B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cane sugar, cocoa butter, milk fat, salted butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, ginger, sodium bicarbonate, cayenne pepper, natural flavor, sea salt.

13g sugar/43g serving (30.2% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Altered from 12/17/11) Minneapolis's B.T. McElrath was founded by a chef, and accordingly seems to focus on creating unusual flavored bars and interesting seasonal confections. No organic/fair trade here. B.T. McElrath's Chile Limón Bar is one of my favorites, and while I was less enamored with the seemingly popular Salty Dog, I'm always up for more of the company's fun flavor combos.

Today's Bar: Continuing a ginger theme is B.T. McElrath's bar of both ginger toffee and candied ginger in 70% cacao. The complex-sounding flavor, which includes cayenne pepper in the toffee, sounds right up my alley.

Appearance: Shiny, rich brown with tiny light flecks under the surface and intermittent, barely-perceptible bumps on the back.

Smell: Rich, sweet, nutty, and mild, but with a bitter-sour undercurrent for chocolatey realness.

Taste: Not nearly as gingery as I thought it would be! I can see little toffee and crystallized ginger pieces, but the ginger here mostly adds candied complexity and texture to a mild, pleasant chocolate, with the cayenne contributing a super-subtle (and quite nice) burn at the end. As the smell demonstrated, the chocolate isn't flavorless, it just doesn't have any standout flavors: It's balanced sweet/sour/bitter/beany with no sharp edges and a smooth (save the inclusions) texture, a very easy 70% cacao. Kind of boring, but nice.

Conclusion: B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar is a nice, mild dark chocolate with textural interest and just a hint of ginger and cayenne.

Green & Black's Ginger Dark Chocolate

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Organic fair trade chocolate, oft. raw cane sugar, oft. cocoa butter, soy lecithin, oft. vanilla extract, o. crystallized ginger pieces (ginger and cane sugar), o. whole milk powder

18g sugar/40g serving (45% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Check out this Brand Overview from March.

Today's Bar: This is the first of three weeks of ginger flavored bars, with today's being just plain ginger in 60% cacao. Sweet for me, but hey.

Appearance: Light grey-red-brown, matte looking but slightly glossy if you wipe away surface dust. Little lighter flecks under the surface, presumably crystallized ginger. Note: Green & Black's molding is very blocky, with wide but shallow scoring. I assume that keeps bars in one piece during shipping, but it makes them a little challenging to break cleanly. Oh well.

Smell: Not strong but sweet-sour and gingery. I anticipate a mild chocolate with minor tartness and sweet crystallized ginger pieces with no “bite.”

Taste: Goes down easy. Sweet, mild, with pleasant, rounded tang. Thoroughly shot through with ginger, which adds harshness-free flavor and soft, candied textural interest rather than discernible pieces within separate chocolate.

Conclusion: Ginger for the mass market: An introduction to ginger for nervous eaters, or an unchallenging, everyday noshing chocolate for ginger lovers.

Taza Chocolate Mexicano Chipotle Chili

2.7oz (77g) in two disks

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. chipotle chili powder

Corporate Info: (Copied from 5/5/12) Taza Chocolate is pretty lovely. The chocolate comprises only organic ingredients, sources its cocoa beans using a variation on fair trade principles called Direct Trade, was made in the U.S., and is wrapped in recycled paper (and foil) or just old-school wax paper. It's neat tasting, too: Rather than being smooth throughout, the chocolate is made from stone-ground cocoa beans and not conched, both of which make for a gritty chocolate with discernible sugar crystals. Taza produces dark bars; Chocolate Mexicano Discs that are just sugar, cacao, and flavorings; and baking chocolate and other items, including a neat Chocolate Mexicano Extract.

Today's Bar: Chipotle! And in 70% cacao.

Appearance: Virtually identical to last week's “rich, orangey-brown with slight gloss,” despite the big jump in cacao content. I should also mention that Taza's chocolate has a very slightly mottled look: tiny lighter-colored flecks in the darker chocolate around it. I wonder if that's the sugar?

Smell: Beany, rawish chocolate with a definite sweet, smoky chipotle smell. Aroma-wise they're well-balanced, with neither smell overwhelming the other.

Taste: The chipotle's roasted heat hits first, throat-filling but not painful, along with some sugar. Then the tart rawness of the chocolate. Finally, only in the aftertaste do I really get the pepper's smoky-sweet flavor along with lingering heat. I wouldn't mind a little more accessible flavor along with the heat, but if you like the particular kind of fire that chipotle provides (i.e. smoky and not searing), this delivers.

