I have spent the last few days in anticipation of a new delight. A Farm Shop opened at a local Garden Centre complex nearby the other week and we went to check out the fare on offer, we do try to buy most of our food from local sources. Imagine my delight when I saw nestling on the shelves some rather elegant looking bars of chocolate – very simply packaged to show off the contents. Granted it wasn’t going to be local but given the nature of the shop, the quality of the display and the price I thought to myself ‘this should be good’.
Eventually I got round to taking a photo (not brilliant I’m afraid) before getting down to the serious business of eating it. The manufacturer’s ‘Ko-Koa’ had done a good job with the point of sale material and the smaller bars were simply mounted on gold board and wrapped in cellophane so that you could see exactly what you were getting. The bar I chose was the Marbled plain chocolate with white chocolate swirl, small size – about 3 inches square, weighing 75gms.
It was such a disappointment. The smell when I opened the packet was of vanilla, not chocolate and that should have forewarned me. Granted the cocoa solids were only 55% in the plain and 28% in the white, but there was absolutely no discernable chocolate taste at all, the overwhelming impression in your mouth was of a sweet, hard lump. The texture was smooth but you felt that you needed to chew to try and wring some flavour out of it rather than the more common experience where the chocolate flavour develops in your mouth as it melts gently on your tongue. I wondered if it might just be me having an ‘off’ day but sad to say, my daughter felt exactly the same as I did. At almost 3GBP ($6) for a small bar – we were distinctly underwhelmed by it and will not be trying it again.