Once again, guys, I am going to indulge my love of creating custom candy concoctions (say that five times fast) by reviewing another bar that the nice folks over at Chocomize let me create.
I love Indian food. This was not always the case. In fact, as I have said in previous reviews, it really took the chef/owner of a sadly now-closed Indian restaurant in northern Georgia to bring me around -- but once he did, I was hooked. (Ken, wherever you may be, I would kill for an Indian crabcake). In addition to loving not only traditional Indian (and Indian fusion) dishes, I also just like the spices and ingredients that go into them.
"Currying Flavor" was inspired by my love of all things Indian. (And I'm hard core here. I even have my own copy of the Bollywood musical version of Fight Club.) As I do with all my custom bars, I am only rating the bar based on the individual ingredients and NOT the overall taste of the bar. Because I put the combination together myself, the ingredients could be top-notch on their own, but maybe never should have been put together -- and if that's the case, the fault is mine and not Chocomize's, so I won't ding them for it.
Anyway, Currying Flavor contains:
A milk chocolate base
Crystallized rose petals
Hot curry powder
Roasted pistachios
Diced mango
I liked the milk chocolate base more in this bar than I did in the first review I tried it with (the "Sugar High" bar). It's still very milky and a little sweeter than I prefer -- but in this case, the sweetness balances the heat and spice from the curry and the mango perfectly, and it just works really well.
The mango chunks are exactly what you'd expect of dried mango. They are generously sized and are a little chewy. The flavor is fresh and it has that nice, light warmth that mango has. The mango pieces are good enough to snack on by themselves!
The pistachios are on the small side, but they whole and very fresh. They were still nice and crunchy, though I would have liked for them to have been salted a bit more. But they were good either way.
The curry powder is liberally sprinkled on the top of the chocolate. There is enough so that you see it and you definitely taste it...but not so much that you feel like it's flocked like a cheap Christmas tree. I like it because it adds just enough curry to wake you up and let you know it's there, but not so much that you wonder what demon ever possessed you to put curry in with chocolate.
The rose petals were a pleasant surprise. Honestly, I was expecting them to simply taste like sugar. And while they certainly do have a sugary edge and crunch to them, you can actually taste the rose! I love that!
All in all, every single one of the ingredients on its own was pretty good. Yes, the milk chocolate is still sweeter than I liked, but when paired with everything else it just worked.
While I will not be rating the bar on the overall taste, I wish I could -- everything just paired up much better than I could have hoped for.
If you would like to try this bar (or create your own), the nice folks over at Chocomize have given my readers a generous 10% off coupon. If you use coupon code "Gigi" at checkout, you get 10% off your order! How can ya say no to that?
This bar was just really, incredibly good!
PURCHASED FROM:
Sample from company
CALORIES:
133 Calories per 1/5th bar.
ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains nuts. May contain traces of milk, nuts and gluten.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
chocomize.com
Wow!! You often seen chilli and chocolate, but curry powder??? genius!
ReplyDeleteHow interesting! I just reviewed my own chocomize bar involving curry powder, and with mine there was absolutely no curry flavour to be found. Luckily the other items I chose were spectacular - but I wish I could've tasted the curry like you clearly did!
ReplyDeleteCin: I actually can't take credit for dreaming up the combo- Vosges has a stellar Curry bar- next time I encounter one "in the wild" I will snag a bar for you.
ReplyDeleteHannah: I'm sorry that you didn't taste your curry. I was lucky that mine there was no question that it was there- it wasn't overly strong but it was there.