Chocion Chocolate Truffle Bars

Today, in honor of "National Truffle Day," we are going to reveal four chocolate truffle bars from Chocion. This first photo is their old wrapper style; I'll show you the new wrapper style at the end of this post so please make sure you read this article all of the way through.  Since I received these samples at different times and some were the same flavors in different wrappers, a different number of people tested the bars; I'll noted how many people tested in the body of this article. Each bar is 70g and measures 2.5 X 4.5 inches so a great size of bar as well though not the standard candy bar size. We tested all of the bars well before their "best by" dates but I thought it was a good feature now near a fun food holiday. I also wanted to highlight how they had changed their wrappers because such changes to products does not mean the product itself changes as is the case here.

We'll start off with least cacao content and build in in our feature article today starting with the Chocion "Finest White Chocolate Bar with Raspberry Trufflefilling." This came in both original gold and new wrapper so a total of six people tried this bar. You want to start a fight about chocolate, the only thing you need is to say "white chocolate" --- people will argue that it is or is not chocolate and over the years I've discovered the people vary in terms of what they describe in their testing experiences the most with white chocolate. I think this is because white chocolate allows any extra filling or flavors to come out most strongly; you don't like that extra flavor, you won't like the bar. In fact of the five people who tested this for me, three would recommend it but two would not.

The "Champagner Trüffel" bar which is a milk chocolate of 38% was only sent to us in the new wrapper style. Four testers tried this bar and collectively they found it had a solid milk chocolate scent; two thought it also had a white wine like fragrance as well. The bar was much softer than they thought and the inside was very smooth, with a hint of almost bubbles. The flavors blended well with an uptick of more chocolate at the end. It melted well in their mouths and even onto fingertips if they held it for a few moments. All four testers would recommend this bar, one suggests that you pair it with Brut and it would bring out the champagne even more.

The "Premium Milk Chocolate Bar with Strawberry Trufflefilling" we sampled came in both the original gold and the new wrapper design meaning that six people tried this bar. We both liked this bar a good deal. It had a strong cocoa scent with a light strawberry fragrance. When we took a bite it made a soft crunch and we discovered a darker inside. It begins strong in chocolate flavor but over each chew gets sweeter then turns more chocolatey again making this a three level taste experience. I think we each would have been happy to have our own bar but we do practice Moderation here on The Chocolate Cult

The 62% "Finest Dark Chocolate with amarena-cherry-cream truffle" was sent with the new wrapper style so four testers examined this. This split our team of testers into 2 vs 2 in terms of recommending it. Two did not like it for the very reasons the other two did -- the cherry flavor is very strong and sweet. They did all like the darker chocolate flavor and found that it had a very strong cherry scent. Breaking off or biting off a piece made a loud snap. The external coat of 62% chocolate was over a lighter, softer center. The sweet cherry flavor reminded the group of cherry cordials complete with an alcohol burn to it that was missing in the other bars. If you like cherry cordials the groups says "give it a try" but if you don't, stay away.

Finally the "Premium Dark Chocolate Truffle Bar with Cherry Trufflefilling" in the original gold wrapper has 80% cacao so this is a very dark bar indeed. Two of us tested this bar and sadly I could not find this on the website any more. The fragrance is strongly chocolate and nothing else. Taking a bite made a fairly loud sound and we discovered a slightly lighter chocolate inside which had a light cherry flavor which built with each chew. Pieces melted quickly in our mouths blending the two flavors perfectly. Of the four bars the two of us tried that weekend, this was our favorite hands down. The good folks at Chocion explained why some flavors might not show up on their website: All chocolates are still available, the 80%Amarena Cherry as well. But sometimes we take some chocolates out of our onlinestore, because we produce every bar fresh. So if one customer orders 1 chocolate each, it makes it very hard for us. All flavours and mixings are possible. We even make 99%dark chocolate.
So a customer can choose any flavor and any chocolate type and we produce it fresh, starting with 5 bars. Its very difficult to show this in our shop. As soon as they get in contact with us, we explain exactly what we can do. its always good to write us. A lot is possible. So drop them an email or call them if you are interested in a flavor that you don't see on their website.

Chocion's chocolate -- white, milk, dark -- is made with basic ingredients (sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter) for the outer shells. The truffle centers varied according to the flavor and amount of alcohol. These do have soy lecithin in case that is an allergen for you. If alcohol is something you don't like, you shouldn't try these even though I suspect the actual kick from alcohol is mostly gone after the processing for the truffle centers. The new bars are difficult to compare to the previous since they only overlapped in the case of the white chocolate raspberry but that one received the same split of opinions. Personally I really like Chocion's chocolates even though I'm not into alcohol very much.

More options from Chocion, a lovely German Chocolate company with a good philosophy to back up their quality chocolate. In this photo you can see the new white label with the mesoamerican designs. I recently learned that this new label design has a connection to famous contemporary Austrian artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000). The owner of Chocion told me: I am a big fan of his work and political liberal view. So I asked my designers to put a little hundertwasser in my packaging. This connection back to both mesoamerican history and contemporary art makes these labels seem even cooler, don't you agree?

The above review is our most complicated yet -- pulled from two separate testing periods with six people total. The Web makes it possible to combine these reviews in one single form for you all. I hope if you've had any of these trufflebars from Chocion that you leave a comment and let us know what you thought. Please do go and check out Chocion.

Comments

elizabeth said…
I love the packaging on these bars!
The new wrapper? Yeah, I think it is both elegant but also references the history. As we looked at last month, Chocion has a good chocolate history section on their website, too, so the wrapper connects well to what they are trying to do in terms of education.