Happy 21st, Chococo!

Many years ago, on holiday in Dorset, my wife and I went along to a food festival in Wimbourne- I think it was called Taste Of Dorset. Amongst the many other gastronomic delights on show (the freshly cooked scallops were particularly memorable!) was a brightly coloured tent staffed by a very friendly lady named Claire Burnet. She and her husband Andy had started their chocolate shop, Chococo, in Purbeck in 2002, and have been making delicious handmade chocolates ever since. That day I bought one of their goodie bags full of chocolate treats (including a fantastic miniature chocolate cake), and have been an enthusiastic customer ever since.

Now they are 21 years old, and their chocolates are as good as ever. To join in the celebrations I bought a couple of items – first, a box of their Award Winners (they have won many awards over the years). This includes several of my all-time favourites: Blackcurrant Beauty – Blackcurrant pate de fruit layered with a dark ganache infused with blackcurrant liqueur in a dark chocolate square; Lemon Zing – Dorset-made fresh lemon curd in a white chocolate ganache in a dark chocolate dome; and Dorset Sea Salt Caramel – Dorset Sea Salt’s apple oak smoked sea salt in a muscovado caramel in a dark chocolate gem. To name but three. One of the best assortments I’ve tasted.

The second item I bought was one of their traybakes – which I’ve been meaning to investigate for some time. I opted for the Gingerbread Caramel Millionaire’s Shortbread, which is every bit as good as that sounds. I’m something of a Millionaire’s Shortbread addict – always the first thing I try when I find a cafe that bakes its own cakes. This is one of the best I’ve tasted, and the inclusion of gingerbread spices in the caramel lifts it into the stratosphere. A real treat!

So there we are: a very Happy 21st Birthday to Chococo, one of the best chocolatiers and makers of other sweet treats in the country. Here’s looking forward to their Silver Anniversary in 2027!

Slight change of address…

Hello, folks,

It’s been apparent to me for a while now that, as far as the world of chocolates is concerned, I don’t really have much left to say. Whilst I still love eating filled chocolates – especially those made by my personal favourites such as Chococo, Grown Up Chocolate Company and Zotter – I’ve come to feel that there are only so many ways I can describe a delicious praline, salted caramel, or boozy truffle.

At the same time, I have no interest in attending industry jollies such as chocolate festivals or product launches. I’m not a terribly social animal at the best of times (though I must stress that if you ever bump into me, I believe you’d find me very friendly!), so those kind of high-rolling beanfeasts I’m more than happy to leave to the chocolate-blogging world’s socialites, of whom there’s a more than plentiful supply.

Furthermore, high-quality chocolate, and chocolate creations, are currently in a kind of golden age. Whilst, as with any other business, those who venture into the world of the commercial chocolatier / chocolate-maker have a tough, competitive journey ahead of them, I don’t believe they still need the ‘umble chocolate blogger to help drum up demand for their delicious wares.

So… whilst I’ll be leaving the blog up, just in case I get the urge to review more chocolates in future, I don’t intend to renew the “chocgourmand.com” domain name, which is due to expire soon. Once it expires, if you want to visit the site, you’ll have to use the full WordPress address, which is chocgourmand.wordpress.com.

Adios for now. As Douglas Adams didn’t quite say, So Long, And Thanks For All The Chocs!

James Chocolates Chocolate Treat Club

James Hutchins’s company, James Chocolates, has been making chocolates since 1995, and has built up a reputation for making chocolates which are delicious, fun, and imaginative. This fun element is best demonstrated via their Chocolate Treat Club.

