Gone Chocco

I haven’t seen any ads or general ‘hoo hah’ for this block and didn’t even see it stocked in Coles or Woolies; instead I found it in my trusty corner store.

Having ‘berry fruit’ in it, I decided to make myself  cup of girlie raspberry and vanilla herbal tea and try this block out in front of the box.

I have vague memories that aren’t successfully repressed of their ‘Desserts’ range featuring a Berry Shortcake flavour that was similar to pressed excrement but somehow my hopes for this new one were still high.

The block is 190 grams, which tends to be Cadbury’s way of avoiding passing on a price increase by reducing the size instead, so I’ll assume that using real ingredients for their ‘berry fruit’ such as cranberry, natural strawberry flavour and elderberry juice concentrate doesn’t come cheap.

The little bubbly bits on the back are the vanilla shortcake crumbs.  Unfortunately the wee sods contain ‘vegetable oil’ so you can draw your own conclusion as to whether it is palm oil or has palm oil as part of the mix.

The block is 82% Dairy Milk chocolate (containing 26% cocoa solids), 9% berry fruit and 9% vanilla shortcake so either we can forgive Cadbury for using palm oil or berate them for being so stingy and unenvironmental for still having to include it in such a small ingredient.

I forgot to take a photo of the front of the block but it consists of the flatter and bigger squares that are also in the Black Forest and Rocky Road blocks to accommodate chunkier fillings.

And, dammit, it tastes delicious. Like a snack for when you’re hungry and have eaten enough fruit or yoghurt for the day and really want to stuff your face in front of 3 episodes of ‘30 Rock’ back-to-back. The berry is a slightly more natural and chewy jelly consistency and the vanilla shortcake (or what to me seems like a nice crunchy butter biscuit) pairs up pretty decently with the dairy milk chocolate.

Love Chunks had a row (three squares out of eighteen), said it was enough for him and left the room to work on the computer.

I confess – I ate the rest, finishing off the entire block. Naughty, Choc Goddess, naughty!

 

In addition to the groovy and unique Daintree truffles, Wild Chocolate also make ‘bark’ or what really are more generously sized blocks in a bright package.

When Sapphire saw it she said, “Oh Mum, that’s your ideal handbag, isn’t it?” Yes, indeedy dear child, it is.

The ‘four bark box’ contains Lemon myrtle, Quandong, Wild lime and Honey Macadamia. I couldn’t decide which one to try first, so decided to try all four at once. For the good of the blog, you understand…….

First up – the honey roasted macadamia nut block. No cocoa percentages were listed, so I’ll hazard a guess that this sits in the high twenties/early thirties - serious, but still milk which always goes well when paired with the buttery macadamia nut. Add a bit of ‘honey’ toffee-crunchy stuff and it’s a winner.

The milk has an added ‘tang’ to it that reminds me a bit of yoghurt. No, it’s not ‘off’ but has a zinginess that matches the crunchy whole nuts, nut pieces (inside the block) and honey shards particularly well.

A second block was in the ‘two bark box’ and was shared the next day with my friend Sigrid, over for a flying visit from Canberra. It disappeared before our cups of tea did and she left with the wrapper, keen to find some more on her way home.

The Dark Chocolate and Lemon Myrtle block contains lemon myrtle oil and what they intriguingly call ‘yellow chocolate chunks’ which we can only assume is white chocolate coloured to remind us of the yellow myrtle flavour. Whatever works, I guess.

The chocolate tastes as though it has around 50% cocoa solids and is therefore very sweet – but not bitter – and dominates the taste buds before the lemon myrtle flavours emerge. There’ll be some fans who’ll want the chocolate to edge up to 70% and those – myself included – who want the lemon myrtle to be a bit more dominant. Only a minor quibble though. 

Third to taste is the Milk Chocolate and Glaced Quandong block.

Again, the chocolate has a ‘tangy yoghurt’ flavour to it and the quandong is fruity and chewy but I couldn’t really detect any distinct quandong flavour – they might as well have been apricots or sultanas for all I knew.

