Valentines Day, the holiday season for chocolates!
This year I received a small bonanza of chocolates from Chocolatier Desiree, an importer of Belgian chocolates located in Sunnyvale, CA. My husband Jeff got a small assortment of imported Belgian dark chocolate bars and handmade filled chocolates.
First, the good stuff: the chocolate bars. I received two of them, the Cote d’Or Noir de Noir (Gold Coast Darkest of the Dark) and the Cote d’Or Noir Intense (Gold Coast Intense Dark).
The Cote d’Or Noir de Noir (seen above) came in a thick package — I thought it must be baking chocolate at first, but it opened up into two chocolate bars. I wasn’t able to discover the exact percentage of dark chocolate in the “darkest of the dark” Cote d’Or bars, but the taste was surprisingly non-bitter. It was smooth and sweet tasting and very flavorful. It also had that creaminess that is often associated with Belgian chocolates — although the ingredients didn’t include any milk products. I wonder how they managed it? Usually when dark chocolate is unusually smooth tasting it’s because the manufacturer has processed it with alkali which removes all the “good stuff” (like isoflavones). But “cocoa processed with alkali” is not listed in the ingredients, so they must be doing something unique. Clearly, more research is needed!
The photo below shows the opened package and the chocolate bricks:
The Cote d’Or Intense bar was labeled as 70% dark. This chocolate bar was less sweet and somewhat darker-chocolaty tasting than the Noir de Noir bar. However, it was still creamier than other 70% bars, for example the Lindt 70% bars.
A close-up of the elephant logo on the Intense Noir bar squares:
I was surprised to read that Cote d’Or is owned by Kraft Foods. I usually associate Kraft with mass-produced low quality products, but it seems as if they are taking a serious foray into more upscale, niche chocolate brands as well.
On the other end of the spectrum, the handmade filled chocolates from Chocolatier Desiree were surprisingly bland. They were primarily milk chocolates with a couple of dark chocolate pieces thrown in. Probably the best one was the the swirly top piece (see photo below) which tasted like it had some hazelnut creme in the middle. The espresso one had a strong espresso taste, but the chocolate layer was so thin that it didn’t blend at all — it was basically all filling. Apart from those two, the rest of the fillings were creamy but bland and were encased in very thin Belgian milk chocolate shells which just contributed to the creaminess and did not add any chocolate taste. Not a very good combination!
It made me realize that for a filled chocolate to have a chocolaty taste it’s necessary to have some thickness to the chocolate shell or to use a very strong flavored chocolate, i.e. dark chocolate.
I would say the biggest discovery of Valentines Day 2012 was the discovery of the Cote d’Or brand which I hope becomes more popular in the USA.