Unlike most subscription-based chocolate selection clubs, you tell James your chocolate preferences (white, milk, dark, types of flavours etc), and how often you’d like to receive the selections (weekly, monthly or fortnightly). Then, every month/week/fortnight you will be sent a box of four different “treats”, selected by James according to your preferences. Each “treat” will be either a bar, or a bag of buttons, discs, or other bite-sized pieces. Some examples of the treats recently sent out are:

• Caramel, Vanilla & Sea Salt Discs
• Chocolate Espresso Beans
• Peanut Praline Bar
• Double Salted Caramel Filled Bar
• Cherry Bakewell Tarts
• Strawberry & Pepper Buttons

But the most truly unique thing about James Chocolates’ Chocolate Treat Club is that you can sign up for free samples! From time to time James invites potential customers to sign up to a list, and each month free samples are sent out to some lucky members. This month I was lucky enough to receive a bag of pieces of high-cocoa milk chocolate pretzel bar. The chocolate was delicious – rich and creamy – and the addition of the salted pretzel pieces provided an interesting texture which simply invited munching!

Having sampled James’s wares, I suspect that in the New Year I’ll be treating myself to some of their Treats boxes!

Links:

Twitter: @jameschocolates

Website: jameschocolates.co.uk

Benjamin Chocolatier Salted Caramel

As my wife knows well, I’ve a continuing addiction to salted caramel chocolates, which is why at Easter she treated me to this beautiful box of Salted Caramels by Benjamin Chocolatier, the premium brand of Ben Axford, a Gloucester-based chocolatier who made it to the finals of Masterchef 2007. Inside the reassuringly chocolate-hued box nestle 18 miniature cocoa pods cast from 65% North Madagascan organic couverture. Each pod contains a blend of caramel and 40% Ghanaian milk chocolate, but the caramel rings some interesting changes…

The selection consists of three different caramels, each using different types of sugar combined with a touch of three different salts. Muscovado caramel is paired with Maldon Sea Salt, Traditional caramel with Fleur de Sel de Camargue, and Palm Blossom caramel with Pink Himalayan Salt. Now, I have to declare up front that I’m not at all convinced, from a flavour point of view, that using different types of salt has any meaning in this context. As far as I can determine, whilst different salts have differing aesthetic characteristics – the pink colouration of the Himalayan being a prime example, the soft flakiness of Maldon being another – these distinctions are lost the moment the salt is dissolved into a caramel. Similarly the healthful nature of low-sodium salts and (more debateably) the multiple trace minerals in Pink Himalayan Salt is of no great significance in the tiny quantities present in a salted caramel chocolate.

However, having got that off my chest I’m delighted to say that these chocolates were some of the nicest salted caramels I’ve tasted, and the differences between the various sugars produced some spectacularly varied flavours. The Muscovado version was full of the liquorice flavours of molasses, nostalgically reminiscent of treacle toffee. The Traditional variant presumably used “normal” sugar, and was a beautifully clean-tasting benchmark to use for comparison with the others. Ben tells me that the Palm Blossom caramel uses sugar which is coconut palm blossom nectar cooked in open copper vessels, yielding a sugar with floral and butterscotch notes; I seemed to detect a very faint smokiness there, too – certainly this was the most complex and interesting of the three.

I should also mention that the chocolate used for the shells was beautifully fruity, as expected from a Madagascan couverture. All in all, this collection is an elegant, luxurious experience to gladden the heart of any caramel lover, and I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what Ben comes up with next.

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These caramels, along with many other chocolate delights, may be ordered from the Benjamin Chocolatier website.

Benjamin Chocolatier are on Twitter as @BenjaminChoc

Wicked & Wonderful Chilli Milk Chocolate Truffles

“Wicked & Wonderful” is a sister brand to Benjamin Chocolatier, both ventures operated by Gloucester-based chocolatier Ben Axford, a 2007 Masterchef finalist (of which Ben has written a very entertaining account on his website). Wicked & Wonderful is a line of elegantly-packaged truffles, and I was fortunate enough to receive this box as an Easter present from my wife. As you can see, each box contains nine square, dusted truffles. This variety is based on a 35% cocoa solids milk chocolate and two varieties of chilli, one fruity and one hot and smoky, and this careful blending reflects the attention to detail practiced by Ben. The flavour spectrum is completed via the inclusion of cinnamon, coconut oil, and a little sea salt.

