NibMor: Crispy

My local Eden Gourmet recently began selling NibMor chocolates, so I picked one up when I was home for Thanksgiving break. The name is kind of misleading -- there are no nibs (bits of roasted cocoa bean) in this chocolate. There may never have been nibs in the processing of this chocolate, because I don't think the cocoa beans were ever roasted. And that, readers, was a huge mistake on NibMor's part. Because this bar was nasty.

NibMor: Crispy
Cocoa content: 65%
Notable ingredients: crispy brown rice; agave nectar
Origin: n/a

NibMor is a couple of women in Huntington, on Long Island, making nasty chocolate bars and leaving out all the good ingredients that make chocolate palatable. Vegan. Dairy Free. Gluten Free. Non-GMO. No Refined Sugar. Kosher. Recyclable. I don't even know how a chocolate bar can be recyclable. Was I not supposed to eat it? Anyway, I'm going to make a list of things I hate about this bar.

1. Raw: The package has all sorts of labels and certifications on it. It's Raw (of course,) it's Certified Vegan, it's USDA Organic. Here's what I don't get -- vegans, ok, I understand that they have to eat chocolate too. Some of their chocolate is ok. Most of it isn't -- whatever! They're doing the best they can! But Raw foodists? Isn't the Raw food movement primarily concerned with maintaining the natural nutrients and antioxidants in food? I know what they say about a little chocolate every day being good for your heart or something, but let's be honest -- chocolate is an indulgence! There are no important nutrients to maintain here, really. Is it worth ruining what could have been a perfectly good chocolate bar just to save some antioxidants?

2. Agave Nectar: Agave is what vegans use instead of honey, because honey comes from bees. Agave is nice to drizzle on yogurt. But last time I checked, sugar is ok for vegans. Sugar actually comes from a plant! And it's the only sweetener that really works with chocolate for consistency reasons. So why couldn't NibMor use sugar? Of course they're concerned with refined ingredients, but plenty of chocolate is made with unrefined cane sugar. Is this flashy, unnecessary nod to veganism worth the gummy, crumbly consistency?

3. Consistency: Combine raw chocolate and agave nectar, and you've achieved the consistency of a Power Bar. NibMor doesn't break along even lines, it has no snap to speak of, and eating it involves a lot of chewing and no melting. Creaminess is sacrificed for cold processing. This was a sticky, lifeless mess.

4. Brown Rice: This is just ridiculous. If you're staying away from refined grains -- if you're staying away from refined anything -- just forget about chocolate. Everything that is good about chocolate is going to offend your diet.

That's that. Next week I will enjoy a chocolate bar rife with refined sugar and literally filled with dairy. This bar gets a D.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast

My friend Molly told me about Komforte Chockolates, a company in Orange, CA. I have never encountered these in stores, and I've had a lot of encounters in a lot of stores. These bars seem to be sold only in California, Oregon, Washington, and of course online. I bought this one on Amazon for about $5 and the shipping costs doubled the price but -- French Toast! It was worth it.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast
Cocoa content: Unlisted (estimate 33%)
Notable ingredients: "french toast"
Origin: n/a

A lot of people gave me shit for choosing this bar over some of Komforte's other wackier flavors: Ramen Noodle and Tortilla with Lime. I love ramen noodles, but I imagine that bar just has crunchy dried noodles tangled within the chocolate, like packaged "ramen" before you've put it in boiled water, and that just didn't interest me. Plus, I was very curious about how french toast -- which I generally think of as sort of soggy and fluffy -- would be incorporated into the chocolate bar. Would it be eggy? Powdered with confectioner's sugar? Moist?

No, no, no. Actually, the second ingredient listed on the back of this bar (after milk chocolate) is -- get ready -- bagel chips! What? What do bagel chips and french toast have to do with one another? Are bagel chips even an ingredient? Aren't bagel chips just stale pieces of bagel? Obviously not, because these bagel chips have molasses in them. And natural beta carotene. What are bagel chips? What is french toast? When shall the twain meet?

