... and the light side too, all at the same time. How is that possible Ted? well ... the Princesses of Popcorn and their Ladies in Waiting decided it was time for another taste outing, and this time they fancied chocolate. The pre-tasting instructions (to me) were clear. “As well as all the fancy shmancy dark stuff you want us to taste Ted we want some of the stuff we really like to eat, we want some of the white stuff as well”. So much for the high tastes of royalty then eh ... sigh ... ok ...
I did a bit of shop lifting and lined up five readily available dark and serious chocolate bars for the first round: Green & Blacks (G&Bs) 70%, Sao Tome 71%, Montezumas
73%, Divine 85%, and Lindt 99%. The "Milky Bar Kid" gang were asked to rate them based on
categories that proper chocolate tasters use:
look, smell, snap, texture, and taste.
The range of categories is supposedly designed to stimulate as many of your
senses as possible in the experience. I enlisted the help of an accountant friend who shall remain
nameless (Lizzie) to do the score-sheet analysis and collate the results of the dark side preferences.
Look - Lindt was a narrow winner. Smell - Montezuma romped home well ahead of the pack. Snap – Lindt again saw off the competition. Texture – G&Bs and Montezumas first equal, and they repeated that performance in Taste. No such luck for Lindt in the taste category where someone else who shall remain nameless (Mandy) gave it a score of minus 5 out of a possible 5 with the comment “tastes like bitumen”. After a bit of data normalisation the overall placings were … 1st Montezumas, Divine was just pipped at the post and pushed back to 3rd place by G&Bs who took out 2nd, Sao Tome limped home in 4th and Lindt was a long way back in 5th place, after a promising start. The accompanying Tawny Ports (10 and 20 years old) both averaged 4 out of 5 for match (if indeed anything could match and compliment bitumen as a foodstuff??).
The line-up of the white chocolate goodies, with their accompanying Muscat desert wines, were much more popular judging by the far nicer comments, and the left over ratios at
the end of the evening. The “stuff we really like to eat” like Willie’s Cacao El
Blanco and G&Bs Madagascan vanilla bars, Hotel Chocolat white bunnies,
Godiva crème brulee truffles, and Confetteria Raffaello (the light side of
Ferrero Rocher), all pretty much disappeared in a waft of cocoa butter.
For some totally unfathomable reason there was a huge amount of that snappy and more than good looking Lindt 99% leftover.
For some totally unfathomable reason there was a huge amount of that snappy and more than good looking Lindt 99% leftover.
6 comments:
Haha I've gotta say, I'm with your testers! While dark chocolate can be good... when given the choice I'll go for milk or white chocolate every time.
Suggestion for a tasting.....liquorice. That way bitumen will fit in perfectly in the line up.
It's a tough job but, someone had to do it. Now you've given me a wonderful idea....and evening of chocolate tasting.
dark the best :)
Those ratings mean nothing to a chocoholic like moi Mo, chocolate is chocolate is chocolate :)
Admittedly, I'm not that fond of dark chocolate... milk chocolate for me!
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