Chocolarder 100% Pure Dark Amazon Rainforest Chocolate (@NLi10) @chocolarder @IllustratedLiv

 Chocolate is still weird and versatile.  While last time we saw it made into a family friendly treat, today we see it weaponised and perfected.

I love little arty shops, and I have a habit of picking up prints.  It's getting impossible to display them all now (and tiring to carry everything back) so I tend to just get cards and gifts from these shops instead.  Some shops don't truly understand this tipping-by-gifts, but others get it spot on.

Here is a good example - Illustrated Living in St. Ives - a shop full of lovely curated things to carefully take home for my cats to destroy. This is not a great idea.  Instead - how about we pick up some of the chocolate off the counter, for me to destroy.

The presence of these Chocolarder bars in the shop itself has a lovely story - the owner ended up eating most of the short date chocolate due to lockdown, and realising that the quality of it didn't quite match the ideals of the shop.  He set out to find a superior version (in fact a local maker convinced them to try his) and so I ended up with one to take home.  They had a few varieties, but I knew which one I was trying.

At £6 for a 70g bar (compared to the £3.50 100g box of chocolate pasties) it's possibly a hard sell to a regular person, but for Foodstuff Finds we make sacrifices, and like I said - I'm basically tipping the shop for letting me covet all the nice things.  Here's the link if you do want to browse from home. 

It's certainly a deluxe affair - the packaging is impeccable - like an origami cocoon that ensures the Instagram pic at the start of the review is a perfect bar. It's all folds and art and story and makes you feel very good about being the person that got to take this home.  Very giftable too.

And it's ethical, being plastic & slavery free - and vegans can eat it!  Well - some of them might be brave enough to try - and some might even like it!

Why do I say that? Well - this is 100% dark chocolate. That means it only has one ingredient - cocoa beans.  We tried the 99% Lindt chocolate some years back (as a taste test on the office!) and it was our first true taste of the Death By Chocolate that is the (near) 100% bar. Even Cinabar found a 100% dark bar she likes!

So - what about this.  As in the picture it's not cubes - they know that this isn't for snacking.  Unlike the Lindt 99% (which I'm sure still lurks somewhere in the cooking draw) this has an inviting smell and begs to be sampled.

And it's quite edible.  My first response was that it's actually quite nice - and it certainly moves through all the different flavour notes you'd expect from a roasted super-dark.  It's more like an espresso in that a small bite will sustain you for a long time - and it's probably similar in terms of the pick-me-up effect.  It really is more of an experience than a snack, and it's my favourite 100% bar that I've tried so far.

There isn't much more I can say about this in regular terms - if you like insanely strong flavours, and salivate at the thought of trying the ultimate in luxury dark roasts then this is totally for you. If not - but you want a contrast flavour for baking or to grate into ordinary hot chocolate to make it suddenly special then you could probably justify it. I'm going to keep it at hand in my work from home kit (along with my Poldhu beach bobble hat) as a lovely reminder that not all art is visual and sometimes your taste-buds disserve a little sophistication too.

That said - it is complemented perfectly with the little orange buttons we talked about in the last chocolate review (as a chaser) so maybe I do need to go back and try some more of the flavours...

 

99% Cocoa Lindt Dark (Resorts World, Solihull) by @NLi10

We happened to be near Resorts World, Solihull (the most confusing shopping centre ever - it's just small versions of good shops) and popped into one of the main reasons to visit - the Lindt Shop.  Here they have everything that you could realistically want a chocolate shop to contain.

Including the rare holy grail of the dark chocolate enthusiast - 99% Dark. 

This is £2.40 for 50g, and you get warned by the shop assistant that it's not really snacking chocolate and to keep water near-by.

It also has a built in caution into the amazingly stylish box.

Well we've had 70%, and 85% and a variety of 90% versions over the years but never made it to the magical 99%.  This is almost the definition of refined, as short of eating raw cocoa powder off a spoon then this is as concentrated as it gets.

The packaging is very inviting.

You could probably take very clever selfies in it.

The chocolate is dark. Very, Very Dark.

It's when you get to this point that you realise that they were not messing around.  The smell is intense, and each little cube practically exudes evil.

Well -  I say cube, but this is a square - very 2D.  And this is applauded - I think a portion for trial is a quarter of this.

And it's certainly an acquired taste - it's not often people refuse chocolate, or bin some of the square you give them but both of these happened.  I too can't really say that I love this as a food.  As the experience, as the sheer concentration of cocoa though it's pretty special.  The whole experience is just so un-chocolatey.  It's practically a whole new class of confectionary.  I plan to grate this and add it to things, and to eat it with things to create sensational new tastes.  Think of this then as the shreds of chilli that show up in a stir-fry, the specks of ginger that make the meal explode and something that can turn ordinary home baking into a more gourmet experience.

Coffee drinkers seemed happier to sit and eat this compared to regular people, and the sheer strength of this means it may be liked by smokers and the elderly, but your average person is not going to enjoy it.  I finished both of the squares that i've had so far - and I'll be happy to eat more.  Well - as long as I've got a nice coffee or a hot choc to reduce the power a notch.

As a side note - a fellow shopper queried why the store didn't carry the mild versions of their dark range - both high in cocoa and milk by the sound of it - which means there are still varieties to try and that the chocolate exploration can continue. Anyone want to fly me to Zurich?

Kellogs's Star Wars - A new Force at Breakfast [@NLi10] #StarWars

I'm not that bothered by Star Wars, I've seen them all but I think they are mostly for the younger generation. As I never saw them as a child I never got that into it. I did win some Ewoks at the bingo counter on holiday one year.

I still had to see what Kellogg's had done when I saw this happy little R2 unit on the box.

And what's on the back - oh no it's Darth Vader - Lord of the Sith! Breakfast is ruined!

I did like the fact that both arts are on the same box, either a metaphor for how we are all capable of being the good guys and the bad guys simultaneously, or just cheaper than printing two boxes and putting puzzles on the back. I have no doubt there will be other character boxes over time.  But what is inside?

It's basically that coco pops but in shapes cereal we've had before. Moons (that's no moon - lol) and stars.

All the real info is tucked away on one side panel due to the big art.

And it's good cereal too, nicer than the Bear chocolate shapes, but probably a heck of a lot less healthy. If you were a Jedi you'd probably stick to normal cornflakes - chocolate cereals are definitely from The Dark Side. At least you can cut eye holes in the box and wear it as a Vader mask while you wait for the next film (or at least the hilarious Mr. Plinket Review of it).