But -- you know what -- I'm not really here to ask questions. This bar was so tasty. It tasted like honey-comb flavored bagel chips (go with it) embedded in creamy, appropriately salted milk chocolate. I had a really good time getting to know this bar and then -- in the blink of an eye, 2.5 ounces later, it was gone. Ramen noodles might be next, because who knows what will REALLY be in that bar. A-.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via

So I told you: I had something decidedly non-anonymous planned. I bought this bar in the Starbucks in Bronxville, NY, because I needed to go online and I thought I had to buy something to get a wireless code. Not so -- apparently you can get free wireless in all Starbucks locations now. But anyway, I ended up with this bar and apparently they had just been released. This has been my first introduction to Via coffee, Starbucks's new instant coffee product.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via
Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess: 75%)
Notable ingredients: instant microground coffee
Origin: n/a

This is a tiny bar, 1.2 oz., which I guess is the size of most of those little chocolate bars they have up at the counter. "Via" and "Readybrew" are imprinted on the bar -- it's cute. It baffles me that Starbucks has such stale, dried-out pastries because they actually have really smart chocolate partnership: they sell TCHO and Santander bars in the stores. I think the chocolate for this Via bar was made by Santander, which is a really good foreign chocolate maker.

It tasted ok -- I'm generally not a big fan of coffee flavored things, but I have found that I enjoy a coffee flavor if its with a sweeter, lighter chocolate. This chocolate is actually quite dark and suffers from being a little acidic. The coffee is thankfully not grainy, and also not too strong. I guess it would be nice to enjoy with a cup of coffee.

I will probably not eat this again, but it wasn't bad. B.

Tikras Sokoladas: Mystery Bar

This week was interesting because this week I ate a mystery chocolate bar. This will be an un-traditional entry because I'm working with very little information. Here's a list of the facts I do know:

1. My friend Dan brought it back from Lithuania for me.
2. It comes from a store called Tikras Sokoladas.
3. It is dark.

This gigantic bar, wrapped simply in plastic and a dark red ribbon, weighed probably close to 10 oz. I would guess that it had a cocoa content of about 72%, but it's hard to know for sure -- when I tried googling "Tikras Sokoladas," I got a scary list of Lithuanian Yelp-equivalents. There's no information about this bar online because it's not really a chocolate bar packaged as such -- obviously there's no label -- it's just a bar shaped package of this store's product.

It's very good! It's deceptively good. The snap is decent, the texture looks very inconsistent and air bubbly, but the taste is great: creamy, rich, and full of that roasted nib flavor.

The sticker on the bar has the address of the store: Vytauto g.4, Trakai (Trakai is the name of a town in Lithuania.) I used Google Maps to see the surroundings, and it looks like the store is right by a big lake -- Lentvario ez. Again, I tried googling the name of the shop and clicked on a blogspot link and asked Google to translate it to English for me. Once the page had loaded, there was no (translated) mention of Tikras Sokoladas -- only a curious blog entry titled "Hot Chocolate Cocoa Does Not Really."

So, this was a great find about which I still know very little. Stay tuned for next week, when I'll feature a decidedly un-mysterious chocolate bar. B+.

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek discovered Lake Winnipesaukee, smack-dab in the middle of the State of New Hampshire (thanks, Sherlock Kai-Shek,) in 1908. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe when they say (on the back of this bar) that she discovered the lake, they mean she came across it, not having known about it before. It's actually absurd to think that a woman from Shanghai could possibly have discovered Lake Winnipesaukee in 1908--while attending summer school nearby. I guess this packaging is just badly written. Anyway:

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess 65%)

Notable ingredients: crystallized ginger

Origin: n/a

So anyway--Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, former First Lady of the Republic of China, was walking in the woods in New Hampshire one day and came across Lake Winnipesaukee, as any normal person might if he or she were walking in the woods in New Hampshire--eventually--that's a pretty small state. To honor the day she happened upon the biggest lake in the state of New Hampshire, Winnipesaukee Chocolates created the Madame Chiang bar, which consists of dark chocolate with crystallized ginger. Sounds a little bit racist to me. Discuss.

