Flowers are something I’m allergic to. They are beautiful but unless bred for lack of pollen I get hayfever and become seriously unwell. So you can imagine that while I love flowers, I do tend to avoid them. This means that the scent of flowers sets off little alarm bells in my brain warning me that I’m about to be quite unwell and to proceed only with caution.

Given I used to hang out in graveyards in downtown Toronto, in pool halls and had learned how to talk my way out of numerous close calls, you’d bet I am a risk-taker who tends to ignore that little voice of alarm ringing in the back of my head. Perhaps with age though I’ve become more cautious and perhaps not. For one thing, I no longer wear tight tops bearing the picture of a white tiger’s face but I do drink tequila so perhaps ignoring alarm bells is still in my blood.

A blast of floral fragrances and chocolate assaults your nose as you open the packer. As with all Artisan Du Chocolat bars, this bar has a lovely bar well poured and brilliantly tempered with added flavours. Not really intended to stand on its own (I assume) the floral scents assail and overwhelm, making it almost impossible to taste the chocolate underneath.

The orchid I think it less pronounced than the orange blossom which does suffuse the abr. The dark chocolate taste is completely entwined with the flavour of the flowers. I think this is an interesting bar for someone who enjoys more floral flavours and fragrances.

We find out why this black cardamom chocolate bar has the mask of Tutankhamen on it – apparently it was the favourite spice of Cleopatra who bathed in it and burnt it to welcome lovers. I’d argue that make Elizabeth Taylor a better image but I guess there were copyright issues.

This Artisan du Chocolat bar is made from South American cocoa beans and combined with black and green cardamoms and apparently has a smoky taste. I have to admit that I would have been tempted to use the cardamom in milk and steep it to infuse it lightly to gently add the flavour to a milk chocolate but I was open to try it in this dark bar.

Even just breaking a piece releases the scent of cardamom into the air and it rises up to tickle your nostrils. The flavour as you place it in your mouth is immediate and intense and yet not overwhelming. One thing to their credit, Artisan Chocolat have absolutely balanced the flavours correctly here. There is a nice balance between dark chocolate and cardamom here and while it would have been easy for the cardamom to overwhelm the chocolate it doesn’t.

The chocolate, when it comes through, is a delightful almost creamy flavour though it is difficult to separate it from the cardamom flavour. This bar, I feel, shows of some excellent skills in balancing flavours as it is very easy to overwhelm everything with the intensely fragrant cardamom and yet here it is gently and while not subtle, it is controlled and balanced.

If you are worried about there being too much intense flavour in this bar – don’t be. This bar is a wonderfully deliciously balanced flavourful bar that has been skilfully created. I continue to be impressed with the Artisan Chocolat range and while not all bars are to my personal taste – especially when paired with whisky, they are delicious and worth checking out.

According to the back of this Mole Chili Chocolate Bar, Mole isn’t just chilli. In fact, apparently it was invented in the 17th century by nuns in Mexico. They made it from dried chiles, ground nits, ground tortilla, cocoa beans and a long list of spices such as aniseed, coriander, allspice, clove and rosemary. Apparently this was meant to accompany chicken and while you can get that in Wahaca, there is no chicken in this bar.

In fact, in this bar you get almost everything else in the dark 70% chocolate including four types of chilli, almonds, tortilla, thyme, cloves, coriander and more. There is at least chocolate as the first ingredient and when you open the packet your senses are absolutely assailed with the scents of all those flavours. Forget the chocolate here – there is no way you will be able ot taste it under the spices but one would hope a spice/woody chocolate was used.

The immediate thing you notice as you put it in your mouth is how the spices mix together making it difficult to tell them apart (as well as how dried spice seems to have been used giving it a slightly powdered taste). There is no single winner to the spice assault here and even the chiles are not front and centre until the bitter end.

As you finish off a piece of this chocolate which melts readily in the mouth and has a delicate hint of a good dark chocolate base, you finally feel that distinctive warming from the four different chilli types added to this bar. There is no striking heat, no feeling of needing to drink milk but a gentle heat that warms the palette and reminds you why you chose this bar.

All in all with a good chocolate base, an exciting combination of spices which all seem to work in harmony without discord, it makes this bar the perfect choice for those looking for something a little different.

This bar greets you with the distinctive coffee scent, tinged with fatty milk as soon as you open it up. The plastic covering of the bar which has sealed it unlocks the scent and flavour promise of this bar before you even take a bite.

