I know you guys dig on those Moser Roth chocolate ‘balls’ that are really egg-shaped and only on sale from September to April.  They rock to much!  Well, this too is a seasonal product on sale until Easter so grab it fast before it goes away.  In fact, this is so inexpensive that you could actually buy 10 or a dozen.

The milk chocolate is sweet and has a different flavour to it I simply cannot identify. There is something slightly weird. I’m not sure if I like it or not – it’s hard to place a finger on. I’m not disliking it but I think I’m neutral on it. The little chocolates inside are OK but they are sweet so were a bit much for me to eat. I like the way the nuts cit through the sweetness but I think this is definitely an egg for a kid with a sweet tooth or an adult with one. I don’t think that any of the chocolates have alcohol in them so you’re safe giving this to a kid (though I’d give it to them in an outdoor space

The chocolate kind of reminds me of Ferrero Rochier I think. At 350g for only £2.99, with chocolates and the chocolate egg it’s going to be difficult to find something better for the same cost.  They say “Aldi’s Choceur Flame Egg is a real treat this Easter. Perfect for sharing, the chocolate egg is enclosed in decadent gold foil and has a selection of delicious milk and white chocolates at the centre.” I say that while I like it I think I’d pick up a box of the Moser Roth truffles which are like little eggs and enjoy those.

This egg is going to be great for kids though or for sharing. If you have a sweet tooth, go for it!

When I was in Toronto visiting family, I got a shipment of delicious treats. In amongst the treats (I liked the Skor chocolate caramel apple best!) I got these three chocolate bars as well.  Each bar is identified as having a different chocolate blend. These are not the height of covertures but they are going to be a lot of people’s first introduction to special chocolate and so is worthy of a look.

Orinoco RMCF 38% milk chocolate – Anillo del Fuego blend:  This is sweet – too sweet for me. There is the distinct flavour of milk powder & sugar with some vanilla. Too much for me but I’ll bet if you chopped it up and used it for chips that it would be delightful in a cookie.  There will be some fans but I’m afraid I’m not one.

Ambanja RMCF 65% dark chocolate – Madagascar blend: I’m not sure – I do get red fruit but also a slightly bitter edge. It isn’t gritty but it is slightly drying. It is interesting but just on the edge of complex. I think for something like RMCF this is really good. I might choose different Madagascian blends but I’ve tried a lot. If you’re a bit shy, this isn’t very bitter or drying but not quite as complex as others. Slightly sweeter too. This would be a good introduction to Madagascar if you’re intimidated by fancy chocolate.

Quetzalcoatl RMCF 72% – Anillo del Fuego blend: Quite bitter & drying from the outset & yet sweet, someone who likes a sweet, vanilla-y dark chocolate will like this. Dark & bitter yet sweet, this wasn’t quite for me but others may love it.

So all in all I’m not a huge fan but I think this is an excellent step forward to work on creating something more complex and more flavourful rather than trying to create something uniform.

Well, ‘tis the season and all that and Galaxy have released a new drinking chocolate.  That’s right – a drinking chocolate. Not a hot chocolate with added milk powder but a rich drinking chocolate.

This drinking chocolate has actually been specifically designed to melt quickly, disperse evenly and give a better drinking chocolate experience without whisks and other paraphernalia. You just heat milk, add the drinking chocolate and voila.

Regrettably this still has added milk so it isn’t just a pure chocolate like other drinking chocolate I have reviewed but it is creamy and sweetly delicious.  I used the recommended measured and heated the milk and it mixed in smoothly.  It is typically chocolaty and sweet as you would expect from Galaxy.

I think that if you don’t feel comfortable with the fancy hot chocolates like the Fortnum & Masons that I reviewed then this is the perfect middle step.  It is a hot chocolate made with milk but isn’t complicated with melting chocolate before adding hot milk so it makes it easier to create and mixes in smoothly.

I received this little number in the mail.  In fact, it was designed for that very purpose.  This ingenious box is nothing short of genius!

This box of Guylian chocolate hearts was specifically designed to be posted to the person of your choice.  It comes with a card as part of the box’s design and has a space for your message on the inside (or stickers and a message, or a pop-up message, or a small note, or an essay in 7pt font, no spaces, double sided).  The card is designed so the jacket wrapping around the outside that you write the address on is detachable so that the card can be displayed by the recipient for their birthday, Valentine’s day or whenever.

The chocolates are set snug within a plastic tray, adding to the structural integrity to the package on the post and preserving the chocolates it holds within.  The chocolates therefore arrive in perfect condition, whether you are in London, Oxfordshire (with one of the worst postal systems in the country) the Outer Hebrides or Australia (hint – our winter is their summer so ship your chocolate wisely).

