Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Mission Chocolate - Umbu Dark Chocolate 70% and Candied Umbu Fruit (bar) - April 27, 2021

Chocolate of the Day

Mission Chocolate
Umbu Dark Chocolate 70% and Candied Umbu Fruit (bar)
Good ++
Weight: 2.12 oz. (60 g.) in total bar
Calories: 297 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $10.00 for 1 bar (dark purple dot)
Purchased from: Chocolate Covered, San Francisco, CA

Welcome to Day #12 of Chocolate and RSTU Theme Week, featuring chocolate items with origins or flavor inclusions that start with the letters R, S, T and/or U, like Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Umbu fruit.

Today's "Umbu" Dark Chocolate 70% and Candied Umbu Fruit (bar) was created by Arcelia Gallardo at Mission Chocolate (Sao Paulo, Brazil). The company offers a line of bars made with Brazilian cacao, and flavor inclusions from Brazil.

The cacao used to make this bean-to-bar chocolate was from Fazenda Camboa, a family-owned plantation in northeast Brazil that produces "Atlantic Rainforest Cacao."

This bar had an aroma with dark chocolate, mild but aromatic fruit, and very light botanical (cucumber cream, faint mint, aloe, sweet wood/camphor) notes.

The back side was adorned with a mindful grid of small, carefully cut, thin squares of softly chewable, candied umbu fruit.* 

The fruit had an intriguing, but hard to describe, subtle flavor (sweet green plum mixed with green grape plus an expansive, light and airy fruit sweetness that I can't compare to anything else I've had before). The candied squares had the sweet-tartness of plum stone fruit with candied pear + cactus fruit texture (i.e. a blend of soft gel-like fruit pectin with a slight, natural graininess). And just when I thought I had the umbu figured out, there was a burst of lemon-lime candy. Citrus flavor fun.

I was so intent on tasting this new fruit for the first time that I had to take many, small successive bites to taste both umbu and chocolate. Oh yes, the chocolate! It was smooth and dark with medium fruit acidity and seemed well-matched with the umbu fruit.

Thank you Arcelia for the virtual vacation to Brazil this morning via your Umbu dark chocolate. 

Ingredients: Organic cacao, organic sugar, organic umbu (fruit), cocoa butter

Allergen-related information: (Made without gluten, dairy or soy ingredients.) "May contain traces of milk, peanut, coconut, tree nuts, and wheat due to shared equipment."

*"Umbu (Spondias tuberosa) (aka Umb, Imba or Brazil plum) is a soft-fleshed fruit, green/yellow in color, and sweet and sour in taste. It is the size of a large grape, soft like a ripe fig, and juicy like a tomato. The umbu tree is the most important tree in the Caatinga Biome (semi-arid region in Northeast Brazil)"..."It is harvested in the wild by families that deliver (the fruits) to cooperatives to get turned into preserves." 

The source of text above in quotes was the Mission Chocolate Umbu bar description on Bar and Cocoa's website. (I added the extra information in parenthesis.) 

 

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