Last but not least, the White Chocolate and Glaced Wild Lime.

2010 is proving to be the year that I’m constantly surprised by how much I’m enjoying white chocolate* and this bar is no exception.

The chocolate tastes of fresh cream with a particularly light texture not normally associated with what a friend of mine calls ‘yak fat’ chocolate (ie white). The green bits drizzled in the block are flavoured with lime that enhances the actual wild fruits studded throughout the block. They taste of chewy,candied citrus pieces that have had a flirtation with currants; so you get my drift that it’s a very subtle flavour done extremely well.

Overall, I’m a bit surprised that it’s the white block and a milk block (macadamia) that are my top two flavours but all of them deserve a spot in the ‘handbag’.

* I used to think that only traitors and mental pgymies would consider the white stuff ‘chocolate’ but there’s some pretty good stuff available these days.

Alrighty then, the Taste of Melbourne event….. The tickets that Green and Black’s sent me to give away to GoneChocco readers were won within twenty minutes of posting and I was lucky enough to attend the opening night on Thursday and take Sapphire with me on Saturday.

….. to be honest, I was also looking forward to having a gander inside the lovely old Exhibition Building which looks rather ominous here due to the spitting rain but didn’t seem to stop a guy posing joyously for a photo (see bottom right) with his arms akimbo like Maria from ‘The Sound of Music’.

Ironically, there was a delay in opening the doors because the cooking inside had set off the fire alarms and three fire trucks turned up to investigate.

You’re going to find this almost impossible to believe, but once inside, my first thoughts weren’t on chocolate.

The interiors of the building were beautiful enough to divert my attention for a moment …..

…… before heading over to the Green and Black’s stall to check out their chocolate fountain

  

 

 

 

…… and sample their delicious cheesecake (made from Maya Gold) and their Tiffin slices before they were eagerly inhaled by other visitors…..  Sarah said that they deliberately didn’t hand out paper recipes in order to be environmentally aware, but she did promise me that she’d email me the PDFs of the recipes that, if you ask me nicely, I could share with you all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the roof – so pretty!  Wait a minute – who’s the topless sheila being fanned by angel? Is she the Taste of Melbourne Goddess? Does enough heat rise to the roof so that she can flash her boobies in such wintry Melbourne weather?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No matter. It was time to have a chocolate fudge ice-cream from Ben and Jerry’s combi van and sneak a few chocolate shards from Sisko (who use Belgian Callebaut, French Valrhona or Spanish Chocovic in theri creations) and guess the weight of the solid chocolate Eiffel tower…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….try some Della Mano (hand made) chocolate fudge brownies from Brissie and some gorgeous looking truffles and chocolates from the more local (Preston) The Chocolate Master (yes, I bought boxes from both stalls)

       

……. and a double choc icecream sandwich from Pat and Stick’s homemade for me and a choc-chip cookie and strawberry one for Sapphire. I’ve stolen the pictures from their website, because the photos I took on the day featured some rather ’strange-looking’ punters nearby that I was unable to edit out and was also unable to publish in case they frightened you (no Pat, it wasn’t you).

        

Rather selfishly, stall holders SMEG weren’t handing out any free samples, even though I fell in love with their candy-influenced fridge and freezer combo:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On both occasions I returned home jubilant, tired and ever-so-slightly ill, because apart from the chocolate stalls, I also sampled various versions of smoked salmon, grain fed beef, organic dukkah and olive oils, cheeses, meringues, vodka(s), biscuits, spice mixes, ginger cordial, turkish meatballs, pesto ravioli and lemon liqueur. 

I’ll be back with bells on for next year though.

I’ve seen these sitting on the shelves at Target and some supermarkets, read that they were made in China and put them back on the shelf.

Perhaps a few other punters have done so as well, because they’ve since been heavily discounted. Even so, I could only bring myself to buy their tiny 50 gram box.