Apparently they grind, conch and refine cocoa and coffee beans from South America and combine that with locally-sourced milk powder (from powder cows) and love. I’m not clear what form the love takes but I think I’d rather not know being of a somewhat delicate disposition.

With “cane sugar” once again the first ingredient, we know this will be a sweet bar but the first think you get when you put a piece in your mouth is coffee and having gritty granules of coffee in the chocolate is the likely culprit here.

When I get a coffee bar (and I have their Espresso bar yet to review) I don’t always like coffee in it. When I had Go Do (who are a wonderful company and we have a review to follow of all their bars) there was SO MUCH coffee in it I immediately thought of my husband who would like a mouthful of grounds more than me. Not that it was a mouthful of unpleasant grounds – it as just a bit much.

Here, the Artisan Chocolat bar has enough coffee to be gritty a bit and for you to notice it but it isn’t thick with it. You get a very pleasant sensation of coffee which is only on the edge of being over-roasted and milk chocolate which gives a nice, if too sweet, caffe latte.

I think this is more of a transition bar. For someone who only likes sweet chocolate, sweet coffee and not a strong roast, this chocolate will be perfect. The milk chocolate is completely eclipsed by the coffee but when the flavour does come through it is delicious. The coffee is aggressing and there but it is not so strong I feel like I need a biscuit to take the flavour away.

I’ve become a real coffee chocolate fan and now fight my husband for the bars. This is so sweet though I know he will not want it and so I’ll get to eat it myself

With 40% cocoa and a promise of dark and deeply scented ripe limes, this bar in its decorated box reminiscent of Middle Eastern art, the first ingredient of “cane sugar” did worry me somewhat. As a person who likes to let chocolate melt in their mouth and savour the flavour of the beans, I always knew that this wasn’t going to happen with the Artisan Chocolat bars (but one can hope)

The scent of milk fat and sweet milk chocolate is the only scent that greets you on opening this bar and it leaves you wondering whether the lime flavour will pull through over these very strong flavours. I was right though – the flavour of the lime fights with the flavour of the milk chocolate and while a dark chocolate would have completely overpowered the lime, this milk chocolate does fight aggressively with the lime forcing it to struggle for any prominence.

The chocolate itself is smooth and creamy – it is a delicious milk chocolate which is rich, creamy and delicious. The darker hint of molassas here may be from the delightful cane sugar and the chocolate is a standard good quality milk. There is nothing in this chocolate which disappoints except maybe the lack of the flavour of the lime.

The lime is absolutely here but it doesn’t make itself immediately known. As a volatile top note, it is difficult to detect but once you have identified it as that odd flavour you keep tasting then you realise that it is there like a haunted image in a photo – there and obvious and yet difficult to discern.

All in all it is a pleasant, if somewhat slightly odd flavour to the chocolate from the Lumi lime.

I had a chance to pick up some Artisan du Chocolat chocolates recently and I just couldn’t help myself. Instead of gobbling them all up like I wanted to, I ate them slowly, detecting the flavours and reviewing the experience. I should say, the shop experience wasn’t great so where I had gone in expecting to spend more, I actually spent less.

One thing I did was to use the leaflet I got with the chocolates to see if I could detect the flavours they were describing. As with all flavour descriptions, some I found matched but most I had questions about. There could be a number of reasons for this but here is what I thought of the pure origins chocolates I got:

Java Dark – not quite sure where they get hay for this in the description in the leaflet – it is a smooth ganache milk chocolate which is slightly flat and not as robust as perhaps a Soma ganache but it is quite nice on its own. Not challenging as a dark chocolate and lacking that bitter, over roasted edge some chocolate has.

Java Milk – slightly grainy ganache tasting of sugar mainly. The chocolate flavour is overwhelmed by the malted milk flavour of the ganache and the extremely sweet nature of this chocolate was a bit extreme for me. The dark was delightful but the light was a bit too much.

Madagascar Milk – I came back at this after a few hours and I am struggling to describe it. Yes it has butter notes but is that because of the ganache? I can’t really pull much out of this chocolate but unlike the java is was smooth.

Madagascar dark – here I’m getting distinctive notes of raisins and the suggested red fruit. This dies seem to have a unique flavour all its own which is slightly acidic and while not unpleasant left me with a slight impression of coffee.

All in all, I’d probably get the ganaches again but I’m not sure I’d get a big box. They were lovely in small doses but I’m not sure I’d want a big box of them I’m a little piggy – not a big one

Having had the chance to grab some Artisan du Chocolat chocolates, I thought I’d review a little selection of them. This is a small box with gives a bit of everything and I chose my selection so that I could try a wide range of flavoured chocolates.

