Trader Joe's Takes Flight: A Dark Chocolate Tasting Odyssey, Part II

 

Corporate Info: (Altered from 10/6/12) Quirky-gourmet grocery store Trader Joe's tends to be hit or miss, with some products being regular purchases for years, some becoming favorites and then disappearing from shelves, and some straight up disappointing. I've had similarly mixed results with their chocolate, but there's constant turnover, they contract with a whole assortment of manufacturers, and they aim for reasonable price points, so it's worth it to keep trying. There isn't much else to say aside from a fun fact: The US's beloved Trader Joe's is owned by Germany's ALDI, which operates discount supermarkets all over Europe—and that explains why we saw packages of dried fruit and nuts labeled Trader Joe's in an ALDI in Osnabrück.

Today's Bar: An assortment! This “Dark Chocolate Tasting Odyssey” is in the same line as the bar with toffee, walnuts, and pecans and the caramel-filled bar with black sea salt, but it includes seven separate and interesting bars! Two are 2oz versions of full-sized products, the salted caramel bar I've already reviewed and a coconut caramel one I still intend to review, so I won't cover them here. Further, you can buy each of those separately, and I've seen both in stores off-and-on for the last year, so you can probably find them if you want them. In contrast, I've only seen this assortment once, so I'm going to cover it in a two-part mega review rather than stretching it out over five posts.

So what, then, are today's bars? Every bar in the assortment is in 70% cacao, and aside from the two caramel-filled ones discussed above, all are regular chocolate with inclusions. Last week I looked at coffee & cocoa nibs and chili & cinnamon; today is even more interesting, with Almond Ginger, Orange Hibiscus, and Salt & Pepper Potato Chip!

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Almond Ginger

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, almonds, ginger, cane sugar, salt

18g sugar/57g serving (31.6% by wt.)

Appearance: Again, plain, slightly purply chocolate, with raised almond pieces on the back and flecks of white almond in cross-section.

Smell: I get the ginger, actually, in the form of something spicy and fragrant within the light, nutty chocolate.

Taste: Saltier than I expected, with crunchy almond slivers and tiny bursts of bright crystallized ginger. All three come in separately, so each bite varies in terms of texture and flavor. The chocolate is still reasonably bland, a little chalky, and sweet, but this bar is more about the inclusions so it works out.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Almond Ginger has varied flavor and texture within okay chocolate.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Orange Hibiscus

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, hibiscus powder, orange oil, tea: elderberry, apples, hibiscus, rosehip, kiwi, strawberry, sunflower petals, rose, corn flower, raspberry, passionfruit, natural flavors

18g sugar/57g serving (31.6% by wt.)

Appearance: Again, plain, slightly purply chocolate.

Smell: Cohesive but complex fruit, ranging from fragrant and perfumey to sweet-tart.

Taste: Hm. The chalkiness of the chocolate base doesn't work here, as it contrasts poorly with the fruit flavor. Aside from that, very fruity and sweet-tart, leaning toward sweet, with tiny crunches, probably the hibiscus powder. I think I can taste the exotic spice of the orange oil, and aside from that it very much reminds me of the sorts of fruit teas that use hibiscus as a foundation, bright and tart and layered. It also works well with the mild chocolate, though I do think it could stand up to a darker, more sour-bitter-beany variety. Unfortunately, the contrast with the texture is awfully weird, and that's what gets to me in the end.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Orange Hibiscus is complexly fruity, with a chalkiness that contrasts oddly with the flavoring.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Salt & Pepper Potato Chip

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, organic clarified butter, sea salt, potatoes, safflower and/or sunflower oil, rice flour, black pepper, white pepper, yeast extract, garlic powder, onion powder, citric acid, black pepper oil, jalapeño powder

18g sugar/57g serving (31.6% by wt.)

Appearance: Again, plain, slightly purply chocolate.

Smell: Salty and savory on top of light, nutty chocolate.

Taste: Neat! There's the crispy crunch of the potato chips, along with their light, savory flavor (these are “salt and pepper” potato chips, which also means other flavor punchers like yeast extract and garlic and onion powders), a nice amount of salt and pepper...it actually works really well. Again, this chocolate has some unpleasant chalkiness, but it can be overlooked with this inclusion and the mild flavor works much better than would something more “chocolatey,” whose bitter and sour notes would probably contrast poorly and/or overwhelm the savory notes.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Salt & Pepper Potato Chip is surprisingly full of potato chips, and their texture and savory flavor works well with the mild chocolate.