I was really taken with this little box.  While I am not the world’s biggest fan of Guylian, I will eat one at the holidays and loved their cute little sharing box last holiday season.  I love this posting pack because it just solved a bunch of gifts for me in one fell swoop!  I can buy a bunch, post them for a modest fee and the recipient gets something I know most chocolate eaters love (yes, I know, I have yet to convert many of my chocolate-consuming friends to the dark side of artisan chocolate).

This is a really cute idea from the folk at Guylian and I have a feeling a lot of these little boxes will be floating around this holiday season. Another tip – I know there is a bit of glue to stick the flaps down but you might want to be a bit paranoid and add a bit of tape too

Turtles
Ooooooo I love Turtles! Turtles are the one chocolate I love that is the worst for me. With a huge dollop of caramel, pecan pieces and smothered in milk chocolate, Turtles are just a sugary, fatty treat I love to eat. Of all the junk chocolate this and Laura Secord French mint are the ones I keep coming back for. Of all the chocolates, this at least has stood the test of time.

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Well, Turtles have stood the test of time in my mind at least. One of the things I love about them is the sweet nutty-ness of them. They are awful and delicious and bad for me and I can’t really stand more than 2 in an evening but I still love them. I love these things. They aren’t top notch and they leave a weird aftertaste in my mouth and the chocolate isn’t my favourite but I love them.

Caramilk
This chocolate I have fond memories of “unretouched” images with people putting hands in front of camera lenses to stop then photographing the secret of how they get the caramel into a caramilk bar. I spent a whole heck of a lot of time trying to figure it and I figured that they had to freeze the caramel, fill the mould, drop the frozen caramel in and it sealed itself up.

The chocolate here is a bit chewy and not the topmost quality but I loved the caramel interior. I always have. I just can’t take the chocolate now I’ve been eating the good stuff. However I just loved this as a kid and now that I can’t take it as an adult I feel like I’ve lost something. I do still have Green & Blacks Caramel

Jersey Milk
I remember when I was growing up going to the “Ex”. It was the Canadian National Exhibition, CNE or the “Ex” in Toronto. At the Ex there was a food building and in the summer I got to go to the Ex and to the food building and it was full of delights. The food building was where you could get chocolate bars cheaply. Oh ya… candy and chocolate and all sorts. The worst part was choosing. Do I pick the Twizzlers and Jersey Milk and Life Savers or some other mix? But joy of joys it was delightful torture.

Jersey Milk used to be thinner and I could swear it used to be richer with a different flavour. It used to be this awesome treat and it seems to have changed. I’m just not finding the milk chocolate all that different than others. It used to be distinct and different and now it just feels like more of the same. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed this new bar as much if this iteration was around when I was a kid. It was a big part of my childhood and I’m kind of disappointed now but as I have said before – you can never really go back.

Much to my amusement at the way my brain works, Galaxy Bites aren’t little cake bites. I’m not sure where I got the idea that these were little balls of cakey goodness but I was way off base. Then when I heard caramel was involved and I had an image of caramel in the centre, surrounded in brownie and then dipped in chocolate.

That, sadly, is not what this is. I know – I built you all up getting ready for fudgy brownie bites with a caramel centre and covered in chocolate but I have something JUST AS GOOD if not better for your waistline It’s the caramel centre covered in chocolate – sans the brownie!

The chocolate is standard Galaxy chocolate so you know just what you’re getting and the caramel is a more solid but still soft caramel centre with the chocolate around it. These are sweet and chewy and I can see anyone going through a bag and girls… we know exactly when we’re most likely to inhale a few bags of these

While a bit sweet for me normally, I have already polished off 2 bags and I don’t see myself stopping.

When the original Second egg came out, it was amazing. It came in several sizes (not mini interestingly) and it was the most lush thing I had ever tried. It was the one candy I got a smaller one of because I knew I just could not eat it all and I’d want to and yet I knew I’d be sick if I tried so it was the one thing I was reasonable with.

I think the old saying is true that you can never go back. As you can see, unlike the smaller ones this one clearly has a yellow interior and yet like the smaller one, there is no difference in taste. The inside is sticky interior and it all tastes the same. Not too sickly sweet but I’m really disappointed. Thicker shell then on minis but still not as I remember them.

In my mind, the inside is smooth but the yellow is thicker. It is sweet but the yellow has this different distinctive buttercream flavour. In reality the inside is of uniform flavour and while different colours, there is nothing distinctive about it. I’m really disappointed. I’m not sure if the recipe has changed, my memory has changed or my tastes have changed.

Then I went on to the Superior egg. Now, in my childhood I was never a fan of this egg so I was coming at it with fresh eyes and an uncluttered mind (as it were). I had no preconceived notions but I do love Laura Secord so I wanted it to be good. It wasn’t great. The sticky chocolate buttercream was a carrier for the cashew nuts which at least were nice. But this egg just wasn’t what it could be. There is a lot of potential to make this a really nice treat – caramelise the cashews, make the buttercream nicer – but they went with the easy/cheap option. Sad.