Although I’m a fan of chilli heat, I’m not wild about those who simply crank up the heat level without paying attention to the flavours (my favourite very hot chilli is the Scotch Bonnet, which has a fabulous intense fruitiness alongside its aggressive heat level), so I was particularly pleased that these truffles achieve a perfect balance of heat and flavour: I’d never thought of combining cinnamon and chilli, but the result works perfectly, with a clear transition from the initial cinnamon hit to the gradual build of heat and chilli flavours. The inclusion of coconut oil also works beautifully, I thought, adding a rounded creaminess to the other flavours.

This box of truffles vanished alarmingly quickly, so unsurprisingly I can say I loved these truffles. If you need further recommendation, Ben won an Academy Of Chocolate silver award in 2013. I urge you to go along to Ben’s online shop and introduce yourself to these truffles, and other delights.

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These truffles, along with many other chocolate delights, may be ordered from the Benjamin Chocolatier website.

Benjamin Chocolatier are on Twitter as @BenjaminChoc

Grown Up Chocolate Company Chocolate Bites

Probably my greatest single confectionery-based weakness is for those tubs of Celebrations which always appear at Christmas and birthdays. Mars always appealed to me far more than Cadbury, even as a kid, and a tub of Celebrations was like getting all my favourite Mars products simultaneously, in bite-sized pieces – well, that’s exactly what it WAS. of course!

Now wind forwards to present times, and my favourite filled chocolate bars are those produced by the Grown Up Chocolate Company (GUCC), whose re-imaginings and upgradings of mass-market bars I’ve previously rhapsodised about here and here. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they produced something similar to Celebrations, but based on their own delicious bars? Well, as if by magic, here we have that very item – well, nearly…

Yummy Scrummy Chocolate Bites (to use their full name) arrive in a hexagonal box, bearing Grown Up Chocolate Company’s familiar “not for kids” design. When you lift the lid, the inner box is ingeniously designed to collapse outwards, like a flower opening, revealing an appealing heap of 20-or-so foil wrapped chocolates. These are miniature versions of four of GUCC’s filled chocolate bars, namely:

• Crunchy Praline Wonder Bar
  This is simply a milk chocolate-covered hazelnut praline, but mixed into the praline is a very generous amount of caramelised feuilletine. The blend of crunchiness with the mellow nuttiness of the praline and chocolate is as perfect a combination here as in the larger bar. My wife’s favourite of this selection.
• Crunchy Crispy Toffee Trilogy
  Three layers packed into a single bite-sized chocolate is a good trick! On a base of milk chocolate and crisped rice lies a layer of thick, rich caramel, topped with a sprinkling of white chocolate covered biscuit “pearls”, and the whole is enrobed in milk chocolate. This is a really interesting combination of textures.
• Dark Chocolate Smoothy
  The only dark chocolate-enrobed member of the assortment, this is one of my favourites. Inside the enrobing are two layers: a dark chocolate ganache mixed with a good portion of cocoa nibs, topped with a dark chocolate caramel. The caramel is fantastic, combining chocolatey and buttery flavours perfectly. As everything else melts away, you’re left with plenty of cocoa nibs to nibble on, prolonging the dark chocolate hit.
• Salted Peanut Caramel Cracker
  I’m really glad they included this, as it’s long been my favourite of their full-size bars. Inside the milk chocolate there’s a deep layer of white chocolate-based peanut praline mixed with chopped salted peanuts, topped with a thin layer of rich caramel. The peanut praline layer is at the root of my addiction to this bar – as the praline melts the little bursts of saltiness become more frequent, and the salt/sweet interplay is one I absolutely love.

All in all, this is a great – and logical – addition to GUCC’s product range. It’s a perfect gift for giving by those who feel a box of chocolates is a more suitable gift than a set of full-size bars (however delicious); it is of course ideal for sharing, for passing around (unless you understandably want to keep the whole box for yourself); finally, I’ve heard some poor souls claim that the full-size GUCC bars are “too rich” to eat at a sitting (I know, I know…), so these bite-size pieces are perfect for them, too. Paradoxically, because it’s impossible to eat only one or two at a sitting (“Just One More” syndrome kicks in very quickly!), I probably got through a box of these much faster than I’d have eaten the equivalent weight of the full-size bars!

