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Rococo ~ Sea Salt Organic Milk

Once again that pretty eye catching packaging from Rococo takes all the attention. This bar had more details on the inside flap about the molding for the chocolate bars.

These highly acclaimed bars are made using our own special blend of organic chocolate with recipes developed over the last twenty years. These moulds are an antique design, reflecting the bar wrapper which is made up of motifs from Letang Fils' 19th Century catalogue of chocolate moulds.

The organic dark chocolate has a 65% cocoa content and a particularly high percentage of cocoa butter (the only fat used) which gives the bars their silky texture and crisp snap. The flavor of the chocolate is robust enough to compliment the botanical flavours without overpowering them. Only the finest and where possible organic ingredients are added to flavour the chocolate.

I really adore the packaging, the moldings, and classic styles all a fitting theme with the name Rococo. It's classic and cute.

Speaking of cute, I want to get my hands on this cute box of truffles! It's called The Cat Who Got The Cream. I love it. I am a crazy cat lady and obviously I am crazy about chocolate, so this is perfect for me.

Flavours include jasmine tea, Manjari Madagascar, lychee rose and raspberry, Irish coffee, sour cherry with dark chocolate, and Jivara marc de champagne, passionfruit and mango, crushed lemon praline with milk chocolate.

I am also proud to say that Rococo highlighted my first review of their chocolate on their blog. That is very exciting news for me. That means they see what I am doing, and they cared enough to highlight it.

Valrhona Grand Cru No. 1 Manjari 93% rating.

Rococo Sea Salt Organic Milk Chocolate

Type: Flavored Milk Chocolate, 37%

Bean Varietal: Blend

Ingredients: Organic cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, organic full cream milk powder, organic cocoa mass, organic Halen Mon (Welsh) sea salt, soya lecithin.

Sample Size: 70g or 2.4oz




Appearance: Shiny, classic 18th century molding, a little bit matted markings on the bar but overall very shiny and smooth. Light, soft brown color.

Score: 93

Snap: Rubbery, dull sounding snap, but still fairly firm.

Score: 90

Aroma: Soft nutty aroma with creamy and milky aromas. A little bit of a floral character but mostly what is dominating is a buttery and caramel nose.

Score: 94

Taste: Blended in sea salt, perfect balance of sweet and salty, nutty, creamy, sweet honey tones, caramel, some fruity notes do come through, but the milky finish really erases all traces of any subtleties.

Score: 96

Texture: Super smooth, soft, creamy, medium melt time.

Score: 95

Usually when I am tasting chocolate, I sample a few small squares of chocolate from the bar, enough to get a good feel for the chocolate or enough until I completely understand it. Then I wrap up the rest to be eaten at another time or share with friends. I ate nearly half of this bar! Not because I didn't understand it, but because it was to satisfy the glutton in me. It was wonderful.

This bar made me miss milk chocolate for the first time. I noticed this feeling before with Vosges' Mo's Milk Chocolate Bacon bar, but I thought maybe the sweet milk chocolate and bacon were working because of the bacon. Everything is better with bacon. So shall it be written, so shall it be! I don't dislike milk chocolate by any means. But when you eat dark chocolate nearly 99.9% of the time, and then you try a fantastic bite of milk chocolate, it makes you wake up to what was missing in your life.

The salt was mixed through out the bar which I liked. It's usually coated on one side of the bar for appearance to and say see look this is a salt chocolate bar. The blending was great because it gave each bite the right balance of sweet and salty. Honey and caramel notes from the sweet chocolate balanced with lovely salt.

I think I hate you Rococo Chocolates! I hate you because I think I found sinful new treat that is going to end up costing me limbs to have shipped over to the U.S. frequently.


Final Score: 93.6

score
A-

Vosges ~ Mo's Milk Chocolate Bacon Bar

Yes the bacon craze is still in full swing and even more so with bacon chocolate bars. I am totally about it.

Vosges has been taunting me for months now on Twitter with their Mo's Bacon Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix. You know who you are person behind the Vosges Twitter account.

Finally, I found one of their bars at Cardullo's in Harvard Sq. They didn't have the dark chocolate and bacon bar, only the milk, but to be fair they look like they had been wiped out of a lot of chocolate. Cardullo's recently had stocked up on Le Whif for their launch party at a restaurant right next door called Tory Road. I stopped by to try and get Le Whif so I could review it. They were sold out, so I bought a collection of other chocolate bars instead. Apparently I wasn't the only one with that back up plan. But I would gladly choose real chocolate over that stupid novelty anyway. Especially bacon and chocolate!

