Chocolate of the Day
Soklet
Candied Ginger 60% Dark Chocolate (bar)
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 1.76 oz. (50 g.) in total
Calories: 264 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $8.00 for 1 bar + shipping
Purchased from: Bar and Cocoa, online order
Welcome to Day #7 of Chocolate and India Theme Week.
Today's Soklet Candied Ginger, 60% Dark Chocolate Glazed Ginger bar was manufactured by Regal Foods and Beverages (Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, India).
This vegan chocolate bar had an inviting, smooth, relatively subtle, semi-sweet chocolate aroma suffused with warm, sweet ginger spice notes. It was a judicious and well-balanced blend of these two relatively strong flavors.
As with other Soklet bars sampled this week, this one was an authentic-tasting,* Indian Origin chocolate--made with cacao grown on plantations in the foothills of the Anamalais, in Tamil Nadu in southern India. The chocolate was not too sweet, not too bitter, and not too heavy on flavor inclusions; and there were no sharp or "off" notes.
Ingredients: Cacao beans, cacao butter, cane sugar, crystallized ginger
*Authentic-tasting to me means that I can taste and recognize the whole food ingredients used to make the chocolate.
Over-processing and attempts to boost or sweeten certain flavors, can make it difficult to taste nuanced, natural flavors. Ironically, in the U.S. (and elsewhere), the addition of "Natural Flavors" (from animal or plant sources and often processed with chemical additives)--and other not so natural added ingredients--can taste artificial and obscure the original flavors.