Marks and Spencer Salted Caramel Chocolate

Having spotted this by the checkout at M&S I knew I had to buy some to greedily devour taste test and blog about as a purely scientific exercise.  Any sweet food which contains a salty or savoury element immediately fires my imagination and taste buds, so I was already enthusiastic about this before I even tried some.  Being M&S too, I was expecting it to be not just any caramel chocolate, but an M&S caramel chocolate.  It didn't disappoint in this respect, being far removed from what is probably it's nearest mass market relation, Cadbury's Caramel.

The bar was 100g, or 12 generous squares (large squares are probably required for a flattish bar with a liquid filling to work).  The chocolate itself was excellent.  It broke with an agreeably crisp snap and melted very smoothly in my mouth.  It reminded me of swiss chocolate though I am sure if it was it would have been blazoned on the pack.  I will return to the flavour of the chocolate later.  

The caramel was quite runny, although again this may be a practical requirement given the dimensions of the bar.  I feel that a chewier caramel adds more textural interest, and a cube or sphere of caramel is my ideal as it is easier for the caramel to shine and the chocolate to play a supporting role rather than the other way around, which was the case here.  I am aware, however, that my mental archetype of a salted caramel is from Galler (http://www.galler.com/index.php).  That was a definite 10/10 when I tasted it- alas, in pre-blogging days- and has inevitably suffered from mental exaggeration of its awesomeness so I try to remind myself not to compare others to it, but I just can't help it.

Back now to the UK in 2010.  The caramel in the M&S version has a perceptible but subtle amount of salt which works well in highlighting the buttery element of the flavour, and by some kind of synaesthetic trick also enhances the smooth mouth feel of the caramel.  Despite this I can't help but feel that if you're going for a salted caramel it's worth really nailing your colours to the mast and going for a more prominence with the salt. I think I'd have to try an salted caramel that overdid it with the salt before I could specify what the happy medium would be.

The chocolate was sweet, and I wondered if it could do with being a bit darker, before realising that the chocolate does need to be sweet to be able to stand up to all the sugar in the caramel. 

This bar has a beautiful, lingering aftertaste of caramel which I absolutely loved, and thus had to chase by eating another square.  Health warning: the huge sweetness of this bar creeps up slowly but after about 6 squares, wow you are aware of it.  

Verdict: a solid 7/10.

Thinking about both  this bar and about lime-tequila-salt shots, I wonder whether salt a) makes things feel smoother in the mouth and b) prolongs a smooth aftertaste. 

Lindt's Sea Salt Dark Chocolate

I was very excited to see a new variety of Lindt chocolate on sale.  It's from their Excellence range and the full name is 'A Touch of Sea Salt.'  Of course I had to buy it and see what it was like.  It's available from Whittard's and from Lindt online.

I'm going to keep this one brief after the white chocolate dissertation.  The bar is presented in the standard Lindt format, big squares.

As with all the Lindt falvoured dark chocolates the cocoa content 47%,  so it hits the balance between sweetness for those who don't like chocolate too dark, and intensity for those who do.  The salt is in evidence as fair sized sea salt crystals throughout the bar.

It definitely one that benefits from savouring rather than chomping, as both the chocolate and the salt melt but at different rates.  The interest came mostly from the fact that I found I was oscillating between tasting the salt and tasting the chocolate, rather than tasting the two simultaneously as a blend of flavours.  I think sea salt would work better with a sweeter, milkier chocolate as this would bring it closer to the idea of a salted caramel, where the flavours do blend.  Another point of note was that I found the salt somehow made the rest of the bar- ie the chocolate- seem oilier than normal by comparison.

This is getting 7/10:  it's interesting to eat, rather than being delicious, and hasn't usurped any of my favourites but Lindt have impressed me by marketing an unsual flavour.

White 'Chocolate'

Recently I went on a chocolate buying spree.  This was mostly because The Mothership's stocks needed topping up/completely replacing after The Geek God and I had done our worst, but I also got inspired by the range of chocolate available, and decided to do some taste testing. 