Lastly I tried the crunchy peanut butter egg mainly because I was foolishly treating this like a chocolate tasting. Who exactly was I kidding? I actually didn’t mind this one and I think fo the three I can say that I actually liked this egg. As you can see it even has a vaguely egg-shaped sizing and it is, I think, larger than my beloved Secord egg. The peanut butter egg here has a crunchy peanut centre with peanuts & crisps inside which you can clearly see is both a different colour and festooned with inclusions. Then you have the peanut butter which I used to say was hard to screw up but now realise it is just as easy to mess up peanut butter as anything else.

All in all I was overwhelmingly disappointed. The Secord egg has really gone downhill since my childhood and I am disappointed by the lack of quality. I really feel that with the increase in good-quality chocolate shops popping up all over that Laura Secord really has to up its game or risk losing their loyal fan base.

This was a stumble-upon that was on my radar but once you’ve been walking for the better part of a day you begin to give up on ever finding things. I came across this shop after my XOX Truffles adventure. It was full of the smell of freshly made caramel corn and fudge. The chocolate seemed kind of second to the sugar delights.

This was a shop run by passionate people no matter what the chocolate situation. They have barrels of taffy, acres of fudge (it seemed) and they insisted everyone try some fudge when they came in the shop. Sure way to get folk to buy.

I was in there for chocolate though and so I picked a well-rounded selection – 2 with fudge and 1 with caramel.

The first fudge truffle was a thinly shelled chocolate ball filled with a more liquid fudge. The dark chocolate was OK and I think it was more an excuse to chocolate coat some delicious fudge than make a chocolate There was a very sweet fudge filling which was deliciously smooth and yummy but the chocolate was not Tcho.

The next one I tried was apparently the most popular milk chocolate dome with chocolate fudge. Again, this was more a decision around fudge than chocolate and while the milk chocolate was the typically sweet milk, this is not necessarily a bad thing as many people prefer extremely sweet milk chocolate. Look at how well See’s does with their sugary confections.

The giant sea salt caramel was probably my least favourite but here we are departing from the core fudge offering and investigating the other sugar states available outside fudge. It was large and reminded me of a peanut butter cup.

All in all if you have a sweet tooth and you like fudge, dipping it in chocolate is going to be no bad thing and you’re going to love these. If you prefer a higher quality of chocolate, Recchiuti is in the Ferry Building not all that far away.

On my way from Web 2.0 I happened upon this chocolate shop with the weird name of Schoggi. Kind of like “soggy” only with a weird accent. I couldn’t help by pop in and buy some chocolates. Questions about the chocolates were met with polite answers but as they were imported, not much was known of creation, development and origin.

This shop was laid out in almost a Japanese style with lots of light, soft colours, spaced out and clear colour groupings. Very up-market looking but what was the chocolate like…?

As with any imported chocolate, this stuff has a lot of preservatives. This is going to affect the quality of the chocolate most evident in the ganache squares. These were slightly unpleasant and melted slightly slimy in the mouth. I had to take a smaller than usual sample as I’m not keen on that mouth feel.

The unknown ganache (diamond) was not as unpleasant but it still melts with an artificially smoothed out taste which actually removes the character of the chocolate from the ganache. You are left with an oddly flavoured chocolate ganache and lacklustre coating.

The coffee chocolate was clearly coffee flavoured but here again the ganache tastes slightly slimy and there is a slight grittiness where the sugar is present in crystallised form. This is again not my favourite chocolate and the coffee is extremely strong, the beans seeming almost burnt.

The caramel was a sugar and molasses with extra vanilla flavour which was again so unpleasant that I took a smaller than usual sample. This was not the best example of what can be done with caramel and I am unclear if this is due to transport, age or style.

All in all I’d not go back but this is going to appeal to a particular type of person who enjoys chocolate with that kind of mouth feel and melt. Since everyone is different just because I didn’t enjoy it doesn’t mean no one else will. I would recommend venturing elsewhere as well and experiencing some of the other chocolate San Francisco has to offer.

Now, when I went to Carluccio’s to buy some goodies for Christmas I decided to try some new things and one of the new chocolate things was the chocolate coated breadsticks I found.

These chocolate covered breadsticks were a bit pricy at £10 for a box so I split the box with Chocablog and decided to review my half.  Well…  suppose I should say something or the image will be bigger than the review.

These breadsticks are not uniform in size and shape so despite being mass-produced, they have tried to make them seem slightly unique to emulate something home made.  These breadsticks have been completely dipped in dark chocolate to give them a not-to-thick coating.

The one thought I had was that I thought they could do with some salt so they were more chocolate coated pretzel than chocolate coated bread stick.  That’s about it.  The dark chocolate is uninspiring.