Lir – Delicious Chocolate Cupcake Selection [By @Cinabar]

These fab chocolates are from Irish company Lir, and have won a Great Taste Award. This particular selection box are their cupcake selection and each one looks like it is in a mini cupcake case, but none of them contain sponge or wrappers. This didn't stop Spectre trying to take one out of its chocolate case and it crumbling as he realised his mistake!
Anyway there were six varieties in the box:

Triple Chocolate Heaven
I decide to start with the chocolate that sounded the simplest, essentially a chocolate truffle. The chocolate has a milk chocolate case, a milk chocolate ganache and a dark layer of chocolate on top (with a stripe of milk chocolate). The first thing I noticed was just how thick the chocolate was on the outside and on top, the dark chocolate lid overpowered everything, it had such a rich strong flavour. The truffle inside was silky smooth and gave the chocolate an edge of sweetness for balance. The chocolate had a heavy cocoa aftertaste. Pure chocolaty goodness.

Praline Perfection
Well when a chocolate describes itself as perfection, it does get your hopes up, particularly as a chocolate and nut lover! This is the chocolate pictured with a sprinkling of nuts on top. It has a milk chocolate case and is filled with a silky praline. The flavour is very nutty and sweet and there is a wonderful crunch in the texture to. It has a full on nut flavour, as well as plenty of cocoa and as such pretty much lived up to its name, yum!

Lemon Dazzle Cake
More than anything else this chocolate just didn't look as expected. Lemon creams are usually in white chocolate, or have some sort of visual clue to their fruity filling. This chocolate is all dark, with a dark chocolate cup and lid. The filling consists of lemon mousse which is fresh and zingy, its sharp sweet taste working rather well with the all dark chocolate casing. The flavours are strong but work well together; it's the kind of chocolate that makes you go mmmm.

Blueberry Thrill
If you'd have asked me to guess the flavour of this chocolate I'd have said cappuccino if it was based on looks alone. The minute you smell the chocolate it becomes clear there is some berry goodness inside. It has a milk chocolate case, with a white chocolate lid and a lovely strong blueberry mousse inside. The flavour is strong, but distinctively that of blueberries with a hit of distinctive berry flavour but with its delicate floral aftertaste. The white chocolate adds a creamy tone to the blueberry but the milk chocolate taste lingers on the palate. A really good blueberry cream, and it's nice to see it included in a selection box like this.

Raspberry Blush
This chocolate was a bit easier to guess the flavour from the appearance, with its tell tale pink lid, it was easy to assumes it contained some sort of summer berry flavour. The case on this one was white chocolate which was creamy and the raspberry flavour was present in a mousse but rather more delicate than the other chocolates I'd tried from the box. It was pleasant and sweet and natural, by all means a nice raspberry taste, but it was lacking the zing that the other chocolates had.

Caramel Carousel
Last up was the caramel, which was encased in a dark chocolate, and dusted with white chocolate. As I bit in to this I expected it to leaky runny caramel everywhere, but it wasn't that kind of filling. The caramel was soft but more solid and not gooey at all. The flavour was gently sweet like brown sugar, but with the soothing edge of vanilla mixed in. It had almost a warm taste, and not sharp like some of the salted caramels on the market. This could add easily have been called a vanilla truffle and nobody would have questioned it. Seriously tasty, but not a classic caramel at all.

We really enjoyed eating our way through this box of chocolates, and can’t wait to see what other goodies Lir make. I received this box as a gift, but have spotted them for sale on Amazon if you fancy giving them a try yourself.

By Cinabar