Double-Duty Gift from Dagoba Chocolate

As an Amazon Vine reviewer I sometimes get to test out cookbooks or chocolate products sent to me to write a review about on Amazon.com. When that happens, I like to share what I've discovered with all of you. I thought before Valentine's Day you might find this option from Dagoba very useful for your beloved. Ha! Did the title misled you?This glass jar looks a lot like cookie or candy jar with a thick and lid made of heavy transparent glass. Mine came with a brown ribbon wrapper but imagine how easy it would be switch out the ribbon for any season or with your beloved favorite color(s). It contains 15.8 oz of individually wrapped pieces of Dagoba chocolate in four varieties; 4 pieces conveniently equal one serving of 180 calories. Let's open this up and see what is inside this Dagoba Assortment Gift Jar. Not other compensation was received for this review.

Milk Chocolate comes in creamy light tan wrapper. The chocolate is 37% cacao which might be a bit dark for some of you. 14 of these came in this gift jar. In this photo you see the basic bar -- "Dagoba" inscribed on the top, angled etched lines around it. This bar has a surprisingly strong cocoa fragrance for a milk chocolate. The chocolate is deep brown and very shiny. Taking a bite makes a soft snapping soft. The first flavor is a bit of vanilla that blends quickly into a creamy chocolate that melts and coats my mouth as I chew. Letting a bite simply melt in my mouth doesn't affect the flavor that much though the coating my tongue gets lets that flavor linger longer.

Lavender Blueberry is in light bluish purple wrappers and has 59% cacao. This gift jar had 12 pieces of this variety. This has a definite lavender scent when I bring the piece to my nose; it also has a good cocoa fragrance. In the photo I hope you can see two lumps that I bet are the cacao nibs but I hope there are more than two; sadly, no. This bar makes a sharper snap than the milk chocolate did when I take a bite. I get a strong chocolate flavor with a light lavender that builds up with each bite.  Oddly when I finally encounter a cacao nib it adds little crunch but it does increase the chocolate flavor quite a bit. I wish this had more nibs in it!

The dark blue/purple wrappers high the New Moon variety of Dagoba at 74% cacao. 13 pieces of this type of Dagoba Organic Chocolate came in this particular gift jar. The scent is slightly darker but not as much as I would expect but then the milk chocolate smelled darker than I had been expecting, too. Oddly this also makes a very soft soft when I take a bite. At first the chocolate is very light, then it builds up with each chew and I detect an almost pear like flavor under the chocolate. While I wouldn't say this was bitter, some of you might think that it was. It did make my mouth a bit dry, which can happen with dark chocolate but not in any annoying way. I really liked this particularly when it helped curb a developing headache the day I tested it.

Finally the brownish orange wrapper holds another 74% cacao called Xocolatl which has chilies and cacao nibs as well. 12 pieces of this variety were in this gift jar. You probably can't see it in my photo, but like the Lavender piece, the back of this shows some cacao nibs, these even smaller. This smell much like the New Moon bar but it has a hint of heat to the fragrance... I hope it isn't too hot for me. It makes a nice snap when I take a bite and immediately I get a bit of crunchiness which is what the lavender one needed. The heat builds up slowly but sadly it also ends up burying the chocolate flavor  to a higher degree than I had hoped. I'd suggest less chilies and more nibs for this one as well.

In terms of flavors, I thought this Dagoba Assortment Gift Jar was a mixed bag personally but there is a lot of variety here so if this sounds like something your beloved would like, it for them. These and every one of these little bars are 0.32 oz and measure 1 5/8th inch square that is 1/8th inch thick. All of these chocolates are gluten free (who puts gluten in chocolate?) and USDA Organic and Rainforest Alliance Certified on their wrappers. They source their cocoa beans from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Tanzania. I've seen them in our local Kroger and organic food stores but these came from Amazon. If you follow our links to order, you'll not only be getting chocolate but helping The Chocolate Cult through the affiliate product on Amazon.com. Other than the sample product, no other compensation was received in exchange for honest reviews on Amazon.com; this review is a free bonus for Dagoba.