Reading the back shows that they’re made in China from Australian-grown macadamias coated in Belgian chocolate. 8th Sin therefore seems to be a brand owned by Suncoast Gold, based in Gympie, Qld. Despite this, there’s no mention of ‘8th Sin’ on their website so it either needs updating or they’re taking a ‘wait and see if these kick off’ approach first.

What they do tell us is that they’re “the leading flavoured macadamia nut supplier in Australia. We process, value add and supply the finest quality macadamia nuts throughout the world…….. Our head office and processing facility are in Gympie, a thriving gold mining town on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. The Gympie region is the centre of the original habitat of the native macadamia tree.

Macadamia nut shells, when combusted, yield an enormous amount of energy. In 2003, Suncoast Gold Macadamias, in co-operation with Ergon Energy, installed a state of the art power plant which uses previously discarded macadamia shells to generate enough ‘green electricity’ to power around 1,200 Queensland homes every year. This in turn reduces greenhouse gases by 9,500 tonnes annually, which is equivalent to taking more than 2,000 cars off the road every year.”

That’s pretty worthy, right?  And yet they’re happy to send their nuts overseas to a Chinese firm presumably to save money on coating their nuts in chocolate and popping them into pretty boxes….. Hmmm, will the real Suncoast Gold stand up?

Fifty grams gives you four rather nice looking chocolates – two mostly milk, one mostly dark and the other one mostly white.  They’ve survived the boat trip from China surprisingly well and it is reassuring to note that there are no scary ingredients listed on the back of the box.

The macadamias are small (maybe sliced in half?) but taste super crunchy with what tastes like a tiny layer of toffee around them, and they in turn sit in a ganache filling underneath the chocolate layer. The chocolate – all three types – is rather nice and I’m guessing it’s Barry Callebaut’s Asian-made version that still cheekily calls itself ‘Belgian’ chocolate solely because it’s owned by a Belgian company.*

So, I’m in a bind. They’re clearly made OS to save money but use Australian grown macadamias that are sent overseas and  back here for us to buy.  That’s a lot of food miles……. whatever green house gases they’ve saved in Australia from combusting maca shells must surely be eaten up (and more) from factory processes and shipping from China? Actually I’m not in a bind at all – I won’t be buying these again because there are many local chocolatiers in Australia who’d quite happily coat these nuts and make it an entirely Australian product.

What do you think?  Three different nations (China, Belgium and Australia) involved in a cheap and rather nice-tasting treat for us to enjoy down under or a cynical rip off that costs us in jobs and environmental impacts instead?

* I’m more than happy to post a correction to this assumption if someone can provide me with more accurate information.

 

 

On a more light-hearted note my review on the new New Lindt Swiss Gold White with Almond included a comment on how LOLcats are taking over the world. This got the attention of the Online Education organisation, who told me that they have developed a pictorial history of LOLcats that’s worth a look (it’s bigger and more detailed than the picture on the left).

 

I fell in love with Wild Chocolates ’Wild About You’ range of truffles a few months ago when they were given to me by my father-in-law who’d purchased them on his way through from Melbourne airport.  They sat in the fridge for a couple of months before I tried them and were a sensation, featuring a variety of Aussie bush foods.

In fact they left me so impressed I tracked down the manufacturer and spoke to Adele who sadly told me that the range is not currently being made any more because it has a short shelf life and weren’t always being stored properly in shops. I kid you not when I say that we both sighed at the same time!

“We have a different range we can show you now though,” she offered. The Wild Chocolates website doesn’t exist yet, but their chocolates certainly do.

And here’s the first, in a gorgeous box, enticingly described on the back as ‘Luscious, fresh and meltingly soft white chocolate eucalyptus truffle centres made with real creamy chocolate and a splash of eucalyptus leaf oil….for a sublime combination of texture and flavour.’

