chrisurban.com » sea salt

Salazon organic Dark Chocolate with Natural Sea Salt

Chris Urban — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 01:30:51 +0000

From Maryland, and Salzon Chocolate, we try one of their four dark chocolates that are all flavored with sea salt. We’re not one to turn down a chance at savory, and this fills the need for this trending flavor nicely. The others are additionally flavored with coffee, cane sugar, and the next we’d like to try: black pepper.

One nice aspect of adding salt to chocolate is that it softens the bitter blow some of the more dark chocolates can deal. In this particular case, it also highlights the nuttiness of the dark chocolate, and lends a creamy mouthfeel to the mid-range dark chocolate (54%) that otherwise would blend in with the rest of the organic dark chocolates you can pick up.

Another nice aspect of this line? They use customer-submitted photographs for their labels – you can go to salzonchoc.com to upload yours.

Chuao Panko

Chris Urban — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:11:55 +0000

If you want to pick a random chocolate bar the next time you’re in the store, and that store happens to carry Chuao chocolates, just pick one. Any one will do. That’s what we did, and this time we picked the Panko.I had hesitations – there’s breadcrumbs in my chocolate bar, they belong on a piece of cedar-plank grilled salmon, not in my chocolate. But, after tasting this, I’ve come to realize that this is actually a good complement to the Chuao Firecracker. What really makes this bar is not the chocolate, not the panko, but the sea salt. It’s almost as thought the salt was embedded int he breadcrumbs, so that once the initial bitterness of the chocolate has dissolved into a smooth creamy sweetness and starts to reveal the grit of the breadcrumbs, that’s when salt hits. Perfect timing, perfect proportions.
This is, simply put, another winner from those crazy chocolate crafters in Carlsbad.

Lake Champlain Organic Bars: Milk Sea Salt & Almonds

Chris Urban — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:07:13 +0000

As Lake Champlain Chocolates puts it, “let chocolate change your world,” and their organic bars are an excellent starting point for your chocolate travels. With a subtle touch of crunchy almonds, the gray sea salt adds just the right amount of savoriness to a creamy smooth milk chocolate bar. The label says 38% cocoa content, but it tastes like more, a credit to Lake Champlain’s craftwork.

It’s an interesting combination of the almonds and sea salt, pockets of saltiness forming in your mouth and as you chew down you get the crunch of the almonds. We’re not talking about an Almond Joy bar, overwhelming amounts of large obnoxious almonds, it’s much more elegant, smaller, tasty morsels of nuttiness.

Finally, a reliable measure of how good a chocolate bar is how a four-year-old likes it: “Salty tastes a little bit crunchy. Lightish hostess, tastes a little different than peanuts, a good taste, but I don’t know the taste.” And from the two-year-old: “Elmo! Cookie tastes like.”