At little bit of history about Katrina Markoff the owner and chocolatier of Vosges from their website:

Vosges' exotic truffles are made from the finest ingredients offered around the world. Owner/Chocolatier, Katrina Markoff, personally chooses every spice, flower and chocolate that is flown into our Chicago kitchen. Markoff utilizes the original methods of French confectionery artistry which she learned during her training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Having graduated with the Grand Diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu and having worked extensively in France, Spain, Italy, Southeast Asia and Australia her collections of haut-chocolats have great, worldly inspirations. Inspired by her global apprenticeships, Vosges truffles have exotic influences of an "East meets West" theme. The infusions of rare spices and flowers combined with premium chocolate give a delicate balance of flavor, leaving you with a layered and lingering sensation of spice and chocolate, a true haut-chocolat experience.

Mission Statement

The Vosges Haut-Chocolat mission is to create a luxury chocolate experience rooted in a sensory journey of bringing about awareness to indigenous cultures through the exploration of spices, herbs, roots, flowers, fruits, nuts, chocolate and the obscure. We invite you to be aware and open to the many cultures, artists and theories of the world's people, through the medium of chocolate. What better way to learn about a culture, person or object than through eating. If we can embrace the idea of trying something new such as the perplexing oddity of curry and chocolate, we just may come one step closer to bringing peace to the world through chocolate. One Love, One Chocolate.

Getting Greener...

Our facility is powered by 100% renewable energy and has been approved as an organic manufacturing facility. Click here to learn more about our mission to get greener.

Vosges Haut-Chocolat is thrilled to be certified as a women’s business enterprise through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the nation’s largest third party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women in the US.

Before I get into the review, I must say I am proud of Vosges for not being above beer and chocolate. I noticed once on their website that they had a wine offering with chocolate. I wanted to email them and ask them why not beer and chocolate? Before I could, I found a cool package they are offering featuring Rogue's Shakespeare Stout with their bacon and chocolate collection.

Mo's Bacon Bar + Rogue Shakespeare Stout Gift Box

This makes me proud. More and more you see people being receptive to craft beer. And as someone who used to teach classes on how to pair beer with chocolate or hosted tastings around beer and chocolate, it makes my heart swell.

They also offer their Caramel Marshmallows with Sam Smith's Imperial Stout.

Thank you Vosges for keeping it real with beer pairings!

Mo's Milk Chocolate Bacon Bar

Katrina's inspiration for the bar:

"I began experimenting with bacon + chocolate at the tender age of 6, while eating chocolate chip pancakes drenched in Aunt Jemima® syrup, as children often do. Beside my chocolate-laden cakes laid three strips of sizzlin' bacon, just barely touching a sweet pool of maple syrup. And then, the magic—just a bite of the bacon was too salty and I yearned for the sweet kiss of chocolate and syrup, so I combined the two. In retrospect, perhaps this was a turning point; for on that plate something magical happened, the beginnings of a combination so ethereal and delicious that it would haunt my thoughts until I found the medium to express it—chocolate.

From there, it was just a matter of time…and what began as a love of salt and sweet quickly unraveled into an obsession. No sooner could I wait to unveil the royal coupling in solid bar form, a deep milk chocolate with bits and pieces of applewood smoked bacon and just a sprinkling of Alder salt. Really, what doesn't taste better with bacon?"
–Katrina

Type: Flavored Milk Chocolate 45% cocoa

Bean Varietal: Unknown

Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, dry whole milk, milk fat, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, soy lecithin, vanilla), uncured bacon (pork, sea salt, raw sugar, white pepper, dried juniper berries, celery juice, lactic acid - started culture), salt.

Sample Size: 3oz or 85g

Appearance: Nice rich milky brown color. But dull, not shiny, and muted with some blotches on the surface. Simple monogrammed molding in large square shapes.

Score: 83

Snap: Light snap, fairly crisp sound and firm snap for milk chocolate, clean break lines.

Score: 94

Aroma: Smokey bacon, milky. No real big roasted cocoa aromas, but pure smokey bacon and soft milky cocoa aroma. Fantastic for bacon lovers, not so much for regular chocolate lovers.

Score: 94

Taste: A perfect balance of sweet and salty. Chocolate is smooth and tastes like caramel, but higher cocoa percentage gives more of a nice cocoa flavor, milky and creamy. Bacon is salty and smokey, very flavorful.

Score: 97

Texture: Soft milk chocolate, crispy yet chewy bacon bits. Perfect texture for bacon.

Score: 93

Awesome chocolate bar. This is gluttony wrapped up in a silver wrapper. I loved the quality of the milk chocolate. Higher percentages of cocoa give it a nice chocolate flavor, the milk gives it a nice soft, creamy texture. It worked incredibly well as a contrast to the salty, cured applewood smoked bacon.

I did wish the bacon was more like strips inside the bar instead of chopped up bits, but the texture of the bacon was perfect. Crispy and yet a little bit chewy as well. Nice and salty too.

This is awesome chocolate. A great bar of chocolate in the morning or breakfast chocolate. The bacon revolution rolls on.


