This week it’s about stepping away from milk chocolate and into something darker. Although I decided that after I got some Sur Caramel and Peanut balls, £5.50/100g – truly delicious. Imagine the biggest, most luxe Revel 2.0 and you’ll get the idea.
I was hoping that eating more dark chocolate would see the overindulgence I spoke of last week come to a halt. But I chose badly. Pralus’s Single Estate Tobago 70%, £8.95/100g, was such a delicious, creamy (high-cocoa butter content) bar it was hard to stop eating. A real ‘wow’ bar. It sounds mad to describe it as ‘really chocolatey’, but it is.
Chocolarder’s Maleku, £6.15/70g, has tasting notes of ‘coffee and caramelised banana’. I didn’t get the latter, tant pis, but I definitely got the former. It’s a rich, slow melt, with an evolving taste. And with the beans from Costa Rica you’re helping them rebuild their cocoa industry (almost wiped out in the 1980s by a fungus).
Newcastle’s North chocolate has a great, fun offering in the 70% range: Stephenson’s Rocket. A bar with citrus notes and… popping candy. If you like your chocolate dark, but want a little fireworks in your mouth, this is your day!
On a non-edible note, The Chocolate Seed, £13.50, is a lovely little children’s hardback book about the chocolate journey from seed to bar. I got mine from Bare Bones. Talking of Bare Bones, remember me writing that its 70% Philippines bar, £6.50/70g, was the best dark I’d ever tasted? It was made, back then, in very limited stock. It sold out, there were tears, but now it’s back.
Follow Annalisa on Twitter @AnnalisaB
