It’s fair to say we get through a lot of chocolate here at Chocablog, but this particular box from Bianca Marton intrigued me as they’re vegan fresh ganaches.
Normally, fresh chocolate ganaches are made with cream (decidedly not vegan) or water (very difficult to get right), but Bianca has chosen to make her ganaches with coconut milk instead.
I was a little skeptical about this idea, but eager to try them nonetheless. When they arrived, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the attractive looking chocolates in the box.
So here’s some of the highlights from this box:
Organic Dark
I thought this unflavoured ganache would be a good test of just how well a coconut milk ganache compares to a cream ganache. Bianca uses a 56.6% Callebaut dark chocolate to make her ganaches, and while not the best chocolate in the world, it does provide a good balance between flavour and affordability. Bianca tells me she put a lot of effort and experimentation into finding the right couverture, and I think she’s found one that works well for her.
The ganache is a little firmer than I would expect from a traditional cream recipe, but it’s still nice.
The dusting of cocoa powder gives a nice, rich, chocolatey edge, and while you can certainly taste the coconut, it’s subtle – as it should be.
Strawberry
The most eye catching chooclates in the box, thanks to their dusting of freeze dried strawberry powder. I love the way dried strawberry comes alive as it hydrates in the mouth, and I really did enjoy this chocolate very much. The flavour is vibrant, but it doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate at all.
Marc De Champagne
A lovely, smooth truffle with very well balanced flavours. Like the strawberry, the flavour is quite strong, but doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate.
Sea-Salted Caramel
The unusual irregular shape of this chocolate led me to believe it was going to be a hard caramel, but it’s actually quite soft and rather pleasant. I’d prefer a touch more salt, but I could still eat these all day.
Single Malt Whiskey
One of the softer ganaches in the box, and one of my favourites. Another great balance of flavours. The Glenlivet 12 year old malt whiskey really comes to the front, but as with the Marc De Champagne truffle, never overpowers. I love this one.
Coconut
A coconut milk ganache mixed with finely ground coconut and rolled in coconut shavings. As you might imagine, this none is particularly coconutty. Bounty lovers will probably adore this!
Summer Berries
Made with blackberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and redcurrants, this is another tangy, fruity ganache, and a great one to end this particular exploration with. It’s refreshing, tasty, and leaves you wanting more.
Overall, I was very impressed with this selection. If I hadn’t been told, I wouldn’t have noticed that most of them were made with coconut milk rather than cream. As an option for vegans or those who need to avoid dairy, I’d highly recommend them.
If I had once criticism – and it’s barely that – it would be that the consistency of the ganache is a little firm compared to most artisan fine chocolates made with cream. But I would still be very happy to give or receive a box of Bianca’s chocolates any time.
We perhaps wouldn’t normally write about a Cadbury Launch, but when you’re invited along to a launch party at The British Library with Claudia Winkleman and the amazing Brian Blessed, it’s difficult to say no. So that’s where we found ourselves on Thursday, and rather fun it was too.
The idea of the promotion is to come up with a word that describes Cadbury chocolate and tweet it to @DairyMilk with the hashtag #JoyvilleTaster. The winner will become “Honorary Cadbury Taster” and win practically unlimited quantities of Cadbury chocolate, I’m told. Claudia and Brian explain it much better that I could in the video above.
And while you’re thinking of your word, here’s some photos from the launch event…
Toronto’s Delight Chocolate is a chocolate shop which puts the focus firmly on wholesome. Owners Jennifer Rashleigh and Jeff Brown only use Fair Trade chocolate and everything else put into their chocolates, ice creams and baked goods is certified organic. That translates into lots of local ingredients and even some vegan options for those who are that way inclined.
Their truffles are large enough to qualify as two bite for anyone with a normal sized mouth, and they all have a substantial outer shell that means they need to be bitten with a certain amount of force. And it does help that in the majority of cases, the chocolate in question is a robust 70% organic variety that has an equally robust flavour, so even if the centre isn’t very good there’s plenty of solace to be found on the outside. That wasn’t much of an issue though. The decoration is mostly functional – usually some kind of white chocolate design to allow it to be identified on the map with the occasional nut but nothing that really impacted the taste.
