Paul A. Young Valentine’s Selection

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on February 9 2011 | Leave A Comment

Time for more Valentine’s chocolates, this time from the always awesome Paul A. Young.

As you’d expect from Paul, everything looks amazing, so I just thought I’d show you lots of pretty pictures. Let’s start with the brownie.

We have of course talked about Paul’s coma-inducingly-good brownies before. This Valentines version is even more amazing though. Not only does it have that cool red heart on the top, but it’s packed with cherries, stem ginger, coconut and cocoa nibs.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? And it tastes even better.

The brownie is still very rich, dense and moist, but fruit, ginger really take it to another level for me. They cut through the incredibly rich chocolate, and just make it that little bit easier to induce a diabetic coma. It’s a truly stunning brownie, but I do recommend you share it with someone. I didn’t.

Next up, we have a little box of four “his” & “hers” chocolates. Or “mine” & “mine” in my case. Two Liquorice Whisky Sours and two Lipstick Rose. You can probably guess which is which.

These chocolates are a collaboration between Paul and Tony Conigliaro of top cocktail loungs 69 Colebrooke Row who are apparently holding a special Valentine’s evening which will include some of Paul’s chocolates on Monday.

The Liquorice Whisky Sour is made with Cutty Sark Whisky, liquorice and lemon juice, wrapped in a 67% Los Ancones dark chocolate – which sounds a little like this one to me. As you’d expect, the flavours work beautifully together. The almost-liquid whisky centre strongly flavoured, without too much of an alcoholic kick. The dark chocolate has an equally robust flavour at first, but develops into a smooth, silky chocolate that melts beautifully in the mouth.

The Lipstick Rose is made from Champagne, rose vodka, raspberry and Peychauds bitters in milk chocolate. That’s a fairly unusual collection of flavours, but again they work together beautifully. This is a much more gentle chocolate, with the raspberry and rose being the predominant flavours. The Champagne is subtle, but definitely there, and the overall effect is that of a soft fondant.

Both chocolates are wonderful of course, although I do wonder if they’re perhaps overplaying gender stereotypes a little. But knowing Paul and how his mind works, he’s completely aware of this and playing up to it to get you thinking about flavours.

I think if you were to get either of these from your Valentine (rather than from a man on a motorbike, like I did), you’d be really rather happy. They’re easily the best of the Valentines themed chocolates I’ve tasted this year. Remember, you can’t buy them online, so if you want to try them for yourself, you’ll have to head down to one of Paul’s London shops before Monday – and I highly recommend you do.

Information

You might also like...

Comments On This Post

  1. Maggie

    Now I know what I want for Valentine’s Day. Need to start dropping hints, methinks 🙂

  2. Ana

    I’d be really happy to get them from anyone… even from Big Foot or any other hideous creature :))

  3. Dom (Chocablog Staff)

    Had I known that, I would have saved you some. 🙂

Leave a comment




Chocablog: Chocolate Blog