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.

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.

Madre Chocolate Passion Fruit Hawaiian Dark Chocolate

1.5oz (43g) bar

Ingredients: Hawaiian cacao beans, organic sugar, o. cocoa butter, Hawaiian passion fruit, Mexican whole vanilla

Corporate Info: (Copied from 8/11/12) Madre is basically brand new (circa early 2011), the brainchild of a traveler working on social justice in Central America and a botanist with a focus on food and medicinal plants. There's a lot of passion behind everything written about the company: the “About Us” page of their website, the focus on ecology and direct contact with cacao farmers, the now-funded Kickstarter, and even reviews by fans of their chocolate and their shop in Kailua. The cacao is grown organically, some on the Big Island (in the only U.S. state in which this is possible) and some in Central America, and they make the chocolate bean-to-bar in Hawaii. Madre has already been talked up in Saveur and, at greater length, by food personality Aida Mollenkamp after she visited the founders in Hawaii.

Madre currently produces two lines of chocolate, one inspired by Latin American cacao and flavorings and the other using Hawaiian cacao and flavorings. All three of my bars come from the latter line and are listed as “limited edition” because of the seasonality and availability of some of the ingredients. As you might imagine, this is not cheap chocolate: All bars are 1.5oz (half the size of most common chocolate bars) and range from $6 to $10 each on the website, and as my mother experienced, they may cost slightly more in stores. The bars are sold all over Hawaii, but they look to be spreading quickly to high-end and specialty stores in the U.S. and abroad.

[Update 9/5: I forgot to change these scheduled posts to indicate that reader Emma has pointed out that the mold Madre uses is mass produced, and you can find it here. Now you know.] 

Today's Bar: Passion fruit in 70% cacao.

Appearance: Matte, greyish-orangish brown with tiny dark and light specks.

Smell: Sweet, beany, fruity, nutty, and mild.

Taste: Texture is crunchy then smooth, with a fresh, light sweet-sour flavor following in little bursts from teeny tiny flecks of dried passion fruit. Unlike Marabou's passion fruit bar, this tastes like the real deal, subtle but genuine.

Conclusion: Madre Chocolate Passion Fruit Hawaiian Dark Chocolate offers subtle but legit and complex passion fruit flavor.

Leysieffer Sloe (Schlehe)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sloe extract, 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: Sloe...? Before I did a little research, I knew basically nothing about sloe except for the vaguely familiar phrase “sloe gin.” Sloe, a.k.a. blackthorn, is a small tree/big shrub in the stone fruit family, and the “berries” it produces are kind of like tiny, bitter plums. You wouldn't eat sloe off the tree, but it's good for jams or to infuse liquor, that sort of thing. I didn't notice much sloe in Germany, but the plant is native to Northern Europe (among other places), whereas in North America it's nonnative and appears to be grown mainly only in the very Northeastern U.S, so it should be less surprising to find it there than here.

Appearance: Leysieffer's usual, because this is just flavored with extract.

Smell: Here's where it gets interesting! The aroma of mild chocolate is well-melded with something fragrantly fruity, sticky-moist, like a dark honey or dried-but-not-too-dried plums and cherries, the sort you bite into and find syrupy sweetness inside.

Taste: This works so well with the mild chocolate that it doesn't taste like an additive to me so much as a whole different kind of chocolate, as though these particular cocoa beans were rich and darkly fruity instead of the usual tart and bitter. Or you can think of it like many flavored truffle centers, with their orange or rum or strawberry balsamic subtle yet thoroughly incorporated. I'm having trouble describing the sloe, since it tastes rather familiar...I'm not sure why...but isn't quite like anything else, just sweet and juicy and deep, and lingering for quite a while after I finish.

Sloe + chocolate conclusion: In Leysieffer's mild base, sloe's deep, honeyed sweetness makes for a perfectly rich, mellow bar.

Marabou Premium Filled Passion Fruit

150g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, vegetable oil, cocoa butter, butterfat, milk powder, passion fruit juice, banana puree, cocoa powder, whey powder, soy lecithin, flavoring

45.5g sugar/100g serving (45.5% by wt.)

During last fall's East Coast trip I traveled as light as possible, which meant I didn't have much reading material other than what presented itself along the way. In New York City that was The Village Voice, and lucky me! That particular issue was the annual Best of New York, perfect for a visitor looking to sight-see. Thus I found myself in a young, bright white, minimally-decorated Scandinavian candy store called Sockerbit. I was mostly looking for licorice, a taste I've been slowly acquiring, but while I was there I also bought three unusually-flavored chocolate bars. Admittedly, all are pretty sweet—i.e. not super-dark chocolate—but they were novel and a compact, cheap souvenir from a big, expensive city. I know they won't be dark enough for my taste, so the question here is about their flavorings. Today's is passion fruit, from a filled bar by Marabou.

Corporate Info: Marabou is indeed a Swedish brand, dating back to 1916 and started by a Norwegian who had already started a successful, identical brand in Norway called Freia. At some point the two merged, and in the early '90s they were bought by Kraft, the second largest food and drink company in the world. You're not going to find much organic, fair trade, small business, or anything else like that with this bar. Oh, well. The chocolate is still packaged under the Marabou name and the ingredients are given in Swedish, Danish, and Finnish, so hopefully I translated them correctly here!

