in milk chocolate.
It’s the taste and texture of the caramel that makes Daim a bit different from other bars though. It’s very hard and crunchy – almost like a hard toffee – and has tiny flakes of almond embedded in it.
The taste is very distinctive. It has a slightly burnt, smokey flavour. If you’ve ever made caramel yourself and left it cooking a little too long, you’ll know the sugar quickly starts to burn. Daim tastes like the caramel is sugar has just started to burn, but just enough to give it a bit of flavour.
The chocolate itself is a fairly standard milk chocolate. It’s nice enough, but nothing special. It tends to melt away quite quickly anyway, leaving you with a mouth full of the crunchy caramel. You then have to decide if you’re just going to slowly suck on the caramel or risk breaking your teeth by biting into it. Think of it as a kind of dental Russian Roulette… only Swedish… with chocolate.
Personally, I love Daim bars, but they are very sweet. I’m not sure I’d want a bigger bar than this, and even with a 28g bar, I find myself breaking small chunks off and making it last all day.
If you’ve never had a Daim, I’d recommend trying one. I think they may be an acquired taste, but for an occasional treat or a quick sugar hit, you can’t beat it.
