Monthly Archives: January 2010

Royce Mild Cacao Nama Chocolate

Posted on January 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

We got a box of these from Derek, my brother-in-law, last night. He brought them back from a recent trip to Japan. As you can see, the box was over half gone by the time I got the chance to take a photo.

I had to really web hunt to figure out what kind of chocolate this was! Most of the lettering, including the type of chocolate and ingredients list, were in Japanese. But I eventually concluded that they’re Royce’s Mild Cacao Nama Chocolates.

They look like dark chocolate truffles, but when you bite into them, there’s a very creamy taste, making it taste more like extra mild milk chocolate. I was a bit disappointed. The cacao dusting does put back a little bit of the bite. I’m interested in trying out the bitter version sometime, but according to the website the Nama chocolate line is made with uncooked cream, so it might be just as creamy as the rest.

The Royce website also shows potato chip chocolates, marshmallow chocolates, coffee chocolates, and a whole bunch of other types. Additionally, the website says they use a secret, new process of producing their chocolate that does not use liquor. Hmmm… It might also be interesting to try a regular ol’  Royce chocolate bar for comparison with a “traditionally” produced chocolate bar. We’ll have to see what the brother-in-law brings back from Japan next time…

Taste Rating: ½☆☆☆☆ – not really for dark chocolate lovers like myself, but milk-chocolate types will love it.
Bitterness Rating: ½☆☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★☆

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GreenMax Black Beans with Matcha Tea

Posted on January 29, 2010 | 3 Comments

Make a healthy beautifully wish! So says the slogan on the GreenMax black beans with matcha tea packets… I really wonder why these mass market manufacturers don’t hire a proper translator for their products. Another typo reads: Infuse the bag in a cup of boiling wathet. Hmmm… This is a powder, so you would mix it in boiling water. Not sure how to infuse powder in wathet.

Never mind, I’m sure we’re guilty of the same errors for products we sell in Taiwan. Yes indeedy, Taiwan, not China, seems to be the home of creamy milk tea products, including the exported franchise Tapioca Express and other boba tea shops. As a pearl tea addict, I will most definitely review these drinks in the future.

Back to the GreenMax. This is actually supposed to be a meal substitute or snack rather than strictly a beverage. Sort of like a green tea porridge. The flavor has a very smooth green milk tea taste with a bit of thick, grainy texture due to the black beans. Aside from black beans and green tea powder, other ingredients include job’s tear, black rice, wheat germ, buckwheat, oat, tuckahoe, brown rice, black sesame, ginko nut, greenish lily bulb, lotus seeds, and glucose. It has 3.5g protein and 6.6g fiber which is really quite amazing.

Taste Rating: ★★★★½
Bitterness Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Creaminess Rating: ★★★★★
Presentation Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Here’s a shot of the tea infused with with boiling wathet. You can sort of see the grainy texture (black spots) in the spoon.

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Twinings English Breakfast Tea Decaffeinated

Posted on January 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Taste Rating: ★★★★½
Bitterness Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★☆☆

Twinings English Breakfast Tea (decaffeinated) is actually a nice cuppa! It has a flavorful tea taste and dark color. Not super-bold, but definitely rich. There’s barely any bitterness (although I actually do like a bit of bite). I’d highly recommend this brand if you love to drink tea all day long, but need to cut back on the caffeine!

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Full Bloom Tea

Posted on January 27, 2010 | 2 Comments

Taste Rating: ★★★★☆
Bitterness Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★★

FullBloomTea.com… Where are you? When I Google the company, I get a string of complaints about customers being cheated out of their money. I tried to visit the website and it’s completely gone. Only the Google cache remains to attest that the website ever existed. Which is too bad, since the tea is decent.

For Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago, my husband bought me a package of the “Sushi Bloom” teas. The flavor was white tea + a hint of lemon and something je ne sais crois. Not a hint of bitterness. You can see that the color is very light. The fact that the tea “blooms” is a novelty that other specialty tea shops have copied (maybe why FullBloomTea.com went out of business?). Each bloom is good for 2 or 3 pots of tea. Tasted quite nice with a hint of sugar and almond milk as well.

