chocolate | chrisurban.com

Hershey’s Extra Dark Chocolate with pomegranate

August 7, 2009 / 0 comments

“It’s delicious, and it has a little taste of [fruit] punch in it. It tastes a little bit like grape juice.” – 5-year-old “It tastes like Giselle.” – 3-year-old Surprisingly, it doesn’t immediately taste like Hershey’s chocolate. We think there might be a little too much pomegranate; the sweet and tart fruit almost overwhelm the…

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Chocolove Orange Peel in Dark Chocolate

June 5, 2009 / 0 comments

Compared to the Frey orange dark chocolate, the orange flavor is much more even and subtle, but the freeze-dried orange peel itself is distracting. The chocolate is nice – the Belgian dark chocolate is smoother, more buttery, than the swiss counterpart – but it’s just those damn peels that get in the way.

Frey Bouquet d’Oranges

June 5, 2009 / 0 comments

We’ve had Frey before – generally we’ve tried to find chocolates with pepper – but here we find some orange. We don’t like it so much. The orange powder tastes a bit crystallized, but we wonder if it’s intentional. We’re also wondered if this might be happen to be a bit stale. The chocolate part…

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Valrhona Le Noir Amer

June 5, 2009 / 0 comments

I can’t believe this chocolate hasn;t been reviewed yet. I’m fairly certain we’ve eaten this at least a half dozen times – and probably never had enough lying around long enough to review. We usually pick this up at our local Trader Joes – and quickly devour it. This is a good, straightforward chocolate. Dark?…

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Cadbury Royal Dark

May 20, 2009 / 0 comments

Never saw a dark chocolate from Cadbury here in the States, so we thought we’d pick this up for a try. The chocolate snob in us shudder at the mere thought of even trying this, but fair is fair. So, here we go: a bit too sweet for my taste. There’s a bit of a…

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Lindt Chili Dark

May 15, 2009 / 0 comments

This chocolate is a tantalizing conundrum. If we look at this from the chocolate point of view, then this dark Swiss chocolate is what one would hope to have for a mass-market gourmet chocolate: it’s silky smooth, with a tantalizing mouthfeel. It’s dark – not sure exactly how dark since no cocoa percentages are on…

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Chuao Chinita Nibs

May 14, 2009 / 0 comments

In a word – yummerific. Ok, so I’m a little biased: I (heart) Chuao chocolates – I have yet to be disappointed. Throw in caramelized cacao nibs, nutmeg into dark chocolate and you’ve got a winner. Bonus: girls in the three- to five-year-old category appreciate the shiny purple wrapper. How can you go wrong? A…

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Guylian Solitaires – Asian, Aztec, African dark

May 14, 2009 / 0 comments

An assortment of solitaire-sized chocolates, this Guylian assortment presented many challenges, not the least of which was which one to try, in what order. As the anal, compulsive, chocoholics that we are, it seemed the most logical to ascertain these in ascending cocoa percentages – that is, from lightest to darkest. And so: Asian dark…

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Marquesitas, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cheese.

February 27, 2009 / 0 comments

We just finished a really nice dinner at La Habicheula in downtown Cancún. We had decided before dinner to take a short stroll to the restaurant we had reservations for the following night, and preview the menu. I had already quickly scanned a map of the area earlier, from our Fodor’s tour book. On that…

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Gvardeysky Chocolate (Babaevsky)

February 27, 2009 / 0 comments

Well, the wrapper says chocolate, and it tastes like chocolate. So… it is chocolate? (Gosh we’re suckers for awkwardly translated food products.) Here’s a chocolate bar all the way from Russia, ‘produced, packaged’ by Babaevsky Confectionery Concern in Moscow, who appear to have been making chocolate since 1804. Admit it, Russia is probably not in…

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Kallari 85% single source organic chocolate

January 6, 2009 / 0 comments

Very interesting, especially comparing this to the 75% Kallari, I’m truly amazed the difference that the extra 10% makes. This is not like the 75% at all – completely different flavor spectrum, much more restrained and concentrrated. This really is a chocolate-lovers’ chocolate, but borderline too intense. The overwhelming cocoa-ness very nearly drowns out some…

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Kallari 75% single source organic chocolate

January 6, 2009 / 0 comments

Wow – pleasantly surprised by this one. You get a nice coating along the sides and back of your tongue, and there’s a nice and full nutty, earthy flavor. It’s almost like eating peanut butter, where you smack the roof of your mouth, except that it’s chocolate. Five-year-old: “It tastes like peanuts.” “It’s delicious and…

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Godiva 50% Dark Chocolate with Orange

January 3, 2009 / 0 comments

As soon as we tear the trademark gold foil open, we can smell the orange – yummy. What’s interesting about this one is the initial orange note is the high sweet orange, more aromatic, but then as the chocolate dissolves, you get the deeper, heartier orange flavor and mouthfeel within the chocolate. As you would…

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Dagoba Single Origin 68% Organic Dark Los Rios Ecuador

January 3, 2009 / 0 comments

In stark contrast to the other Ecuador chocolate we just reviewed, here’s one with a much more interesting arrangment of flavors. Also from the Amazonian Ecuador region, this chocolate possessed more of a fruity cocoa flavor and a smoother mouthfeel. The chocolate itself was interesting in appearance – whether it was a brief exposure to…

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Vintage Plantations 65% Dark Rancho San Jacintho Harvest, Ecuador

January 3, 2009 / 0 comments

We found this chocolate to be dry on the start, a little too sweet and not enough complexity on the mouthfeel. I expected a little more from this, Ecuadorian-sourced organic chocolate, but I have to be careful about this to not give the wrong impression: this is definitely an above-average chocolate, but I expected a…

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