Pearls – these were cute but just balls of chocolate. I love how they have got the edible glitter but they weren’t stand up and wow me.

O Mint – a thin disk of a green mint ganache. The chocolate here cannot overpower the green fresh mint flavour though it does its darnedest to. I think the O chocolate disks are so heavy on the chocolate as to make it difficult to discern all but the strongest of flavours.

O Caramel – a thin disk of chocolate with a thin layer of caramel. Here the chocolate is really the dominant flavour with the caramel adding an interesting side flavour. It is hard to get much of the caramel flavour as the chocolate itself dominates the palette. Caramel makes it slide

Sea Salted Caramel – what I didn’t expect here was an almost fudge-like interior. This is very sweet but unlike what you might expect, not sickly sweet. The soft fudge interior of sea salted caramel is only slightly chewy, mainly fudgy, without an overpowering flavour of salt.

Jasmine tea – I’ve been spoilt by Matcha Chocolat’s jasmine though I did quite enjoy the milk chocolate ganache used here over the white chocolate favoured by Matcha. Still, I missed the floral overtones which come to the fore with Matcha and here the jasmine is muted. However this is perfect for anyone who finds Matcha’s too strong or prefer more of a hint rather than the full flavour

Earl Grey tea – this is a gentle tea flavour and so not as aggressive or strong as other chocolate flavours. Earl Grey tea has fans and foes and I think if you aren’t sure if you like it, this is a great chocolate to try as the flavour is understated.

Coffee & Star Anise – an aggressive flavour which really pwns your mouth. The distinct star anise flavour is in there with a strong coffee flavour in a grainy ganache that taste quite sweet. This is only for those who like both flavours!

All in all it was a great selection and I have great fun choosing and eating them. I’m not a huge fan of the O’s at the end though and I think for me I’d rather get more squares and some sea salt caramels or something but as a taster selection it was a nice example of the chocolate range at Artisan du Chocolat.

Nothing could possibly touch Chef’s salty chocolate balls but that is what I think of every time I see this sea salt caramel range.  I wonder how many others hum the tune as they bite into the gooey, liquid interior.

I had a chance to try these sea salt caramels as part of the Artisan du Chocolat range for the holidays.  Artisan du Chocolat is a chocolate maker that started small and grew from artisan chocolate producer through to major manufacturer whose products have now been spotted in Marks & Spencer.

This journey has not been without its ups and downs and changes in the quality of chocolate as recipes have been adjusted and manipulated.  I’ve been a fan of the sea salt caramel balls (original) for awhile but even this fan has noticed constant changes in the quality of the chocolate encircling the delicious gooey interior.  However we’re not here about the chocolate, we’re here about the sea salt interior!

The first thing you always notice with an Artisan du Chocolat sea salt caramel is how liquid the interior is.  This is part of the process and has been deliberately designed to flood your mouth with sea salt caramel flavour (or your fingers if you try to eat it in more than a single bite).  With the addition of the passion fruit, there is an additional tart edge which stays just this side of sour to make it pleasant but not too overpowering.  The passion fruit flavour seems overly pronounced within the caramel though, as though somehow the essence of passion fruit flavour had been added without the fruit reduction which would give it a thicker, stickier consistency.

Whatever the reason for it, these sea salt caramels were much nicer for me than the fig I tried (and gifted) at Christmas.  I enjoy these acidic, sour, tart flavours balanced with sweet as that is my personal taste.  If you enjoy that type of flavour combination you’re likely to enjoy these – otherwise you might want to try one of their other flavours which tend towards the more savoury.

A little while ago I went to a whisky and chocolate pairing. I’m not a big whisky drinker as I always saw it as a very unfeminine, masculine drink. The few tastings I have been to including the lovely Compass Box and the recent Macallan tastings have changed my mind about this so much so that I assisted another woman at duty free choose a Macallan whisky to purchase.

Chocolate is something else I am passionate about and after helping her choose some Hotel Chocolat chocolates and The Macallan Whiskey Makers Select, I felt I had done my duty to a fellow discoverer of whisky and settled back for a long flight. I also finally found time to formally write up the multitude of notes I had taken on the night.

