Matcha Chocolat Tea Chocolates Selection

I had the singular pleasure of visiting chocolaier Katie Christoffers at her Matcha Chocolat tea lab in Wallingford.  I got a chance to look into the chocolate and tea world of Matcha Chocolat and taste the selection you see here.  One of the chocolates – the heart – will have its own review with a competition as it is the brand new secret chocolate from Matcha.  You can read about Katie’s tea passion in Speciality Food too.

One of the interesting things I discovered was that Matcha chocolates was born out of a passion for tea and chocolate.  Chocolate has so many different flavours and tea, in much the same way, has different flavours depending on how you finish it after picking.

I’ve been a big fan of tea and chocolate, as well as coffee and chocolate, for quite awhile.  Katie has created a huge selection of chocolate tea creations and each one is made by her, by hand so you know each one has been created with passion and love.  The flavours are created using fresh ingredients and seasonal ingredients with some of the finest tea available.

The selection presented to me on a gorgeous plate was delicious and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Jasmine tea chocolate – delicious jasmine flavour which is strong and distinct and I think that the taste of both the tea and the jasmine comes through the dark chocolate here. The ganache is firm and dark. I’ve enjoyed this jasmine tea chocolate in dark chocolate!

Genmaicha tea chocolate – it is a bit weird and hard to describe but not unpleasant.  In fact, while trying to describe the flavour I found I had eaten the whole chocolate! Whoops…  It is a green tea combined with roasted brown rice and popcorn. It is a difficult to describe flavour but very nice. The ganache is less solid here and lovely – a perfect vehicle for the flavour of the genmaicha tea.

Mint chocolate – not exactly tea per se but people do drink mint tea so still on theme.  This is a milk chocolate shell with dark chocolate ganache infused with the flavour of mint.  Not as green as other fresh mint chocolates I’ve tried it is still distinctly pleasant and a lovely mint chocolate.  Unlike mint parfait most people are used to, this somewhat solid ganache has a delicious fresh mint flavour.

Tasmania honey chocolate – another difficult to describe chocolate this is a delicious melt-in-the-mouth chocolate.  It may have picked up a slight jasmine flavour from the other chocolate but it is delicious nonetheless.  I think it was a wonderful melt-in-the-mouth chocolate.

Fresh Grapefruit chocolate – This chocolate had some candied orange on top of it and I thought it was ginger.  The flavour of the chocolate leapt out as grapefruit though and it was delicious and fresh and lovely and I gobbled it up quick as you will!

The Chai Caramel and special chocolate shards will be reviewed in another post…