Peanut Butter Cups for Halloween

Another independent consult for a larger chocolate company is Helen Beauregard who represents Xocai, a brand of chocolate that focuses on the health claims about our Sacrament Substance.  Helene is planning to give these individual peanut cups out for Halloween and wanted us to know about them and give us the opportunity to review them and tell you all about them, Sisters and Brothers. We cannot truly assess the health claims, we do not have the facilities to do so but you have the links to her cite so you can check out the health claims yourself.

She sent us a dozen of these Xocai peanut butter cups so we were able to share it with several volunteers and Acolytes in The Chocolate Cult.  These are 1.75 inches across on the top, almost 0.5 inches thick, and are simply wrapped in the foil, no unnecessary paper cups.  When you unwrap one you get an immediate roasted peanut scent with an undertone of milk chocolate.  The chocolate is cool but a bit waxy in my fingertips.  The first bite makes a soft snap.  A light chocolate is the first flavor and then a very roasted, lightly salted peanut favor.  The peanut flavor is the dominant flavor and it is not too creamy nor too sweet.  The chocolate is fine but it can't honestly compete with the peanut butter.  If it were darker, less milk and less sugar, then it stand up well.  For The Chocolate Cult then, these fall short of what we want from any product with chocolate.

There is both cocoa butter and chocolate liquor in these along with some other ingredients I'm unsure of: Butteroil, Inulin, and XoVita. There is also whey protein that I have seen before in chocolate products but the standard added sugar, milk powder, soy, and so forth.  Are these added titled ingredients what is supposed to make this healthier than other peanut butter cups?  While we've reviewed other Xocai products in the past I don't think I looked into these ingredients before so why not do it now, huh?  Even though I can't determine the health claims, I can try to figure out what those three ingredients are.  XoVita is a blend of cocoa, acai, and blueberry powders.  Inulin is a starch from plants that WebMD tells me it might have positive effects on blood fats.  Butteroil is a dairy product created from butter when you remove the moisture and the nonfat milk solids; it controls fat bloom in chocolate that can be created with varying degrees of temperatures during storage where the chocolate melts and then re-solidifies.

The good thing about the Xocai peanut butter cups is that they are not specific to Halloween in any way. You can check out Helen's website and give them and other products a try whenever you want.  For our Halloween Treat Challenge though this means that they simply won't stand up well to more creepy holiday specific products.  We've reviewed other Xocai products in the past so please do look for those articles here and decide for yourself if you'd like to give them a try.