Last year I tested a chocolate bar that was so good, I wanted to write about it, but it went out of stock and has only just come back in. It’s a dark milk coffee chocolate. A collaboration between two New Zealand companies, Bennett’s of Mangawhai and Allpress, Flat White 45%, £5, is superbly creamy and has just the right amount of coffee. The name is confusing (it’s not a white chocolate) but if you like dark milk and you like coffee, prepare to be made happy.
Sur Chocolates has launched new flavours and cute little individual tins for their alfajores, ideal stocking fillers at £3.50-£3.75 each. While all are delicious, the original will always have a special place in my heart as that’s the first one I tasted – but the new Menta Negra is particularly fine-flavoured.
Hotel Chocolat has launched a new subscription club, the Inventing Room, limited to 10,000 members, £30 per month. Here, you get to try new ideas and give feedback: if the feedback isn’t good, it won’t make it to stores. Every month you’ll get something exciting: chocolate bars/boxes/biscuits/hot chocolate. My first pack contained caramelised white chocolate buttons, which I wasn’t mad about, but were excellent pushed into some homemade chocolate cookies just as they came out of the oven. What I was mad about was the Tanzania Kilombero Hot Chocolate which, whizzed into some full-cream milk, was so powerful it kept me going all afternoon. And the Cocoa Hazelnut Biscuit was the most chocolately shop-bought biscuit I’ve ever tasted.