Final Score: 92.2

score
B+

William Curley ~ Sea Salt Caramel Bar

Now this is what life is all about! William Curley's Sea Salt Caramel bar.

This thing is like heaven. The chocolate is rich and wonderful, while the caramel is so soft, and buttery. The taste of the caramel and chocolate together gives off a little bit of a rich coffee flavor. Beautiful roasted cocoa lingers on the palate.

This is eye's-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-head good!

I don't need to write a detailed review for this. You can tell just by looking at it that it's good. I just want you to look at it and crave it. I want you to envy me for having such a life where I get to write about these kinds of tokens from the gods.

William Curley ~ Chilli 70%

My second encounter with William Curley. This time with the the Chilli pepper chocolate bar made with 70% dark chocolate.

I sent my good friend Angelo around London to collect the best chocolates from the city. It was imperative that William Curley, with their tremendous reputation, be apart of that collection. The bars I received come from the Belgravia location.

Let's not waste time and get right into the review.

William Curley ~ Chilli 70%

Bean Varietal: Unknown

Type: Flavored Bittersweet, 70%

Ingredients: Cocoa mass (65% cocoa solids), cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, chilli.

Sample Size: 50g or nearly 2oz


Appearance: Deep, rich brown color, shiny, simple molding, no monograms.

Score: 95

Snap: Excellent deep, firm, crisp snap. Clean break lines.

Score: 99

Aroma: Roasted cocoa, coffee notes right out of the package, a little citric, very soft aroma it's very hard to get anything out of it.

Score: 91

Taste: Roasted cocoa, sweet, low bitterness, almonds, complex fruit characters, slight heat from chilli, a slow, comfortable heat, soft chilli taste, and a very soft heat.

Score: 93

Texture: Soft and smooth, medium melt time.

Score: 94

This was fantastic chocolate. The heat could have been kicked up just a notch though. And that is coming from someone with a super sensitive palate to heat. The chocolate was delicious and complex. Big roasted cocoa notes, sweet, and had some complex fruity characters to it.

I am willing to bet the cocoa came from South America, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was from Ghana or the Ivory Coast.

This was completely redeeming chocolate after my first encounter with William Curley bars. I was worried after that first review. This bar however, blows that previous review out of the water. With all the accolades William Curley has received, now I understand why they deserve such high praise.

Final Score: 94.4

score
A-

Melange Chocolate ~ 5 Classic Flavors

[Image via South London Guide]


As part of the British Chocolate Invasion, my good friend Angelo snuck in these fine straps of flavored chocolates in my collection from The Melange Chocolate Shop in Peckham Rye, London. They are located on Bellenden Rd. off to the left of the map.

It would be a perfect way to spend an afternoon in London, walking through the Peckham Rye Common and then off to Melange for a bite to eat of chocolate.

**UPDATE**

As promised, I said I would update this post if I heard back from the people at Melange.

Isabelle believes the cocoa beans being used are a blend of West African beans but she get the beans from Belcolade, a Belgian chocolate company. I tend to agree about the beans as the chocolates do have a strong character and most of the chocolate being consumed today comes from Africa and not South America as commonly thought.

She also added this:

It's a couverture chocolate, which means high content of cocoa butter and no substitute such a vegetable oil or dairy.
 
All the flavours I am adding are natural and infused into the chocolate which will be layered into thin slabs to enjoy better the texture as it melts easier in the mouth and develop it's flavours.
 
Isabelle Alaya has 15 years in the food industry in New York, as General Manager or Partner in restaurants and bars, working with amazing chefs who introduced her to lots of amazing and unsuspected flavours.
 
After a short class taken when she arrived in the UK, Isabelle started to experiment with Chocolate and created some flavoured bars. she started to trade in market and it became obvious that people were coming back to her for more chocolate.
 
The opportunity was to open a shop in Peckham, South London, a very villagy area of London, where she's now developping her business and creates always more flavours. she aims for 20 at least Melange Signature bars.

As far as the grading goes for these chocolates, I don't really have a solid format for grading flavored chocolate. These were also in thin straps and wouldn't be able to have the snap quality judged. I graded these based on the best flavor interactions with the chocolate. The cocoa for the chocolate bars is good, but it's not easy to tell how great the quality is with big spices like cinnamon. So again these are highly opinionated grades based on how I thought the flavors worked with the chocolate. Completely subjective without a real format for grading.

Basil & Lemon

Ingredients: Dark chocolate 72% cocoa, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, natural vanilla, basil, and lemon.

Type: Flavored Bitterweet 72%

Heavy basil nose. It was almost medicinal the way it interacted with the cocoa and lemon. Hints of licorice.

Spicy, heavy basil taste, almost minty and cooling. Barely any lemon taste, but more bitterness from the lemon. A little bit like licorice.

