Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Cachet - Cocoa Nibs 70% Dark Chocolate bar - Nov. 4, 2015

Chocolate of the Day: 

Cachet
(Kim's Chocolates N.V.)
Cocoa Nibs 70% Dark Chocolate bar
Good
Weight: .866 oz. (25.3 g.) / 3.5 oz. (100 g.) in total bar
Calories: 153.3 calories in 2 squares of bar
Cost: $3.69 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Piazza's Fine Foods, Palo Alto, CA

Today was Day #9 of Cocoa Nibs Theme Week.

As with yesterday's bar, this Cachet Cocoa Nibs 70% Dark Chocolate tablet (bar) was embedded with tiny caramelized nibs. The Cachet brand is part of Kim's Chocolates N.V. (Tienen, Belgium), one of the largest chocolate manufacturers (and the largest exporter to North America) in Belgium.

I like the taste of cocoa nibs in their natural, unadulterated state, as long as nibs aren't overly dry and there are no off-flavors.* There were no funky nibs that I could taste in this bar (a definite plus). (About 1/3 of chocolates that contain cocoa nibs that I try have at least one tiny, "off" nib that can disrupt the tasting experience.)

Also, the caramelized nibs in today's bar weren't overly sweet (double plus). They added some crunchy texture, without extra sugar, to this 70% dark chocolate bar.

This generously-sized and reasonably priced bar was relatively thin, which some prefer. Thinner bars can be easier to eat and break into pieces; and they allow more immediate access to flavors in a bar.

*Nibs are bits of cocoa bean. One of the most exacting tasks a chocolatemaker making bean-to-bar chocolate has is screening out any moldy or funky beans that come into their facility before grinding them up into nibs. I'm not sure how large manufacturers sort beans; but for small batch makers, this can mean hours of hunching over trays and visually inspecting beans. If funky beans aren't caught earlier, inspecting the nibs later may require a magnifying glass—or special visual scanning technology—one reason why it's best to catch any inferior beans as early in the process as possible.




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