Leysieffer Lavender (Lavendel)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, spices, nutmeg extract, lavender extract

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: Lavender, which I noted includes “spices” and nutmeg extract as well as the lavender. Interesting.

Appearance: Similar to last week, semi-glossy, very medium brown with a warm, yellow-orange undertone. Possibly half a shade lighter, or maybe not.

Smell: Huh. Definitely lavender, but not just floral, and it doesn't merely lay unmoored on top of the chocolate flavor. I never would have thought of nutmeg as a complement, but that and/or the “spices” seem to act as a bridge connecting the earthy chocolate to perfumey lavender to make it smell more complex and melded. I can't wait to see if this carries over to the taste.

Taste: Lavender sticks out first and stays there, while chocolate comes up from behind along with a warm spiciness. I can identify nutmeg, and if there are other spices I'd guess something darker and spicier—allspice or something like that—but only just a touch. As with last year's elderflower, I think this floral might not pair well with a darker, more sour or bitter chocolate, but here and with the bridge of “spices,” it actually works. A unique experience.

Lavender + chocolate conclusion: I don't know what it would be like with a different chocolate or only lavender as a flavoring, but in mild chocolate and with additional spices to connect the two flavors, lavender imparts an intriguing floral note.

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.

Fearless 70% Sweet & Hot Hibiscus Ginger

 

2oz (56.7g) bar

Ingredients: Organic raw cacao, o. raw cane sugar, o. hibiscus flower, o. ginger

7g sugar/28.35g serving (24.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Fearless is totally new to me, but I spied its frankly adorable boxes (tiny elephant! lightning! cloud/bite out of corner! friendly font!) on sale and bought a couple boxes. The company was apparently founded in 2006 in California, uses recycled paper for the outer boxes, and makes bean-to-bar chocolate with organic ingredients and direct trade cacao from specific plantations in Brazil, with a special focus on raw cacao. All of this may or may not mean anything to you, but I think I can safely say that Fearless is full of good intentions, part of what I'm seeing as a young cohort trying to bring chocolate into the modern age more thoughtfully, with an eye toward (or blatant focus on) sustainability and treating growers well. The small-company, bean-to-bar model is one way of doing it (contrast with Divine, for example), and it's a fine option. Good for them. Oh, and Fearless currently produces only five items, a plain 75% bar and four 70% bars with interesting flavor combos.

Today's Bar: The third in a run of ginger bars, this one also contains hibiscus, which in my experience is usually quite tart. The raw cacao also promises to be a flavor wild card.

Appearance: Fearless has its looks down, making raw/organic/direct trade accessibly cute. In addition to a matte, orangey bar with a touch of grey (mostly the washed-out effect of the matte texture), this bar has the tiny elephant, stars on each section, and a replica of the scalloped “bite” taken out of the top right corner. This is a rare case of meaningfully good product design.

Smell: Surprisingly mild, with a beany-tart “real chocolate” aroma (similar to last week's) and some super-integrated gingery spice. Not sure about the hibiscus.

Taste: Spicy ginger shows up immediately, even before I begin chewing, then a sour combo that I think comes from both the chocolate (beany) and the hibiscus (sharp). The texture is quite smooth and somewhat thick, which also means no crystallized ginger pieces. I don't know if I'm tasting ginger juice or ground ginger, but either way it's thin and spicy, not at all candied, but also not overwhelming or hot. I'm not sure that raw, super close-to-the-tree chocolate is my favorite kind, but it works very well with the fresh tasting ginger and a hibiscus flavor that enhances the cacao's raw, sour highs. A surprising success.

Conclusion: Fearless 70% Sweet & Hot Hibiscus Ginger makes raw cacao and fresh ginger and hibiscus friendly by controlling potentially harsh flavors and presenting an outstanding appearance.

B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cane sugar, cocoa butter, milk fat, salted butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, ginger, sodium bicarbonate, cayenne pepper, natural flavor, sea salt.

13g sugar/43g serving (30.2% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Altered from 12/17/11) 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: Continuing a ginger theme is B.T. McElrath's bar of both ginger toffee and candied ginger in 70% cacao. The complex-sounding flavor, which includes cayenne pepper in the toffee, sounds right up my alley.

Appearance: Shiny, rich brown with tiny light flecks under the surface and intermittent, barely-perceptible bumps on the back.

Smell: Rich, sweet, nutty, and mild, but with a bitter-sour undercurrent for chocolatey realness.

Taste: Not nearly as gingery as I thought it would be! I can see little toffee and crystallized ginger pieces, but the ginger here mostly adds candied complexity and texture to a mild, pleasant chocolate, with the cayenne contributing a super-subtle (and quite nice) burn at the end. As the smell demonstrated, the chocolate isn't flavorless, it just doesn't have any standout flavors: It's balanced sweet/sour/bitter/beany with no sharp edges and a smooth (save the inclusions) texture, a very easy 70% cacao. Kind of boring, but nice.

Conclusion: B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar is a nice, mild dark chocolate with textural interest and just a hint of ginger and cayenne.

