The Hogarth Monsoon bar is a 66% dark chocolate bar with beans from Hacienda Victoria, Ecuador.
The ingredients include candied ginger, chili, lime oil, and lemongrass oil. This has a firm texture and snap. The first notes you taste are a sweetness with lime peel and cocoa flavours, then the ginger and chili kicks in growing stronger and stronger until it gives you a good slap in the mouth. The flavours are nice. We were pleasantly surprised by the lime oil as we haven't really enjoyed citrus oils in chocolate, but this added a nice lime marmalade type tang. Joni loved the heat slap at the end, but Joey wasn't so much a fan of the chili hit. This was a fun tasting.
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At the Choc Stock festival we visited Jonty the Lucid Chocolatier to see what is on offer at the moment. We picked up a bar and got a selection of his bon bons. We have previously got a sample of his trial stage bonbons and confectionary, so we were excited to see the final product on offer. Our most favourite bonbons were the Port and Tonka Infused caramels. Yummy and melt in the mouth.
From our previous samples, the Almond dragees were nice, but our overall, must try FAVOURITE is the Vanilla Chocolate Caramels!! Gorgeous flavour and texture, and we love the finger size. AO Cacao is another new chocolate maker to us. We bought a range of their bars from the Wellington Choc Stock festival to try. AO Cacao is created by Thomas Netana Wright, a pastry chef, chocolatier and chocolate maker. The inspiration and approach to chocolate making is quoted on their website: "Respect the history of cacao, Respect the People, Be Transparent and Be a good ancestor." Their cacao is sourced from Tuana'i, Samoa The first bar we tried is the Everything Gianduja 43% milk chocolate. It has won a gold medal at the Food Producer Awards 2024. When we first read Gianduja, we thought of the hazelnut filling. This bar instead refers to the hazelnut and macadamias being the plant based milk for the milk chocolate.
We thought the chocolate was nice and creamy. It is a mild chocolate with our tasting notes of vanilla, burning wood and musk. A pleasant bar. Coromandel Chocolate is a chocolate maker that is new to us, so we were excited to pick up a few bars from them at the Choc Stock festival.
Coromandel Chocolate is a family owned business in Whangamata, New Zealand. They make their chocolate from beans sourced from Malekula in Vanuatu Archipelago. They use earth conscious packaging and ethical ingredients. The first bar to taste: A milk chocolate, Toasted Coconut Rough with Passionfruit. Joni is a coconut rough fan, Joey is not, so you will get both sides with this one. This is certainly a coconut rough with lots of coconut. Sugar is the 2nd listed ingredient, but it is suprisingly only slightly sweet. It is tangy. The passionfruit gives a tangy dried fruit flavour with just a hint of passionfruit taste. We like that the passionfruit is not a strong flavour. Sometimes passionfruit in chocolate can be a bit overpowering and sickly, but here it is a nice and gives the coconut rough an added yumminess.... if you like coconut rough. The chocolate flavours are a very mild backdrop. If you like coconut rough, then this is nice. If you are not a coconut rough fan, this won't change your mind. This is a bar was one of the one we bought from Baron Hasselhoff's when we attended the Wellington ChocStock Festival. The Cheese Bar is 60% Vanuatu Origin Cacao milk chocolate. It is blended with an award winning aged danbo cheese from Hohepa Cheese. Here is a link to the cheese: Hohepa Danbo Cheese
They say on the cheese website that Danbo is similar to Dutch Gouda. When we sampled it at ChocStock, we could immediately taste the cheese as well as the chocolate. We opened the chocolate bar after lunch with the Wellington Gazetters. Because part of our lunch was a cheese, some of us found it nullified the taste of the cheese in the chocolate. Peter tasted it as an aftertaste. Johanan tasted it straight away, but the rest of us could only taste the cheese in the chocolate after we drank some water and cleansed our palates. This is a clever blending of flavours. The slightly yeasty, sour tang of cheese and chocolate flavours go so well together. There is a sweetness that is just right, and even though it is a milk chocolate, the chocolate comes through quite strong. We really enjoyed this one. 4 new bars from the Baron's is tastebud happy days! First a duo from Papua New Guinea. PAPUA NEW GUINEA70% DARK Single Origin from the Manabu Plantation We tasted a chocolate that had a slight peppery wood flavour to it. There was also some notes of vanilla and a sweet tanginess. There was also some milkiness to it, even though this was not a milk bar. This bar was very nice. PAPUA NEW GUINEA DARK MILK 60% Single origin from the Manabu Plantation. This bar had the same lit match, wood pepper flavours and had more fruitiness, raisin, wine flavours coming through than the dark. Really, really yum! The tasting notes from the Baron on the Papua New Guinea single origins are: honey caramel, dark cherry and cinnamon butter. COCONUT, BLACK PEPPER AND NIB DARK CHOCOLATE 69% This bar has cacao from the Anamalai Estate in India. The nibs are from Chiapas, Mexico. We loved the texture of the nibs in this chocolate. We got flavour notes of pepper, coconut, cherry, apricot, maple syrup and red wine. This was our favourite of the 4! JAGUAR VS CHIAPAS CACAO This bar has 2 types of Mexican cacao in one bar. There is the Theobroma Bicolour, (Jaguar Cacao), from Oaxaca Mexico and the Theobroma Cacao from Chiapas Mexico. We are presuming the light coloured is the Jaguar cacao. There is no milk in this bar, but this light chocolate has a mild buttery, creaminess to it. It's flavours reminded us of plum pudding and vanilla custard.