Something that most people may not be aware of is the extreme effort that goes in to pairing a chocolate and an alcohol. Gerard Coleman (the sexy accent seems to be a cross between Irish and French) and his colleagues from Artisan du Chocolat worked diligently on trying to find the right chocolate to pair with The Macallan whiskies to create the perfect truffle. They went through a large number of types of chocolate in an effort to pair them up and then invited chocolate experts, chocolate and whisky bloggers, and whisky experts to confirm their findings.

The evening started simply enough with this gorgeous array of whisky on the table. I sat under the image of a canopy of cocoa trees, as a table that looked like a giant chocolate bar. I must admit I was looking forward both to the sampling of everything and buying some more chocolate from Artisan du Chocolat whose sea salt caramels I have become somewhat addicted to. I was prepared to taste the whisky but worried it would again be too strong for me.  We had a delicious Cocoa Pulp Bellini which was apparently part of Artisan’s Chocolateria cocktail menu.  It was served to thirsty, hot and tired me in a champers glass with cocoa pulp topped up with prosecco.

We were educated brilliantly and expertly by both the Macallan expert Toby Shellard and Gerard Coleman himself from Artisan du Chocolat. The pairings weren’t always to my taste as I am not a fan of the stronger tobacco flavours (thus why I prefer the arriba nacional bean from Askinosie chocolate grown in Ecuador) nor the current penchant for using Tonka beans however the chocolate was both changed by, and changed the whisky. It was a fascinating sensation and one I didn’t realise was possible.

We tried several whiskies – Macallan 15, Macallan 12, Macallan Select Oak and Macallan Whisky Makers Special Edition.  Now, one thing you may not have known is that whisky is matured in different barrels and the previous occupants of those barrels is what can give whisky its distinctive and changeable taste.  For example – it wasn’t so much the age as the oak I loved in the Macallan 15 whereas the Macallan 12 was too dark for my liking having been matured in oloroso casks. We were given a glass of this on the table and the sweetness of it with the whisky just didn’t sit well with me.  I had always thought it was the water that it was made with but no – it is also the barrel it is aged in.

It would be interesting to get more women from my social circle involved in trying whisky and learning about it.  I wish I knew more and could have a bunch of friends around for an evening to try whisky out.  I’m fond of neat rum but whisky is probably wrongly overlooked by people who don’t understand it or like me, have tried the wrong ones and just need to be shown they don’t all taste like you wither drank the bottom of an ashtray or swamp water.  Some, like The Macallan and Compass Box, are wonderful.

In the end, I fell in love with the Select Oak and Orange Blossom and Orchid Milk chocolate from Artisan du Chocolat.  I’ll be reviewing some of the chocolate bars from that evening on their own. I really think that whisky needs to lose the exclusively guy drink image because it can be extremely pleasant. I might not choose it over a rum in a bar with a high quality selection of rums but I would definitely choose Select Oak over a mediocre rum – or to enjoy with chocolate In fact I fell in love with it so much, I made a point of buying some on a recent trip and convincing an American woman at duty free to buy some as well.

I got these lovely chocolates because it gave me a little bit of everything to try.  The box contained several chocolates all of very different flavours and they seemed almost perfectly chosen for me.  The box was delightful wrapped in a ribbon and the whole experience was one of luxury.

Lumi – Perfumed ganache made with Iranian sun dried limes. The stencil of runic characters delighted me slightly more than the filling did.  It was very subtle and was the first I had tried because I suspected it would be difficult to taste. The flavour is there but it is subtle and difficult to find.

Jasmine Tea – another of the delicate ones in the box, I chose this second. It was much more strongly flavoured with the floral jasmine in the tea coming through quite strongly as it apparently has 5 times its weight in jasmine flowers. The ganache had a slightly grainy feel to it though which was a bit odd.

O Caramel – a flat round disk filled with caramel. The chocolate is delightful and the thin caramel filling just a bit tangy. Yummy enough to want to eat a whole box!

O Lychee & Rose – a flat round dark chocolate with a delightful filling but there just wasn’t enough filling to get the full effect I’m sure.  The filling was delightful and slightly floral but sweet with as delicate sour edge.

Moroccan Mint – I love the flavour of the fresh green mint in this delightful chocolate. It has such a different flavour from other mints it makes it a fun delight.

A South Sea gold pearl and a Tahitian pearl choc – these are cool coloured chocolates in a glistening coating. Brilliant concept and the chocolate is different in each and each is delightful in its own way. Pretty plain and the white chocolate isn’t overwhelming so a delightful treat.

Ginger – this chocolate was far too strong for me but for ginger lovers it’ll be a delight.