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UCC Green Tea

Posted on January 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

UCC Green Tea is unsweetened green tea sold in cans at sushi restaurants and supermarkets. I enjoy drinking this with the cucumber rolls in particular (I’m allergic to seafood).

The taste has a strong-ish green tea flavor to it and has medium bitterness. The fact that it’s cold instead of hot green tea is very refreshing, particularly on hot days or with hot food.

The tin can is cleanly decorated but surprisingly heavy which makes me worry about the environmental impact.

Taste Rating: ★★★★½
Bitterness Rating: ★★★☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★☆☆☆

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Taste-off! Dove Promises vs. Godiva Gems vs. Hershey Bliss

Posted on January 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

As anyone who visits the candy isle of the grocery store might have noticed, there’s been an explosion of chocolate “buttons” – small pieces of individually wrapped solid chocolate.

I personally have been addicted to Dove’s dark chocolate Promises for a few years now. But around 2009 Christmas time I suddenly noticed 2 new additions : Godiva Gems and Hershey’s Bliss. Well, it’s time for a good ol’ fashioned taste competition!

Starting with the Godiva Gems…
Taste Rating: ★★★★☆
Bitterness Rating: ★★★☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★☆
The thin gem-like discs are quite rich and have a distinct bitterness to them. I am a fan of chocolate that has a bite, although I know that not everyone agrees on that point. I liked these guys quite a bit, although I was a mite disappointed to see that it was really cocoa processed with alkali. C’mon, guys!!! You’re a fru-fru chocolate brand. Give us the real deal!

Moving on to Hershey’s Bliss….
Taste Rating: ★★★★☆
Bitterness Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★☆☆
Well there’s a surprise… They’re actually… good. No chocolate processed with alkali, although there’s milk mixed in. I believe that milk reduces the antioxidant nature of dark chocolate, so this isn’t great. But the taste is still dark, a little bit bitter, and a little bit creamy. I give it high marks – I really wasn’t expecting much and they surprised me.

And concluding with good ol’ Dove Dark Chocolate Promises…
Taste Rating: ★★★½☆
Bitterness Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★☆☆
I’ve lived off of these for years now, so I feel a bit cheap exploiting them in a taste-off with new-comers. But here we go anyways. Taste-wise they don’t have the same punch as Godiva and Hersheys. Maybe because they’ve been processed with alkali? I read in an article in Prevention magazine that Dove is so high in flavanols that this is the chocolate the researchers use in their studies. I don’t know if said researchers have compared Dove’s flavanols with the new Godiva & Hershey’s chocolates’… Wish I knew how to measure the levels myself!

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Mighty Leaf Tea Artisan’s Pack

Posted on January 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

I received this Mighty Leaf Tea Artisan Pack as a birthday gift last year and totally forgot about it in the cupboard until I ran out of my usual tea. Yay for surprises!

Green Tea Tropical - Green Tea, natural tropical flavors, natural flavors, flower petals, pineapple bits
Taste Rating: ★★★★☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★★
Bitterness Rating: ½☆☆☆☆

I started out first with the Green Tea Tropical tea bag. Here’s what the tea looks like opened up :

…and brewed for 3 minutes a la packaging directions:

The resulting taste – green tea with a juicy, fruity taste. It reminded me a little bit of the green tea latte I enjoyed at Border’s Bookstore. The taste was very smooth and almost completely absent any bitterness. I was able to reuse the tea bag for a 2nd cup of tea. If I had any complaint, it would be for a stronger green-tea flavor.

Orange Dulce – Black tea, green tea, natural citrus flavors, natural flavors, jasmine flowers
Taste Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★★
Bitterness Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Hmmmm… I have to confess that this tea had a slight medicine taste to it. It’s not bitter, the black tea is very subtle (I like a much bolder black tea taste) and then there’s this distinct medicine undertone. I tried adding milk and sugar to the tea, but no dice — still there. Yuck.