This is the first time I’ve seen eucalyptus featured as a chocolate flavour and am pretty sure that they’ll be more fun than sucking on a honey-and-eucalytpus throat lozenge after a coughing fit….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The green sprinkles on the top are just chocolate but add to the overal impact, don’t they? Sapphire and I both said, “Oooh, wow, so pretty….” as the lid was lifted, but Love Chunks passed by and sniffed, “Oh the packaging’s a bit bright, isn’t it?” so one-third of the reviewing panel prefers their packaging colours on the more traditional side.

The pale green-coloured ganache provided a lovely creamy and sweet hint of eucalyptus. It wasn’t overpowering like the oils you squirt up your nose during a case of the sniffles or sloosh around your loo bowl during housework sessions but was distinct, unusual and utterly delicious.

Sapphire and I adored them and I regret not letting her have three of them. There are eight in the box, so we adults had three each, and she two.

Love Chunks wasn’t impressed with them – “It’s like eating Vaporub, erk,” but I could have eaten all eight on my own. As could Sapphire, if I’d let her. Maybe next time we’ll get ourselves a box each and not tell Love Chunks…..

Ask me nicely and I’ll tell you where you can find them outside of Melbourne, but for those of you with postcodes start with a 3 and a 0, try:

Icons Australia: Shop RM09, Mezzanine Level, Qantas Domestic Terminal Melbourne Airport 3045
Swords Chill: 348 Queens Pde, Clifton Hill
Sweet Ports: 175 Bay St, Port Melbourne
Brighton Chocolates & Baskets: 334 Bay Street,Brighton

And TONIGHT is the  Lindt Chocolate Ball in Melbourne! You can still donate to a very worthy cause, even if you can’t frock up and rock up. Click on the link below:

 

I think most of us who’ve been in Coles or Woolworths lately have seen these bags lurking near the checkouts. Caramello is the other flavour on offer as well as some really large milk buttons which to me just seems like the seven thousandth way that they’ve re-packaged plain Dairy Milk chocolate, so I chose the ‘Clusters of crunchy flakes and juicy raisins tumbled in scrumptious Cadbury milk chocolate.’

Chocolate that is put into these ‘pouch bags’ (and there’s a few chocolate companies that do it) seem to be indicating that it’s better than a bog-standard block, but not as good as a box of chocolates. This doesn’t really seem like it’s going to be a long term success in my opinion because if you want to scoff something in the privacy of your own home you’ll choose the cheaper blocks and if you want to impress someone with a gift, you’ll buy a box so as not to be considered a cheapskate.

When opened, they’re not pretty. Rolling around in a pouch all the way from Germany (yes, they’re made in Germany – why not here, or shouldn’t I care?) means they’re a bit crumbly and turd – sorry ‘tired’ looking.

Still, they seemed like a good way to get in some fibre via the Sultana bran that I never eat for breakfast. Why not have some at morning coffee time, covered in chocolate? Who wouldn’t be excited about fibre intake then?

And that’s exactly what they taste like. Sultana bran!

The ingredients and nutrition panel don’t bother to mention fibre content and chocolate makes up 70% of the clusters, so it was sadly apparent that my bowels weren’t going to benefit any time soon.

Raisins comprise 18% and cornflakes the remaining12%. The three of us at Chocco Lockett scoffed these in a few minutes, so fifty grams gave us 11 grams of fat (16% RDI), 6.8 grams saturated fat (28% RDI) and 31.4 grams of sugar (34% RDI) each.

They are more-ish and the chocolate has 29% cocoa solids (here in Australia it’s usually 26%), but I’m not sure that they worth the $3 I paid for them.

What do you think? Has anyone tried the crunchie-flavoured ones?

