primal chocolate exploration

You've got a favorite. You know you do!

Perhaps it's obvious to you because you tell people all the time. Perhaps you think you like all chocolate so much that you can't possibly have a favorite. But look deep and you've probably got one that will rise to the surface.

What makes your favorite your favorite? Go ahead and share with us what your favorite chocolate is and why it's your favorite...

It's time for your voice to be heard! Expose your taste buds. Tell us your favorite chocolate.

As far as fruit flavors go, raspberry is probably my favorite. Certainly combined with chocolate it ranks at or near the top. I just had a piece of Ghirardelli's "Dark & Raspberry." It's very good. It's a standard chocolate bar shape, with 8 sections. Within each section there's a layer of raspberry goodness.

The chocolate itself is quite smooth, perhaps lacking a little chocolate impact at first, but the mid and late flavor notes are strong. The raspberry center is a gelatinous goo made from freeze dried raspberry powder. It has raspberry seed fragments in it which enhances the sensation of eating real raspberries, as if it were an actual raspberry puree.

The combination is probably a little sweeter than my normal preferences. I would accept this chocolate as a gift and be happy to share too.

Here's a free ebook with 101 fascinating facts about chocolate. Dig in and you'll discover a lot of interesting chocolate trivia.

I'll give you a secret. Be sure to look at bonus fact #102. Yeah, that's right, the 102nd fact (out of 101) is particularly worthwhile... :)

Chocolate University Online has recently published a new website. There is a page with free chocolate information that includes 21 things you must know about chocolate.

While there you can also sign up to receive an ebook titled, "101 Things You Must Know About Chocolate." This ebook is free and gets delivered via an email link as soon as you confirm your email address.

Of course the big draw to Chocolate University Online are the chocolate classes. Anyone can learn more about chocolate. CUO makes the learning fun. There is plenty of tasting which serves to enhance your learning and, well, what could possibly be wrong with tasting chocolate!?

Check it out!

The first Chocolate University Online store has opened with custom logo merchandise. Now you can show off your "school spirit" in style with t-shirts, mugs for your hot chocolate, and other fun items.

Take a look for yourself or as gift ideas for others. While you're at it, be sure to enroll as a student at the premiere online chocolate school where you can become a chocolate expert from the comfort of your own home.

Interesting. Is it a snack or a dessert? These all natural chocolate tortilla chips come from FoodShouldTasteGood.

In initial taste impact, the essence is like that of any tortilla chip. It's crunchy. It's salty. It would probably taste good with a salsa. But then, there's a little sweetness and a chocolatey aftertaste. A look at the ingredient list reveals dutch cocoa powder and cane sugar in addtion to the sea salt.

The package recommends the these chips to go with peanut butter or banana slices. Since I think both peanut butter and bananas are disgusting, I will not be trying their recommendation. Eating them plain works for me. Or, if I can a fruit salsa, like mango or pineapple, on hand, I bet that would be a good option.

When I started this lens I figured I'd be writing about chocolate bars, not other chocolate foods, or chocolate bars with wierd ingredients like bacon. Yet, as my eyes open to the world of chocolate, there appear to be many options that I previously did not see. Thanks to the Primal Chocolate Therapist for helping to open my eyes.

I found it in my stocking Christmas morning. It looked like a plastic covered little red log. Then I read the label, Niederegger Lubeck Dark Chocolate Covered Marzipan. Awesome!

I have not had any marzipan in several years, yet I love the stuff. If you're not familiar with marzipan, it's an almond paste, kind of dry, not oily, interesting texture. Wrap some dark chocolate around it and it's pretty close to the best flavor I can imagine.

This particular marzipan bar is among the best I've tasted. The chocolate is thinly applied, so I wouldn't mind having more chocolate impact, but the subtle chocolate flavor really allows the rich almond flavor to come out.

The next chocolate holiday approaching is Valentine's Day. With the red wrapping, this bar might make be part of a great gift. The other part of a great Valentine chocolate gift would be a membership at Chocolate University Online. Put it all together and you'll have a fun and tasty gift.

Today I had a chance to complete the chocolate playoffs. The final two milk chocolates were Ghirardelli Luxe Milk and Valrhona Jivara Lait. The final two dark chocolates were Lindt Excellence 70% and Dagoba Cona Cado Dominican Republic 73%.

In the milk match-up I noticed that the Ghirardelli was a bit saltier than I had previously noticed. The smell of the Ghirardelli didn't seem quite as offensive as the last tasting. The chocolate flavor was still nice. The Valrhona has a better mouth-feel in comparison and just tastes a bit more chocolatey. For those reasons I picked it as the winner in the Milk finals.

For the dark chocolate finals I was shocked to discover some almost burnt-toffee flavors in the Lindt bar. That's not a flavor attribute I had noticed in the past. And the Dagoba seemed awful smoky. This goes to show that your mouth condition makes a big difference in flavor detection. Coming off the milk chocolate finals had an impact on my perception of tasting dark chocolate. I decided to eat a few oyster crackers to clear my palate. What a difference that made! The dark chocolates tasted normal again. To me the Lindt bar tasted like a dark chocolate should. The Dagoba bar was a little too strong in spicy flavors. The winner of the darks was the Lindt.

This brought us to the final round, the grand championship! The finalists being the Valrhona Jivara Lait 40% milk chocolate and the Lindt Excellence 80% dark chocolate. I prefer dark chocolates so I was surprised how well the Valrhona "played" in this final game. Had it been playing against a lesser dark it might have been able to pull off the upset. But today the Lindt still ruled becoming victorious by a small margin in the end.

You can learn more about tasting chocolate at Chocolate University Online.

