Continuing the series of ‘chocolate I bought while abroad’, may I present a little something from Germany.
Made by Feodora, this bar has 75% cocoa bitter dark chocolate blended with Lime oil. Obviously, we’re all familiar with Orange and chocolate, but I’ve never seen other citrus fruits included in chocolate bars. Nor have I ever seen Feodora chocolate before, so it was something I was very much looking forward to trying.
As you can see from the photo, it fulfills the ‘posh choc’ criteria by being divided into large, thin squares with the manufacturer’s logo stamped into the chocolate. As soon as you get close to this bar, you catch a whiff of lime, something I have always liked (I remember monstering my way through many a quarter pound of chocolate limes as a boy).
The chocolate itself is definitely bitterweet. It’s dark cocoa rich flavour is given a delightful sharp extra note by the inclusion of the lime, which floods your mouth as the chocolate melts away, leaving a lingering citrus tang on the palate. For me, an unusual and very welcome taste experience – a real treat. I would recommend this as a superb after dinner nibble, but not one to overdo. A couple of squares was quite enough for me for one sitting, as it is very rich and strong in taste.
This was by no means the most expensive bar I bought while away, and I’m surprised that there’s nothing like it available from UK manufacturers. Are our chocolate companies so loathe to try new flavours that we are condemned to ‘dark, milk or white’ from the big companies? All I can say is thank goodness for the ‘new breed’ of English chocolatiers, whose rising popularity must surely be related to the dearth of any decent product from the big boys.
Having enjoyed pitting two Dark chocolate and ginger bars against each other, I was very pleased to see that these two were on offer at my local supermarket. In the interests of research (and to save Chocablog having to pay twice) may I present our contenders?
In the Dark Brown corner:
Côte D’Or Spécialités Truffé Noir
and in the Light Brown corner:
Côte D’Or Spécialités Truffé Milk.
Côte D’Or (part of the Kraft Empire) is, allegedly, Belgium’s favourite chocolate, and the packages (which are almost identical) make sure the consumer knows that they’re serious about their choccy, promising ‘rich, indulgent flavours, seductive aromas and smooth, refined textures’.
Interestingly enough, there is only a 10% cocoa content difference between the milk and the dark version of these bars. The milk bar has 34% cocoa, the Dark 44%.
Of course, both bars are made in exactly the same shape, divided laterally into long fingers with ample ‘snapping space’ between each stick of filled chocolate, which are of course embossed with the Côte D’Or name.
So which one wins the taste test?
First of all I tried a piece of the Milk Bar. It is very smooth indeed, creamy and light and with a delightful sweetness to the filling that makes it extremely moreish in spite of its richness. The truffle filling melted away and left me wanting more almost immediately. very tasty.
So it was with great delight that I took a bite of the Dark bar, but this time I’m afraid the Dark Side didn’t do it for me. The chocolate does have that bitter tang, but the filling didn’t really do anything special to compliment the chocolate flavour, it just kind of sat there with the chocolate. I put this down to a lack of extra sweetness in the filling, which seemed to give the Milk Bar that little extra lift. The Dark bar is tasty, don’t get me wrong, but in this situation I found myself thinking that the Milk bar just had the more interesting flavour.
These bars were on sale in my local Sainsbury – go grab a couple for yourself and see what you think.
What happens when you take the constituent parts of a Mars Bar and Mars Delight, squish them up into little balls and coat them in chocolate? Well, you get Mars Planets, that’s what.
Planets are little balls of soft malt nougat, caramel and wafer covered in milk chocolate. Nothing more, nothing less.
They taste exactly as you’d expect. The nougat one taste like Mars Bar nougat… the caramel one tastes like Mars Bar caramel and the wafer one taste like Mars Delight wafer.
That’s really all there is to them.. and to be honest, while they’re not offensive in any way, they’re just a bit boring. The only way to make them interesting is to eat the whole pack in one go.
I think Mars may have missed a trick here. You see, they also make Revels – a very similar concept – chocolate balls with different centres all mixed up in a bag. Planets are just a little dull on their own, but they’d all make interesting additions to Revels. Maybe as a special addition pack (I can’t see Mars Planets lasting long anyway).
In the mean time, the best way to eat Planets is probably to buy them with a bag of Revels and mix them all up together. That way you’ll get some real variety – although if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably still just stuff them all into your mouth in one go anyway.
The words “Hershey’s” and “goodness” may not be something you’d normally use together in a sentence, but that’s the name of their new ‘healthier’ product range, and they’ve been kind enough to send us some samples.
The range currently consists of:
- Hershey’s Whole Bean Milk Chocolate
- Hershey’s Natural Flavanol Antioxidant Milk Chocolate
- Hershey’s All Natural Extra Dark
Of course, none of the health benefits are particularly useful if the chocolate isn’t up to scratch, and I’ll be reviewing all of the above over the next week or so. In the mean time, check out the Hershey’s Goodness web site for more information.
