Indi Chocolate

Corporate Info: Indi Chocolate is a small batch, bean-to-bar company in Seattle, producing not only dark chocolate but also cacao-infused skin products. A generous co-taster spotted Indi's small storefront in Pike Place Market and brought me a sampling of its dark chocolate bars.

Today's Bars: Four in total: plain, dried cherries, dried cranberries, and crystallized ginger. All include only cocoa beans, cocoa butter, sugar, and cherries/cranberries/ginger.

Appearance: Indi's plain bar comes in a fancy mold, imprinted with leaves and cacao pods (and some air bubbles around the edges). The others involve spreading chocolate out in a thin sheet, sprinkling on the inclusion, then cooling and breaking up the pieces. Either way, the chocolate has a nice, low-shine sheen and a deep, rich, medium brown color. 

Smell: Surprisingly buttery, and even the plain chocolate is deeply sweet, like dried fruit.

Taste: The plain chocolate starts out sweet, but is followed by a thin, bitter edge that adds complexity, and there's an underlying dark, fruity flavor like dried dates or plums. The chocolate under the inclusions tastes like it might be lower cacao, but I wouldn't swear to it. The cherry and cranberry both work really well, sweet and moist against the bittersweet chocolate. The ginger is surprisingly subtle, more than I personally would like, but for the ginger-wary it would work well. 

Conclusion: Indi Chocolate is a Seattle-local company making a fine chocolate product with good inclusions, especially the fruits.

Chocolove Chilies & Cherries in Dark Chocolate

3.2oz (90g) bar
Ingredients: Cocoa liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, dried cherries, ancho chilies, chipotle chilies
14g sugar/30g serving (46.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from 3/16/13) I have a soft spot for Chocolove, having lived in near its hometown of Boulder, Colorado and enjoyed the company's samples in my local Whole Foods. It's a relatively young company (Wikipedia says 1996; Chocolove's website indicates similar), hasn't yet been bought by a giant conglomerate, and claims it has taken or is taking several steps toward "sustainability & social responsiblity." On the other hand, Chocolove produces only three organic, fair trade bars and is rated a C by the Better World folks (same as Hershey's, much better than Nestle), so I don't want to give them my unconditional Choco-love (ha ha, I crack me up). But it's cheaper than most premium chocolate—$2-2.50 a bar—and reliably tasty.

Note: Chocolove's flavored dark bars are in 55% cacao, which I know I'll find too sweet, but I can't help but be enticed by all the flavor options.

Today's Bar: Dried cherries with two types of chiles, mild ancho and smoky chipotle, in 55% cacao.

Appearance: Another purple-grey brown, in Chocolove's quilted mold, with a somewhat bumpy back.

Smell: Sweet and rich, with the nose-filling scent that is clearly the chile, though it doesn't strike me as distinctively chile-ish.

Taste: Sweet and thick, then the chew of the dried cherries, then their sweet and sour flavor, then a slow build and finally throat-prickling chile. The spice isn't at all overwhelming--either heat or smoke--more of a rounded addition that adds to the overall flavor and experience, complementing the sweet-tart cherries and mouth-coating chocolate. Really an excellent combination.

Conclusion: Chocolove Chilies & Cherries in Dark Chocolate combines thick, sweet dark chocolate and chewy, sweet-tart cherries, with the mouth-filling support of prickly, not overly hot or smoky chile.  

Chocolove Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate

3.2oz (90g) bar
Ingredients: Cocoa liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, dried cherries, almonds, rice flour, sunflower oil
13g sugar/30g serving (43.3% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from 3/16/13) I have a soft spot for Chocolove, having lived in near its hometown of Boulder, Colorado and enjoyed the company's samples in my local Whole Foods. It's a relatively young company (Wikipedia says 1996; Chocolove's website indicates similar), hasn't yet been bought by a giant conglomerate, and claims it has taken or is taking several steps toward "sustainability & social responsiblity." On the other hand, Chocolove produces only three organic, fair trade bars and is rated a C by the Better World folks (same as Hershey's, much better than Nestle), so I don't want to give them my unconditional Choco-love (ha ha, I crack me up). But it's cheaper than most premium chocolate—$2-2.50 a bar—and reliably tasty. 

Note: Chocolove's flavored dark bars are in 55% cacao, which I know I'll find too sweet, but I can't help but be enticed by all the flavor options.

Today's Bar: Cherry and almond in 55% cacao.

Appearance: Purple-grey brown in Chocolove's quilted pattern, with rounded bumps and visible almonds on the back.

Smell: Sweet and nutty. I don't get cherries per se, but there's a little dried fruit in there.

