Gone Chocco

 

Having two Lindt Cafes in Melbourne now means that there are two other avenues to sniff out the blocks and varieties of Lindt that we KNOW are found freely in Europe but, cruelly, can be rarer than chicken lips here.

I found this little stunner at Chadstone:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiramisu is one of my favourite desserts to eat and to make (I might one day be persuaded to share my never-fail, always-impressive recipe with you if you ask – nay, beg – nicely) and I even like the Cadbury Desserts version.

But Lindt always manage to find that extra ‘oomph’ when it comes to their chocolates and this is no exception. Plus, it’s 150 grams instead of the excellence-sized 100 grams so I was already excited.

The smell of coffee and cream hits the nostrils as soon as the foil was torn open and the lovely embossed segments always look so inviting. And dammit it all, Love Chunks and Sapphire were hovering (they spring to life at the sound of the first tearing of the cardboard flap at the back of the Lindt pack like our dog does when we plonk her dinner bowl on the sink), so I had to share.

Still, fifty grams of sweet milk chocolate filled with a thin but flavoursome layer of dark truffle, coffee cream and biscuit pieces (presumably instead of soaked sponge) was divine. We all agreed; and this was obvious when all that was uttered was a slightly-less-than-eloquent “Mmmm, mmm” instead of real words or critiques.  Each square was nibbled delicately to make it last longer when what I really longed to do was snatch the block and inhale it all myself.

The ingredients show that the milk chocolate has a respectable 30% minimum cocoa solids and – what a shame – no fat, saturated or sugar or any nutritional information at all is included, so we’ll eat without fear or guilt.

Unfortunately, the biscuit component of the block contains palm oil. Yes, the biscuit only makes up one percent of the whole block and it the oil is only a percentage of that one percent but it begs the question as to whether it is really needed and, with environmental and conservation issues now raging about the Orangutans in South East Asia, can’t they get rid of it and get rid of it SOON?

 

Droste are probably best known here in Australia for their tubes of pastilles and have been making them in Haarlem, Holland since Gerardus Johannes Droste opened his confectionery business in 1863. They’re one of the few Dutch chocolate manufacturers who make their product straight from the cocoa bean.

They remain popular around the world, with even the Droste website proclaiming it has a very strong position in duty-free shopping at airports in over 70 countries. Here you can often find it in supermarkets as well as the smaller, more independent delis and food specialists; so it’s no wonder they pump out 5,256 pastilles a minute!

However unlike the ubiquitous tubes, I’d never seen their blocks before, and a 75% cocoa solids bar (or ‘tablet’, as Droste refer to them) is a fairly serious product compared to their pastilles.

There are no lines or squares to snap from; it’s just a complete (albeit thin) slab of chocolate with the Droste logo elegantly displayed on it – a good sign of things to come.

It tastes smooth, earthy and slightly grainy. My bogan palate isn’t able to discern what kind of beans were used (Forestero, Trinidaro or the revered Criollo) or where they’re from or even if they’re a blend, but it’s not a chocolate you scoff. You snap off a piece (luckily, despite the bloom on my bar, it still snapped cleanly) and let it dissolve on your tongue, allowing the full range of flavours to express themselves. As such, you can’t eat a lot of it and a glass of water or tea nearby helps in replenishing your mouth after the bitterness takes over.

The orange flavours add an extra dimension to this and somehow make it taste sweeter than a 75% block should but it is likely to be a challenge for anyone scared to go beyond a 50% taste.

Nutrition wise, being so high in cocoa means that it has a huge 41.9 grams fat per 100g of which 24.8 grams is saturated – another reason to nibble rather than inhale. All the other ingredients are true to the spirit of real, dark chocolate – cocoa butter, sugar, orange flavor, vanilla.

There are three other flavours in this tablet range – 75% plain dark, Almond/honey milk chocolate and milk caramel chocolate. I hope I manage to track down them sometime soon as well but even since buying and writing about this orange block it’s become rarer than chicken lips in my particular choco-postcode….