Chocolove Extra Strong Dark Chocolate 77% Cocoa

3.2oz (90g) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin

6g sugar/30g serving (20% by wt.)

Chocolove prints love poems on the inside of its chocolate bar wrappers, a wholly unnecessary but cute gimmick. The poem on today's Extra Strong 77% wrapper is from Twelfth Night, which caught my eye because I've just been watching a TV series that revolves around a Shakespeare festival and am about to attend such a festival myself. Thus, I'm giving Chocolove points for (arbitrary and subjective) topicality.

Fortunately, the bar is pretty good, too. It's a glossy dark brown of the down-the-middle brown brown sort and molded into Chocolove's usual pillow-topped shape, and it smells like dried fruit, which isn't my favorite scent on its own but often heralds a flavor I will like. In this case, it's low on the bitter/sour index and high in smooth, mild intensity, with a texture that is waxy (seemingly a personal preference of mine) and just so slightly gritty-chalky in a nice way. Nothing about it wows me, but it does have the complexity that I find necessary to any bar I'll buy more than once, and I usually find it for a reasonable $2.50-$2.75 in my local stores.

Conclusion: For general snacking, Chocolove Extra Strong Dark Chocolate 77% Cocoa is a great choice: Reasonably priced, easy to find, and with a mild medium-dark flavor profile. 

Baratti e Milano Venezuela Cacao 80% Extra Fondente

75g bar

Ingredients: Venezuela cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural vanilla extract

Last time I reviewed Baratti & Milano, I was impressed by the depth of chocolate flavor in the 88% bar. This time around I'm trying a gift from the same friend, Baratti & Milano's Venezuelan 80% cacao bar. Those paltry 8% and a single source couldn't make much of a difference, right?

The 80% bar comes from the same mold and has the same dull finish, though I'd wager the color is warmer and brighter than the black-brown of the 88% bar. While I no longer have that one for a side-by-side comparison, the scent here doesn't strike me as “spicy perfume heady with vanilla” so much as sweet and caramelized, like a toasted marshmallow.

I wasn't feeling like a super-dark bar today, so I was nervous to eat another of Baratti & Milano's “extra-bitter” bars, but I needn't have worried. Oh sure, it's dark and intense, but it has the sweet support staff that the 88% bar only utilized as a background note. The flavor isn't as marshmallowy as it smelled either, more nutty, with a good portion of bitterness and very little sourness. To my taste buds, this is not a fruity chocolate.

Conclusion: Baratti e Milano Venezuela Cacao 80% Extra Fondente is...well, it doesn't stand out for me, but it's tasty.

[Note: I couldn't find a good website showing this bar.]

E. Guittard Nocturne 91% Cacao

2oz (56.7g) bar

Ingredients: Cacao beans, cocoa butter, cane sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla beans

5g sugar/57g serving (8.8% by wt.)

I'd heard of E. Guittard's chocolate via the reportedly high-quality baking wafers, though I never got around to buying any. Then I was given the chance to try the Nocturne bar courtesy of my generous Pralus donor, but I didn't feel like chocolate for a while (sacrilege!), so I've been working on this review for perhaps three weeks. Here goes...

The Nocture bar is small and thick, in a uniform, relatively matte basic brown. The aroma is quite nice, with dark, browned-caramel dried fruit: raisins, cherries, maybe figs. The taste is extremely dark and somewhat bitter but doesn't leave much impression otherwise, so I don't have much more to say about it other than that this may be why it took me so long to review the bar. On the other hand, a visitor tried some and rather liked it, a reminder of how personal taste in chocolate can be!

Conclusion: E. Guittard Nocture 91% Cacao is dark and bitter but not all that interesting.

François Pralus Le 100% Criollo

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Organic cocoa, o. cocoa butter

I was working on another review when the mail brought me a package from a thoughtful friend: François Pralus 100% cacao bar. What was I to do with such dark chocolate? I figured I couldn't review it, because without sugar, 100% cacao is bitter and sour. I also didn't want to bake it, drowning a relatively small amount of lovingly molded French cacao in butter and flour.

I unwrapped the foil, took a little sniff, then inhaled deeply: tropical, fruity, enveloping. So I tried a crumb, and this 100% cacao bar surprised me: it's not especially sour or bitter. It does have the expected acrid bite, but what predominates is the tropical fruit, not too flowery, something like pineapple or mango. The texture is more waxy than brittle, which I appreciate. This chocolate is complex but easy to eat—if you like 100% cacao, of course—because it's free of the sort of unpleasant edges that require dulling by sugar or milk.

Okay, I still wasn't about to eat an entire bar of unadulterated cacao. I discovered the solution in a leftover cup of heavy cream, and just for the heck of it, I tried it in two different but similar preparations. First I melted the bar with a bit of sugar. For one dessert, I whipped a small amount of the chocolate and sugar with half the cream to make an easy, soft, spoonable ganache. The rest of the chocolate mixture and cream (close to equal parts) I combined, refrigerated, scooped into balls, and rolled in cocoa powder to make truffles. In such a simple recipe inferior chocolate would have stood out, but these desserts tasted rich, pure, and dark.