If you like Basil, you will like this bar. It's a little too heavy on the basil for me allowing flavors like licorice to come through which I don't like too much. I wanted to taste more of the lemon. More lemon peel came through than actual tart lemon flavors. The basil was simply too dominating.

Good cocoa taste and not too sweet. Medium melt time, not soft but not too hard or waxy either. Lingering basil, again too much leaving kind of a medicinal aftertaste.

score
C+

Orange & Chili

Ingredients: Dark chocolate 70% cocoa, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, natural vanilla, orange, and chili.

Type: Flavored Bittersweet 70%

Soft nose of almonds and soft roasted cocoa. Almost no orange aroma.Tiny hints of chili, but so barely noticeable.

Nice roasted cocoa, orange flavors are subdued and hidden by the cocoa. Takes a minute for the orange to open up and come out, but still soft. Virtually no chili taste, but a barely there spicy heat that barely hangs on after the chocolate has melted.

Despite light chili notes which could have been kicked up a notch, this was pretty delightful. The orange flavor was not overpowering and hints at it's presence. The cocoa is good tasting and once again not too sweet and not too acidic but definitely bittersweet.

score
B+

5 Spice & Lemongrass

Ingredients: Dark chocolate 70% cocoa, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, natural vanilla, clove, fennel, cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger.

Type: Flavored Bittersweet 70%

Roasted cocoa and lemongrass nose. Spices are apparent, but lemongrass is dominating.

Lemongrass taste, ginger, and cinnamon. Lemongrass is very apparent, but it's lovely. Spices show up for a second, but then give way to the lemongrass. Ginger is the only spice really hanging on. A little bit of a spicy lingering taste on the palate once chocolate has melted. Gorgeous flavors married with the cocoa. I am very impressed with this one.

The only slightly negative thing about this bar is the spices leave for a bit of a tar taste on the finish. Bitter chocolate and spices leave for an odd aftertaste, but it's still gorgeous flavored chocolate.

score
A

Bergamot & Cinnamon

Ingredients: Dark chocolate 70% cocoa, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, natural vanilla, Bergamot (Earl Grey), and cinnamon.

Type: Flavored Bittersweet 70%

Soft Bergamot and cocoa nose not overpowered by cinnamon.

Takes a minute for the cinnamon to present itself, light cinnamon, balanced well with the Bergamot flavor. Spices are soft, but the bittersweet cocoa is a little dominating at first. But then Bergamot makes more of an appearance at the end and is a nice flavor to finish on. Good balance all the way around.

I am a believer in Bergamot and chocolate flavors together.

score
A-

  

Mulled Wine Spices

Ingredients: Dark chocolate 70% cocoa, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, natural vanilla, orange peel, lemon peel, cassia bark, nutmeg, ginger, clove.

Type: Flavored Bittersweet 70%

Big spicy nose. Cinnamon, cloves, and a little bit of the orange peel dominate.

Good cocoa taste in the beginning, cinnamon and clove spices dominate once it begins to open up. Lemon and orange peels makes an appearance, but ginger and cinnamon spices come back and finish the palate.

Good winter chocolate. Spicy and representative of the holidays. A little cloying at the end with the cinnamon, but overall very tasty. Now if I only had a nice glass of red wine to go with this chocolate.....

score
A

These were fun to taste. I was really impressed with the 5 spice & Lemongrass and the Mulled Wine Spices. Excellent flavors with chocolate. I like it when someone takes a risk and gets adventurous with chocolate. It's not always about the single origins.

Modern Dwellers ~ Beat Up Truffles

When I was visiting Anchorage, Alaska last month, my new close buddies Ken and Shauna Pajak of Cafe Amsterdam sent me a box of truffles from Modern Dwellers. They arrived just as Ken arrived to hang out and visit Boston for the BeerAdvocate Extreme Beer Festival.

I wasn't able to check out their shop while visiting Anchorage, because they were closed on the one day I had for some free time in Alaska. Shauna being the amazing person that she is, shipped off some truffles to me to make sure I got a chance to try them.

I have to admit though, I am kind of disappointed. These truffles got beat the hell up in transition. I am frustrated at Modern Dwellers for this. Even if you are taking them down the street, or shipping them across the continental US, they should have been packed up better. They were tossed on a large box, and rattled around. Ones that were coated in nuts, completely lost the coating. Others were covered in soot from the other truffles.

This is what they looked like after I tried to put them back together again. Not very appetizing. But believe me when I say the box was in total shambles when I opened it. See their website with a list of truffles and what they would have looked like.

Modern Dwellers Truffles

The other issue with the way they were packed is freshness. Sitting in a cardboard box for days on end without any kind of insulation, leaves them vulnerable to getting stale and absorbing the box flavors. Not to mention absorbing all the other spices from the heavier spiced truffles in the box. All in all they are bit stale and are in no way representative of what is shown on their website.

