Gone Chocco

Well, we’re now at the so-busy-it’s-crazy stage of selling/donating/throwing out our entire houseful of possessions as well as sorting out the dog’s boarding and flight over, visa details, eBay follow-ups, a forth-coming garage sale, temporary accommodation here in Melbourne as well as first arrival in Geneva and oh, about several dozen other things. Anyone want a canoe or a TV cabinet or a truckload of kitchen utensils? No?

So, it’s time to say a big thank you and farewell to all readers of GoneChocco – lurkers, Facebook fans, subscribers and page markers.

This blog started in September 2009 with a small but rather heartening 2000 page views and finishes with 59,000 page views per month as at the end of April 2011.  To use an Aussie phrase, this growth and interest has left me absolutely stoked and has found me, many times, sitting at the computer with a goofy grin on my face.

To be able to have a bit of fun eating, photographing, reviewing and writing about the Best. Food. In. The. Entire. Universe. Bar. None. has been a real privilege and led to some amazing opportunities. I’ve been on radio, print and the telly and make some wonderful friends that I hope to stay in touch with.

Now the irony of closing this blog because we’re moving to the land where Rudolphe Lindt invented the conching process and therefore the creamy dreamy chocolate that has since swept the world does not escape me, but I’m aware that there are a lot of European-focussed foodie and chocolate blogs out there and my rather daggy Aussie approach might not make a dent. Plus, you guys want to read about chocolate that you can find yourself – not some poncy stuff that’s only available in a market off the main cobbled medieaval square in Bruges after slipping the gypsy a fiver and reciting the Brabançonne backwards in Flemish…

Plus I’m looking forward to just enjoying chocolate for a while, without having to whip out the SLR and a notepad or say (very sternly), “NO Love Chunks! I haven’t reviewed this yet!” or “GO AWAY Sapphire, I need to edit these photos and then we’ll have fun eating the leftovers.”

However, my other blog – which talks about pretty well everything except chocolate – will continue. Here it’s called ‘Blurb from the burbs’ but may find a new name in Geneva. It will still, however, document my observations, experiences and general fumblings as we make our way in a new country, so please pop over to read and say ‘g’day’.

Thank you once again for being part of this blog. It’s been so much fun and I’d better sign off because I need to drop off our mail re-direction notice and then head into the real estate agent with the landlord forms and stack those cardboard boxes with books ready for the garage sale and have a shower and stop crying and smiling at the same time….

Thank you!

Belgian chocolate company Choc-o-lait make only one thing - hot chocolate.

Well actually it’s not hot chocolate they make, but they provide you with the things you need to make it for yourself.

Imported by Apromo Trading (whose website is very secretive), they come in packs of two and couldn’t be more simple:

Two squares of chocolate, on sticks.

Sapphire had her friend Phoebe over, and it was snack time.

“Who’d like to make their own hot drink with real choc—-” I started to call out but they were at my feet with eager smiles before I could finish the sentence.

As a nice addition, Phoebe had been baking the night before and brought along some strawberry friands to share (yes, never let it be said that eleven year olds aren’t sophisticated).

I’m not sure what was luring me more – the squares of chocolate about to melt into milk or the friands….

….which were delicious (if you email me at kath@gonechocco.com I might be persuaded to send you the recipe, if Chef Phoebe agrees).

To heat up the milk I didn’t fuss about the instructions to do it to 75C, I just put two mugs into the microwave, nuked them for one minute; gave them a  stir and nuked ‘em for another minute. All class, me, but it did work pretty well.

Rightio – plonk them in and start stirring!

That’s the way – less than a minute later and the mixture was smelling decidedly creamy and chocolatey……

Done!

And how did it taste?

Sapphire? Phoebe?

Girls? ‘They were each in a state of silent pleasure’ is perhaps the best way to describe it, before finally being able to rouse themselves up enough to answer. “This is lovely, really smooth and sort of thick and melty,” and “You can tell that this drink is from real chocolate and not the horrible powdered stuff.”