Chuao Chocolatier Salted Chocolate Crunch

2.8oz (80g) bar

Ingredients: cacao, sugar, cacao butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, sea salt, panko breadcrumbs (wheat flour, dextrose, yeast, salt)

15g sugar/40g serving (37.5% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from 11/17/12) According to its stylish website, Chuao Chocolatier is a San Diego-based company founded by two brothers from Venezuela, who named the company after a region of their homeland. Chuao's whole deal is interesting chocolate combinations, in bars like maple bacon and potato chip (see the production here), and in confections like smoky macadamia and goat cheese & pear. You can buy Chuao's products at its well-regarded retail locations in Southern California, at other select stores, or at large chains like Whole Foods and Target.

Note: The site calls Chuao the “first Venezuelan Chocolatier based in the United States,” but aside from this pricey bar I can't find a claim that their cacao is sourced in the region of Chuao or in Venezuela generally, so I won't be labeling the company single-origin.

Today's Bar: “Crunchy, toasted breadcrumbs dusted with sea salt and swirled in [60%] dark chocolate.”

Appearance: Shiny, in a grey-yellow-brown that's surprisingly a touch lighter than last week's Chuao Firecracker, despite presumably being in the same base. Maybe the chipotle darkened the other bar?

Smell: Hm, subtle, which again surprises me compared to last week's—but my co-taster says he thinks this one smells stronger. Subjective senses!

Taste: So I had to step back from sugar over the last few weeks, which explains why this 60% cacao base tastes very sweet to me. That aside, it's quite nice. The chocolate is mild but with a light, bitter aftertaste, reminiscent of the lingering taste of a cup of coffee; my co-taster similarly reflected “you can really taste the toastiness—browned, I guess a little carbonized.” The breadcrumbs offer a pleasant, crispy crunch, varied and never mushy. The well-incorporated salt rounds out the flavor, which I think of as achieving balance but my co-taster expanded, commenting on the way the toasty/bitter flavors, salt, and sweet all pull in different directions, offering a broader experience.

Conclusion: Chuao Chocolatier Salted Chocolate Crunch is both complex and well balanced, in terms of both flavor and texture.

Chuao Chocolatier Firecracker

2.8oz (80g) bar

Ingredients: 60% cacao, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, chipotle chile, pasilla chile, sea salt, candy (sugar, corn glucose, lactose, carbon dioxide)

Corporate Info: According to its stylish website, Chuao Chocolatier is a San Diego-based company founded by two brothers from Venezuela, who named the company after a region of their homeland. Chuao's whole deal is interesting chocolate combinations, in bars like maple bacon and potato chip (see the production here), and in confections like smoky macadamia and goat cheese & pear. You can buy Chuao's products at its well-regarded retail locations in Southern California, at other select stores, or at large chains like Whole Foods and Target.

Note: The site calls Chuao the “first Venezuelan Chocolatier based in the United States,” but aside from this pricey bar I can't find a claim that their cacao is sourced in the region of Chuao or in Venezuela generally, so I won't be labeling the company single-origin.

 

Today's Bar: Chuao's Firecracker Bar, 60% cacao with sea salt, chipotle, and Pop-Rocks-type popping candy. Hm.

Appearance: Shiny, not especially red/orange/yellow medium brown, in an interesting mold (as you can see above). The back surface is pebbled with the candy pieces and possibly also the salt.

Smell: I mostly get a fresh/raw, sour, bitter (in a beany way, not acrid) chocolate smell, with perhaps a touch of smokiness from the chipotle but nothing obvious.

Taste: Ooh, that's fun. The chocolate is decent quality, with the beany, fresh flavor I got from the aroma. Depending on what hits your tongue first, you either get saltiness or the popping candies, which have little flavor but add a Nestle Crunch sort of crispiness that morphs into the crackle of Pop Rocks that fill your mouth as you chew but never threaten to explode—this isn't candy you'd have to eat on a dare. Chipotle is slow to arrive after the sweet-salty chocolate, mostly resulting in a slow but prominent burn in the back of the throat; a co-taster says he also feels the heat on the back of his tongue. I think I find the 60% cacao a tad too sweet for my taste, though that's after having eaten a good quarter of the bar.