Appearance: Big, matte, medium-light brown. The filling is a truffley sort, basically the same color as the outside and with little chunks in it.

Smell: Sweet and jelly-ish. I think I get more of the banana than the passion fruit.

Taste: Texture is soft—the outside is a little firmer than the inside, but not much—and with scattered small crispies. Flavor is sweet with low-key banana flavor, real bananas rather than banana candy flavoring. The banana lingers, though not in a bad way, rather like almost imperceptible pieces of dried banana are stuck to my teeth, so I get random bursts of banana flavor. If there's passion fruit, it just contributes to the tropical vibe rather than standing out in any way.

Conclusion: Marabou Premium Filled Passion Fruit is a big, soft, mass-market, filled bar with an interesting banana flavor.

P.S. From the next day: This makes incredibly sweet, insipid hot chocolate. Seriously, don't do it.

Whole Foods Dark Chocolate Pear & Almond

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, almonds, cocoa butter, butter oil, inulin, pear, natural flavoring, soy lecithin

14g sugar/38g serving (36.8% by wt.)

Corporate Info: See two weeks ago, both this section and the introduction. This week's bar isn't organic or whatever else; it's Whole Foods' attempt at upscale chocolate flavors. So how do they do?

Appearance: Flat, lightly textured, deep reddish brown, with pale flecks under the surface. A cross-section reveals slivered almonds and, due to slightly different color and shape, what must be tiny pieces of pear.

Smell: In both color and smell this is actually dark, probably at least 60%, though the package doesn't say. Light, nutty, winey. No pear smell as far as I can tell.

Taste: What stands out is pear, which based on the ingredients is just in the pieces (“natural flavoring” is in parentheses next to pear, along with inulin and dehydrated pear; there's no “flavoring” in the chocolate itself), but it jumps out like liberally applied pear extract, sweet, with a candyish texture but a real ripe pear vibe, as in a pear Jelly Belly. Almonds are more low-key and textural, and chocolate isn't in front but does have some winey flavor, so it doesn't get lost.

Conclusion: Whole Foods Dark Chocolate Pear & Almond isn't for lovers of super dark chocolate, but it does provide pear flavor, almond texture, and a legitimate dark chocolate foundation.

Shaman Organic Chocolates 60% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Açaí, Lemon, & Orange

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Organic sugar, o. chocolate liquor, o. cocoa butter, o. soy lecithin, o. vanilla, o. lemon peel, o. açaí, o. orange oil

9g sugar/28.5g serving (31.6% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from last week.) As of this writing Shaman's website is under construction, but the bar packaging explains that the point of the company is to support Mexico's indigenous Huichol people. I've found a lot of positive commentary on assorted unfamiliar-to-me websites and an A rating by the Better World Shopper; I hope this organic, fair trade chocolate's actual practices live up to the hype.

Appearance: Reddish, glossy, with inclusions visible on the back and more air bubbles than the 82% bar.

Smell: Fun! Complex, sweet-sour, perfumey from the lemon peel and spicy orange oil. Any scent from the chocolate is subtle or in keeping with the inclusions.

Taste: Rather sweet, not sour at all, and just not as interesting as I'd hoped. Açaí is hard and crunchy, stone-like and unpleasant, and the fibers stick around in my teeth after the chocolate is gone. Good spice from the orange oil, but it's not enough to stand up to the sweetness. Perhaps this would've been better with 70% cacao or higher.

Conclusion: Shaman Organic Chocolates 60% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Açaí, Lemon, & Orange smells better than it tastes.

Seeds of Change 61% Cacao Dark Chocolate With Mango and Cashew

2.99oz (84.8g) in three 1oz bars

Ingredients: Organic chocolate, o. cane sugar, o. cocoa butter, o. milkfat, o. soy lecithin, o. vanilla, o. cashews, o. mango

9g sugar/28g serving (32.1% by wt.)

I bought Seeds of Change's 61% Mango and Cashew bar at the same time as the coconut bar, because I found them on sale and hadn't tried the brand before. My opinion of the coconut chocolate was mixed: I thought it was mild and fatty, permeated with a tanning-oil coconut sweetness that was too much for me but might work for others. I've used the extra in hot cocoa and had the same problem, the coconut flavor overwhelming the chocolate and making the drink taste sickly and artificial. Nevertheless I said I'd like to sample another flavor, and there's no chance that the mango cashew bar will have the same Eau de Mounds.

Corporate Info: Seeds of Change is...complicated. The company was founded in 1989 on one very well-intentioned product, organic seeds, but in 1997 sold to mega-corporation Mars, Inc., makers of everything from M&Ms and Skittles to Pedigree dog food. Despite Seeds of Change's sustainability claims, UK-based Ethical Consumer Magazine now rates the chocolate at 2.5 out of 20 on their scale of ethical chocolate consumerism. (By contrast, they rate Divine at 14.5, Lindt at 11, and Mars' own M&Ms at 1.5.) Mars says it's striving for economic, social, and environmental sustainability in its chocolate production, but those goals don't yet seem to have made it into the product. With all that's involved in the long processing chain of chocolate production, I suspect there's some good and a fair amount of bad. Your conclusion may vary.

