Did you know that this Sunday 20th May, is World Baking Day?
Well no, either did I. But apparently it is, and they got in touch a couple of days ago to tell us about it. And they also sent this big box of ingredients to bake with along with some recipe cards.
So now I guess I really have no choice but to bake something now!
If you’re interested in taking part yourself, then follow World Baking Day on Twitter and don’t forget to tweet photos of your creations. Assuming my efforts don’t go disastrously wrong, I’ll be doing a follow up post to let you know how I got on.
But what to bake? I could of course just go for something on the recipe cards they sent. But it’s also my birthday weekend and I have a lot of leftover chocolate to use up. Suggestions gratefully received!
I hadn’t heard of the Lallapolosa Baking Company before, but I’m never one to refuse brownies, so when they offered to send some of their pecan & salted caramel brownies, I bit their hand off – figuratively speaking.
Lallapolosa make an extensive range of brownies, cakes, cookies & confections, but if I had to pick any one item, this would probably be it. For one thing, they come in huge boxes of 12 (1kg) or 18 (1.5kg) that look beautiful. Tied with a ribbon and wrapped in tissue paper, they just feel like a quality, handmade gift.
But the wow factor doesn’t really hit you until you lift the lid and peel back the paper inside. Rather than individually packaged brownies, you’re presented with a large slab of brownie which has been cut into slices before being shoehorned into the box. It’s quite an impressive sight.
The surface of the brownie is loaded with pecans and smothered in caramel. It’s crunchy and gooey and delightfully difficult to pick up a single slice without making a complete mess.
After I’d finally managed to free a single slice, I managed to get some onto a plate for closer examination. The bulk of the top layer is made up of nuts, chocolate and caramel, with more of the actual brownie towards the bottom.
When I bit into it, one word came to mind: Snickers.
It has that same nutty, caramel flavour and chewy texture, but of course is much richer, fresher and tastier. To be honest, the actual brownie is really just a carrying mechanism for all these other delicious ingredients. It’s there, but it’s not the star of the show.
After a single slice I had to have a sit down and a bit of a rest. While these aren’t as purely rich as a brownie like Paul A Young makes, they’re still very dense and sweet. They’re quite a different take on the concept of what a brownie should be, but I still love them.
I love the fact that they’re so beautifully presented and come in a box so big that you just have to share it. They’re a bit different from other brownies I’ve tried lately and while they might appeal less to brownie purists (if there is such a thing!), they’re a delicious and indulgent snack.
And now I just have the other 11 slices to get through…
Club Chocolat Français is, as you might have guessed, a French chocolate club. It operates along the same lines as Hotel Chocolat’s Chocolate Tasting Club. They’ve recently launched in the UK and they sent us a box to try.
The club offers 3 month, 6 month and annual subscriptions at £19.95 per month. At least I assume that’s the “per month” price, as the website lists all subscription options for the same price, rather than giving the total cost of the subscription. For your money, you get a 320g box of assorted chocolates delivered every month.
The first thing I noticed about my box was that it didn’t look very French. I usually associate French chocolates with style and sophistication, but these are presented in a very ordinary looking purple and blue box. Inside, the purple plastic insert that holds the chocolates is made from a very cheap, thin plastic.
Of course, packaging isn’t everything, but first impressions do count and frankly these look cheap. There’s also some scuffing and a hint of blooming on some of the chocolates, which doesn’t help with the appearance.
The label on the bottom of the box tells me that the dark chocolates are 70% cocoa solids and the milk chocolates are 36%, which is pretty good. There’s a few solid chocolate pieces to try, so I started off trying to get a feel for the chocolate. The milk chocolate is passable, but the 70% dark has no real flavour at all. It’s bitter and dry and has very little going for it.
Many of the chocolates have praline fillings, which do at least add some texture and flavour to the chocolate, but they’re not really my thing.
I picked up a white chocolate heart, and noticed it had leaked red goo into the plastic tray below, but I took a bite anyway. Inside the thin white chocolate shell was a rather cheap strawberry that immediately flowed out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chocolate simply filled with jam before. And now I know why.
I had higher hopes for the dark chocolate framboise, but again, this turned out simply to be filled with jam. It was a little better though, not being quite as sweet and working better with the dark chocolate.
The square chocolate pralines decorated with sugar coated candies in the centre of the box did turn out to be quite pleasant, but they were the highlight of a selection that is at best uninteresting.
Unfortunately then, I can’t recommend these. If you have £20 a month to spend on chocolates, there are much, much better options available, and unless Club Chocolat Français seriously up their game, I can’t see it catching on over here.
Shockingly, I’m back on the Lindt. This bar was one of a small selection given to us at the end of Lindt’s recent event at The Pearl restuarant, and the main reason I’m reviewing it is because it says “New” on it, and I want to see how it compares to that other new bar, the Lindt Wasabi which Simon reviewed last week.
As you can see, the format of the bar is exactly the same as the rest of the Excellence range. It’s a simple, thin, 100g bar divided into ten squares.
A quick glance at the back reveals that this bar uses the same, rather disappointing 47% cocoa solids chocolate as the Wasabi bar, so I was expecting it to be sweet – especially when combined with caramel.
The caramel comes in the form of hard, crunchy pieces scattered throughout the chocolate. Also scattered through the bar is a small amount of sea salt, but for me it’s not really enough to lift the flavour.
As you’d expect, the chocolate is very sweet, but the surprise is the caramel, which has a very burnt flavour, reminiscent of a crème brûlée. It’s a very distinctive flavour and probably won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for this particular bar, I think it’s a fairly good counterpart to the sweetness of the chocolate.
I wasn’t entirely sure the sea salt added much to the flavour. A small piece often contains no salt at all, but a second piece might contain a couple of large crystals of salt. I would rather have had smaller, more regular crystals, as I think they would have had a bigger impact on the overall flavour, without the slightly strange sensation of going from very sweet to very salty.
This is clearly confectionery rather than fine chocolate, and that’s something that’s reflected in the very reasonable £1.25 price tag. I managed to make my way through the bar (something I can rarely do with sweet confectionery chocolate these days), but I would still rather see the cocoa content bumped up to at least 60%. As it is, it’s too sweet for my tastes, but it’s an interesting take on the caramel & chocolate combination that’s worth trying if you have a sweeter tooth.
