Let me introduce what I call the sodium-deficiency chocolate range. Cross paths with it once and you will have enough sodium to last the rest of your life.
The actual name of this five bar set sent to me by Napa Valley-based Le Belge Chocolatier is the Varietal Sea Salt Artisan Chocolate Collection. Of the five 85 gram bars, four are dark chocolate and one is milk; the $20 price tag definitely leans toward the steep side.
I paused long over Le Belge’s designs. The colors, fonts, and patterns remind me of something a hotel would put out. Lessening the number of fonts would help the look. I also keep comparing the designs to construction paper cut-outs, but could that just be my disinterest in this artistic style?
The problem is that my perspective on the outside carried on to the inside. Ironically, perhaps, my favorites of the five were the 31% milk chocolate Sea Salted Almond and the 72% dark Sea Salt. The former is flavor-packed: the caramel notes from the chocolate, bountiful flakes of sea salt, and small almond pieces here and there. It’s impressive that Le Belge makes such a high amount of salt work here. The plain Sea Salt bar is a basic salt and chocolate pairing. Since it doesn’t have other flavors, it is the one where you can taste the chocolate most. For 72%, it is fairly sweet, but that works to pair with the salt.
My least favorite was the Tellicherry Pepper & Sea Salt. Being a 54% dark, it is too sweet a dark chocolate for my tastes. It also has a powerful, fresh pepper taste. Too powerful – it overpowers even the salt. The semisweet chocolate works better in the Himalayan Sea Salt & Strawberry, whose strawberry aspect comes from freeze dried strawberries and strawberry flavor. The salt, thankfully, doesn’t stand out as much as in some of these. The Mediterranean Sea Salt & Lemon Zest, which is another 72% dark, is alright: the taste from dried lemon peels and natural lemon citrus flavor is trailed by the salt in an interesting effect.
Strongly disliking one bar, not particularly liking two, and feeling okay about the other two doesn’t justify the price tag for me. It is true that the splashes of flavors and semisweet chocolate might work better for other palates than mine, but I still feel that there is room for improvement. Le Belge has a basis, but I would like to see more sculpting happen on top of that.
During a recent short holiday, we stopped in at Bracegirdles Chocolate. When stopping at a place like this, one does of course pick up a few goodies to take home and try later. We did too. Oops.
Todays’ treat is dark chocolate coated Cranberries. I’ve tried a Cranberry chocolate before and the berries really didn’t have a lot of flavour. I also tried some Cranberry Clumps which were pretty good, but with a slightly crunchy texture, so hard to compare.
But – I still don’t know what real Cranberries taste like. We don’t get them fresh here (ever), so the best I can manage is juice, or Cranberries that had chocolate accidentally wrapped around them. Such a shame. So I just had to have these little beauties, found in Bracegirdles. Yes, I know, I could have picked a whole lot of the other freshly-made thingies – but they would need to be eaten on the spot and I wanted something that would keep for a few days.
These little chaps look just like every other chocolate coated whatsit you will find – you know, nuts, raisins, black garlic, whatever.
Inside is another story:
These claim on the pack to have dried cranberries in, but they seem to me to be only partly dried. The inside is soft, a bit squooshy (yes, that is a word… now), sweet, fruity, and kinda yummy. The dissectionistas amongst the readers should appreciate that the cut apart ball was done using… teeth!
The chocolate has no stated cocoa percentage, but sugar does appear on the label as the first ingredient, leading me to think that although “dark” this is probably about 50% cocoa. The chocolate is fairly sweet, rich, and complements the Cranberries rather well. When I let the chocolate melt away it is not at all bitter, slightly sweet, the word that springs to mind is “round”. Odd, that. This leaves the Cranberry inside to slurp and crunch up. It is pleasant, and fruity, but with no special leaping-out-and-grabbing-you flavour. These are easy-eating little treats. Not hugely complex, clever or sophisticated, but nice. Really nice.
I made a mistake and left the pack open on the kitchen bench. The family vultures have been coming past and grazing. Judging by how quickly the pack has disappeared the Lady Of The House, as well as the teenage sons, seem to think these are pretty good. I do too.
I still don’t know what real Cranberries taste like though.
After reviewing Valrhona’s Andoa Lait milk chocolate last week, I went rooting around in my chocolate stash to see if I had any other Valrhona milk chocolates to compare it to. The Andoa turned out to be one of my favourite milk chocolates for some time and I thought it would be good to see how it stacks up against other chocolates in the Valrhona range.
I found these little 20g Valrhona Tanariva bars in my collection, so I decided it was time to open them up.
The first thing to note is that the format of these smaller bars is very different from the larger Andoa bar I reviewed. They’re much thinner, and that’s actually something that can have an impact on flavour as a thinner bar will melt and release its flavour more quickly.
The Tanariva has 6% less cocoa solids than the Andoa, but it isn’t noticeably paler in colour. In fact, if anything it’s a little darker. The chocolates are made with different beans though; Tanariva uses Madagascan cocoa, whereas the Andoa uses beans from around South America & the Caribbean.
Madagascan cocoa is known for its fruity, citrus notes, but in this bar, that’s almost completely obliterated by the added milk. The overwhelming flavour is sweet and creamy, with some caramel notes. It’s quite a lot sweeter than the Andoa and much less chocolatey. I don’t think I would recognise this as Madagascan if it didn’t say so on the label.
This is a chocolate that’s Ok in small doses, but much better suited to those with a very sweet tooth. I ate one 20g bar, but didn’t feel the need to open the second. I’d recommend skipping this one and going for the Andoa instead.
This is my first crack at reviewing one of Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s creations & I chose the somewhat bizarrely named Javan Light Breaking 69 to get my teeth into.
Willie’s notes start with the phrase ‘Long Forgotten Flavours’, so I’m guessing this is made from hard to find beans. The tasting notes also suggest rich caramel & toffee flavours & with only thee ingredients there was no doubt that I was going to get the full flavour of the beans.
What struck me first about this chocolate was the acidity. When you first taste it it comes across as quite bitter with very little cacao flavour coming through. as the chocolate begins to soften & melt in the mouth those caramel and toffee flavours start to develop but to be honest I found them more ‘burnt’ than ‘rich’. It was almost as if this chocolate had been ‘left on’ for too long and had acquired a singed flavour. This burnt sugar taste tended to persist to the last moments of the chocolate, softening out into a long finish which retained a lot of the initial acidity. The more subtle flavours of the cacao weren’t really revealed until the chocolate was more or less gone, which I found a little odd.
In fact ‘odd’ is about the best description of this chocolate. From the tangy aroma to the burnt sugar taste that dominated the whole experience, I found myself asking if i would actually buy this to enjoy at home, and the answer was ‘almost certainly not’. I’ve tasted Willie’s cacao before & have quite enjoyed it, but this little oddity is one I wouldn’t perk up at.