UPDATE: I hate to really trash a product, but I trashed this one and now it has come back to haunt me. Whilst I was sipping the Orange Dulce medicine, everyone around me was falling sicker than flies with bricks around their necks. I was fully expecting to get sick myself…. But didn’t. Still healthy and disease-free 2 weeks later. Is the Orange Dulce the long sought vaccine for the common cold????? Well, one data point says “yes”. So there we have it. Time to order myself an entire box of Orange Dulce medicine….

Chamomile Citrus – Rosehips, orange peels, chamomile flowers, lemon grass, lemon myrtle, nana mint, hibiscus flowers, natural citrus flowers, natural flavors
Taste Rating: ★★★★★
Presentation Rating: ★★★★★
Bitterness Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

I had this one right before going to bed and made a milk-tea with it:

The color was tan-ish with sharp dabs of red (probably from the rose hips). The taste was a very light, clear herbal tea and a little bit malty! Perfect for a bedtime cuppa.

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Tea and Lifespan

Posted on January 20, 2010 | 1 Comment

According to a recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, drinking 3 cups of tea a day can extend the drinker’s lifespan by 5 years. The researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong divided their subjects into two groups: those who drank 3 or more cups of tea per day and those who drank just 1/2 cup or less. Those who drank 3 or more cups per day had telomeres that were 4.6 kilobases longer than the other group. The researchers state that this corresponds to about 5 extra years of life.

The study did not differentiate between green tea or black tea, but the main researcher, Dr. Ruth Chan, said that most of their Chinese subjects drank green tea.

Source: Omega-3 linked to younger biological age: Study

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Cadbury’s bought out by Kraft

Posted on January 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

News came today that Cadbury has accepted Kraft proposed buyout of £11.5 billion ($19.5 billion). Kraft’s bitter battle to buy Cadbury’s has been ongoing for months, starting with an “insulting” opening offer of £10 billion ($17 billion). The idea of Kraft “the fake-cheese company” buying out the UK’s national chocolatier had incensed many British citizens. Apparently, a bid of 14% more satisfied their national pride.

After Kraft’s initial rejection, other chocolate makers including Hershey’s and the Italian chocolatier Ferraro considered putting in their own offers. However, Hershey’s business strategy focuses on aquiring smaller, domestic chocolatiers. Cadbury is actually double the size of Hershey. I found this a very surprising fact! Here’s a Reuter’s graphic showing market share for the various confectionery companies:

Nestle was considering an offer, but instead withdrew from the process and bought Kraft’s frozen pizza business. Apparently, Nestle is trying to distance itself from the confectionery business and focus on “health and wellness” foods. Hmmm…. Pizza = health and wellness? That will make the hubby happy to hear!

The suits at Kraft argued that buying Cadbury’s fit nicely into their global strategy. Apparently, there’s much to be saved by cross-selling in shops. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the two companies will save $675 million a year just on business expenses.

Everyone, of course, is hoping that Cadbury’s chocolate does not suffer in quality.

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Choxie Dark Chocolate Cocoa Nib Truffle Bar

Posted on January 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Hmmm… I’m guessing that “Choxie” is the words “chocolate” and “moxie” glued together. If you visit Choxie.com, you actually end up at Target’s website. So I’ve always thought of Choxie as a fake fru-fru chocolate bar brand sold at Target.

Last weekend, I noticed this little number sitting on the Target shelves: Choxie’s dark chocolate, cocoa nibs, and truffle filling bar. I forked over the dough to try it out and I didn’t regret it. The dark chocolate is surprisingly smooth, and slightly juicy, due to the truffle filling. The Cocoa nibs add a bit of pleasing bitter crunch to each bite. The chocolate itself had a buttery, slightly fruity, mild dark taste.

Flavor Rating: ★★★★★
Bitterness Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Presentation Rating: ★★★★☆

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