They had the milk chocolate (there’s eight varieties in total) which contained 25% cocoa solids and smelled (to my nose, as I unwrapped them) pretty darned tempting.

Would they recommend these drinks to kids? Yes.

And adults? Yes. “Especially YOU, Mum, for when you say that you don’t want to have any chocolate because it’s too late at night but then end up trying to make a hot drink instead.”  Oh.

Did they share any with me? No.

Did I eat a second friand to make up for it? Yes.

It can be a quandary, this Choc Goddess stuff. Sometimes I find myself at my favourite little corner store and spy some imported (and therefore expensive) little packets of Peanut Butter M&Ms and of course buy myself some because they’re wickedly delicious and Mars Australia can’t be bothered making them here.

Other times, I see the Peanut Butter M&Ms but my conscience tells me to look further right and take note of a new flavour I’ve not seen before – Coconut.

If you look carefully you’ll see Mr Yellow falling out of the coconut tree, binoculars in hand, clearly over-reaching whilst perving on Miss Coconut (wearing a hibiscus in what I thought would be a non-existent ear considering she’s a smooth M&M shape), and for some reason this little illustration conjured up hopeful visions of coconut slivers or even a fondant inside.

Instead, they look like your usual plain M&Ms but only in three colours. And they taste awful with a not-so-nice chemical Copha flavour that is presumably meant to convince my taste buds that it is coconut. It’s not and they’re not. Convinced I mean.

The ingredients include a variety colouring numbers, corn starch, corn syrup and artificial flavour. No wonder they taste so bottom-lip-droopingly bleeding ordinary.  And no, the fact that a little pack of these shockers provides me with 4% of my daily fibre and 2% of my daily iron needs doesn’t make up for it. These are the sorts of lollies that we used to have as kids in the seventies before such knowledgeable concerns as cancer in rats, unrestrained hyperactivity, cavities and insanity set in - but surely this fakery shouldn’t be permissable as ‘food’ in this day and age? Making a product where chemicals outnumber real ingredients?

Why couldn’t Mars have added a few tiny slivers of coconut to the chocolate centre? Why are they allowed to name a product after an ingredient that isn’t even included?  Oh, wait – underneath the red ‘Coconut’ lettering is (squint squint) writing in what appears to be 0.0001-sized font that says ‘Artificial Flavor.’  Thanks for that, Mars.

If you see these and are hankering for a nice experience, walk away. However if you’re feeling brave and want a dose of (legal) chemicals, be my guest. Yuk!

I love what the mad and creative Austrian Josef Zotter creates and this Labooko duo features two small blocks made from sheep’s milk. Yes, from Mary’s flock; not McDonald’s.

The first small block contains 42% cocoa (so yes, it’s the lighter one in the picture below) and the flavour is quite distinctly different – less creamy than cows’ milk but a more ‘milky’ flavour (if that makes any sense). I could detect hints of vanilla, a swirl of caramel and a nutty kick. After flipping over the wrapper I discovered that it contains walnuts but they don’t produce the strong sour notes you’d normally associate but a very light and sweet contribution. This is very, very special. 

Block number two is the intriguingly titled ‘Hot Sheep’ – all obvious jokes will be put aside to keep the ‘tone’ of this website at an acceptable level.

This little fella contains 60% cocoa with the instant tongue tickle of chilli (Oooh, so it’s not a reference to overly-attractive wool growers….). Bird’s eye chilli is used which is not for the faint-hearted but it also won’t peel the top layer off your tongue either. It adds a cheeky little kick that somehow makes the melting chocolate taste sweeter and creamier in contrast. Love Mr Zotter!

Contact the ‘hot sheep’ blokes at Premier Food and Beverages for details on where you can get your hands on these quirkies (the Zotter blocks, not the blokes)

G’day everyone, I hope you all had a great Easter Break.  I did and it was without a skerrick of chocolate. Yes, if moving to Geneva wasn’t enough, I’m shocking you again to say that I didn’t have any chocolate over Easter!

