Ahhhh, chocolate! So delightful and delicious! Have you noticed how all the big chocolate makers are now dabbling in special reserve and single origin chocolate? Mon dieu! I have no complaints about this. I am not a chocolate connoisseur, but I do like me some chocolate. And I think I may have confessed this before, but here is my dark secret: I prefer milk chocolate to dark chocolate. There you have it. I am trashy and unsophisticated, in case you didn’t know. Anyway, lucky for me this chocolate craze has resulted in the proliferation of a new breed of milk chocolate: dark milk chocolate with high cacao content. As Rachael Ray would say, “Yumm-o!”
Now, I had my first taste of really good dark milk chocolate a couple years ago when I bought a Slitti Lattenero Bar. I think I got the 45% or the 51%, I can’t remember. It was smooth and flavorful and super, you know, yumm-o. I’ve been hankering for more Slitti ever since. Well, enter The Meadow, a florist cum fancy salt shop cum wine shop cum chocolate shop right here in good ol’ Portland! They had one Slitti Lattenero bar, the 70%er. Woohoo! I also found a very intriguing bar by Vosges. I noticed it because I recognized the logo on it and thought it was super weird, since the logo was for Bobbi Brown, the cosmetics company. What the? It’s called the Beauty Bar, and it is a dark milk chocolate with matcha in it. As embarrassing as it was to buy something called the Bobbi Brown Beauty Bar, I just HAD TO, and I’m glad I did.
A couple weeks ago Melissa and I checked out another new chocolate place in town: Cacao. They carry a lot of different bars and truffles and also serve drinking chocolate. They didn’t have the Slitti bars, so I decided to try the Michel Cluizel dark milk chocolate. I’ve had the Cluizel dark chocolate before and found it to be excellent, so I figured the milk chocolate must be really good.
And last but not least, some amazing chocolate that Jun/Tricoquelicot gave me: Royce Chocolate. She told me to keep the box refrigerated, so I carefully hand carried it back to the US and stuck it in the fridge.
And that concludes chocolate Sunday for December 3!
wow! never heard of chocolate triggering a headache/migrane – that must be some strong stuff! i haven’t tried the chocolates you’ve mentioned, but my favorite is the ‘pound plus’ at trader joe’s, both the dark chocolate and the milk chocolate with almonds – i always ask for one of those when someone goes to the mainland since we don’t have a trader joe’s in hawaii; their pack of three mini dark chocolate bars are nice too….i’m looking for the best hot chocolate mix if there’s such a thing….
I REALLY need to have chocolate after reading this post!!!! 🙂
That sounds like a Moonstruck rip off – did you know we’re getting one here in San Francisco? The rest of the chocolate looks delicious!
I sure hope that tomorrow involves chocolate.
drool….the bobbi brown bar is hilarious. i wouldn’t put matcha and chocolate together but it sounds intriguing…
What is “ganache?”
Did I mention you’re my idol??
Ah you have my heart with this post. I adore chocolate. Although I do tend to prefer dark chocolate over milk. Some of these you’re posting look UNREAL. Have you ever shopped at chocosphere.com? I’ve only window browsed never ordered. I’m tempted though.
Are you the Marie Leach that used to live in Oak Grove, Oregon? Mark Koberstein
I’m sorry you didn’t like your Cluizel Mangaro Lait 50% bar- it is a particularly fruity bar. I would have happily given you a sample or offered a suggestion if I had known what you were looking for. Cluizel doesn’t use any soy lecithin in his chocolate, so maybe you don’t like the texture acheived by this methid, or perhaps you like a chocolate with less cacao butter.
We currently have almost all of our bars available for sampling, and are working on tasting notes so as to help people find what they are seeking on their own. Cluizel does have a brief flavor description on the back of their Single Plantation bars, but they also have so much other info everywhere it is really hard to find- made especially confusing because some of the text is in French.
Anyway, sorry you left with something you didn’t like. Come by sometime when we aren’t too busy, and I will give your a tour of our dark milk chocolate selection. I don’t currently have anything over 65% but the 65% bars I have are really pretty dynamic for a milk chocolate.
I’m glad to see you are exploring the world of chocolate. I share your passion for chocolate and always enjoy hearing what other people think about various bars.
PS: For Jen- “Ganache is an emulsion of chocolate and any water-based liquid- cream, milk, half&half, even soymilk.” it is often also blended with butter, and most often is seen as the center of a fresh made truffle. It is usually very creamy and smooth and soft and should melt in your mouth. The quoted part of taken from Scharffenberger’s new book “The Essence of Chocolate”