On Monday and Wednesday, I reviewed bars of my own design. For my third and final bar, I decided to let Chocri take the lead and made one of their recommended bars, the Magical Forest.
The Magical Forest is dark chocolate (64%) with blueberries, flower mix, and pine nuts. To jazz mine up a bit, and because I had more space for toppings, I added marzipan carrots and a marzipan rose, reasoning that since the marzipan sat on top of the chocolate, it wouldn’t disturb the essence of the Magical Forest.
I was quite excited about this one, as it sounded exotic. Real flowers! Pine nuts! Carrots! And it promised that “alone the scent of pine nuts forbodes which arcane taste experiences are hidden here.” I think Chocri has a bit more translation tweaking to do, but I kind of like their babelfishy description – it’s more mysterious!
The Magical Forest, unfortunately, turned out to be more like a potted plant. That is, less arcane and more pretty straightforward. The flower mix wasn’t noticeable to me in flavor or texture. At one point, I maybe got a barely perceptible hint of floral essence at the start, but it was so faint that it could have just been the power of suggestion.
The pine nuts were lackluster as well. By the time the bars made it to me (remember, they were shipped all the way from Germany!), the pine nuts had lost their distinctive flavor. They added some textural contrast, but not really anything in terms of taste. Maybe if they had been toasted first?
I did like the blueberries – they added a bit of chew and a bright fruitiness. And while the marzipan decorations were a bit dry at their outermost layer (especially the rose, which had more exposed surface area), they were delicious! Gritty/grainy as marzipan should be, with lots of almond (or almond extract) flavor that was good on its own or chomped up with the chocolate.
Speaking of the chocolate, it really shines in this bar. While Wednesday‘s dark bar had more domineering toppings, the ones on today’s bar mostly took a back seat to the lovely dark chocolate base. Again, it has deep, strong cocoa notes with a lovely duskiness and a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel.
I wouldn’t recommend the Magical Forest combination (though my guess is that it fares better in Germany, where it would be fresher upon delivery), but Chocri the company gets a ZOMG for a great concept that’s nicely executed. They give you high quality ingredients to work with, and if the flavor combinations don’t work out, it’s pretty much your fault. It’s so much fun to make the different bars – and so hard to choose from the plethora of toppings!
The only downside is the price. As you can see, the Magical Forest sans marzipan adornments is already nearly $13. With the extra decorations, it costs over $16, and that’s before shipping. Though the bars are fairly hefty (3.5 oz, and I think that’s before the toppings),? that’s still a lot to pay for a single bar.
Chocri bars would make good gifts – I think gifts should be things that the recipient wants/would like but would never buy for him/herself – but half the fun is choosing your own toppings. In a smart business move, it looks like Chocri will be offering gift certificates.
And for those of you with deeper pockets, or those more willing to splurge on chocolate, this would be a fun and tasty buy.
Varsha