That’s because we went to Singapore for the week and the chocolate there is either the US stuff I’d actively avoid and/or it was way, way overpriced. Instead, I loved being shown around the place by my lovely sister-in-law who grew up there and my brother, who knows the place like the back of his hand. We ate stuff like ice kechang desserts (flavoured with beans and sweetcorn at the bottom), aloe vera juices, avocado cream donuts, pork squares and, of course, Singapore chilli crab and the must-have ‘Singapore sling’ at Raffles.

Now that I’m back in the land where things are getting darker and colder instead of hotter and sweatier, it’s back to some chocolate revieiwing………….

Available from Rosco Fine Foods, boxes of Roca nut-centred toffee chocolates have started to appear in some supermarkets and delis.

Homesick Yanks will be far more familiar with them as the makers of Roca – Brown Haley - have been manufacturing ‘buttercrunch’ toffee in the US since 1923 but have been making all kinds of confectionery since 1912, apparently seeking to soothe the sweet tooths of young soldiers training nearby.

Their best-seller continues to be their original Almond Roca (’roca’ means ‘rock’ in Spanish, but don’t let that frighten you off), so it’s the first one of the three boxes (yes, there are four pictured, but one is going to be tasted another day) we’ll review.

In their crinkly foil wrappers they look rather home made but unwrapped they remind me a bit of the Anvers truffle logs we tasted in Tasmania.

However, where Anvers have soft cream-based ganache inside, the Almond Roca is a peanut brittle texture that belies the outward appearance. 

In fact it’s the ‘buttercrunch’ toffee that’s the key here, not the chocolate or the almonds. It shatters easily when bitten into, so there’s no need to worry about cracking crowns or dinging any dentures. The chocolate is a minor ingredient; a thin layer to coat the toffee and allow tiny pieces of almond to stick to the outside and no cocoa solids are included. I see these more as a ‘candy’ than a chocolate and in that regard they’re pretty nice.

And Cashew Roca is pretty much exactly the same except that cashews are the nuts used.  

Ditto for the Macadamia Roca but this one isn’t coated in crushed nuts on the outside (presumably they’re too hard to stop turning into butter, or too expensive?)

I’ll go with the ‘too expensive’ option because macadamias fall behind palm oil in the list of ingredients and, unlike almonds that are specified as comprising 22% of each chocolate, there are no details on volumes provided here.

Again, they’re in the lovely butter crunch toffee stuff, so in reality each box gives the option of choosing the nut you like best; albeit held captive in a super sugar, cripsy textured log of out and proud sweetness.

Almonds have the strongest flavour out of the three. They’re not marzipany in the least, but emit a surprisingly warm, popcorn hint that sings in harmony with the toffee.

Contact Rosco Fine Foods for stockists.

It’s been a huge week – one of the ‘hugest’ in my life so far – so when this bag of eggs arrived, I seriously considered just ignoring it.

Yes, ignoring chocolate – that’s got you sitting up, hasn’t it?

But by mid-afternoon I eventually realised that I hadn’t had a drink or gone to the toilet for several hours – let alone sat down, so it was time to drop  tools and have a break.  Sapphire was busy sweeping the garden so that it looked spick and span for a couple who were coming to see our house. Cup of chai latte and a Ferrero mini egg or three?

I did have the energy to find the camera amongst the papers, boxes and books and take a few snaps, even one of a mildly protesting Sapphire, who really only agreed to it because I was offering chocolate immediately afterwards (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree).

Y’see, Love Chunks has won a job. A great job. In Geneva. Yeah, Switzerland. Quite literally the home of chocolate.  We are all excited, nervous, frantically busy, sentimental, thrilled, anxious and exhausted. How do you pack up a family, home and life in four weeks?  Fast and furiously, as it happens. Cartoon-like clouds and whirlwinds accompany each of my movements as I race from one task to the other, mind more scattered than a dropped packet of smarties.