Conclusion: Taza Chocolate Mexicano Chipotle Chili is warm, tart, and beany, though it delivers more chipotle heat than chipotle flavor.

Taza Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili

2.7oz (77g) in two disks

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. guajillo chili powder

Corporate Info: (Altered from 8/27/11) Taza Chocolate is pretty lovely. The chocolate comprises only organic ingredients, sources its cocoa beans using a variation on fair trade principles called Direct Trade, was made in the U.S., and is wrapped in recycled paper (and foil) or just old-school wax paper. It's neat tasting, too: Rather than being smooth throughout, the chocolate is made from stone-ground cocoa beans and not conched, both of which make for a gritty chocolate with discernible sugar crystals. Taza produces dark bars; Chocolate Mexicano Discs that are just sugar, cacao, and flavorings; and baking chocolate and other items, including a neat Chocolate Mexicano Extract.

This Bar: In the past I've only had Taza's plain bars, but I saw a (fairly minor) sale on the Chocolate Mexicano Discs and use it as an excuse to finally buy several. Today's “bar” contains guajillo chili, which one site says has “either a green-tea or fruity flavor, with hints of berries”; Taza claims the disk has “powerful notes of citrus and smoke, with a slow-to-develop heat that's assertive but not overwhelming.” Oh, and this bar is lower than my usual cacao requirement, only 50%.

Appearance: Rich, orangey-brown with slight gloss.

Smell: Beany, a little roasted, almost coffee-ish. I don't smell chili.

Taste: First, Taza's signature gritty, stone-ground texture. As for flavor, for me, sweetness can often get in the way of discerning other elements, and this is indeed sweet, but it still has a really dark quality, probably because of the rawness and roasted flavors. The chili is super-integrated, more like an enhancement of the chocolateyness: I do get a little tart, rounded fruit, and smokey vibe, and just a little warmth on the back of the throat—I wouldn't even call it spicy, only warm. Unless you're super sensitive to heat and chili flavors, you might not even notice the chili, just thinking of the chocolate as really complex and sour-fruity-earthy-toasty. Very cool.

Conclusion: Despite its relatively high sugar level and added chili powder, Taza Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili just tastes like a super-complex, tart-fruity-earthy-roasted, close-to-the-tree chocolate.

Madécasse Exotic Pepper

2.64oz (75g) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, tsiperifery pepper, pink pepper, black pepper

10g sugar/37.5g serving (26.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Altered from 4/21/12) Madécasse has one of those interesting progressive-chocolate-company stories: The American founders met as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar and decided to not only grow their cacao there (not unusual) but also process and package the chocolate there to benefit the local community. The company claims to be paying good wages and using sustainable farming practices, and has impressed The New York Times and Fast Company (among others) with its commitment and innovation. The bars are not officially labeled fair trade or organic, but from what I read, the process is essentially a variation on both of those complicated labels. Madécasse—the name is apparently old French for Madagascar—produces a relatively small selection of plain chocolate and bars flavored with Madagascar-sourced inclusions like coffee and spices.

This Bar: Today I'm following last week's pink peppercorn and combava bar with another pepper combination, this time in 70% cacao: black pepper, pink pepper again, and tsiperifery pepper (or, from what I'm seeing online, Voatsiperifery). The last seems to be a Madagascar native, and I'm mostly just finding it on commercial sites, described by one as “pungent . . . earthy and woody . . . a wee bit sweet . . . distinct fragrance . . . citrus notes . . . long lasting and without rage.” Neat.

Appearance: Glossy, vivid chestnut brown.

Smell: Not strong, beany, with a hint of black pepper

Taste: Waxy texture followed by low- to mid-volume, integrated, very complex pepper flavor, from classic black pepper to more tingly, herby, “green” flavors to dried, woodsy, “brown” flavors. The flavor of the chocolate itself is raw and beany (as opposed to smooth, creamy, roasted, etc), which makes the whole experience very earthy. The flavor is a bit of a contrast with the waxy texture, and now that I think of it, I think that the texture, along with the low-medium volume of the pepper, keeps this bar from being overwhelmingly earthy (it un-grounds it, heh).