Green & Black's Ginger Dark Chocolate

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Organic fair trade chocolate, oft. raw cane sugar, oft. cocoa butter, soy lecithin, oft. vanilla extract, o. crystallized ginger pieces (ginger and cane sugar), o. whole milk powder

18g sugar/40g serving (45% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Check out this Brand Overview from March.

Today's Bar: This is the first of three weeks of ginger flavored bars, with today's being just plain ginger in 60% cacao. Sweet for me, but hey.

Appearance: Light grey-red-brown, matte looking but slightly glossy if you wipe away surface dust. Little lighter flecks under the surface, presumably crystallized ginger. Note: Green & Black's molding is very blocky, with wide but shallow scoring. I assume that keeps bars in one piece during shipping, but it makes them a little challenging to break cleanly. Oh well.

Smell: Not strong but sweet-sour and gingery. I anticipate a mild chocolate with minor tartness and sweet crystallized ginger pieces with no “bite.”

Taste: Goes down easy. Sweet, mild, with pleasant, rounded tang. Thoroughly shot through with ginger, which adds harshness-free flavor and soft, candied textural interest rather than discernible pieces within separate chocolate.

Conclusion: Ginger for the mass market: An introduction to ginger for nervous eaters, or an unchallenging, everyday noshing chocolate for ginger lovers.

Taza Chocolate Mexicano Chipotle Chili

2.7oz (77g) in two disks

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. chipotle chili powder

Corporate Info: (Copied from 5/5/12) Taza Chocolate is pretty lovely. The chocolate comprises only organic ingredients, sources its cocoa beans using a variation on fair trade principles called Direct Trade, was made in the U.S., and is wrapped in recycled paper (and foil) or just old-school wax paper. It's neat tasting, too: Rather than being smooth throughout, the chocolate is made from stone-ground cocoa beans and not conched, both of which make for a gritty chocolate with discernible sugar crystals. Taza produces dark bars; Chocolate Mexicano Discs that are just sugar, cacao, and flavorings; and baking chocolate and other items, including a neat Chocolate Mexicano Extract.

Today's Bar: Chipotle! And in 70% cacao.

Appearance: Virtually identical to last week's “rich, orangey-brown with slight gloss,” despite the big jump in cacao content. I should also mention that Taza's chocolate has a very slightly mottled look: tiny lighter-colored flecks in the darker chocolate around it. I wonder if that's the sugar?

Smell: Beany, rawish chocolate with a definite sweet, smoky chipotle smell. Aroma-wise they're well-balanced, with neither smell overwhelming the other.

Taste: The chipotle's roasted heat hits first, throat-filling but not painful, along with some sugar. Then the tart rawness of the chocolate. Finally, only in the aftertaste do I really get the pepper's smoky-sweet flavor along with lingering heat. I wouldn't mind a little more accessible flavor along with the heat, but if you like the particular kind of fire that chipotle provides (i.e. smoky and not searing), this delivers.

Conclusion: Taza Chocolate Mexicano Chipotle Chili is warm, tart, and beany, though it delivers more chipotle heat than chipotle flavor.

Taza Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili

2.7oz (77g) in two disks

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. guajillo chili powder

Corporate Info: (Altered from 8/27/11) Taza Chocolate is pretty lovely. The chocolate comprises only organic ingredients, sources its cocoa beans using a variation on fair trade principles called Direct Trade, was made in the U.S., and is wrapped in recycled paper (and foil) or just old-school wax paper. It's neat tasting, too: Rather than being smooth throughout, the chocolate is made from stone-ground cocoa beans and not conched, both of which make for a gritty chocolate with discernible sugar crystals. Taza produces dark bars; Chocolate Mexicano Discs that are just sugar, cacao, and flavorings; and baking chocolate and other items, including a neat Chocolate Mexicano Extract.

This Bar: In the past I've only had Taza's plain bars, but I saw a (fairly minor) sale on the Chocolate Mexicano Discs and use it as an excuse to finally buy several. Today's “bar” contains guajillo chili, which one site says has “either a green-tea or fruity flavor, with hints of berries”; Taza claims the disk has “powerful notes of citrus and smoke, with a slow-to-develop heat that's assertive but not overwhelming.” Oh, and this bar is lower than my usual cacao requirement, only 50%.

Appearance: Rich, orangey-brown with slight gloss.

Smell: Beany, a little roasted, almost coffee-ish. I don't smell chili.

Taste: First, Taza's signature gritty, stone-ground texture. As for flavor, for me, sweetness can often get in the way of discerning other elements, and this is indeed sweet, but it still has a really dark quality, probably because of the rawness and roasted flavors. The chili is super-integrated, more like an enhancement of the chocolateyness: I do get a little tart, rounded fruit, and smokey vibe, and just a little warmth on the back of the throat—I wouldn't even call it spicy, only warm. Unless you're super sensitive to heat and chili flavors, you might not even notice the chili, just thinking of the chocolate as really complex and sour-fruity-earthy-toasty. Very cool.

Conclusion: Despite its relatively high sugar level and added chili powder, Taza Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili just tastes like a super-complex, tart-fruity-earthy-roasted, close-to-the-tree chocolate.