Sunday, May 17, 2020

Ghirardelli Chocolate Company - Intense Dark Salted Caramel Cascade (bar) - May 17, 2020

Chocolate of the Day: 

Ghirardelli Chocolate Company
Intense Dark Salted Caramel Cascade (bar)
Good +
Weight: .88 oz. (25 g.) / 3.5 oz. (100 g.) in total bar
Calories: 120 calories in 1 serving of bar (2 squares)
Cost: $2.50 for 1 bar (2 bars for $5.00)
Purchased from: Walgreens, midtown Palo Alto, CA

Welcome to Day #3 of Chocolate and Caramel Theme Week.

Today's Intense Dark Salted Caramel Cascade (bar) was from Ghirardelli Chocolate Company (San Leandro, CA).

Most mass market chocolates tend to be very sweet. Add caramel to the mix and one can't taste the chocolate that's covering a mass of sugary goo. Thankfully, this dark chocolate (I wouldn't use the term "intense," but it) was smooth. And the sweetness level was held in check by the inclusion of sea salt.

I liked the thinness of this filled chocolate bar. A layer of crunchy and slightly chewy sweet caramel bits was sandwiched between two ultra-thin layers of dark chocolate, making these balanced flavors rapidly accessible.

Ingredients: Sugar, unsweetened chocolate, glucose syrup (wheat), cocoa butter, milk fat, cream (milk), butter (cream, salt), nonfat dry milk, sea salt, natural flavor, soy lecithin, salt, vanilla extract. 
Note: there may be traces of wheat/gluten in this bar.

Atypic Chocolate - Caramel Brittle 72% Dark Chocolate Vanuatu bar - May 16, 2020

Chocolate of the Day:

Atypic Chocolate
Caramel Brittle 72% Dark Chocolate Vanuatu bar
Good ++
Weight: 1.235 oz. (35 g.) / 2.47 oz. (70 g.) in total bar
Calories: 161.35 calories (estimate based on label) in 1/2 bar
Cost: $10.75 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Chocosphere.com, online order

Welcome to Day #2 of Chocolate, Caramel and Toffee Theme Week.

Today's Caramel Brittle 72% Dark Chocolate Vanuatu bar was from Atypic Artiste Chocolatier/Atypic Chocolate (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia).

Atypic Chocolate is a bean-to-bar chocolaterie, co-founded by Charles Lemai, that offers chocolate bars, confections and spreads. The company sources sustainably farmed cacao beans from "all over the South Pacific to carefully craft the finest single origin chocolates."

This attractively-packaged, ebony-colored Caramel Brittle bar was a piece of art--an avant-garde stained glass window--adorned with panes of caramel brittle on one side. A line art map of Melbourne was printed on one side of the inner wrapper. (I'm a sucker for map art and have enjoyed this tradition, e.g. SOMA Chocolate (Toronto) and various chocolate city maps over the years.)

The base chocolate, made from cacao grown in Vanuatu, had a dark chocolate (72%) aroma and a very slightly grainy texture--possibly from the organic cane sugar or the cacao being more coarsely ground. It had the dense dark flavor of a forastero cacao but with some mild fruit and other flavor notes (trinitario cacao?)* This chocolate was not too sweet (thank you!) which left room to enjoy the contrasting sweet brittle elements.

"Ingredients: cacao beans, organic cane sugar, cacao butter, sunflower lecithin, butter, salt flakes, bicarb soda."

"Vanuatu cacao may only make up one percent or less of the world's cacao supply; but cacao is well-suited to grow there, particularly in the warmer, northern provinces (closer to the Equator). Forastero and trinitario varieties are grown there. And cacao trees may be planted with crops like coconut palms, one of several varieties of bananas, and/or coffee. Like most developing countries where cacao is grown, cacao beans are fermented and dried "in country" where they're grown, but production--where these beans are transformed into chocolate--almost always takes place in fairly sophisticated, climate-controlled facilities in more developed countries.



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