Conclusion: For simple desserts that showcase high-quality chocolate, medium-bodied François Pralus Le 100% Criollo will not disappoint. 

Bissinger's Naurals Chocolate Covered Pumpkin Seed Crunch

5oz (142g) bag

Ingredients: Pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, rice malt, organic cane sugar, sea salt, dark chocolate (sugar, unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, butter oil, soy lecithin, vanilla)

8g sugar/29g serving (27.6% by wt.)

Missouri-based Bissinger's makes a whole host of confections, chocolate and otherwise, which aren't the sort of thing I usually review. But I saw these dark-chocolate-covered pumpkin seed clusters when I was trolling the candy aisle at Whole Foods (as I am wont to do), and while they don't list the percent cacao content, they fall within my sugar limit because much of the weight of a serving is made up of nuts. It's kind of a cheap way to sneak in candy, but these things happen when I shop hungry.

The good news: They're pretty good! Each piece is one or two bites' worth of pumpkin seeds and a sprinkling of sesame seeds bound by a minimal sheen of sweet lacquer and enrobed by a thin layer of inoffensive, generic dark chocolate. Because the pumpkin seeds are fairly delicate and the syrup and chocolate are applied with a light hand, the whole thing ends up airy and really quite nice. I'm not big into nuts and seeds, so I had my doubts, but I'd be happy to recommend these to folks who want a sweet chocolate snack that actually tastes reasonably healthy. Good going, Bissinger's.

Conclusion: Bissinger's Naturals Chocolate Covered Pumpkin Seed Crunch is pleasantly light and not too sweet.

Divine Fruit and Nut Dark Chocolate

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa mass, ft. sugar, currants, ft. cocoa butter, chopped almonds, butterfat, soy lecthin, ft. vanilla

14g sugar/50g serving (28% by wt.)

When I reviewed Divine's mint bar I thought it just okay, but I appreciated the company's commitment to fair trade practices and swore to give its chocolate another chance. That chance is here with the fruit and nut dark chocolate bar, which is more precisely the currant and almond bar in 68% cacao chocolate. The bar is straightforward: It has a standard gloss, is nicely molded, and looks medium brown, and it smells, as you might imagine, of raisins. It also tastes a bit of raisins, and nuts too (though I wouldn't say they're clearly almonds), both chopped fine. The chocolate is sweet and not especially interesting.

I've actually had Divine's fruit and nut bar several times before. It's never my favorite, as the chocolate isn't the best and the combination of currants, almonds, and chocolate is wholly uninspired. But by the same token, the chocolate isn't off-putting and the flavorings don't clash with the chocolate, so the bar is pleasant enough and easy to eat. I wouldn't say I recommend it, but if you like the combination, you could do worse.

Conclusion: Divine's Fruit and Nut bar is acceptable for those who like currants and almonds in their chocolate.

Olive and Sinclair Salt & Pepper

2.75oz bar

Ingredients: Cacao beans, brown sugar, cocoa bitter, kosher salt, black peppercorns

I spotted Olive and Sinclair's distinctive wrappers at a specialty chocolate shop, where the clerk said the bars had only just arrived. The Nashville-based company doesn't even have a fully functioning website as of this writing, but its enthusiastic blog details the entire process of setting up production, from receiving the bean roaster to choosing molds to getting the first bars out the door. The blog currently lists two plain bars in 67% and 75% cacao, three year-round flavored bars, one seasonal bar, and nibs. My local store carried three of the bars including Salt & Pepper, which according to the blog is in the 67% cacao base.

So how's the new chocolate on the block? The look of the bars is very clean, a vivid brown and with sharp edges and detailing on the front and an even sprinkling of salt and medium-ground black pepper on the back. Of course it smells like salt, pepper, and chocolate, with the salt and pepper somewhat restrained and the chocolate...hard to distinguish: It all blends into one sweet-savory aroma, which is probably a sign of a good pairing. The rectangles snap apart easily—this is a firm, crunchy chocolate.

Because of the slightly dusty salt and pepper I start by biting into the rectangles flavor-side-up, and I find I detect a gentle pepper scent, nothing close to sneeze-inducing. When I try biting into them flavor-side-down instead, the scent is eliminated but the salt immediately begins to melt on my tongue and the pepper provides heat instead of perfume. Once I begin chewing the flavor changes again: The salt becomes a background salinity and the pepper a touch of earthiness, a combination that evokes seawater.

If I weren't paying such close attention, I'd probably swallow before thinking about the experience, and I'd come out with “That was kind of neat. Not a strong pepper flavor, a little salty, tasty chocolate but that's really not the point here...heh, cool.” And that would be that. As it is, I am reflecting during each step of the process of savoring each bite, and it's rather more complicated. Thus, I pronouce:

Conclusion: Olive and Sinclair's Salt & Pepper bar is subtle, meant for measured bites and slow appreciation—an interesting experiment in learning to pay attention to how things taste. 

[Apologies for the dark photo of the back of the bar. It's actually the same color as the front, but my bare-bones free photo organizing software doesn't enable me to lighten photos.]