I thought I'd try something I don't normally buy, white chocolate.  I don't buy it because I don't like it.  Urban myths claim there is a certain number of times one has to try a new food before learning to like it, and it's definitely true that I had to go through a stage of making myself consume certain food and drinks before learning to love them: tea, coffee, wine, beer and ginger (the token food in that list) all spring to mind. 

Back to white chocolate.  I decided that the best quality chocolate was the most likely to introuduce me to what is good about white chocolate, so I bought Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Swiss White Chocolate and Green and Black's White Chocolate.

The 'Taste the Difference' chocolate didn't taste any different.. to milkybar- I subsequently bought a milkybar so I could compare them at the same sitting. 

The difference I did find, however, was that the Taste the Difference chocolate had a very smooth texture whereas the milkybar texture was grainy.  The blurb on the Taste the Difference packet focussed on how the 'mouthfeel' was smoother because the chocolate had been conched for longer.  Usefully it even tells you what a conche is- "a container which grinds the ingredients together."  Looking into this in a bit more detail, it turns out that conching achieves a smooth texture by making the particles very small (so small your tongue doesn't perceive them as individual particles anymore) and evenly distributing the solids within the cocoa butter. Conching also allows flavours to develop because it generates frictional heat which releases volatile compounds in the choclate which we can taste.

So that's the thoery.  In practice no flavours to developed other than sugar, and maybe a hint of cream but this was mostly blugeoned out by the sweetness.  It was also a bit off-putting tasting something so ridiculously sweet yet totally smooth.

Sainsburys did well to focus on the texture for their marketing on the packet because the flavour is so unremarkable.  It gets 3/10, and that's only because if you're after a sugar hit, it would do the job.  It's not revolting, just too sweet.

The rest of the bar got experiemented on- I melted it down then mixed instant coffee granules into it.  This was more of a 5/10 but the amount of coffee granules it took to make it taste good meant you'd have serious caffeine overload if you ate more than a tiny bit!  You could also probably use this chocolate with eggs and coffee to make an easy coffee mousse for friends who like coffee but not dark chocolate.

The Green and Black's effort had a speckly appearance because it contains "fragrant Madasgascan vanilla for a creamy taste."  It was definitely "fragrant", reminding me of what happens when you're baking and you accidentally use way too much vanilla essence.  I'd also argue that it is the whole milk powder and cocoa butter that gives the creamy taste, not the vanilla as they claim.  I was unimpressed with the taste.

The texture was more fudgy than the Taste the Difference chocolate; presumably Green and Black's aren't such big fans of hardcore conching, and I preferred it that way because if you're eating something that is mostly sugar it makes sense if you can tell this from the texture.  Another 3/10.

In conclusion, I still don't like white chocolate, and I have new theory on the 'trying new foods' thing.  This probably works for complex flavours, e.g. getting a toddler to grow into an adult who likes black olives and anchovies and red wine.  But I reckon it doesn't work so much with tastes that are arguably childish to begin with.

Tesco Finest Swiss Milk Chocolate with Caramel Pieces

Aha.  This is where the Swiss thing starts to look up: the introduction of cows and more to the point, milk, to the equation.  This chocolate is a winner.  My only reservation is that it should be approached thinking 'sweet tasty treat involving chocolate' rather than thinking 'this will be chocolate bliss'.  Chocolate plays an accompanying part here, rather than being a stand-alone star.  Indeed, the star of the show is the caramel, first glimpsed in jaggedy shards when the  the chocolate breaks in a slightly crumbling way.

The taste is super-sweet, and actually reminded me of a good egg custard more than anything else.  There is a definite presence of chocolate there so it passes the "if I shut my eyes would I know this was chocolate" test.  This is the kind of delectation where I say "one piece is enough, any more would be far too sickly."  Then I proceed to take my chances with the sickliness.  Enjoyed with restraint, (which The Diver is more capable of doing than I am), it's the childhood joy of too much sugar tweaked to a- slightly- more adult palate.  Rated 8/10.

Tesco Finest 72% Plain Chocolate

The packaging reflects the 'Finest' pedigree due to the silver colour that always reminds me of the scratch-off stuff on scratchcards, but somehow manages to look classy in this context.  The foil around the chocolate is easily torn with a fingernail, a la old kit-kat tv ad, revealing a dark and shiny bar that breaks with a satisfying snap.  It melts smoothly on the tongue, releasing an earthy cocoa flavour that strikes the balance perfectly between acidity, bitterness, and sweetness. Even The Fiesta and The Diver, not normally fans of chocolate this dark came back for seconds of this.