Appearance: Like the coconut bars, the mango and cashew bars come in three individually packaged, stubby bricks. They're a light to medium, orangey brown, and a cross section reveals small pieces of chopped mango and cashews.

Smell: Fresh, sweet, and tropical. Not at all sour or pungent.

Taste: Soft and smooth with a few tiny hard, chewy pieces of mango. Quite sweet, with sweet-tart mango; cashew contributes to the overall tropical vibe rather than having any distinctive flavor or texture.

Snooty Reviewer Stuff: I definitely get the extra cocoa butter and milkfat in here, as it has the same fatty texture as the coconut bar, but the slightly tart mango and lack of coconut flavor makes that texture less off-putting. I wouldn't call it recognizably mango—it could almost be apricot or weirdly sour cantaloupe—but the fruit works as a flavor contrast, though it does stick in my teeth long after I've swallowed the chocolate. Not much more to say...this is not a complex chocolate.

Conclusion: Seeds of Change 61% Cacao Dark Chocolate With Mango and Cashew is sweet, fatty, and just okay.

Chocolate Santander Colombian Single Origin 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate Pineapple Bits

2.3oz (65g) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, pineapple extract

19g sugar/65g serving (29.2% by wt.)

I bought Chocolate Santander's pineapple bar during a trip to Chocolopolis. It caught my eye because it seemed like a nice change of pace, conjuring images of an only-in-the-tropics merger of sweet chocolate and chewy pieces of sweet-tart dried pineapple.

This sharply molded, deep brown bar does smell of sweet tropical fruit, as well as the nuttiness I remember from my first Chocolate Santander bar. The chocolate is nutty, tart, and dryly tannic—fine, but not exactly what I was envisioning. The pineapple, while plentiful, is in such small pieces that they can't possibly be really chewy, though they do have enough presence to stick around in all their tiny glory as the chocolate melts in your mouth. They also contribute a hint of the fruity sharpness particular to pineapple, but the strong-tasting chocolate base dominates here.

I have to admit I'm disappointed, though I'm not sure I'm being fair. This bar is just more sour than I had hoped, without the corresponding juicy sweetness I think of when I crave pineapple or the creaminess I thought the chocolate might contribute. On the other hand, I should have remembered that Chocolate Santander uses a stronger, sourer chocolate than the ideal I had in mind, and for what it is it's not bad. Maybe this is just not for me.

Conclusion: Chocolate Santander Colombian Single Origin 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate Pineapple Bits is strong, tart chocolate with a light touch of pineapple.

Vosges Calindia Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin), dried plums, cardamom, organic walnuts

10g sugar/32g serving (31.3% by wt.)

You've probably seen Vosges (pronounced something like “Vohzh” or “Vohj”) bars in upscale markets. Perhaps you heard of the company's famous bacon bars. If you picked one up, you more than likely gaped at the price. The Calindia Bar here was something like $7, which is more than I'm usually willing to spend on a 3 ounce bar, but my first impression was that the cardamom, walnut, and plum combination sounded rather novel, so I threw caution to the wind and went for it.

Second impression: The copy on the box is silly. “How to enjoy an exotic candy bar: Breathe...Engage your senses. Take 3 deep ujjayi breaths, quiet the chattering mind and be in the present moment.” It goes on and on from there, about how the chocolate should smell, sound and taste, which is theoretically useful, but it rubs me the wrong way, making me feel like I'm paying for marketing rather than quality. Also on the box are Vosges founder Katrina's headshot and the story of her privileged career path, from Vanderbilt to Le Cordon Bleu to “extensive world travel.” I would never fault her for how she's gotten where she is today, but to me the charmed life story and yoga-speak fall somewhere between “I want to attain that” (by buying the chocolate) and tone-deaf bragging (so I don't really want to give her more money).

Third impression: This is a perfectly nice looking bar of the large and thin variety, with a delicate scent of nuts and dried fruit.

Fourth impression: The flavors are delicate as well, more so than my personal taste would hope for. The walnut is the least interesting element to me, and also the one that predominates, if only slightly. The plum shows up in a light fruitiness, like a golden raisin; the pieces are small and not readily apparent, but large enough that one's teeth sometimes close on a bit of firm chewiness. The cardamom is a good match, quite subtle but easily identified by the scent that wafts up in the back of the throat and a taste on the tip of the tongue. The chocolate is light and soft, reminiscent of citrus rather than berries or wine. (The box recommends pressing a small piece of the chocolate to the roof of your mouth and letting it melt to smell the cardamom as well as the subtleties in the chocolate, and that does seem to work.)

Final verdict: I wouldn't pay $7 for this again, but it was different from my norm, and I'm glad I tried it.

Conclusion: Vosges Calindia Bar is light, subtly exotic, and expensive.