And only two more sleeps until the Lindt Chocolate Ball – but plenty of sleeps to donate to a worthy cause:

FINALLY I found a block of the new Cadbury Old Gold ‘Toffee Crunch’  that some readers, commenters and emailers have already been talking about. It took about a month for it to reach my local Coles or Safeway and I haven’t seen any form of advertising for it anywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Gold is as much of a Cadbury classic as Dairy Milk is. It contains a fairly paltry 45% cocoa solids, so it’s certainly not a strong version of dark chocolate unless you select their 70% Old Gold block. The website says: “Legal Description: The original taste of Cadbury® Old Gold® dark chocolate with crunchy toffee pieces.” Crikey, who knew you needed lawyers to describe the flavour of a family block??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the crumbs scattered on the top as a result of being hidden in the shopping trolley under a bag of oranges, then jostled in a green shopping bag, rolled on the backseat, lugged from the car and flung onto the kitchen counter before being ripped open, the squares had a nice sheen and the usual sweet smell that is associated with Old Gold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the ingredients, the block consists of 9% of crunchy toffee pieces (sugar, milk solids, salt, flavours, emulsifier 322) and whilst they are clearly visible and I could certainly feel their crytallised slivers get stuck into my teeth, they didn”t taste like anything much. I was hoping for a much more discernible buttery toffee flavour – especially considering that milk solids are included – but could only detect sugar. 

Sapphire and Love Chunks adored it, both proclaiming it moreish and delicious, and were quite puzzled at my lukewarm reaction of ‘Plain Old Gold with bits in it.’  I think that the ultra-sweetness of the dark chocolate might override the actual ’toffee’ in the ‘crunch’ a bit too much and wonder what it would taste like in either the 70% or Dairy Milk (one extreme to the other). 

For those of you who have tasted it, what do you think?

 

Brand new and exclusive to Australia – yes, Australia, made especially for us!! – is Lindt’s ‘Swiss Gold Chocolate’ block range available in four flavours: Milk Fruit & Nut, Milk Hazelnut, Milk and White with Almonds.

They’re more generous in size than the Excellence blocks (100 grams) and the Swiss Classic (125 grams) at 150 grams and are clearly designed to persuade some of the Mums and Nannas of our big brown land to try something other than Cadbury Dairy Milk fruit-n-nut blocks.

However, today I’m trying the Milk block. Why the plain one first? Because I just happen to have three other Lindt milk blocks in my pantry and thought it would be interesting to compare the quartet:

Before ripping each of them open, I perused the back panels for information on cocoa and milk content:

Far Left, new Swiss Gold – 31% cocoa solids, 14% milk solids

Lindor (red) – 31% cocoa solid, 14% milk solids

Swiss Classic (second from right) – 31% cocoa solids, 14% milk solids

Lindt Excellence Extra Creamy – 30% cocoa solids, 20% milk solids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lindor squares: Think of your classic round Lindt ball, but in a square. These babies are perfect for sucking whilst typing at the computer. Classic creamy-buttery combination that we all know and love but with the highest fat content.

Swiss Classic: Has a great ’snap’ for a milk chocolate with a nice clean and fresh taste. Very sweet of course and dissolves away leaving faint hints of brown sugar and caramel notes. A Choc Goddess pantry standard.

Lindt Excellence: The thinnest of all, which means it melts in the mouth instantly and has much stronger toffee and cream flavours. Definitely the classiest of the bunch and I even fancied I could detect the tiniest hint of salt at the very end, but it’s not in the ingredients – just my own over-active imagination.

The new Lindt on the block – Swiss Gold: The ingredients and nutritional panel suggests that this is a direct copy of the Swiss Classic. However it’s thicker in size so as it warms and melts, it has a closer echo to the chunkier size and structure of Cadbury Dairy Milk (with a much better taste of course).  It tastes a tiny bit less sweet than the Swiss Classic and tiny bit more buttery-er (is that a word? No? Well it should be). The thicker size and segments provide more ‘bang’ for the buck and perhaps stand a better chance of enticing Dairy Milk devotees to venture over to Lindt Land.

I’d be interested to hear which Lindt milk style you prefer.

 

I’m torn. 

Firstly, I’m not sure that Cadbury are ever going to master the ‘luxury’ end of the chocolate market because they’re, well, Cadbury.  Beloved, traditional, expected, value for money. 

