Sulpice Chocolat - Salt and Almonds Milk Chocolate Bar - Aug. 28, 2015

Chocolate of the Day: 

Sulpice Chocolat
Salt and Almonds Milk Chocolate bar
Good - Good +
Weight: .92 oz. (26 g.) / 2.3 oz. (65 g.) in 1 bar
Calories: 134 calories in 2/5 bar
Cost: $0.99 (estimate)
Purchased from: Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, Palo Alto, CA

Today was Day #3 of Chocolate and Salt Theme Week.

This Salt and Almonds Milk Chocolate bar from Sulpice Chocolat (Barrington, IL) was sealed in a gold inner wrapper.

I like attractive design and packaging. However, effective packaging also prolongs freshness. Hand-crafted and folded paper and foil wrappings are nice to look at, but they don't do as much to preserve freshness as sealed wrappers. Today's bar simply tasted fresher.

This Non-GMO and Gluten Free milk chocolate bar also had a pleasing design on the bar itself. Drizzles of pink and orange cocoa butter "paint" were splashed across the top of this "hand-painted artisan chocolate" bar.

The chocolate itself was thick creamy milk chocolate with a fairly soft "bite." Soy lecithin gave it a very slightly gummy chew, but it was not nearly as bad as some bars in this respect.

The salt was enjoyably uniform throughout the bar without being overly salty; and the salt helped balance sweetness. I couldn't really taste any almonds. They could have been in very tiny bits.

Sulpice Chocolat - Ginger and Lemon bar - Jan. 15, 2015

Chocolate of the Day: 

Sulpice Chocolat
Ginger and Lemon bar
Good - Good +
Weight: .92 oz. (26 g. )/ 2.3 oz. (65 g.)
Calories: 135 calories (estimate) in 2/5 bar
Cost: $4.49 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Draegers, San Mateo, CA

Today was Day #4 of Chocolate and Ginger Theme Week.

Ginger is one of my favorite spices to blend with chocolate. And ginger, lemon and chocolate are wonderfully universally on their own --- they can work in either sweet or savory dishes.

So, today's Non-GMO and Gluten-Free, Ginger and Lemon Dark Chocolate bar from Sulpice Chocolat (Barrington, IL) felt like a natural choice of blended flavors.

This attractively hand-painted bar had a very faint chocolate and ginger aroma and broke with a hard snap (a sign of a good temper). It was very smooth in both flavor and texture.

Chocolate ginger and lemon flavors were uniformly melded together; and the bar had an almost creamy texture perhaps due to some additional cocoa butter and soy lecithin, an emulsifier. (Fortunately, not so much of the latter -- which can sometimes result in a gummy-creamy mouthfeel I find.)

The company name -- Sulpice Chocolat -- is named after Sulpice Debauve, an influential Frenchman who opened a chocolate shop in 1800, and became the official purveyor of chocolate to the Royal Court of France.