Lake Champlain Five Star Chocolate Bar Fruit & Nut

 

1.9oz (53g) bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, milk powder, milk fat, soybean lecithin, vanilla, hazelnut paste, pecans, raisins, dried cherries

Corporate Info: I rather like Lake Champlain because it makes my favorite cocoa powder (so far), and because the passionate, creative mind (at least at that time) behind the Five Star Bars is profiled in Candyfreak, a book about a few remaining small businesses in the large-corporation-dominated chocolate world. I'm not sure there's a lot to say about the company otherwise: It's based in Vermont and about 30 years old...not organic or fair trade or whatnot, but if you're in the U.S. you can buy them and support a relatively small American company. (Bonus: Combine a factory tour with a trip to the nearby Ben and Jerry's factory and seriously, that's a good time right there.)

[Update/correction 4/2/12] Lake Champlain does produce a few organic items and is a member of the World Cocoa Foundation, which claims to be working toward various positive aims (focusing on child labor and so on). However, as the WCF includes many of the world's largest chocolate manufacturers, visions of happy workers sustainably producing cheap chocolate to fulfill the world's demand may be a bit of wishful thinking, at least for the time being.

Appearance: Lake Champlain's Five Star bars are all stubby, chunky, and unassuming. This one is mildly reddish-brown and just a little glossy. A cross-section looks like ganache mixed with whitish pecans and not a lot of fruit.

Smell: Sweet dried fruit and nuts, though that might be cheating with this bar. Very pleasant, which is to say nothing pops out.

Taste: The texture in these bars is fatty-creamy, sort of like a less extreme version of a Lindor Truffle (but with actual cocoa butter instead of palm and coconut oils), plus inclusions: Crunchy, low-flavor nuts, dried fruits contributing low-impact complexity and intermittent chew, and a good amount of fatty filling. Since there's hazelnut paste, they're trying for additional flavor and creaminess rather than just nut pieces, and I am getting some minor hints of Nutella that probably add to the fruit/nut vibe. The chocolate feels like an afterthought, but it's really not, because it's well-matched in sweet-tart profile, just not particularly intense.

Conclusion: Lake Champlain Five Star Chocolate Bar Fruit & Nut is an easy, not-so-strong hit of dried fruits, nuts, fat, and pleasant chocolate.

Lake Champlain Chocolates Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa Sao Thome

  

3oz (85g) bar
Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, soybean lecithin, vanilla
12g sugar/43g serving (27.9% by wt.)

I don't know much about Vermont-based Lake Champlain Chocolates except that I've seen the company's products around and that they get a positive mention in Steve Almond's Candyfreak. The bar I have here is one of several very dark bars Lake Champlain offers, differentiated by cacao origin: This particular chocolate is from an island off the coast of Gabon called São Tomé and Príncipe. The wrapper describes the chocolate's flavor as “fruity and robust...exceedingly complex...pure” with “resounding vanilla tones” (from the vanilla, of course). So what do I think of it?

This is a rather dark bar with a dull finish and a shape that has held together in the wrapper with no flaking or scuffing, which is something I can't always say. It smells richly chocolatey and breaks into clean rectangles. A bite reveals chocolate that is dense and creamy, with a bit of chew and a complex flavor. 

An aside: There's a difference between being mild and lacking complexity. Even if you haven't bothered to pay close attention to how the flavor of various bars differs, if you've eaten enough chocolate you'll notice that some bars you just don't go back to after the first few pieces, and it's not because something stands out as being “off.” I think you feel indifferent when you eat chocolate that lacks complexity—it's one-note, boring, unintriguing, even though it's technically just as much chocolate as any other. You experience the opposite when you eat something chocolate flavored, like mousse or cake, and exclaim “Oh, that's just so...so chocolatey!” Similarly, you can make two pans of brownies using the same recipe but with two different chocolates and have one pan taste markedly more chocolatey than the other.

Back to Lake Champlain. This chocolate is complex but not super-dark, with a flavor that is perhaps a bit nutty. It's not my favorite bar ever, but I doubt I'll have trouble finishing it. And that's all I have to say about that.

Conclusion: Lake Champlain Chocolates Dark Chocolate 70% Sao Thome is satisfying, interesting, and easy to eat without being boring. 


[Update 1/18/12: I fixed the color issue.]