Milly the dog is coming with us because Geneva is very pooch-friendly and, well, because she’s family. Skipper the rabbit (and occasional GoneChocco model) is being adopted by a lovely Melbourne family who have a bigger garden, grow all their own organic veges and are just amazingly kind and generous friends as well. We know that he’ll be happy with them. Still, there’s a household worth of stuff to sell off (we ain’t paying to store 10 year old IKEA furniture), a car to hand over to someone who appreciates reliability over looks, an English-speaking school to find, accommodation to sort out and several thousand other things besides….

…. back to the review, ChocGoddess, the review.  There are ten eggs in the pack, each weighing ten grams each and, as Sapphire said, neither the packaging nor the actual egg is anything to write home about (oh crikey, speaking of writing home – there are email addresses to save, skype account to organise, snail mail addresses to add to a book, Aussie post to contact for twelve months of mail forwarding, several dozen phone calls to make to the rellos who aren’t on Facebook and….).

……The REVIEW, Kath!

Unlike our current domestic situation, these are disappointing. Ferrero fans love Ferreros because they’re studded on the outside with tiny bits of hazelnut and because there’s a whole one sitting inside a nutella-like paste inside.  Here there’s no nutty outside and no nut inside; it’s literally just milk chocolate, a bit of wafer and gooey praline.

Ferrero have a much better Easter offering of a large Easter egg that is generously studded with nuts and filled with the classic gold ferreros. Obviously that costs more than this little packet does but it might leave you feeling thrilled rather than couldn’t-care-less.

Which is the complete opposite of how I feel about the way Sapphire is handling the move from family, friends and everything she holds dear; how she’ll spontaneously offer over a game, toy or trinket to anyone who visits and how she’ll pitch in and help. 

There’ll be some tough and lonely times, but if anyone’s ready (and deserving) of this adventure, it’s her.  My job is to hold her hand when she reaches for mine which is such a privilege.

I hope you all have a great Easter break that is full of all the chocolate you love and people you love even more.

Hillier’s are like British Paints (except they’re Australian) – they just keep on keepin’ on.

We’ve tried their pretty pastel foiled milk chocolate mini eggs and their lovely milk and white chocolate mousse-filled littlies and now, on Mini Egg Monday (despite being a Wenesday) we try their plain dark and plain white solid eggs.

The silver and red foil make them look rather elegant; perfectly in line with the other mini eggs made by Hillier’s. I wonder if I gave my sister in law a packet of these would she eat them or keep them with her now three-year-old big pink egg with the satin bow?

Dark egg first. It contains a minimum of 53% solids, so it’s more serious than Cadbury Old Gold and less serious/bitter than Lindt’s classic 70%. There’s a tiny smidge of milk solids included but overall the taste is strong cocoa and light coffee notes with enough sweetness to not strip the saliva from the tongue or scare off milk chocolate-only eaters. Pleasantly moreish.

The white egg contains 29% cocoa solids and are very, veeeeerry sweet. I needed a glass of water to eat two of these and know that genuine fans of white chocolate will love them but occasional fans (such as myself) will only be able to eat a couple. 

….which is a good thing, because the packet of dark mini eggs were an endangered species long before I finished uploading the photos.

I know that homesick Kiwis living in Australia pine for Pineapple Lumps. They’re mostly ignored or unheard of by Aussies, but seeing their increased presence in shops makes me realise just how many New Zealanders are buying them.

Evidence is even stronger when there’s an Easter-themed version of them available in my local supermarket.

Wikipedia tells us that the first pineapple lumps were made by the Regina confectionery factory in Oamaru NZ in the early 1950s after the chef was asked to use up the waste product of other lollies such as the banana marshmallow filling for the chocolate fish. I have no idea how banana fish turned into pineapple lumps, but here, today, they’re now Pineapple Lumps as eggs. Why not, I suppose…..

Whilst the front of the pack trumpets ‘With real fruit juice’ let’s not kid ourselves here. This is an old-fashioned sweet and considering that the marshmallow component makes up 69% of each ‘egg’ and contains 3.3% pineapple juice concentrate, it’s no time to start considering these as a daily serve of vitamin C.