The reason this is so aggravating is because it destroys a nice gift that my new good friends were trying to get to me. Also Modern Dwellers had some completely unique flavors. How can I give them a fair shot when they don't care enough to package their products properly?

It should be said that I am not normally this picky when someone gives me a gift. I am not ungrateful to my friend Shauna for giving me the chance to get to taste these truffles. I am just miffed that they didn't do too well in transition.

I will get over how they look because some of them still tasted good based on how they were flavored despite being beat up. But this is something Modern Dwellers should look into and take care of. Package your product better!


This is what came in my box.

Pumpkin Spice: Pumpkin pie spiced dark chocolate ganache dipped in white chocolate.

Very good! And I will be damned when I ate the truffle before I thought of taking pictures of the individual ones. But you can figure at least for this one since it was dipped in white chocolate and was the only white chocolate in the box, which one it was from the picture above.






Dazed By Hazel: Rich milk chocolate and hazelnut ganache rolled in dark chocolate and chunks of hazelnut.

Uhhhh you mean the nuts that ended up at the bottom of the box? Fail! This one tasted okay. It was soft but I had a hard time telling which one this actually was. It didn't taste too hazelnut-y.






Indian Bop: Bittersweet East Indian curry ganache hand rolled in coconut flakes and dark chocolate.

This was excellent. But I wish half of the coconut hadn't worn off. Nice curry flavor without being too over bearing. Lingers a bit, but is in no way offensive. Some people really love curry. I can tolerate it in small bits. I really liked this one a lot.

Raspberry Grove: Bittersweet raspberry and maple ganache enrobed in dark chocolate. Finished with a lavish luster.

This could have been pretty if you could still see the sparkly sheen and not the dusty coating from the other truffle coatings. This tasted interesting. The raspberry is not as dominating as I would have thought. The maple comes through quite a bit.

Purple Infusion: Smooth fragrant lavender ganache encased in layers of delightful dark chocolate. Garnished with petals of lavender.

Mine looked like it was topped with grass. It barely tasted like lavender. The chocolate was too strong for it. Maybe it was different when it was more fresh. I can only assume that's the one I was looking at because no other truffle listed is described as this.

The Berbere: Bittersweet ganache spiced with Ethiopian Berbere. Dipped in dark chocolate and garnished with a pinch of berbere.

Woo a little too spicy for me. I am wuss about spicy food and I make no bones about it. This is spicy and laden with a bit of heat. It was a little salty at first to contrast the sweet chocolate, but then the heat got the better of me. I think most people will like this one, but again it was too much for my oversensitive palate. My wuss mouth.

Mint Breezy: Fresh taste of mint infused in a bittersweet ganache. Hand rolled dark chocolate shell and lustered.

Soft, subtle mint. Tasted like spearmint. I liked this truffle. The sheen was pretty despite the condition of these truffles. The mint was soft and worked well with the dark chocolate.

Orange Drop: A delightful ganache of orange zest and Grand Marnier enrobed in dark chocolate and accented with fresh candied orange.

This will sound silly but it tastes exactly like the chocolate covered donuts from Entemann's. I loved those when I was a kid. The orange is apparent and soft, but the Grand Marnier is dull and not potent at all. This was a good truffle, but might have been better with a bit of an alcohol kick. 

Cacao Wow: Dark 72% chocolate ganache encased in dark chocolate and sprinkled wit organic cocoa nibs.

This is simple and straight forward, a rich dark chocolate truffle. Tasty and strong dark chocolate. Hardly any nib left on the top.

Blueberry Patch: Bittersweet blueberry puree ganache swimming in layers of hand rolled dark chocolate.

Not too fruity. I was hoping for big blueberry taste on this one. The dark chocolate overwhelmed. Might have been different fresh.

Margarita Zing: Bittersweet ganache of fresh lime zest and tequila cloaked in dark chocolate and topped with Hawaiian pink sea salt.

No sea salt left on this truffle, but it tastes salty on the coating. Light lime and tequila taste, but worked surprisingly well with the dark chocolate. Would have been fantastic fresh.

Pistachio Passion: Lemon zest white ganache enrobed in dark chocolate shell topped with salted pistachios.

No pistachios left on top of this truffle, but very tasty center. The lemon zest is delicious and holds up well against the dark chocolate. The salted pistachios are deeply missed for this truffle.

I cannot express enough my disappointment with how shoddy Modern Dwellers packed their lovely truffles. These would have been fantastic if they were fresh. These are creative and wonder flavors for truffles, but since they were stale from lack of proper packaging, they failed miserably in their representation of what is deemed an awesome chocolate shop in Anchorage, Alaska.

To my friend Shauna Pajak,

I thank you for making sure these were sent to me. You went out of your way to make sure I got them, and I am personally grateful to you for that. I just hope my brutal honestly in writing about these doesn't upset you personally. They should have packaged these up better. But your kindness in thinking of me is more important than the outcome of these truffles.