Taste: This is another sweet and thick dark Chocolove bar, but unlike last week's, with its tart freeze-dried raspberries, this one includes sweet, chewy cherries and pieces of almond. The cherry does have a bit of sweet-sour charm (and I do love cherries in chocolate), and its texture is a great addition, but mostly it doesn't cut the sweetness of the chocolate. The almonds are tasty but intermittent: Not all squares include enough almond to taste. So this isn't my favorite, but really it's a pretty good bar.

Conclusion: Chocolove Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate has good textural variation from the cherries and the intermittent almonds and a slight tartness in the sweet cherries, and is overall a good, fairly sweet, rich bar.

B.T. McElrath Super Red Chocolate Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, tart cherries, strawberries, raspberries

12g sugar/43g serving (27.9% by wt.)

Corporate Info: [Copied from 5/26/12] 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: 70% cacao with cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. I'm not hugely into berry bars, but that's just a matter of personal taste, and it's always interesting to see how different companies approach the fruit in terms of size, sweetness, consistency, etc.

Appearance: Semi-glossy with yellow undertones and, on the reverse, bumps from chocolate-covered fruit pieces.

Smell: Mild, though a broken bar reveals the scent of light, dried raspberries and strawberries, with the freshness of freeze dried fruit (a la Just Tomatoes) rather than than fruit that is sweet and moist or artificial and overpowering. I should note that I opened this bar long before I had a chance to review it, and sometimes that means a lot of the scent is lost.

Taste: The chocolate is B.T. McElrath's usual, mild and creamy (see the extra fat in the ingredients). The small, copious berry pieces add a punch of tart, fruity flavor and a slight crunch and chewiness, and the red flecks look nice in a broken bar, as you can see accurately on the box. As a co-taster said as he grabbed for another square, “This is such good chocolate!” Because berries aren't my thing I won't go out of my way to buy this bar again, but if the description sounds good to you, you probably won't be disappointed.

Conclusion: B.T. McElrath Super Red Chocolate Bar is mild and pleasant, with tiny punches of flavor from fresh-tasting fruit.

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.

Amedei Tuscany Toscano Red Cioccolato Fondente Extra 70% con Fragole, Ciliegie e Lamponi (70% Cacao with Strawberry, Cherry, and Raspberry)

50g (1.75 oz) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, dried fruit (strawberry, cherry, raspberry; 10%), vanilla

I had a little spree at Chocolopolis, buying several bars that were different from my norm, and the one that has called to me the loudest since then is this red-fruit bar [scroll down] from Amedei. It's loveable: The wrapper is pretty, it lists the ingredients in six languages, and the inside is covered in dense, flowery text in phrases like “pleasure and transgression,” “evoking childhood memories,” and “full aromatic potential.” (I know I'm being hypocritical, but come on—it's Italian.)

This is an appealing, super-accessible bar. It's a medium chocolate shade, not too glossy or dull, and the back reminds me of a less-uniform, magenta-studded Nestle Crunch bar. The chocolate smells nutty and fresh, like the freeze dried raspberries you can buy at upscale groceries and camping stores, and it tastes like that too. I'm not sure I get a lot of strawberry, mostly because the tang strikes me as raspberry (perhaps because of the palpable raspberry seeds) and a bit of sour cherry, but then again, unsweetened strawberries have a similar tartness that may be there too. The bits of fruit are lightly crispy, substantial but not chewy, with a bright flavor. The chocolate is also bright and clean and a bit sour, not super intense or dark or bland, which meshes well with the fruit.

Conclusion: Amedei's 70% bar with strawberries, cherries, and raspberries is fresh, fruity, and easy to eat. 

Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate with Whole Cherries 60% Cocoa Content

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Organic chocolate liquor, o. raw cane sugar, o. cherries (o. dried cherries, o. sunflower oil), o. cocoa butter, soy lecithin, o. vanilla extract

12g sugar/40g serving (30% by wt.)

As I’m generally a fan of Green & Black’s products I’ve tried most of their dark flavored bars too, and this is one I pick up every so often. It is exactly what it says: chocolate with whole cherries. The plentiful cherries are bracingly tart and chewy, the sweeter chocolate is creamy and dark enough to hold its own, and the two play off each other beautifully. The whole cherries add greater textural interest than smaller pieces would, and the flavor is more inspired than similar but tired cranberry.

Personally, I would prefer a slightly darker and less sweet chocolate, but I realize that others might not feel the same way, and as it is the pairing is well balanced. This is the bar I end up eating most quickly—not because it is necessarily better than others (though it is very good) but because it is tasty, interesting, and not so dark and intense as to overwhelm after a few bites. It’s a good thing I don’t buy it regularly!

Conclusion: Green & Black’s Dark Chocolate with Whole Cherries is simple yet inspired and well balanced.