It is hard to believe that there was a time in my life before Chocablog, but there was. And in those days, I wasn’t seeking out chocolate quite as obsessively as I do now and when I found myself in Denver a few years back, I did see a lot of Hammond’s Candies in various shops although most of them were of the colourful hard candy variety rather than chocolate. I sampled a few but they didn’t really make too much of an impression.
So I was kind of surprised to find a bar of chocolate with their name on it in a local shop because I had no real idea that they made bars, especially fun ones like Hammond’s Crackle Crunch.
The name hints at what lies inside the very colourful wrapper – this is a bar of milk chocolate with popping candy scattered liberally throughout. And that’s about it really. The chocolate is of an undetermined percentage, but it has a decent flavour – a hint of creaminess and not overly sweet. Plus, to be perfectly honest, the chocolate is only there to play a supporting role to the raspberry popping candy and that does a very respectable job of that. As the chocolate melts in your mouth, it is accompanied by a cacophony of pops and cracks and a hint of sweet raspberry which increases in magnitude as the chocolate leaves. By the end of it all, it does get a little oversweet for me, but others were happy enough.
Really, this isn’t the kind of chocolate that you eat because of the specialness of the chocolate. It’s something you eat because it puts a smile on your face. So it succeeds simply because it made me happy; there may have been a little bit of giggling involved. This is a perfectly acceptable bar of chocolate that delivers what it promises and that’s not a bad thing although I’m thinking the novelty would probably wear off.
It’s been a while since we reviewed anything from James Chocolates, so when they offered to send some new samples, I wasn’t going to refuse. Randomly picked from the small selection they sent for review are these sizeable ‘Salted Caramel Honeycomb’ balls.
I say sizeable as the eight balls in this 150g pack are over an inch across, so not something you would want to eat in one go. Yeah, I tried.
The balls themselves are mainly honeycomb, which is then dipped in chocolate and coated with caramel and sea salt. I’ve had plenty of honeycomb and plenty of salted caramel, but I don’t think I’ve ever had this particular combination before.
Bite into one and the first impression is of something very similar to a Cadbury Crunchie. There’s a big crunch from the honeycomb, combined with a fairly decent milk chocolate.
After a second or two, the caramel flavour starts to come through, and this is where it gets a little bit too sweet for my tastes. Crunchie lovers with a very sweet tooth will no doubt like it, but I was really looking for something to cut through the sweetness. Unfortunately, that didn’t come from the salt, which only comes through at the very end, and is a little too salty. It doesn’t feel like a salted caramel, so much as it does ‘caramel’ and ‘salt’ separately.
That said, it’s still quite easy to eat. I managed to eat three before deciding these really were too sweet for me and had to hide them from myself.
Not the most elegant of chocolates, but worth a try if you love honeycomb and you want to try something a bit different from the usual Cadbury fare.
Those of you who follow Chocablog on Twitter or Facebook will know that we’ve spent the last few days in Paris at Salon du Chocolat, the world’s largest chocolate show.
Salon events are held around the world, but the Paris show is still the biggest, attracting around 130,000 visitors. It’s far bigger than anything we have in the UK, and the really exciting news is that Salon comes to London for the first time next year.
In Paris, the event hosted 160 exhibitors in a 135,000 square foot exhibition hall. That’s a lot of space, but with tens of thousands of people in the hall at any one time, it was busy to say the least. In fact, at one point, I was crushed in a crowd to the point where my feet were lifted off the ground and I could no longer breathe. I genuinely feared for my safety, and I think this is a major black mark against an otherwise amazing event.
Back to the show and Chocolate makers and chocolatiers from all around the world are there, although the majority of exhibitors are French. Many of the continent’s best known chocolate companies such as Pralus (who devote half their stand to a brioche production line), Jean-Paul Hévin, Sébastien Bouillet, and Pierre Marcolini were out in force, along with big names like Nestlé and Leonidas, but the majority of the show floor is taken up by smaller chocolatiers from around France.
Along with the chocolatiers were a number of bean to bar chocolate makers, including Akesson’s, Vietcacao, Pacari and the only UK exhibitor in the whole show, Willie’s Cacao. But the most memorable of the bean to bar makers were Sam and Vincent from Marou. These two Frenchmen met in Vietnam and decided to make chocolate from the bean. They are amazing, passionate people and their chocolate is wonderful. I’ll be posting a review shortly.
One of our favourite French chocolatiers, Sébastien Bouillet had a couple of interesting new products to show. First was a range of chocolate lipsticks, designed to be kept in your bag and give you a small chocolatey boost through the course of the day. Bouillet was also showing a new range of single origin chocolate ‘records’, that look exactly like an old 7 inch single, complete with sleeve. Skeuomorphism is clearly alive and well in the chocolate world.
The bulk of the smaller chocolatiers were using Valrhona chocolate in their creations, so it was a little odd that Valrhona, France’s largest chocolat maker weren’t there themselves – particularly as they can be found exhibiting at almost every UK chocolate show. It was a little disappointing to find so many people using the same chocolate, as it means there’s very little to differentiate a lot of the French chocolatiers.
That might be why I found the Japanese contingent more exciting. Sadaharu Aoki, who I reviewed last year was back, but even more interesting was Es Koyama, who had some wonderful flavour combinations. Chief patiessier Susumu Koyama guided us personally through a tasting of his wonderful chocolates. Again, I’ll be posting a review of these soon.
We spoke to Salon organiser Sylvie Douce, who said she’s very excited about coming to London for the first time. They have worked hard to get the best location at Olympia, and even Salon’s trademark chocolate fashion show will be making an appearance next year.
I’m really looking forward to Salon du Chocolat in London, but I hope they can resolve the overcrowding issues, rather than just trying to cram as many people into the space as humanly possible. It will also be interesting to see which exhibitors they attract too. With just a single British company showing in Paris, this is new territory for British chocolatiers.
Salon du Chocolat London will be at London’s Olympia from 18th – 20th October 2013.
When faced with even the meagre selection of chocolate that I find in my local stores, the several varieties of Choc’fleurs bars really stand out. That’s because every bar in their range is hand-decorated with flower petals giving them a very colourful and unique look. In addition, the range is completely organic and made with Fair Trade Beans, and also sprinkled with hemp seeds which apparently add Omega fatty acids so you could make a pretty convincing case for this being positively healthy to eat. Or at least I did when I picked out the India White Chocolate with Ginger bar, in part because of my love of ginger and also because I had no idea what India White Chocolate was.
The bar itself looks very striking, with the added ingredients and flower petals pressed into the chocolate. The chocolate isn’t too sweet – the usual curse of the white variety – and comes in at a respectable 32%. The addition of turmeric turns the white chocolate a more buttery shade and lurks in the background giving an underlying spiciness which really helps to cut through the richness of the cocoa butter.
Considering that ginger is the featured ingredient, it is a little disappointing that less than half the squares actually have a piece of candied ginger – maybe that’s just down to the bars being handmade, but I did feel cheated. When it is present, it adds a lovely intense burst of flavour which will leave your tongue tingling. What I wasn’t so keen on were the roasted hemp seeds because their subtle flavour is drowned out by everything else and that means their sole contribution is texture and they shatter on crunching leaving too many little pieces to get caught between your teeth.
So this is a bar which looks better than it tastes although the main problem is the lack of balance of flavours. But with more ginger and less hemp it would be a completely different story .