Secondly, these Coco truffles are only available in David Jones. Are DJs shoppers going to buy these over their usual Godiva, imported Lindt and Varlhonas?

Thirdly, the price. $12.95 for 195 grams.

However…… Love Chunks and Sapphire shared the first packet with me on Friday night and adored them. “These are divine,” my daughter said. ”What are these?” asked Love Chunks during an AFL match, which means they were good enough for him to mentally step away from the game for a while: “They’re really creamy.”

The second bag was shared with my parents, older brother and sister-in-law a couple of days later on Sunday night and they also loved them. In fact, even Matt Preston’s ‘this is disgusting’ dramatics on MasterChef were almost forgotten during the ad break as everyone asked how many more Coco truffles were left in the box/packet and would I please pass it around again.

Hmmm. So everybody loves them except me. 

What I don’t love about them is that they’re made in Poland (!!?! what the…?), contain only 21% cocoa solids (even Cadbury’s Australian made Fair Trade Dairy Milk now has 26%) and, when unwrapped, they are clearly a molded chocolate, not a ‘truffle’ by any stretch of the imagination.

On my second tasting, I could see/taste/feel that the inside is a softer, more buttery version of Dairy Milk whose texture owes itself to the inside of Lindor Ball, but are nowhere near as delectable as those most revered of chocolates. But if Dairy Milk is your utterly favourite chocolate, then these optimistically titled ‘truffles’ are a slightly posher version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I being stubbornly snobby? Not giving Cadbury a fair go? The odd person out, when seven other nearest and dearest really enjoyed them?

I honestly don’t know.

 

I’ve been waiting for this to come out to Australia for a long time and it’s finally here – Lindt’s ‘A Touch of Sea Salt’ or ‘Fleur de Sel crystals hand-harvested from Brittany, France’ if you want to sound uber-posh.

Salt as a flavouring on its own has only been a recogised player in the world of chocolate for the past couple of years, but boy, is it a good one. I remember trying some milk chocolate at a cooking demonstration at the Royal Adelaide Show in 2007. The chef melted some nestle buds (yes, it was that humble), spread the mixture out onto some foil and then sprinkled some plain old Saxa salt over the top. When it set, she snapped it into pieces and let us try some.

My tongue, brain, head and taste buds didn’t quite know what was going on, but they liked it and ever since I’ve sought out peanut butter fillings (the salt really comes alive inside the chocolate), salty caramels and even sprinkled my own ground up sea salt on some plain chocolate when desperate.

Back to the Lindt.  The chocolate is dark, but at 47% cocoa solids it has enough sugar in it (49 grams in the 100 gram block) to hold its own against the salt. As with the Lindt 50% block, butterfat has also been added. However this time vanilla flavouring is used rather than bourbon vanilla bean which might have something to do with how it reacts with the salt?

The silken creaminess of the chocolate is what I noticed first before some tiny crunchy bits which of course revealed the salt flavours. It is very delicate, so if you gave a square or two of this to someone who didn’t know what they were eating, they might not guess the mystery ingredient at first.

What the salt does do, as it does in cooking main courses, sauces and even plain porridge for breakfast, is that it heightens the flavour of the chocolate. The cocoa stands out and makes its presence and complexity felt, as does the sweetness.

I then got a bit excited and thought, ‘Nah, it’s too subtle. I want MORE salt.’ Nothing from Brittany this time, but good old Maldon Sea Salt, freshly ground from the wooden shakers Dad made for us a couple of years ago.

It tasted delicious!

Or was I just confusing myself…? I went back to eating the Lindt ‘A touch of Sea Salt’ unadorned again, and I swear it tasted saltier than the first square. In a good way, making the chocolate ‘thicker’ and velvety…. How come? What the….?

It’s a bit of a head-scratcher trying to figure out just what kind of taste bud it tingles or whether I want more salt, or to try salt in a milkier-style chocolate or a darker-style.

I’d love to hear what you guys think when you try it.