This bar was kind of a dud, which is disappointing because the last Winnipesaukee bar I tried--Sally's Gut--was pretty nice. This bar was just way too thick and the ginger was dispersed too scarcely. The chocolate was kind of inconsistent in texture: unpleasantly grainy, with a lot of air bubbles, and very dried out. No melt or creaminess to speak of. And, on top of that, the bar was almost impossible to break. They should stretch these 3 oz. bars out so that they're half as thick--that would go a long way.

So, this bar certainly wasn't disgusting, but after eating it for two nights I wanted nothing to do with it. On to the next. C.

Noi Sirius: 33%

Happy Halloween! I was thinking about ways to make this entry spooky, but it's super hard to be scary in a blog entry so I have decided instead to write about this bar, the 33% milk chocolate bar by the Icelandic chocolate maker Sirius, because it is scary good. Also, it's scary big, scary inexpensive, and any kid would be lucky to receive it in his or her Halloween bag -- although it's highly unlikely that anyone will.

Noi Sirius: 33%
Cocoa content: 33%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

Noi Sirius is the leading confectionery company in Iceland -- they were established in 1920 and have been using the same minimal packaging since 1933! The company makes all kinds of candy products including chocolate eggs, pastilles, and licorice. They also emphasize that the product is really good for baking -- I can attest to that, as I used the remainder of the 56% bar to make chocolate chip cookies two summers ago.

Everything about this bar, fittingly, was highly serious. It's enormous at 7.05 oz., and it consists of two heavy planks of milk chocolate, stacked one on top of the other and then wrapped cleanly in white parchment paper. It cost only about $4, which is less than some bars half its size. I have already been eating it for a week and I've only finished one of the planks. The chocolate itself is intensely rich and creamy, but not overly sweet. Noi Sirius uses "Icelandic quality milk," which I know very little about but which is apparently delicious. According to Noi Sirius's website, the only US vendor is Whole Foods, and they keep the price really low -- I can recommend this one and also the 56% variety.

Overall, this was and continues to be delicious! Noi Sirius may be one of the best chocolate companies I have Known. A.

Theo: Toasted Coconut

Have you ever seen anything that looks more like a present for a baby girl? Nor I -- though you're probably not supposed to give chocolate to babies. Or is that just dogs? In any case, if you were going to give a chocolate bar to a baby, you probably wouldn't give it something that costs $5 and bills itself as fair trade and organic. Baby girls don't care about that! You're wasting your money. This bar is part of Theo's Classic Collection line. I got it at a Whole Foods in New Jersey.

Theo: Toasted Coconut
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: toasted coconut
Origin: n/a

Theo is one of my favorite domestic chocolate companies, even though I haven't always loved the Theo bars that I've blogged about here. The company is based in Seattle, WA. I like them for their well-made, balanced chocolate, their packaging, their partnership with Jane Goodall, and their excellent Fantasy Flavors line, that includes bars like "Fig Fennel & Almond" and "Bread and Chocolate" (the latter as seen on this blog.)

Coconut -- I want to say it is a crude confection. I want to say an inelegant-- what is a coconut? My sources say the coconut is a member of the palm family, and, I quote, "the only accepted member in the genus Cocos." What kind of wacky tree-dropping -- let's be honest, it's a tree nut -- gets its own genus in the plant kingdom? I want to say that coconut doesn't deserve it -- it's a tacky tree nut. But I've always really liked coconut confections. Almond Joy bars, in particular. So I bought this bar kind of as a guilty pleasure, expecting that my craving would be satisfied.

This bar tasted very good, but it didn't taste like coconut. Everyone I shared it with said the same thing. The lone member of the Cocos genus didn't show up. The texture of coconut was definitely present, but I absolutely didn't taste coconut once. Kind of a disappointment, although the bar was pretty good anyway. If someone could point me in the direction of a better coconut bar for next time, I'd be very appreciative.

For its goodness, unfulfilled promise of coconut aside, this bar gets a B.