Conclusion: Chuao Chocolatier Firecracker is likably crackly, smoky-burny, and sweet, a novel if not necessary combination.

Leysieffer Poppy Seed (Mohn)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, poppy seed, soy lecithin

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Chocolate and poppy seeds! I noticed more poppy seed in Germany than here in the US. We're not talking on pizza or anything, but anyone familiar with hamentaschen has tried poppy seed in desserts of German origin, and I saw them in the odd pastry or bagged for sale with other nuts and seeds. I don't know if Leysieffer has included them whole or ground or what, but I guess I'll find out.

Appearance: On the outside, this looks like any other Leysieffer bar, but a cross section shows tiny white flecks. I think of poppy seeds as black, so either these are magically different or it's what you get when you break one. How about that.

Smell: I think just chocolate? If there's something more there, it's not obvious to me.

Taste: Man, I don't know. It mostly just tastes like chocolate, but with a slightly gritty (not sand-like, something softer) texture. These poppy seeds are either ground/broken up or really easy to chew, leaving little bits hanging around in your mouth as an aftertaste of sorts. Not sure about any particular flavor, though my sometimes co-taster claims it “tastes like poppy seed.” “What does that mean?” [Long pause.] “I don't know, poppy seed?” Given how low-key this is—just a light texture as far as I can tell—I'm not sure why anyone would search it out. Maybe people who eat a lot of poppy seed products become sensitive to their subtle flavor, or buyers just want that texture?

Poppy seed + chocolate conclusion: Underwhelming, but fine. I'd like to try something with a higher poppy seed content, or even a filling of poppy seed paste, as perhaps that would emphasize what the ingredient has to contribute to chocolate.

Leysieffer Honey (Honig)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, honey, honey oil, soy lecithin

This May I was back in Germany and again visited the small city of Osnabrück, home to Leysieffer and its interestingly-flavored bars. Last year I tried their 55% cacao with pink peppercorns, rose oil, cardamom, and elderflower, and this year I brought back five more flavored bars and one plain one. As I did then, I'm focusing on flavors that are new to me, at least as chocolate additives, so even if you can't get your hands on Leysieffer anytime soon, it might be fun to hear about these funky combinations.

Corporate Info: Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Honey! Germans seem to be into honey, relatively speaking—not that it's everywhere, exactly, but the typical hotel breakfast buffet spread of breads, cheese, meat, jams, and so on always includes honey of some sort, and in Cologne I walked by a store whose entire stock was honey-related. So while I didn't see a lot of honey-infused chocolate floating around, neither was I surprised to find it as a flavoring in Leysieffer's large product line. As with all the flavored bars I'm reviewing, this is in 55% cacao. Also note that the “honey oil” in the ingredients list seems to be some sort of essential oil, not a honey-dosed vegetable oil or, obviously, oil in the drug-related sense that you'll discover if you Google the phrase.

Appearance: Aside from a few bars with inclusions, Leysieffer flavored bars in 55% cacao look more or less the same, a semi-glossy, very medium brown with a warm, yellow-orange undertone.

Smell: Mild, with a light, complex sweetness.

Taste: As I knew from last year, Leysieffer's dark chocolate base is mild, smooth, and sweet, not a challenging base to the flavorings it uses. So, more importantly, what about the honey? It's not strong, but more a particular take on the sweetness common to any (not-too-dark) chocolate. Imagine several sweeteners—say, honey, maple, cane sugar (white, brown, raw, whatever), and some artificial sweetener—and how, if you mix each into a cup of coffee or yogurt, it ends up sweeter but with a slightly varied perfume, which may or may not work with the other flavors and be what you want in that moment. This bar basically tastes like a fairly sweet dark chocolate, but with a touch of the succulence of a light honey. It doesn't do anything for me, personally, but it's a rather innocuous take on flavoring chocolate.

Honey + chocolate conclusion: Fine, just a slight variation on a usual sweetish dark bar. However, Leysieffer's version uses quite a light honey, and I'd be curious to try a more robust take on the combination.

