Fossa Chocolate, Singapore

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on May 4 2021 | Leave A Comment

I don’t get a chance to review a lot of bean-to-bar chocolate these days. That’s partly because I don’t get sent chocolate for review quite as often as I used to, but also because a maker has to be pretty special to catch my eye in a world where new chocolate companies are popping up every week.

I’d heard of Fossa Chocolate when my friend Jess offered to send me a few bars, but I’d never tried them for myself.

Fossa are a small maker based in Singapore. They work closely with farmers, co-operatives and local ingredient suppliers to produce some extraordinary and unusual flavours. I’ve just got three to try here, but I can say right from the start that I’ll be seeking out more!

First off, I have to say how much I like this kind of packaging. It’s simple, elegant and plastic free. The bars are easy to reseal after you break a piece off, and you don’t have to wrestle with it to close it up neatly. The simple colour scheme adds a touch of class and makes it easy to tell the varieties apart.

I wanted to start my taste journey with the unflavoured dark chocolate; the 70% Indonesia Pak Eddy. The tasting notes on the bar say “Creamy almonds with notes of raisins and floral undertones”, but as we all know, everyone perceives flavours slightly differently, and there will always be minor differences between batches of craft chocolate anyway.

The bar has a great snap and a wonderful, rich aroma. It has a great melt too. A small piece on the tongue quickly and evenly starts to melt away releasing all its wonderful flavour. It’s chocolatey at first, but the more it melts, the more of those fruity, raisin flavour notes come forward. The balance is spot on, not too sweet, but not a hint of bitterness. Wonderful stuff.

Next up, I wanted to try the one I knew would be most challenging. “Salted Egg Cereal – Your favourite tze-char dish in a bar”.

I confess I didn’t know what tze-char was, but Wikipedia tells me that it’s a Singaporean term used to “describe a Chinese food stall which provides a wide selection of common and affordable dishes”. So, a local dish that will likely be much more familiar to Singaporean people. Although, I’m not sure if they would be familiar with it in chocolate bar form!

I’m not a big fan of the flavour of egg (eggs are best used in cakes, as everyone knows), and as expected I did find it a little challenging. It’s a flavoured white chocolate, a little softer than the dark chocolate, but with a very pleasant creamy, cereal aroma.

The first taste is of a pleasant white chocolate, but as it melts, you get more of the egg flavour and a decent amount of spicy heat. A quick glance at the ingredients tells me it does contain curry leaves and chilli padi.

This is a tough one for me to review, because I’m not personally keen on the flavour, but it is clearly very well made and well balanced. I think it will appeal to those a little more familiar with “the original” than me.

Finally, we have Honey Orchid Dancong Hongcha Tea. A quick glance at the Fossa website tells me:

“Mi Lan Xiang (Honey Orchid) is a dancong tea cultivated in the Phoenix Mountain of Guangdong Province.

This lot was hand-harvested from Zhen Ya village in Spring 2010. Made into a Hongcha (western black tea) and further aged for eight years, this tea is incredibly smooth and creamy with very low astringence. It has a characteristic lychee fragrance and red date sweetness. Complemented by the biscuity Kokoa Kamili cacao from Tanzania, it is a delicious bar to be slowly savoured.”

There’s a lot to love here. First off, I love tea flavoured chocolates. They’re difficult to make, but when done right can be truly wonderful. I also love lychee flavour notes in chocolate, and I truly love the Kokoa Kamili cocoa beans from Tanzania. I’ve worked with them myself, and they’re amongst my favourite in the world.

So does the chocolate live up to all that? Totally.

Those lychee tasting notes are spot on. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking this bar wasn’t packed full of real lychee fruit. But it isn’t; the only flavouring here is tea. And while there is a little hint of a more recognisable tea flavour toward the end, it’s that smooth, tropical fruit flavour that shines through. I love this bar. It makes me want to seek some of the tea to try on its own.

Overall, an outstanding little selection of bars from Fossa. Their range is quite large, so I’m looking forward to trying more soon. You should seek some out too.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Been following your chocolate reviews recently and would love to see your take/review on La Folie Chocolate bars.
    Thanks.

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