My one complaint about this selection is that I don’t feel it goes far enough. Personally I’d like to see all NINE of the available bars represented here in miniature. Why not include the Glorious Coconut Hocus Pocus? Or the White Chocolate Praline Wonder Bar? Eating these bars in miniature is a great promotional tool for the full-size versions, too, so surely this would be of benefit to the company’s sales of ALL their bars, rather than just the four present here? Come on, GUCC, if Mars can see the wisdom of including eight or nine different products in their Celebrations box, surely a similar policy would benefit you, too?

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Yummy Scrummy Chocolate Bites, along with many other delights, may be ordered from the Grown Up Chocolate Company website.

Grown Up Chocolate Company are on Twitter as @grownupchocs

Zotter Mi-Xing Bar

This is a strange one to review, since it’s more about a concept than a specific product. Confused? Let’s start again…

One of Zotter’s most endearing characteristics is the enormous variety of its products – such as the ever-changing, ever-expanding range of their “hand-scooped” bars. The Mi-Xing bar at their online shop allows you to mix your own custom chocolate bar, in any one of a wide variety of shapes. You select a maximum of 7 different ingredients, specify a shape, pay at the checkout, and wait for your own bespoke one-of-a-kind creation to arrive through the post. Now that’s what I call chocolate excitement!

You start by choosing a shape, from the simple geometrics (bars, discs, stars) to the more fanciful (car, fish, flower, dog!). Next, you select one or more types of chocolate to form the foundation of the bar. Even here, there are 16 varieties to choose from, ranging from basic white, milk and dark chocolate, through several fruit and nut chocolates, to soy and rice-milk chocolate for those with lactose intolerance. At this stage you begin to notice that the shop is building up a representation at the top of the page of what your chosen shape and components will look like – very, very clever, and fun!

The next step is to optionally choose a filling for your chocolate shape (unless you want to add some “Biofekt” truffles as a topping later!). There are 24 fillings to choose from – are you beginning to get a sense of the mind-boggling number of permutations you can create here? There are loads of fruity, nutty and boozy fillings available. Finally you get to add several toppings, and here things get really wild as you can choose from a range of spices, flowers, herbs, fruits, nuts, and mini chocolate bars (yes, bars on bars!) in numerous shapes including hearts and filled praline mini-bars. The toppings also provide a bizarre range of “goodies” which include the mysterious “Flic Flocs” – cereal flakes flavoured with raspberry, coffee, caramel etc.

By the time you reach the checkout, you’ll have created something utterly unique, probably quite bizarre, and almost certainly delicious (unless you’ve perversely gone for some REALLY out-there combos!). The cost of the bar varies according to how many ingredients you’ve added – my “dry run” for the purpose of writing the above picked a mix of 2 different chocolates, a filling, and 5 toppings, and came to £6.40, which was very reasonable for such a unique experience. The bars weigh in at around 100g, by the way.

If you’re feeling less creative, Zotter offer an “off the shelf” range of some of the more popular Mi-Xing Bar creations to choose from. For Valentine’s Day, I was given one of these – a Mi-Xing Heart (pictured above), which consisted of caramel chocolate, (black)currant chocolate, Zotter coffee filling, raspberry Flic Flocs, coconut Flic Flocs, and raspberry hearts. Zotter’s caramel chocolate made a particularly good base for this bar – not over-sweet, but full of mellow caramel flavour. The coffee filling went really well with this, the flavour of freshly ground coffee mingling with the caramel chocolate like a good strong latte. Against this background, the bursts of blackcurrant and raspberry chocolate came as a refreshing contrast, yet still blended well with the other flavours. Fruit chocolate is another of Zotter’s fortes (they have several!), always fresh and bursting with the intense, natural fruit flavours. A final treat consisted of picking off and eating the raspberry and coconut “flic flocs”; these flavoured cereal flakes are similar to those used in some breakfast cereals, but have the characteristic Zotter intensity of flavour. All in all, this was a carnival of a chocolate bar, which left me itching to try and concoct my own creation at the Mi-Xing Bar!

