Standout Chocolate
Nordic Nature Spruce Shoots 66% (bar)
Good ++
Weight: .88 oz. (25 g.) / 1.76 oz. (50 g.) in total bar
Calories: 144.5 calories in 1/2 bar
Cost: $11.50 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Bar and Cocoa, online order
Welcome to Day #5 of Chocolate and Botanicals Theme Week.
Today's Organic and vegan Nordic Nature Spruce Shoots 66% (bar) was handcrafted by chocolate maker Fredrik Martinsson and team at Standout Chocolate (Kallered, Sweden).
Aroma and flavor notes included tart sweet green and citrus as well as very faint evergreen forest notes.
The cacao used to make this bar was grown in the Dominican Republic and it provided dark rich flavor (Forastero-Trinitario hybrid cacao variety perhaps?) with one faint, fleeting flicker of earth. The sugar, chocolate and spruce together created a nicely-balanced red berry-citrus like sweetness.
I highly recommend this unique and tasty spruce tip flavored bar for chocolate lovers who also enjoy botanicals and edible plants. No surprise--coming from an area where evergreens are enjoyed and appreciated--the spruce flavor in this chocolate was particularly wonderful.*
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic cacao butter, organic spruce shoots.
Allergen-related information: May contain milk.
*Native Americans also used edible Spruce tips (as well as spruce "gum" (resin) and occasionally inner bark) for medicinal purposes. And European explorers learned to stave off scurvy with these Vitamin C rich botanicals. Occasionally I am able to find Douglas Fir and/or spruce tree tip teas; but they're a rare commercial find in the U.S.
