Happy National Gelato Day 2017!

In July we like to look at frozen treats but when companies and brands aren't interested we just keep bringing you other products. While today is National Gelato Day, I'm bringing you that tasty treat in a more solid form with two flavors from TCHO, a brand we've been honored to test and write several times over the years. The two flavors are Mint Chip Gelato and Toffee + Sea Salt. These are flavors we have not looked at before on this blog, I double checked before getting them. I got these flavors at my local Super Target using two Free coupons I was sent from TCHO just because as part of a promotion; this feature article will be a surprise to them. Obviously since this article is a surprise to the brand, no other form of compensation was received.

Since it is National Gelato Day we'll look at the Mint Chip Gelato Bar first. This is a 64% cacao bar that weighs 2.5 oz or 70 grams. It clocks in at 420 calories. Even though it is dark chocolate there is milk and cream from the "freeze dried gelato" in it. It also has organic dark chocolate made of cacao beans and cocoa butter -- the "beans" ingredient is odd, usually I see chocolate liquor or chocolate mass isted. When I unwrapped it there was a gold foil inside wrapper as well under the green paper. The bar as you can see has visible white pieces which must be the gelato itself. As with all of the TCHO bars of this size, the brand logo takes up two squares in what would otherwise be a nine square bar. The only fragrance was the darker chocolate however. The bar made no sound with a bite but there was a soft crunch with each chew. The first and dominant flavor is the dark chocolate, very smooth, then a slightly creamy and mint flavor. The mint flavor and cooling sensation built up with each chew but never overpowered the chocolate. I really liked it and my co-tester liked it a lot as well.

The Toffee + Sea Salt Bar is a milk chocolate bar because it has whole milk powder and non-fat milk powder but don't let that fool you because the label also says 53% cacao. This contains cacao beans and cocoa butter. This also has soy, rice syrup, and coconut oil in case you have allergies to any of those ingredients. As you can see in the photo, compared to the previous bar in this feature the toffee pieces are very small and sparse. The paper wrapper has a very good look to it with the brown nicely showing off mounts of toffee and a little chocolate but let's see if the toffee is the dominant flavor. The fragrance is very light chocolate with a hint of something but it isn't definitively buttery or salty or sweet. The pieces of the bar break apart with a soft snap. There are more pieces of toffee than the cross sections show because every bite is crunchy. The initial flavor is a smooth slightly creamy chocolate followed by a little butter and an increasing amount of saltiness before a buttery tang becomes the final flavor. This is good but I was expecting less salt and more chocolate even though the photo clearly showed me to expect what I got.

So tell me, what new flavors of TCHO have you tried recently? Have you had these two flavors?