The darker side, (Chiapas) is more intense in flavour and we got notes of cherry, plum and strawberry jam. We liked the darker side the best. This foursome was so good! They are really fun tasting experience combo. We really enjoyed comparing the dark and the dark milk of the Papua New Guinea single origins and they are up there with our favourite Papua New Guinea bars. The flavours of the Coconut and Black Pepper chocolate makes our mouths water thinking about it. And what a fun way to finish off the tasting, comparing the two Theobrama bean types. Still huge fans of the Baron!! Our friends are starting to catch on we LOVE chocolate. We recently got our favourite type of pressie..... Here is how we ranked them: 1ST - WHITTAKERS WEST COAST BUTTERMILK CARAMELISED WHITE CHOCOLATE Yummy white chocolate with caramel flavour notes, with an under note of vanilla. 2ND - LINDT EXCELLENCE SEA SALT CARAMEL ![]() Nice caramel vanilla flavour. Very mild cocoa flavour. 3RD - WHITTAKERS HAWKES BAY BLACK DORIS PLUM AND ROASTED ALMONDS The Whittakers dark has a crisper bite than the Lindt dark. This has nice plum flavours. There is also a nice almond texture with a hint of almond taste and an under note of dark chocolate. 4TH - LINDT EXCELLENCE MANGO AND ALMOND 5TH - WHITTAKERS FIJIAN GINGER AND KERIKERI MANDARIN Johanan is not a fan of citrus and chocolate. Its just a preference. The Mandarin flavours are prominent alongside the dark chocolate flavour, then the ginger take over. All the flavours are there so if you like those flavours, you will like this. 6TH - LINDT EXCELLENCE CARAMILISED HAZELNUT You can taste the caramel. The hazelnut and dark chocolate flavours are very mild.
What would be your favourites? We have noticed a new 100g block chocolate range appearing on our store shelves. The brand name is
Belgid 'Or and the local offerings are a milk chocolate, milk hazelnut, dark sea salt, dark orange. These are fairly cheaply priced at under $3. The chocolate is made in Belgium and is distributed by Foodstuffs. There is 34% cocoa solids and 19% milk solids in the milk chocolate bar. We tried the milk version. The chocolate was very sweet and milky. There wasn't much cocoa flavour. It reminded us of the chocolate in Kinder Suprises. I think we have much nicer chocolate in our supermarkets in New Zealand. We are a bit underwhelmed by this one and not that keen to try the other variants. We probably will at some stage just to log them in the reviews. We bundled up on some of the new offerings from Cadbury, including a new chocolate covered sweet under their Pascall label. PASCALL HOKEY POKEY LUMPS Pineapple Lumps are iconic in New Zealand. Chocolate covered, soft tangy sweets. These Hokey Pokey lumps had the hokey pokey flavour, but were quite sweet. Joni missed the tang from the pineapple lumps. CADBURY CARAMILK MARVELLOUS CREATIONS We are not really a fan of popping candy in chocolate, or of caramilk really. The combo with jelly lollies and candy covered chocolate pebbles in the caramilk chocolate is actually quite fun and yum. We liked this one and would buy this over their other marvellous creations blocks. CADBURY SLICES: VANILLA AND PASSIONFRUIT PLUS OLD GOLD MINT CREME The passionfruit jelly is yummy in the vanilla passionfruit block. We like this jelly filling more than chocolate flavoured with passionfruit oil. We would buy this one again.
Old Gold mint creme has the same flavour as the mint slices biscuit you can buy from Griffins. There is little crunchy mint bits we thought were a bit odd. We aren't a fan of Cadbury dark chocolate, so we wouldn't buy this one again. We were very excited to discover a new chocolate maker for us in New Zealand: Wonderland Chocolate. Wonderland Chocolate is based in Lyall Bay, Wellington. They create bean to bar plant based milk chocolate goodies. They use Uncommon Cacao, transperant trade beans for their chocolate. The bars we bought are milk chocolate made with cashew milk. We loved the packaging artwork. ROCKET MAN ROY SMOOTH CASHEW MILK CHOCOLATE 50% cocoa solids from the Dominican Republic. The chocolate is very smooth and melty. It has a nice strong chocolate flavour for a milk chocolate. There is a mild nut flavour to it and some wood and vanilla notes. It has a nice sweetness that is not overly done. This is one of the nicest plant based milk chocolate we have tasted and is definitely going onto our 'Favourites' page. STAN THE STRONGMAN STRAWBERRY & CHAMPAGNE The same cashew milk chocolate with 49% cacao. The cocoa beans have been soaked in Champagne and the chocolate bar has a scattering of dried strawberries. The champagne and strawberries weren't distinct flavors, but together they added tang and berry fruit flavor notes to the wood, musk, vanilla notes of the chocolate. RONNIE & RITA HAZELNUT PLUM The cashew milk chocolate this time is 44% with hazelnuts and a scattering of dried Black Doris Plum. That same yummy wood, musk, vanilla chocolate notes, combined with some definite hazelnut flavours with a hint of plum. This was a dessert like combo for us. We really liked this cashew milk chocolate. Can't wait to try more from Wonderland Chocolate.
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June 2024
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