Now this is interesting: the first time I tried this chocolate I thought it would be a contender for at least 9/10.  I bought some more, and it just wasn't as good as I remembered.  What I had thought was perfectly balanced flavours turned out to be actually quite boring.  I'd like to be non-PC here; this chocolate is the gastronomic equivalent of stereotypical Switzerland- efficiently meeting all that it promises to but lacking something in the personality department. Rated 7/10.

Asda Milk Chocolate Flavoured Cake Covering

This is rank.  Having purchased it with the intention of using it to coat biscuits I am making for a young friends birthday, I decided to sample a square, in the interests of, er, let's be honest here, it was calling to me.
 I crumbled off a bit, put it in my mouth and eeeew icky ick! My mouth was filled with gritty greasy vaguely chocolate-flavoured (hey, it does what it says on the tin) slime, which after I had forced myself to swallow it, left a very synthetic aftertaste.  In the interests of gaining a full description for you, dear reader, I forced myself to attempt a second square and I actually had to spit it in the bin, it was so bad.  Yes me, spit chocolate, in the bin. I want to save anyone else from a similar fate, or from defacing their beautiful homemade cake with this travesty.

Looking at the information on the back I can see it contains sugar, fat, and a whole 6% of it is reduced fat (yeah good one when you've used that amount of fat already) cocoa powder.

I will keep you posted about the biscuits and which chocolate I end up using.  I predict awesomeness.

The Chocolate Apothecary

Last weekend The Diver and I decided to do some exploraration on the Isle of Wight. A failure on both of our parts to grasp the finer principles of using a bus service led to an unexpected visit to Ryde.

Here we discovered 'The Chocolate Apothecary', a very promising looking wood panelled cavern lined with chocolate displays and a sign proclaiming "I'd give up chocolate but I'm no quitter."



http://www.chocolateapothecary.co.uk/index.html

Although the cafe looked a good place for hot chocolates etc we were ultimately in search of a lunch destination, so we settled for some chocolates to take away.


Here is what we got and the verdicts:

Salted Caramel- too fragile and gooey to go in a bad, these cups of golden goo had to eaten straight away (of course this was a hardship!) A nibble on the beautiful dark and white chocolate cup revealed the distressing cardboardy taste of inferior chocolate. The caramel itself tasted exactly like manjar- this is a Chilean version of the Argentine favourite Dulce de leche, also known as banoffee toffee. While this was tasty, it was too sickly and did not have the subtlety of flavours I would expect from caramel.

43% Ghanian Chocolate truffles- The filling hit a good balance between sweetness and cocoa depth, was was marred again by the chocolate cup it came in; the excellent quality of the filling only highlighted the disappointment of the cup.

Hazelnut Praline Cups- the praline was very liquid, actually more like a thick syrup, and more translucent than would be expected from a classic praline. This meant the texture did not have that smooth crumble-richness I love so much, while the taste was something like a suary nutella. It also came in a chocolate cup which I have discussed above.

In summary, it rates at 5/10. The idea and shop front are great, but with the prices they charge they should definitely consider either enclosing chocolates in a thicker cup of better quality chocolate, or in paper cases. The possible small drop in aesthetic value would be far outweighed by allowing their fillings to shine, especially if that salted caramel is made more grown up.

Waitrose Stem Ginger Ice Cream

Mmmmmmmm No picture of this one so you're going to have to conjure up your own image!

Imagine you have a mouth full of ice cream- quite light in consistency and very basic (but oh so good) in flavour: no vanilla, no nothing, just cream.

But this light cream is the perfect base to hold chunks of zingy crystallised ginger, which adds a spicy bite and a sugary crunch. And some of the ginger is inside dark chocolate, which you have to bite off (or melt off) going through rich cocoa to find the ginger. All inside the cream.

Perfect. Not too sweet or rich or spicy or chocolately but still assertively flavoured with a great texture. In fact so good, I have just upgraded my rating from a 7 to 8/10.