Working through lesson #9 at Chocolate University Online, I set aside 4 different dark chocolates:
1. Lindt Excellence 70%
2. Lake Champlain Chocolates - Dark Chocolate African Blend 80%
3. Dagoba Cona Cado Dominican Republic 73%
4. Lindt Excellence Madagascar 65%

The Lindt Excellence 70% is a long-time favorite of mine so the Lake Champlain African Blend was up against a tough opponent. It's 80% dark favored well with strong chocolate notes and made it a much better competitor than I expected. Up against any other chocolate this Lake Champlain would have probably been the winner, but head-to-head against the Lindt it lost by a slim margin.

The second comparison was the Dagoba Dominican Republic against the other single source, Lindt Madagascar. The Dagoba bar had a rather unique flavor, with even a little essence of fennel plant. The Lindt bar had a very creamy flavor for a dark chocolate bar. It's actually so richly flavored that I couldn't eat a whole bar. In the end the Dagoba came out ahead.

Now it's off to the chocolate championship where we determine the milk winner and the dark winner and the ultimate champion. It's like sports at a chocolate school.

Working through lesson #8 at Chocolate University Online, I find myself tasting 4 different milk chocolates:
1. Lindt Classic Recipe Milk
2. Ghirardelli Luxe Milk
3. Omanhene Dark Milk Chocolate
4. Valrhona Jivara Lait

The Lindt and Ghirardelli are paired against each other. This is tough. The Lindt is so smooth and tastes very creamy. It also has a nice vanilla smell. But with its slow melt the chocolate feels thick and sticky in my mouth. The Ghirardelli tastes more chocolatey and is less sticky feeling, but is slightly coarser and I don't really like the smell. Yet in the end I go with the Ghiradelli.

The Omanhene and Valrhona are paired against each other. Generally I prefer more cacao content so I suspect the Omanhene will win, but it tastes neither like a milk chocolate or a dark chocolate and is a little coarser than I like. It's also got a floral taste that lingers. The Valrhona is a smooth chocolate that tastes really nice, both chocolatey and milky. I go with the Valrhona.

Next week's lesson pairs up some dark chocolates before we come up with finalists and the grand winner.

You can learn all kinds of chocolate facts and form your own opinions at Chocolate University Online.

Well, this was a disappointment. I was kind of looking forward to tasting this particular bar because it's a Newman's Own brand product. I have liked some of their other food products.

The anticipation of something nice was not to happen this time. I broke a square off of the main bar, put it in my mouth, chomped down breaking off a piece in anticipation. Ugh. That was my initial reaction, just ugh. The flavor was earthy, like sugar mixed with soil. And the texture was much coarser than a quality bar of chocolate. On top of that, there really wasn't much chocolate flavor at all.

I did not enjoy this bar at all. I don't want one as a gift. I would share one with others as a tasting experiment, not really expecting others to enjoy.

Here's an interesting chocolate bar. It's called Mo's Bacon Bar. I couldn't resist trying something that sounded so strange. And, actually, it's pretty good!

It smells a little smokey. When you first take a bite it's a little strange too. But then the smoked wood flavor of the bacon and the saltiness, combine with the sweet milk chocolate for an interesting effect. Since the cacao content is 45% it's still quite chocolaty for a milk chocolate.

The strangest part is non-melting, non-dissolving bits of crunchy bacon left in the mouth at the end.

This probably isn't a bar I'll buy often, but I enjoyed it, would buy it again, would accept as a gift, and would share it, certainly for the shock value.

It's available online at Vosges, Ltd.

Surprisingly good. My sister-in-law found these and sent an 8 oz. bag to my wife and I. These are little soybeans covered with 70% dark chocolate. They look much like chocolate covered espresso beans, only a little smaller.

The chocolate itself, if you manage to suck it off of these little things, is quite good. It's rather smooth, very chocolaty, with no unusual flavor notes.

When chewed together as intended, the nuttiness of the soybeans mixes well with the chocolate. Not quite like anything I've tasted before. Very nice and somewhat addicting though.

I will gladly accept this as a gift and would be happy to give a little sample to others. (I want to eat most of the bag myself.)

http://www.soyalmostnuts.com/

This is a dark chocolate bar containing 60% chocolate liquor. Unlike the standard Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar, the extra dark bar is real chocolate! As a fan of dark chocolates I guess my taste buds are biased from the beginning, so you'll have to decide whether you agree with me or not.

When I took my first bite, I noticed a coconut-like flavor. It disappeared quickly though and I did not taste that again on subsequent bites. Maybe if I come back later I'll notice it again. Otherwise I do notice a bit of earthiness to the flavor in addition to the good chocolate impact. The texture is pretty good, with smallish particle size, not the smoothest dark chocolate, but not too coarse either. This is a chocolate that I would gladly accept and share.

Get free chocolate information from the Primal Chocolate Therapist.

I have decided that I will review chocolates from time to time. Today I want to talk about the Hershey Milk Chocolate bar.

My comments are not very good. When I was younger I used to like the Hershey bar, now I tend to like dark chocolates and high quality milk chocolate. I don't consider the Hershey bar to be very high quality.

As I taste the chocolate of the Hershey bar I notice the sourness of it. The milk flavor is more like sour cream than a nice caramel or toffee flavor. So, I cannot recommend this chocolate, nor will I eat it if offered to me (unless of course I was starving).

You can learn about chocolate tasting and discover your own favorites at Chocolate University Online.

...the flavor, the texture, and the seeds... Actually that's usually my answer as to why I don't like something. But in the case of chocolate we all know it's about the flavor (and tasting), it's about the texture (more tasting), and, well, it comes from the seed of the cacao tree. So, what do I like about chocolate; "the flavor, the texture, and the seeds."