The box I got my hands on had a dozen chocolates, with some of the usual suspects that everyone seems to have and a few surprises too. Here are the highlights:
Orange Espresso
I always pair espresso with dark chocolate in my head, but this goes in the opposite direction trying to balance out the deep coffee flavour with creamy milk and just a hint of orange. A surprisingly successful pairing.
Chili Cinnamon
It starts off as being all about the cinnamon than chili but then completely changes direction at the halfway point as the heat begins to build. I’m a big fan of this particular combination of flavours and so I didn’t need much convincing to make this one of my favourites in the box.
Pink Peppercorn
This one is really clever. It starts off with a very bitter chocolate shell which is washed away by a light, creamy centre before a rush of pepper swoops in for the finale. One of the best pink peppercorn chocolates I’ve ever had because it really delivers on its promise.
Cardamom Rosewater
Rose is one of those flavours which is easy to either go overboard with or no put enough in, and this leans towards the latter. Even with the addition of cardamom, the centre struggles to be noticed when dark chocolate in thrown into the mix.
Single Malt Scotch
@ark chocolate, dark truffle and a very generous splash of an unnamed single malt. Not subtle at all and all the better for it.
Chocolate Caramel with Smoked Sea Salt
This, for better or worse, has become the yardstick by which boxes of chocolates are measured simply because of its ubiquitousness. This one is a good one – it goes with the less runny caramel and even though there is some chocolate in there, the primary flavour is a rich, buttery caramel. Using smoked salt also boosts its profile and cuts right through the sweetness. Yum.
Toasted Hazelnut
One of the vegan chocolates in the box, not that you’d know. A nice rich, nutty ganache which slowly fades into dark chocolate. Nothing new, but well executed and preferable to the vegan Burnt Almond which was a bit on the dry side.
Quebec Blue Cheese
Before even tasting this, I knew this would be one of those chocolates which people would either love or hate, much like Paul A. Young’s Marmite truffles. They really don’t hold back on the blue cheese, which happens to be an award-winning variety called Bleu D’Elizabeth. There’s absolutely no mistaking the flavour at all, and the saltiness of the cheese works well with the dark chocolate because the boldness of both complement each other. It is really unusual and I’m not sure I’d want to eat a whole bunch of them, but I’d consider it very successful for what it is.
All in all, I was rather impressed. Although they weren’t the most exciting chocolates to look at, they more than compensated in the taste department and that is much more important. Delight Chocolate are another reason for those with an interest in all things chocolatey to spend some time in Toronto.
A couple of years ago I bought a tin of Van Houten drinking chocolate while working in the Middle East, and I was rather impressed with it. Indeed, I was rather sad when it inevitably came to an end.
I was mildly excited when I spotted this bar while on holiday last month. Could their solid chocolate bars be anywhere near as good as the drinking chocolate had been?
These days I tend to read wrappers a lot more carefully than I used to. Some of the better quality manufacturer’s offer tasting notes (some have turned their packaging into a combination of information sheet and work of art) but even the lowliest of confectionery will have some information about ingredients, even if there’s no mention of cocoa content. It turned out that I was in for a bit of a shock – Van Halen, sorry Van Houten is owned by Hershey’s, and this bar was made in the People’s Republic of China. Could it get any worse?
The answer to that was yes, it could get worse. You could be made to eat some of this stuff. There are no less than four different oils (palm, shea and illipe oil plus castor bean oil) in this bar, and no mention of cocoa content whatsoever. I didn’t even know what illipe oil was and had to refer to Wikipedia for information. (It’s a fast-growing tropical tree with seeds that produce oil that is used in cosmetics, foods and detergents. Yum.)
So, expectations thoroughly shattered, I braced myself for a taste.
The chocolate smells like the cheap ersatz chocolate my Polish grandmother would give us in the 1970s. There’s hardly any real cacao aroma at all. It’s just a bit flat and dull, and that’s more or less how it tastes. It’s more like the idea of chocolate than actual, real chocolate, and it has an undertone of wrongness to the flavour that meant I was never going to eat more than one piece. The aftertaste is mainly greasy sugar with hardly anything of note lingering on the palate.
I suppose if I had to find one positive thing to say about this bar, it would have to be “It didn’t taste as awful as Hershey’s normally does.”
Hardly a glowing recommendation now, is it?
