When I think of chocolate makers in Brooklyn, my mind immediately turns to Mast Brothers, with their beautiful packaging and awesome beards. I confess I was less familiar with Cacao Prieto.
Founded by aerospace engineer and inventor Daniel Prieto Preston and based in the Red Hook neighbourhood of Brooklyn, Prieto produces bean to bar chocolate made with beans from the family’s own cocoa farm in the Dominican Republic. Unusually, they also produce a range of cacao based rums and liqueurs made from the same beans. Even more unusually, they also sell a range of chocolate making machines.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the machines to try, but I do have some chocolate and some rum, courtesy of UK distributors The Chocolate Society who were kind enough to send me some samples.
The first thing that stands out about the chocolate is the packaging. The two flavoured bars I was sent come in elegant card boxes with charming illustrations on the front. Except these are actually postcards which you can keep or send – a great way of spreading the word about good chocolate!
The back of the boxes feature a window so you can see the chocolate itself. In this case, the bars are studded with enticingly large pieces of fruit and nuts… I couldn’t wait to try.
The first flavour I tried was Pecan and sour cherry. As you can see, it looks great. These bars aren’t divided into chunks. They’re just thick slabs of deliciously dark chocolate that force you to break off big chunks. Perfect.
The chocolate, which is the same 72% cocoa solids Dominican Republic in all the bars is really, really nice. It’s wonderfully smooth with a rich and fruity flavour. There’s a lot of cocoa butter in there which adds to the smooth texture, but that’s what I love. I could eat this chocolate all day.
The fruit and nuts just add to the experience. The pecans are deliciously crispy and light, and the sour cherries are bursting with flavour that complements the chocolate perfectly. I simply love this chocolate.
My hazelnut and raisin bar was even chunkier and just as delicious. These clearly hand made bars are a massive step up from your average fruit and nut chocolate. My preference is for the pecan and sour cherry, but that’s purely a personal choice.
Also included in my package of samples was this beautiful looking unflavoured bar. The thick paper wrapper is very reminiscent of Mast Brothers, and this bar is divided into chunks.
But perhaps most interesting of all is the cacao rum and rum liqueur.
I’m definitely not a rum reviewer, but obviously I had to try them! Both have a wonderful deep red colour. I tried both neat, and although they’re rather strong, there is a definite hint of cacao in both. I think they’d be great in cocktails.
Unfortunately, the rum isn’t available in the UK at the moment, but the chocolate is (links below), and I highly recommend giving it a go.
Here’s a great video of the Cacao Prieto chocolate making process.
Godiva Milk Chocolate Strawberry & Lindt Excellence Strawberry
I blame the Pink Panther. I still remember eating those sickly sweet, incredibly pink bars of strawberry confection adorned with his image many, many years ago and even though I knew they were probably just sugar, fluorescent food colouring and artificial flavours, I was very fond of them.
The whole experience must have gotten lodged somewhere in my head because I’m a bit of a sucker for strawberry chocolate of any variety. So when two different strawberry chocolate bars fell into my lap (not literally…), I was hoping to recapture some of that panther-related excitement.
Godiva’s bar is made with milk chocolate and is 31% cocoa solids. The chocolate itself is quite sweet and really does mask any strawberry flavour until towards the end of each mouthful. The pieces of strawberry are rather small and don’t provide much in the way of texture because they have been freeze dried and are very airy. The result is a very subtle strawberriness that is more like an afterthought than the main attraction.
Lindt, on the other hand, take a very different approach. They’ve gone with white chocolate, or white “chocolate” depending on your point of view, and then packed it with as many little pieces of strawberry as they could without it turning completely pink. It makes for a pretty bar of chocolate that looks very appealing.
The aroma of strawberry is incredibly strong and that is, not surprisingly, reflected in the taste too – it is a near perfect recreation of strawberries and cream that is just plain yummy. It might not rank particularly high on the scale of quality chocolate bars and I could lose a whole lot of my Chocablog credibility (assuming I have some…), but I ate the whole thing pretty quickly.
If you are just looking for berry undertones then the Godiva bar would be your best bet, but it was the Lindt all the way for me because they absolutely nail the flavour. It might not be the most sophisticated bar of chocolate, but I’d happily eat another one right now.
Toronto’s Soma Chocolatemaker has been one of my favourite chocolate makers for some time. Their 70% Chuao bar is still amongst my all time favourites, although subsequent batches weren’t quite up to the same standard as the one I wrote about in my review.
That’s not really surprising though. The first Chuao bar I had was spectacularly good, but consistency is a huge challenge for any small batch bean to bar chocolate maker. Each batch is treated slightly differently, and a minor difference in the beans or the chocolate making process can have a big effect on the flavour of the finished bar.
This particular bar has two added flavours – salt and pepper – so minor changes in the flavour of the chocolate might not be quite as noticeable. It’s a difficult combination to get right though; salt can lift the flavour of chocolate, but too much and it becomes inedible. Combined with the heat of pepper, it would be easy for it to end up being more savoury than sweet.
As you can see from the photos, it’s an interesting looking bar. On one side are the traditional chunks, but on the other, it’s covered in flakes of Maldon salt and a deep orange Alleppo pepper. It certainly looks exciting.
Of course, with a random scattering of spicing, each chunk tastes slightly different, but overall the balance of flavours is good. The salt comes first, then the heat of the pepper builds, but never becomes overpowering.
Disappointingly though, the chocolate itself isn’t that great. Although the wrapper states that it’s of Peruvian origin, it neglects to mention what percentage of cocoa solids it is. It’s rich and chocolatey, with a lovely smooth texture, but it’s not particularly complex. In fact, there’s really not much to it at all. In the back of my mind I’m wondering if the salt and pepper have been added just to make it a little more… interesting.
Overall then, it’s a bar that’s most notable for the flavours that have been added rather than the chocolate itself. It’s not something I’d recommend buying, but luckily Soma do have a great range that are worth spending money on. I just wish they were a little easier to get outside of Canada.
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