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Create your own Mi-Xing Bar at Zotter’s online shop

Grown Up Chocolate Company: Trio Of Easter Eggs

Last year, as Easter approached, the Grown Up Chocolate Company tweeted an intriguing photo of what appeared to be a new departure for them: a box containing a trio of foil-wrapped, creme-egg-sized Caramel Eggs. Sadly, these never became available from their online shop, and were only available from retail outlets, of which there were none local to me. Being a seasonal product line, they disappeared from view…

…until this year! For Easter 2015, James Ecclestone and his GUCC team have reprised the eggs, but this time they’re available from their online shop as an Easter special. James kindly sent me some of the eggs for review, so I set to:

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Crispy Toffee Caramel Egg

Like all three eggs this is the same size as one of you-know-who’s creme eggs, but that’s where the similarity ends. The shell of each egg is made from rich, creamy milk chocolate with 38% cocoa solids and 21% milk solids, but things get even better inside the shells. This one, clad in purple foil, contains a smooth, earthy, nutty hazelnut praline laced with pieces of crisped rice. Bite through that and you’re rewarded with a molten “yolk” of liquid caramel. I found the caramel particularly tasty, having a deep, dark flavour with buttery overtones.

Salted Peanut Caramel Egg

Being a great fan of GUCC’s Salted Peanut Caramel Cracker bar, I was eagerly anticipating this egg-shaped interpretation, and was not disappointed. Inside the shell is a thick layer of a salted peanut praline which has to be tasted to be believed: it’s a mixture of white chocolate and very finely chopped salted roasted peanuts. The initial flavour hit is of the chocolate and roasted peanuts, which is delicious. But as the praline melts away, the salt becomes apparent, in little bursts, and this mingling of sweetness with sparks of saltiness, against the earthy peanut background can only be described as divine. As if things couldn’t get any better, along comes that core of molten, buttery caramel to provide a perfect end-note. I think I loved this egg even more than the bar of which it’s a variation. Grown Up Chocolate Company, I salute you!

Passion Fruit Caramel Egg

Unlike the other two eggs, this one is a complete departure from GUCC’s regular range of bars. I’d experienced their way with passion fruit in their monthly chocolate selections (several of which I reviewed a couple of years ago), so I was expecting a full-on approach and, happily, that is what I found. After penetrating the milk chocolate shell, there is a thick layer of dense white chocolate ganache, well-flavoured with vanilla to give a deliciously custardy flavour. The rich creaminess of the ganache makes the contrast all the more pronounced when you reach the “yolk”. This is a slightly thicker caramel than the other two eggs, but has a concentrated tangy flavour of passion fruit. As creaminess and fruitiness mingle, the experience is that of eating a delicious passion fruit dessert. This is another egg I’d happily eat on a regular basis.

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In summary, all three eggs are many miles ahead of the mass-market stuff found in high street shops. At £2 each they’re good value considering their excellent quality, but even better value is to buy the 3-pack, reviewed here, which contains one of each for £4.99. I hope these sell in sufficient quantities to convince James and his team to make them a regular feature of Easters to come!

Buy these eggs (you should!) at GUCC’s webshop.
Follow The Grown Up Chocolate Company on Twitter at @grownupchocs.

My earlier reviews of Grown Up Chocolate Company’s excellent bars:

New Bars From The Grown Up Chocolate Company

White Chocolate Praline Wonder Bar

Four More Zotter Bars!

