ChocolateSpiel
75% Monk Fruit (bar)
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 1 oz. (27 g.) in 1 bar
Calories: 108 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $8.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: ChocolateSpiel, online order
75% Monk Fruit (bar)
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 1 oz. (27 g.) in 1 bar
Calories: 108 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $8.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: ChocolateSpiel, online order
Welcome to Day #15 of Chocolate and Fruits Theme Week.
Today's 75% Monk Fruit* (bar) was from ChocolateSpiel (Seattle, WA). Chocolate Maker and founder, Angi, (a former chemical engineer) produces a variety of fun and colorful bars and bonbons, speckled with colorful (cocoa butter based) "paint(s)". I found her chocolates on Etsy.com.
This dark chocolate was sweetened with monk fruit, and was made with cacao from the Dominican Republic.
Aroma and flavor notes for this colorful bar included: smooth dark chocolate, that was low in acidity and bitterness, and very faint fruit. There was also barely detectable menthol flavor/cooling mouthfeel from the monk fruit; but nothing as strong as some artificial sweetener flavors.
Texture: This smooth textured bar had an even melt and broke with a well-tempered snap.
I enjoyed this attractively "painted" smooth dark chocolate bar with (chocolate-y) flavor and lack of a sugar buzz. I also appreciated the relatively short list of ingredients.
Ingredients: cocoa, monk fruit sweetener, cocoa butter, colored cocoa butter.
Allergen-related information: "May contain traces of peanuts, gluten and tree nuts."
*Monk fruit (Siraitia grosvenorii), also known as luo han guo, is part of the Cucurbitaceae family (melons, cucumbers). It's native to southern China.
I first saw monk fruit in Hawaii on a coffee and fruit farm. I remember it as small, slightly brownish, and passion fruit-like, growing on a vine. It is difficult to grow in less humid, mainland, U.S. states. Climate warming has allowed me to grow passion fruit easily (no more frosts in the winter) where I live in California; but monk fruit is apparently difficult to grow, and male and female plants likely require human pollination help); so I'm more likely to try growing stevia, a less finicky plant sweetener from the Americas.
I tasted the above-mentioned monk fruit in Hawaii during a coffee tasting. The monk fruit (that was made into a powder using a water extraction process) made the bitterness all but disappear from the coffee we were tasting. It was a culinary magic trick.
Pure monk fruit can be over 200x as sweet as sugar, so a little bit goes a long way. Also, the powder is so concentrated that the quantities needed are very small (making it more challenging to measure accurately and perhaps harder to mix uniformly with foods), as you'll notice a spike more readily.
To address this challenge (and to cut costs), monk fruit powder is often mixed with bulking/filler agents like erythritol, maltitol, dextrose or other additives, in part to make it easier to mix uniformly into desserts, drinks or chocolates.