Often I eat a bar and struggle to figure out what to say about it—“it tastes like chocolate”—so it's always a fun to encounter one that gives me food for thought, as it were. Do I absolutely love this? I dunno. But I like the thought behind it, and the thoughts that arise when I eat it.

Conclusion: Madécasse Exotic Pepper is earthy and complex but not overwhelming, and it offers a lot to ponder.

Madécasse Pink Pepper & Citrus

2.64oz (75g) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, pink pepper, combava

13g sugar/37.5g serving (34.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Altered from 12/3/11) Madécasse has one of those interesting progressive-chocolate-company stories: The American founders met as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar and decided to not only grow their cacao there (not unusual) but also process and package the chocolate there to benefit the local community. The company claims to be paying good wages and using sustainable farming practices, and has impressed The New York Times and Fast Company (among others) with its commitment and innovation. The bars are not officially labeled fair trade or organic, but from what I read, the process is essentially a variation on both of those complicated labels. Madécasse produces a relatively small selection of plain and flavored bars. As Emma pointed out after my last Madécasse review, the company has changed its labels since then—though I should note that, even a few months later, I'm still seeing some of the old bars on store shelves among the new ones, so you might find the old labels out there.

Today I'm trying a really fun bar, a 63% cacao Pink Pepper & Citrus. I've tried herby pink pepper before, in two bars I brought back from Germany, but while those peppercorns were pressed into the chocolate these are incorporated, so I'm curious if they will impart a different experience. What's totally unfamiliar to me is the combava, which turns out to be another name for kaffir lime, a fruit I only know through the leaves (and apparently rind?) used in southeast Asian cooking. I suspect Madécasse used “combava” because it seems to be the preferred term in French, one of Madagascar's official languages. (Similarly, Madécasse is apparently the old French name for Madagascar, I'm assuming having to do with its being a one-time French colony.)

Appearance: Like a normal chocolate bar, though I'm reviewing a 70% cacao Madécasse bar next week and they actually have very different finishes. Today's is fairly matte, with only a little gloss after I wipe it a little, and the brown is quite light, almost washed-out looking, whereas next week's only-somewhat-higher-cacao bar is a significantly deeper, richer color. Hm.

Smell: Not strong, though I'm getting a hint of the pink pepper's prickly spice. No obvious citrus.

Taste: Fun! The chocolate is foundational, maybe a little chalky and beany, but not strong. Then a hit of citrus, and then the super-complex pepper that's hard to describe, plus the flavors are well blended, in that I don't taste three separate ingredients. There's some medium-volume sourness that I think comes from both the combava and the chocolate, because it's both sharp (like citrus) and beany (like you'll taste in tart chocolates). Then there's that resiny, prickly, herby flavor like cardamom and grass and nutmeg that I'm assuming comes from the pink pepper, but since I don't know combava well, I wonder if it contributes any of the fresh, green elements. As I said, texture is a little chalky, and the pink pepper is totally incorporated, whether finely ground or somehow steeped in the chocolate.

Conclusion: Super interesting, if you like herby-spicy (and not super dark) chocolate.

World Market Dark Chocolate 72% Cacao

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla

11g sugar/43g serving (25.6% by wt.)

Corporate Info: World Market (a.k.a. Cost Plus World Market) is an American retailer whose large stores sell furniture, housewares, and packaged food and alcohol with a global-imported vibe. For example, it's the only place in Seattle where I've come across Australia's Bundaberg Ginger Beer. World Market carries a particularly wide variety of candies, including store-brand chocolate bars. I've reviewed a couple of flavored bars; what about their plain dark chocolate?

Appearance: Super-dark, with a grey-purple tint rather than red or orange.

Smell: Chocolatey, of the dried-fruit variety. No edges.

Taste: On first bite, I thought “wow, this is really dark for 72%,” and then the sweet came along behind it. I think it's because there really aren't any edges—not really tannic (astringent, mouth-drying), not at all sour, just nothing to balance the sugar even though I don't think it's that sweet. It's kind of like dates, or prunes without the tartness, some simply sweet fruit that's been dried and concentrated. That said, I think there's nuance to what is there, if you're not into sour and don't like bitter chocolate. Think dried persimmons: I've tried them and thought they were dully sweet, but others obviously get more out of that flavor. The chocolate's texture is very slightly waxy, and the aftertaste is caramelized and sweetish.

Conclusion: World Market Dark Chocolate 72% Cacao is sweet, dark, and not much else, though what is there is nuanced. Not for me.