It’s been a while since I last reviewed a selection of Zotters ever-expanding range of “hand-scooped” bars (Link: Four Zotter Chocolate Bars), but thanks to my wife’s bounteous Valentine’s Day gift to me, at last it’s time for a sequel. Yeah, sequels, I know: blame the publishing industry. And the film industry… Although the range continues to evolve, some things remain constant. Zotter still hold fast to their  principles of using organic, fairly-traded, and (where possible) locally sourced ingredients, and to constantly developing new bean-to-bar couvertures. The packaging, from the quirky and witty artwork to the physical quality of the wrapping materials, remains a delight. And, yes, the mystery of just what they mean by “hand scooped” still puzzles even the grandmasters of chocolate arcana! One change since I reviewed the previous quartet is that Zotter now have a UK webshop, so the full dazzling Zotter range is now available within the UK. Good news for my chocoholic urge, possibly less good news for my bank manager! But onwards:

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For You

The strangely anonymous name of this bar conceals what at first sight is simply an old Zotter favourite, a layer of creamy smooth almond praline (although in Zotter terminology they refer to this as almond “nougat”, I’ll persist with the more familiar “praline”), atop a layer of earthy roasted hazelnut praline, the whole enrobed in Zotter’s excellent 70% “noble bitter” chocolate. However the hazelnut praline is mixed with crunchy hazelnut brittle, which gives an interesting added texture to the bar, also adding to the earthiness of the hazelnut praline’s flavour. A really excellent bar; I’m usually fairly ambivalent about pralines, but this one is really exceptionally good.

Almond Roses

Appropriately for a Valentine’s Day gift, this bar combines the flavours of roses and almonds. I was a bit suspicious of this bar, not being an enormous fan of floral flavours. The outer casing, made from a rich 50%-cocoa Mountain Milk chocolate, conceals two layers: the firm, smooth almond praline layer melds with the milk chocolate, but it’s the other layer which is more interesting; a wonderfully gooey marzipan laced with a whopping 3% rose water plus a hint of rose oil. This results in a flavour instantly reminiscent of Turkish Delight, and I found this far more more-ish  than I expected. Highly recommended for any Turkish Delight fan!

Cognac + Coffee

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’ve always had a soft spot for coffee creams, probably evolved because as a child, in our house nobody else liked them, so at Christmas time my services were always called upon to hoover them up. I’m also very partial to boozy chocolates, the more full-on the better. Therefore the name of this bar attracted my attention immediately. True to form, Zotter have devised an ingenious variation on the coffee-cream theme: the coffee is all located in the chocolate enrobing of the bar! Yes the bar is covered in a 40% cocoa milk chocolate which is flavoured with coffee beans (roasted in-house by Zotter) and coffee powder. This means you start getting the coffee flavour right away, and is very effective. Inside the bar is a simple dark chocolate ganache containing a whopping 10% of French Cognac, which delivers a powerful alcoholic kick and really allows the full flavour of the cognac to permeate your mouth. This is a truly fabulous bar, which immediately became one of my all-time favourites.

A Piece Of Pure Joy

I don’t really need to describe this one, do I? Surely the name says it all? Well, OK, The only problem I have with this bar is that there is no way of gleaning even the slightest clue as to its flavour without turning it over and scrutinising the small print of the ingredients list. Even the artwork doesn’t provide any hints. Sure, you can eat it and find out, but that’s not really a pre-purchase option! With that minor quibble aside, let me say that I LOVED this bar! The two key words are “creamy” and “oranges”. The 40%-cocoa milk chocolate covering contains a soft, buttery milk chocolate ganache, which is flavoured with no less than FOUR orange-related ingredients: orange liqueur, grated orange peel, blood orange brandy, and orange concentrate, adding up to 9% of the bar’s total weight. It’s like the classiest Chocolate Orange you’ve ever tasted – and boozy too, which gets extra points from me. All in all, I’d describe this as a piece of pure joy. Oh…

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So there we are, four more illustrations of the way Zotter keep on spinning new ideas and new creations faster than anyone can keep up with. Ethical and wildly imaginative in equal measure, they remain one of my favourite chocolate makers and chocolatiers. The entire Zotter range is available online from www.zotter.co.uk

Zotter “Biofekt” Valentine Heart Assortment

Biofekt is Zotter’s collective name for their selections of hand-made individual chocolates. Like all of Zotter’s creations, Biofekt chocolates are made with all natural ingredients. Due to the fresh ingredients, the Biofekt collections are only available from Zotter’s own stores and via their online shop. Happily, of course, Zotter now have a UK webshop, so they can be readily obtained online in the UK. Note that although these Valentine Heart boxes are no longer available, the same chocolates are included in all other Zotter Biofekt selections!