Chocri ~ Meine Shokolade Part 2

A little while ago, I found out about a create your own custom chocolate bar company called Chocri through Twitter. They began to follow me and I followed them. I eventually ordered some of my own custom creations.

They were delivered and they looked beautiful!

A few things I should note right off the bat, The order was promised by Jan. 21st. I didn't get it until the 25th. Granted, there was a weekend there, but still they send you emails of when your chocolate was made and guarantee you a timely delivery.

The only other bad thing I want to mention is that one of my bars was messed up. The Health Bar is the name of my creation and it was requested to be made with dark chocolate and even the label it was sent with said dark chocolate. It came as white chocolate. I don't like white chocolate all that much and since white chocolate is completely unhealthy, it defeats the purpose of the bar. Simple mistake I am sure, but for am $11 to $14 dollar bar of chocolate, it's very frustrating.

A small, petty detail of The Health Bar is that it also had a huge chunk of walnut on it. This is really a petty detail for me to point out, but if you happen to be allergic to nuts, then you should be careful that your custom bars might be contaminated with other ingredients you did not request. Again, I must stress that that is a petty detail to call out, but in the case of being fair and honest it must be noted.

Chocolate Ingredients:

Milk chocolate:

Sugar 50.5 % ; Cocoa mass 32.5 % ; Cocoa butter 16.5 % ; Emulsifier: soya lecithin ; Natural vanilla flavouring.

White chocolate:

Cane sugar*** 45.0 % ; Cocoa butter *** 30.0 % ; Whole milk powder *** 24.5 % ; Emulsifier: soya lecithin

*** : from organic farming in accordance to EU regulation

With the Dark chocolate, we have a special case since we mix some chocolate with less cocoa content to it, and since that such a custom mixture no one ever actually calculated the percentages other than the cocoa content (64%). Here's the dark chocolate that we use as a base:

Cocoa mass *** 61.0 % ; Cane sugar*** 26.5 % ; Cocoa mass *** 8.0 % ; Cocoa butter *** 4.0 % ; Emulsifier: soya lecithin

*** : from organic farming in accordance to EU regulation CERTISYS BE-BIO-01
*** : from organic farming in accordance to regulation USDA National Organic Program certified by CERTISYS SPRL/BVBA 

Let's get to it shall we.

First up:

Old World: Dark Chocolate (64%) with Anise, Rosemary, Sea Salt, Date Bits, and Fig Bits.

 

I was trying to gather all of the toppings that they offered that were considered old world. Anise, figs, dates, sea salt, and rosemary. They just sounded old world and sounded like they would taste good together on dark chocolate.

The dark chocolate was very tasty. The rosemary was the most flavorful, and the fig and date bits added a nice chewy texture. I barely noticed any sea salt, I think they may have forgotten it or it was barely coated with it. I think the sea salt would have added the right contrast. Overall though, it was a pretty tasty bar.

Strawberry Basil Martini: Dark Chocolate (64%) with Strawberry, Ground Chili, Basil, and Organic Mint Leaves.

 

I created this bar because Boston has been known for the Strawberry-Basil Martini. While I was in San Francisco for a food festival, a company that jars peppers, displayed their products with a Strawberry basil martini that contained muddled red peppers and garnished with a pepperocini. I decided to try and recreate that with this bar of chocolate.

This bar was messy! It looked beautiful though. Lovely red colors with hints of green from the mint. Tart strawberry bits, and dark chocolate dominate the flavors on the bar. A little bit of spicy heat on the finish as well as bit of cooling mint from the dried mint leaves. Rather dull though for the amount of ingredients in it. Still, I didn't mind eating this one either. 

Banana Nut: Milk Chocolate with Banana Chips, Cinnamon, and Walnuts.

 

This one is almost self explanatory. I was trying to make banana nut muffins or loaf bread into a chocolate bar. I wanted to try their milk chocolate as well and thought this would be the right combination for milk chocolate.

This was very tasty! Creamy and soft milk chocolate, huge chunks of walnuts bigger than anything I have ever seen before. The cinnamon added the perfect touch. The bananas added a nice crunchy texture. I liked this bar the most. It was so good.

Health Bar: Dark Chocolate (64%) with Blueberries, Cranberries, Organic Flax Seeds, Goji Berries, and mymuesli - Organic Muesli.

As I mentioned earlier, huge disappointment that this bar came in white chocolate when the ingredients called for it to be on dark chocolate. The intention for this bar was to include everything super healthy in their profile and make a super bar. White chocolate being all fat, completely nulls and voids the premise for this bar.

The white chocolate completely ruined the taste of this bar as well. I am not a big fan of white chocolate. The creamy taste of the white chocolate completely clashed with almost all of the ingredients added to this bar. I did not like this bar and was not able to finish the sample bites I snapped off.

