If you’re the sort of person who likes a piece of very plain, dark, simple chocolate after a meal and think that every week everything I recommend is too fancy, complicated and expensive, then I have the perfect bar for you this week. Co-op’s Irresistible Single Origin 85% dark, made with cocoa from Peru (£1.95, 100g).
Like all high-cocoa content chocolates, it’s dry on the tongue (more so because it also contains cocoa powder, not sure why). It’s not craft chocolate, but for under £2 and single origin – come on.
But for those who like their dark with bits in it, and that would be me quite a lot of the time, a treat is Fatso’s chocolate. I’m not sure what I think of the brand name, but the packaging is fabulous and the product names imaginative, like the inclusions. These are chunky, jaw-dislocating, 60% cocoa, single-origin (Colombian) bars (£6.50, 150g).
You need strong telephone-directory-ripping hands, or a big knife, to liberate pieces easily (OK, slight exaggeration). At first, I nibbled at it and couldn’t really get any idea of flavours and was a bit ‘meh’, but then I properly committed and the combinations are, in fact, absolutely gorgeous. I recommend two pieces per sitting. It’d be wrong to say, because it’s 60%, you won’t eat a lot of this. You might. But given its high-cocoa content you should be able to control yourself.
Currently, four flavours: King’s Ransom (mint, pistachio, cocoa nibs, heavy on the mint); Nan’s Stash (70%, with peanut, toffee, digestive biscuits); Home Run (salted pretzel, whole almond and honeycomb) and probably my favourite, Morning Glory with, yes, a cockerel on it (cornflake, toast and marmalade – very orangey).
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