Anthon Berg Salmiak (salty licorice)

100g (3.53oz) bar
Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa mass, f.t. sugar, cocoa butter, licorice powder, ammonium chloride, glucose syrup, canola lecithin
39% sugar (labeled)

Today's licorice bar is the third and final item I brought home from New York's Sockerbit. As I mentioned, I'm slowly acquiring a taste for licorice, especially the more challenging “salty” licorice made with ammonium chloride (not the sodium chloride salt we usually use in cooking) and popular in Scandinavia. This bar includes licorice in the chocolate as well as licorice “chips” made of sugars, cocoa butter, licorice, and ammonium chloride—which is to say that both bar and chips are licorice flavored, and only the chips are salty. Huh! 

Corporate Info: (copied from 2/18/12) Denmark's Anthon Berg was founded in 1884 and is now owned by Toms International, a chocolate and candy company operating in Scandinavia and the UK (though the subsidiary site avoids mentioning Toms). Anthon Berg produces assorted chocolate items including flavored fair trade bars, chocolate-covered marzipan, and those little foil-wrapped chocolate bottles filled with branded liquor. 

Appearance: Thin, flat, semi-glossy, reddish-orangish-brown, with the lighter-colored “chips” visible under the surface. When you break it, it turns out that those “chips” are tiny, clear candy crystals. 

Smell: I don't smell licorice, which is a vastly different experience from the last and only other licorice-related chocolate I've tasted, Venchi's high-powered absinth bar. There is a faint whiff of something unusual, though, dark and rich like prunes and blackberries, but as I've said it's faint, just a slight variation on the chocolate norm. 

Taste: Weird. After having eating some intense licorice candies (other purchases from Sockerbit), I find this surprisingly subtle, if mouth-filling; I definitely know I'm eating something other than chocolate, but it's not obvious to me what that is. If you hate the flavor, maybe this would scream licorice and gross you out, but to me it just tastes kind of savory, with an only flavor-boosting saltiness that balances out the sweet of this 57% cacao bar. In the past I haven't liked bars flavored with tiny crystal candies, which never seem to give me what I want (whether that's mint or fruit or whatever), but here it's...intriguing. The licorice flavor itself is complex and not what I'm used to, not exactly sweet, salty, bitter, or sour, and for what it's worth it lingers long after the chocolate is gone. It's certainly unusual. 

Conclusion: Anthon Berg Salmiak (salty licorice) isn't at all intense, but it is really different.

Sahagún Palomitapapá

25g/0.9oz bar (self-weighed)

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, corn, soy oil, fleur de sel, chile (cocoa is Ecuadorian)

Corporate Info: Sahagún (or, judging by the website, Sahagun) is a tiny little company that currently makes a few barks, a couple filled confections, and one coffee flavored bar. I must have bought funky little Palomitapapá at Cacao in Portland, drawn in by the “exploded corn” in the ingredients list. (Note: I can only find this bar as part of a bark three-pack, which I'm guessing means the company switches up its flavors from time to time.) If you're interested in Sahagún's South American names and ingredients, philosophy, or future plans, you can read an interview with owner Elizabeth Montes here.

Appearance: Nubbly and barky, with exposed salt crystals on top.

Smell: Not too much, actually.

Taste: First chile, more than I was expecting but not to a give-me-a-glass-of-water extent. Then salt, then the relatively subtle flavor and not at all subtle texture of the corn kernels, which are more chewy-crunchy than puffy like popcorn. The spiciness lingers, and the kernels get stuck in my teeth, and all in all the chocolate is just a flavor element rather than the headliner here. Hm, there's not a lot to say except that this is a fun experience if you're into the ingredients.

Conclusion: Sahagún Palomitapapá is fun if you want chile, crunchy corn, and salt with your chocolate.

ChocoLate con Aceite de Oliva Virgen Extra Bio (Organic 70% Cacao with Extra Virgin Olive Oil)

70g (2.4oz) bar

Ingredients: Organic cocoa, o. cocoa butter, o. cane sugar, o. extra virgin olive oil (5%), soy lecithin

11g sugar/40g serving (27.5% by wt.)

I wasn't sure what to expect from this Spanish bar other than a novel experience. The pairing of chocolate and olive oil is like coffee and cheese or prosciutto and salsa, two gastronomic powerhouses that arise from different parts of the globe and don't sound quite right as a team. Then again, I guess chocolate and olive oil can both be creamy and rich, with an enveloping perfume and a distinctive flavor, so maybe they're not so far apart after all. Would that come across here?