Pretty: White Chocolate with Strawberry, Papaya Cubes, Flower Mix, Silver Pearls, and Macadamia Nuts.

I created this bar for aesthetics. I wanted something pretty to look at. I think I may have over done it a bit. The bar also came broken. But that wasn't a big deal to me as I was trying to figure out how to snap a chunk off that had the huge macadamia nut on it.

The size of the macadamia nuts were outrageous. I have never seen them that big before. Same as the walnuts on the Banana Nut bar. I think this bar would have looked better if they were smaller, but I am not going to complain that they were too big. I thought flowers and papaya cubes, and silver pearls would be gorgeous together, but it ended up being a bit too much. I still think the bar was pretty overall, but it would have been nicer if it was tweaked a bit.

The flavors were very nice on this bar. The strawberries, white chocolate, and macadamia nuts dominated the flavors, the papaya rounded out the finish. These are the kinds of flavors made for white chocolate. Even though I am not a major fan, there is still a time and a place for white chocolate. These are the kinds of ingredients for white chocolate. Crunchy texture with soft white chocolate made it balanced. Lovely flavors.

I think the idea behind these bars is a cool concept. Custom made chocolate bars from Europe delivered right to your door. These do make for a great gift idea. Anyone who is a chocolate lover will appreciate this concept.

However, they are a bit expensive and had some issues in execution. The ruined Health bar was a major fail all the across the board simply because it was meant to be dark chocolate and not white chocolate. It upset all of the other flavors. Some of the spices and flavors were not as robust as I would have hoped as noted with the Strawberry Basil Martini. Just some things to keep in mind when creating your own bars. 

Overall it is worth the risk. And I like the people behind this company. They have a donation area when ordering your bars that you can chose to donate to to help support the regions they get their chocolate beans from. This is something I can totally support. They are a young company with young people working the helms. Their customer service is fantastic too. They stayed in good contact with me to give me the ingredients, followed up with me when my bars were running late, and have stayed in contact via Twitter.

I like this company and I wish them success.

When Bad Things Happen To Good Chocolate

Saturday night I met with a bunch of BeerAdvocates for a staff meeting at The Publick House in Brookline. These are the fine folks who volunteer for me for the BeerAdvocate beer festivals thrown here in Boston. We have the Extreme Beer Festival happening this weekend and an I needed to go over some information and talk about what was to be expected for the festival.

I happened to bring with me samples of chocolate that have been sitting around and needed to be eaten. Some of it was already reviewed, but some of it was chocolate I couldn't review.

Some of the chocolate I had, was not reviewable, but still edible. Some of it had bloom, and one of them I dropped and broke into a million pieces. The conditions in my apartment haven't been to favorable for storing chocolate. It gets either way too cold or way too hot. Mostly it's too hot. Especially in the winter when the heat is turned on full which I have no control over. Or if the heat doesn't come on and I have left my windows open in the wintertime to combat the heat, the house is frozen. Needless to say this has wreaked havoc on some the chocolate I wanted to review. Luckily, I am getting them replaced to give them all a fair shot.

This is why I didn't review some of these chocolates. It's my fault or rather my apartment's fault that there is an unstable environment for storage. I felt it was unfair to review these chocolates in the state they were in despite still being perfectly fine to eat.

But having bloom on chocolate does not make the chocolate inedible. And chocolate also has a very long shelf life. I brought the chocolate to the meeting and let the staff have at it. I was able to talk to them about bloom and let them experience some real chocolate for a change.

I am currently sitting on 25 bars of chocolate up for review. With new ones that just came in from my husband for Valentine's day, a friend from England who has been on a mission in London rounding up chocolate from all over the city, and my good friend Shane Welch of Sixpoint Craft Ales, bringing me more Mast Brothers to review, you can see why I had to get rid of this chocolate. I already reviewed a lot of it, and I didn't want to see if just go to waste.

What we tasted:

Amano: Madagascar 70% (reviewed)
Amedei 9 (reviewed)
Amedei La Tavolette
Mast Brothers:
    Sea Salt + Pepper 75%
    Fleur de Sel 75% (reviewed)
    Dried cranberries 75%
    Sea Salt + Almonds 75%
    Cocoa Nibs 75%
Villars L'Ancienne (reviewed)
Villars Noir 72% (reviewed)
Chocolat Olivier Selection 85% (reviewed)
Pralus 100% Criollo
Chocolat Olivier Ghana 70% (reviewed)
Michel Cluizel Mangaro 65% (reviewed)
Michel Cluizel Maralumi 64% (reviewed)
Fine & Raw Mesquite Bar (reviewed)




 

We drank Brooklyn Cookie Jar Porter, Dogfish Head World Wide Stout, and Great Divide's Yeti. The Cookie jar was fairly flat but still tasted excellent, the WWS was too sweet, and but the Yeti was just right for the more bitter chocolates.