And, let’s also not kid ourselves that Pascall’s chocolate (despite nowadays being owned by Cadbury who are in turn owned by Kraft) is anything other than ~shudder~ compounded. Yep – sugar, water and vegetable oil first on the list of ingredients with only cocoa powder to convince us that it is actual chocolate with a paltry 10% cocoa solids.

So, even before opening this packet, I wanted to hate them.

Weird Kiwi food. Fake health claims. Evil compounded chocolate. Grumble pout moan.

Maybe it was the happy bunny on the front but, despite my best intentions, I loved these. The marshmallow is surprisingly fluffy and the pineapple flavour is instantly noticeable. And nice.  I love a good marshmallow and this is certainly right up there.

So I ate another couple just to make sure. And another, realising that the chocolate was merely a bit-player to the pineapple, um ‘lump’ or in this case, ‘egg’. Or half an egg, squashed up against another half an egg.

Dare I say it – like New Zealanders themselves, these are classic, simple and quirky.

And yes, I’m sure I’ll find myself buying a bag or two of the lumps when I next see them.

We reviewed the secretive Italian company Sorini’s little eggs last year but thought that perhaps these chicks could be (loosely) considered for Mini Egg Monday this year.

They might be dressed up as little chicks but really they’re just egg halves that haven’t been stuck together.

I’ve mentioned before that Sorini are very cyber-shy and often the only references I can find are my own reviews or online chocolate sellers.

Here in Australia, I’ve found them at my little corner shop and, in this case, at the Reject Shop.

The chicks are made from plain milk chocolate that contains a minimum 29% cocoa solids but on tasting, I think that most of that must be from cocoa powder. The taste is very strong and rather gritty – methinks that notta lotta conching (ie slow mixing and blending for hours and sometimes days) went on.

They don’t melt in the mouth like good chocolate should and the overall effect is like eating dry Nestle Quik out of the tin when you’re desperate – crunchy but not creamy. This is strange because whole milk powder is included but the rough texture hides it far too well.

I’d let these chicks live and let them hatch a few million more of the Sorini eggs that are a lot nicer to eat.

I couldn’t walk past ALDI without seeing what they were offering for Easter, could I?

And these 125 gram Dairy Fine rabbits were only 79c each!

And they put the ‘fine’ into Dairy Fine because they’re absolutely fine and acceptable for the crazy price.

They contain 24% cocoa solids and are, as expected, very very sweet. There’s vege fat included (with a paltry 9% milk solids) so you do end up with a lip-smackingly greasy effect after eating but for this price, I could see a few of us willing to put up with that.

Moser Roth are well known and beloved for their blocks of chocolate and this Easter Bunny has a rather smug expression on his face: ‘Come on, you KNOW you want me…..’

He looked rather small next to the Dairy Fine rabbits but I gently read the underside of his, um, bottom to discover that he has 32% cocoa solids and, when bitten, a very thick shell.  Actually he weighs five grams more than his taller shopmates so clearly he’s got a lot to offer on the inside, hence the self-satisfied expression.

There’s no vegetable fat or oil included but there is butterfat ‘from milk’ that is perhaps (apart from the cocoa content) what makes it tastes a lot smoother and creamier than the Dairy Fine duo. He also has more milk solids – 20%.

Moser Roth rabbit isn’t a patch on the Lindt bunny but he’s streets ahead of the Dairy Fine rabbits. 

I didn’t see any Choceur hollow bunnies or eggs during my visit but spied this packet of mini bunnies.

Filled with ‘milk creme’ and containing vegetable fat and wheat (how or what or why it has wheat isn’t specified), I wasn’t holding out much hope.

Still, they are cute little fellas aren’t they?

Like Moser Roth, they contain 32% cocoa solids and slightly more milk solids (22%) which probably contributes to the ‘creme’ they’re filled with.

And they taste nice enough – the milk chocolate outside is lovely and sweet and the filling inside is like a white chocolate ganache with a tiny malt kick (oh….. maybe that’s where the wheat comes in…?

There’s heaps more available at ALDI but this is a selection from three different ‘brands’ (or are they really?)