The bar has a common, matte brown appearance, though the molding design is fairly interesting. Where this chocolate really gets me is the aroma: Mostly chocolate with...something else, something subtle and hard to recognize. It doesn't smell at all like the bottle of olive oil on my kitchen counter, and I bet that's because they're different types; the one in the chocolate strikes me as mouth-filling and buttery. This flavor carries through on first taste: The olive oil hits the tongue first, then as the chocolate begins to melt, that flavor melds with what turns out to be a very creamy, sweet chocolate, a good match for a rich-tasting olive oil. I find the aftertaste to be more of the same, mostly chocolate with some subtle variation, but another taster here felt it showcased the olive oil again.

Inevitable intrusion of personal taste: I don't like buttery olive oils. I figured olive oil flavors varied but were all good until I found myself recoiling from certain bottles, as the aroma and flavor struck me as overwhelmingly greasy, kind of like rancid oil. I thought maybe I just needed a better quality bottle until I found that some I liked some cheap varieties just fine. What I was reacting to was the particularly buttery type, which is why I have a big bottle of inexpensive grassy, fruity extra virgin olive oil in my kitchen and a bit of an aversion to this chocolate. That's not to say anything about its quality, because it really is luscious and creamy, and interesting in a quiet way I haven't seen before, and plenty of people like buttery olive oils. In light of this, I would love to try some of this company's other bars.

Conclusion: ChocoLate con Aceite de Oliva Virgen Extra Bio is smooth and rich and worth a try—unless you don't like buttery olive oils (or, obviously, olive oil in general). 

Venchi Assenzio Pure Extra Bitter Chocolate with Absinth

45g (1.58oz) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa powder (22-24% cocoa butter), cocoa butter, cocoa mass, sugar, dill, Artemisia absinthium extract, soy lecithin, vanilla.

Venchi's absinthe-flavored 75% cacao bar is unlike anything else I've tried. It looks like any old small bar with fancy wrapping, but the licorice-like scent is powerful, unmistakeable even when the bar was wrapped. I bought this chocolate because it was novel and exotic, but to be honest I'm not a huge fan of licorice and its cousins (cousins in odor only—anise and fennel are barely related to licorice), so it took a few weeks of daring myself to review The Absinthe Bar before I finally bit the bullet.

So what's absinthe? I won't go into detail here because I think most of us have already heard that there's this the green, anise-flavored, slightly illegal liquor that maybe makes you crazy but actually probably doesn't. Regardless, it's worth noting that the cult-favorite spirit with the sexy history experienced a bit of a resurgence in the last decade or so, which makes Venchi's formidably herbaceous chocolate somewhat trendy in a bold and interesting way. Venchi approximates absinthe by using the liquor's characteristic Artemesia absinthium, aka wormwood, as well as dill in the place of fennel, though it leaves out the usual anise. [3/30/11: See the end of the post for an update on The Dill Situation.]

The look: angular, matte, and grayish. The smell: Like absinthe. Fennel, anise, licorice, you know what I'm talking about. As I've mentioned there is no fennel or anise here as in absinthe, so what provides the aura of licorice? I can't find a description of the flavor of Artemesia absinthium itself other than “bitter,” but I've discovered that licorice-haters can buy modern absinthe without the traditional flavor, so it probably isn't coming from the wormwood. Dill, on the other hand, is fairly closely related to fennel, and while they don't taste identical, I'd wager that flavor and odor are what dill brings to the table in this chocolate (perhaps in some high concentration or using a non-leaf part of the plant). Let's give it a taste.

This pairing actually works surprisingly well. The texture of the bar is very smooth (if just a touch chalky) and the chocolate is dark and slightly bitter but mostly sweet and not too intense, which jibes with the oddly sweet undertone particular to licorice and similar plants. While the anise-y quality melds nicely with the chocolate, it also predominates and lingers...and lingers. This bar is for licorice lovers and absinthe fetishists only.

Conclusion: Venchi Assenzio Pure Extra Bitter Chocolate with Absinth is a great bar for a niche market.

[Note: I couldn't find this bar on Venchi's website, though I did see it for sale on a couple other random sites. I bought it in a brick-and-mortar specialty chocolate shop.]


Update 3/30/11: In light of the comment left below, I looked into the ingredient in question as it was listed in Italian, anetolo. The only translation I could find was "anethole," which turns out to be the aromatic compound largely responsible for the flavor of licorice, anise, and fennel. (Fennel as a vegetable is finnochio.) So there you go!