Steampunk Chocolate?

June 14 is International Steampunk Day in honor of H.G. Wells's birthday. Many steampunk enthusiasts see his work an inspiration to their creativity in the form of costuming, writing, roleplaying, and yes, even chocolate.  One of our volunteers, the Fruit Acolyte, Rene, here on The Chocolate Cult found a company that makes steampunk items out of chocolate.  They are called Sweet Steam and today we'd like to talk about them.

Rene, our Fruit Acolyte, gave me a bag of three Dark Chocolatey Cogs that I shared with another volunteer to try out. They came in three different color sheens but were identical in terms of shape and size. While the package didn't say how much there was, my kitchen calculated 1.95oz of the chocolate. All three cogs smelled identical and there is nothing in the ingredients list that suggests they will be different flavors. These are only chocolate in that they use cocoa processed with alkali but they also have hydrogenated palm kernel oil and artificial flavors as two ingredients that make me unhappy -- neither are necessary and the first could be harmful frankly. The reddish cog does not taste dark at all nor does it taste creamy; it is very sweet with a strong vanilla flavor which makes sense given the company's name but not so much for something "dark."  The light purplish hue cog has a bit less of sweet and vanilla flavors but is still not very "dark" in flavor.  The grayish cog has the least sweet flavor and the strongest vanilla but still isn't "dark."

It was so very nice of Rene to get these for me at the convention she attended but overall I wasn't impressed. I don't think we help Steampunk (or any other genre) nor do we help Chocolate when we buy poor quality products.