This smallish house-brand bar from Seattle's Chocolopolis has no label other than the store's, so I don't know anything about it, including the ingredients, how dark it is, or what brand they use, though it includes "vanilla sea salt." I was in there anyway and have been wanting to try more salt-topped chocolate, so there you go.
Appearance: Smooth, medium-brown, and blocky.
Smell: Subtly fruity, not at all intense. Maybe dried fruit, not caramelized like raisins, more like dried cherries or dates, or a light honey.
Taste: They know what they're doing over at Chocolopolis. This is a pretty dark chocolate, with a percent cacao somewhere in the mid-70s (hope I'm not wrong about that!), and it's well balanced: not over-roasted or weirdly sweet or challenging with smoke or sourness or any other pungent flavors. A very medium bar with just enough salt to make things interesting.
Because this isn't a very sweet bar, it doesn't have the same salty-sweet, caramelized vibe as salt caramels or caramel corn (though I love those too); to my mind, the salt enhances the flavor of the beans here, not the sugar.
Conclusion: Chocolopolis Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt is very well balanced. I'd be curious to find out whose chocolate they use for their house bars.
Vanilla-flavored salt? That strikes me as curiously delightful. But definitely odd...
ReplyDeleteI've made vanilla salt myself by burying a vanilla bean in a container of my usual kosher salt. I never know what to do with it, so it just sits there on the counter.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I got my vanilla a while back at organic-vanilla.com, for something like $30 for a whole bunch of the small pods, both Tahitian and Bourbon. Wrapped tightly they seem to last forever; I still have tons. It looks like that store is out of stock right now, though.