The Biofekt Heart assortment was a special for Valentine’s Day 2015, and came in an absolutely beautiful heart-shaped keepsake box. Zotter always pay a lot of attention to the physical design of their products’ packaging, and the intricate design on the lid is one of their best presentations yet. Inside the box are a dozen small but perfectly formed chocolates, each nestling in its own section of a clear plastic tray. As with all these current reviews of Zotter products, this was a Valentine’s Day present from my wonderful wife.

All the spherical truffles in the box, of which there were four, have sumptuously gooey fillings and are referred to by Zotter as “Endorphins” – I have no idea why, other than that chocolate apparently stimulates the brain to trigger the release of endorphins, chemicals which produce feelings of pleasure and well-being. I can’t argue with that, since those are the feelings which ALL of this selection induced in me! As ever, with Zotter, it’s probably best to ignore the kooky names, and go with the flow – the chocolates speak for themselves!

My command of German is not great, but assuming my translations are correct, these were the twelve chocolates in the box:

Rum in Coconut – Exactly as described: rum, coconut and white choc ganache, covered in dark chocolate and still more (desiccated) coconut. Delicious, and with a good rum kick!

Ginger – a dark ganache, mingled with chopped crystallized ginger, and topped with a chunk of more crystallized ginger, yet oddly mild. I’d expected a little more fire, but I suppose that’s down to personal taste. Slightly disappointing.

Pistachio – Gorgeous, creamy-tasting pistachio marzipan, topped with a tiny, perfect, emerald-green pistachio, and covered with the thinnest coating of dark chocolate.

Caipirinha – rum and lime in a white chocolate ganache. Full-on, boozy and delicious. Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail, where it is traditionally made with cachaca rather than rum – but since both cachaca and rum are sugar-cane-based spirits, I guess rum is a suitable substitute!

Sour Cherry Endorphin – full of lovely sweet-and-sour gooey fruitiness, but not overwhelmingly so. Dusted with cherry powder.

Coffee Endorphin – soft ganache filling, bursting with fresh coffee flavour, yet mellowed with a smooth creaminess. I’ve loved “coffee cream” choices ever since I was a kid, so this really hit the spot for me.

Swiss Pine Endorphin – This had a vivid green coating and was… strange. It was filled with a soft, boozy dark chocolate ganache which had an elusive resinous flavour. Not at all sure about this one, but I’d be willing to try a few more – purely in the interests of making up my mind!

Limoncello – Two layers lurked inside the outer chocolate coating: a layer of milk chocolate ganache, and then a pale layer of really very full-on Limoncello flavour. A real blow-your-socks off chocolate – I loved this combination!

Almond Amaretto – another marzipan/praline double-layer creation, this time with added oomph from the Amaretto. Good, but not one of my favourites.

Redcurrant – inside a dark chocolate coating lies a deep red, powerfully sharp and zingy redcurrant ganache. Very refreshing and potentially addictive! After caramel, fruit flavours are probably my favourites in chocolates, and this sort of intensity is very much to my liking.

Hazelnut Marzipan – two layers, a creamy praline and a very nice marzipan. Little else to say, really.

Tequilla Endorphin – a citrusy coating on the shell evoked the experience of taking a bite of lime before the shot of tequilla-rich soft ganache inside. Very clever and made me wish I’d taken more care to note the flavours of that coating – knowing Zotter there may have been a little salt in it, to complete the Tequilla experience!

Although I’ve eaten many of Zotter’s infinitely varied bars, this was the first time I’d tried their individual chocolates, and I hope it won’t be the last. Though they’re perhaps not the most imaginative chocolates I’ve eaten, the quality was as high as I’d expect, and the flavours were mostly intense, with a good variety of shapes and textures. An excellent selection. Zotter Biofekt chocolates are available from their web shop.