It was a Saturday night at the Publick House. A lot of other people who were not part of the BA meeting were standing around curious about what we were doing. It looked like I was teaching a class on crack. Everyone had a major caffeine buzz going on and all of the sample were in plastic baggies.

The Cluizel went over well for texture. The Mast Brothers Salt and Pepper was voted best over all. And the very harsh Pralus was a bigger hit than I expected. Unsweetened 100% bitter chocolate.

 

Sexual Chocolate (NSFW)

Kama Sutra Chocolate and a Tantric Tablet Collection. Yep, you guessed it. An adult, pre-Valentine's day heads-up (no pun intended) post about intimate chocolates.

I also give a quickie (pun intended) list of Valentine's Day beer recommendations for your chocolate.

This post is NSFW. Please enter at your own risk. And for the love of god if you don't have a sense of humor or can't handle my particular brand of vulgarity, then you should forget about this post all together.

Mast Brothers ~ Dark Chocolate 75% + Fleur de Sel

Mast Brothers Chocolate Brooklyn, New York.

Take a second to marvel at their gorgeous packaging. Each bar has a different and eccentric package pattern. I love the way they look.

[Image via Lovely Package]

Lovely Package has good collection of images with their various products and packaging. They also have way better photography than I do giving much better justice to these special chocolate wrappers.

A collection of Mast Brothers Bars were sent to me from my good friend Shane Welch, brewer and owner of Sixpoint Craft Ales. Shane has used Mast Brothers cocoa in his beers before and raves about their chocolate. Shane and I also talk a lot of shit to one and other be it politically or in general. That's what home slice's do. He demanded that I try the Mast Brothers chocolate after I proclaimed my love for Italian Chocolatiers. Then one day in the mail, a wonderful package of beer and chocolate was delivered to my door.

From their website:

The Brothers

Rick Mast culled his culinary craft in heralded New York City kitchens such as Gramercy Tavern, Soho House, and the Outermost Inn on Martha's Vineyard, and under Jacques Torres at his Manhattan chocolate factory. A classically trained musician, Rick plays piano and is an amateur banjo player.

Michael Mast, prior to handcrafting chocolate, spent many years in finance for independent film and television in New York. Making chocolate was a disciplined an studious hobby. In recent years, her has combined his love for cocoa, travel, and photography with trips to Central America and Africa.

The Mast Brothers are located in Brooklyn, New York making artisanal chocolate bars. These are hand made bars with cocoa from Madagascar, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador.

Upon receiving their bars, I immediately sent a request for information. How much cocoa butter, why soy lecithin? I indicated my connection with Shane Welch, hoping that would lend some credibility. I heard nothing back. That only means I have minimal information to go on as far as where the beans come from for each particular bar. I know they use single origin beans, but I am not sure of the varietals. Each bar lists ingredients, but not cocoa origin or varietals.

They do have a blog and a Facebook page, but I didn't know that they had those pages when I reviewed this chocolate.

Upon reading their Facebook notes, they seem to do a lot of beer and chocolate tastings. Men after my own heart due to the nature of my beer background. Not to mention when I used to teach beer and chocolate tastings when I worked at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Ma. That's where my chocolate journey began.






Mast Brothers Dark Chocolate 75% + Fleur de Sel

Bean Varietal: Unknown

Sample size: 2.5 oz

Type: Flavored Bittersweet 75%

Ingredients: Cocoa, cane sugar, cocoa butter, sea salt, soy lecithin, vanilla beans.

Appearance: Slightly knicked up, but that won't reflect on the score. I believe that came from shipping. Shiny, and simple molding. Slight streak through the bar as if blooming may have begun to occur.

Score: 87

Snap: Clean snap with clean break lines, good snapping sound.

Score: 94

Aroma: Smokey, tobacco, slight roasted cocoa, a little earthy, fruity, berries.

Score: 95

Taste: Salt is the first thing that comes through, but then dissipates as it is not blended through the bar. It's actually quite soft and not overbearing. Adds a nice balance to the bar.

Cocoa has big berry taste, low acidity, no sharp pangs in the neck. Takes a while for the flavors to open up due to slow melting. Smokey tobacco notes, flowery lavender and ginger notes mixed in with berry and smoke notes. Lingering tartness and bitterness at the end when the chocolate has completely melted.

Score: 97

Texture: Dry, hard texture, extremely slow melt, but opens and becomes creamy as it softens though the melt. The salt is delicate and not coarse, it is not gritty, and smooths itself away quickly.

Score: 92

I am guessing that this particular bar was made with the Venezuelan beans. The big berries and smokey nose indicate that that may be where the beans came from. Probably Forastero bean varietal.

The sea salt was excellent for this bar. A nice balance to the sweet berry flavors. The sea salt was sprinkled on lightly, and was not overdone and not too coarse to interfere with the texture.

Very pretty chocolate.

Final Score: 93

score
A-