Gifts = New Chocolate Bar Discoveries

Back for Valentine's Day my hubby gave me three bars of chocolate I had not eaten before. This is NOT a feature review, it won't be nearly as detailed. This is merely my simple opinions of the bars that he gave me.


First up, is Alter Eco's Dark Quinoa bar with "60% cocoa" and toasted quinoa.  I liked it, it made me think of the Crunch bar that I grew up eating but much darker and actually more crispy. Now remember that I like very dark and if I didn't know this was 60% I'd guess closer to 70%; flavor of chocolate is a factor of many things not just cocoa or cacao percentage.


The second bar was Lily's 70% Extra Dark Chocolate bar. The label proclaims that is it sugar free, made with Stevia, that it is vegan (duh, dark chocolate?), and non GMO. The big deal for me is the fewer calories, 170 per half bar. If it sucks, who cares how many calories it has, right? Note the slightly gray color of the bar? That probably means that the shop where my husband found this wasn't keep it temperature controlled well enough, that might be fat bloom. It had a slightly grainy texture to it and wasn't sweet at all though there was a weird aftertaste... yeah, not a big success this one but I don't know how much of that to blame on the chocolate maker or the store that sold it.


The third bar my hubby gave was from a company whose chocolate I have really liked in the past but at a higher cacao level than I have tried before. This Divine 85% Dark Chocolate is a 3.5 oz bar, 10 pieces = 1 serving and it is not a low calorie treat clocking in at 260 (it did warn us on the wrapper that it was "Exquisitely Rich" so I'm not surprised! Oddly it didn't have much of a scent but it had a surprisingly smooth flavor that had both a touch of bitter and sweet about it. I really liked it though I bet I might like it at 80-82% better. My hubby can get me more Divine bars in the future!


Has your husband or wife or lover or just you ever eaten any of these bars? What did you think about them? Leave a comment and let me know!

Comments

Emilie said…
Thank you for covering a product with Stevia. I don't like it, but it is hard to find out if it is worth trying lower calorie chocolates. I agree: if it doesn't taste good, it isn't worth even a small number of calories!
I just wish the bar itself hadn't had bloom on it so I could determine if it was the Stevia or that causing the aftertaste. I know a lot of folks claim sugar or fat bloom doesn't affect the taste or texture but they are WRONG!