Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk - Coconut Rendezvous

Whatever else the US may be famous for, it is certainly not chocolate. The only American chocolate brand that I have read about with any consistency over these months of chocolate blogging is Ghirardelli. And it is unsurprising because the company apparently has a Lindt & Sprungli connection ¹. The brand is named after founder Domenico Ghirardelli, an Italian chocolatier. Having been established in 1852, it is America's second oldest brand (the oldest being Baker's Chocolate). It is also among the few brands in the world that control the bean-to-bar aspects of production.

I was naturally excited to find it at a specialty food store in Chembur, Mumbai. However, they had only a couple of variations and I had to bring back a milk chocolate bar. So my first Ghirardelli experience was to be with Gourmet Milk Coconut Rendezvous.

Once the card wrapper is opened, one sees a lovely light golden foil embossed with the Ghirardelli brand name. The chocolate bar is also branded with the Ghirardelli logo, that has a quintessentially American eagle in it. The chocolate bar has a sweet aroma and I was afraid it might be a little too sweet by the time it reached my palate. And right I was. The chocolate turned out to be disappointingly sweet; even for a milk chocolate. I might as well be drinking Milkmaid.

That said, the chocolate is exceptionally smooth and has a lovely, creamy texture. The coconut adds texture, but I found it dry and it did not do much for me in terms of flavour. For example, I'll think of Bounty first when someone says coconut chocolate and not Ghirardelli Coconut Rendezvous. Milk chocolate lovers may like it, but it isn't worth spending INR 490 for a 100 g bar.

I'm eager to try Ghirardelli's dark chocolate offerings, but I'm definitely never buying this again.


RATING: 2.5/5

Baking Magic, Khargar, Navi Mumbai

The joy of chocolates apart, Chocosophy is beginning to get sweet new acquaintances into my life. I got in touch with Baking Magic through my dear friend, Reema, and was asked to come over and review the place. Although Khargar was far and I did curse the traffic on my way there, my tryst with Baking Magic was worth all my time and effort.

L-R: Dorothy, Yuga Sreejeev and Nalini Sreejeev

Baking Magic, a cafe & bakery in Khargar, Navi Mumbai, is the kind of place where people go for a quick bite or to satisfy their sweet cravings. The business is a joint venture by Nalini Sreejeev and her partner, Manju Daryanani. It started out as a hobby for the two women, but as orders grew, they decided to turn it into a full-fledged business. The first outlet was opened in Bandra in 2007. They eventually moved to Seawoods in Navi Mumbai and finally to Khargar, where they are currently located. Daryanani moved to Dubai in due course, where she runs a sister outlet called Cake Story. In Mumbai, Sreejeev not only handles the business, but even does some baking firsthand. She is, of course, helped by her lovely daughter Yuga, who helped design the space and looks after some of the marketing. A design student, Yuga also designed the cafe's lovely logo.

The pastry showcase and the wall shelves with breads

I was met by these lovely people at the cafe and then some wonderful sights. A shelf full of desserts greets a customer up front, to the left are shelves of breads and savouries and to the right are specimens of cutomised cakes and boxes of chocolates. I couldn't help but admire the handiwork on the cakes, imagining the possibilities. There were wedding cakes, baby shower cakes, themed birthday cakes, festival cakes... you name it!

Custom and themed cakes

These cakes are the superstars of Bakin Magic's repertoire, but Sreejeev also takes up a lot of corporate orders for chocolate. They've delivered to companies like Jet, Wipro, and Ernst & Young among others. They also make custom chocolates for private events (in bulk orders, obviously). A specimen made for a bridal shower is seen here. Inventiveness is the key word for Nalini and her peers at Baking Magic.

Custom chocolates

After a while came the difficult task of choosing goodies for the review. Trust me, a chocolate reviewer's job can be a hard one when it comes to making choices. Undecided, I threw down the gauntlet to Nalini and Yuga and asked them to pick their bests for me. Over a cup of some lovely hazelnut coffee (a Baking Magic specialty), and a tasty chicken roll, they suggested I try their Chocolate Cup Mango Mousse, the Chocolate Overload Pastry, Chocolate Waffle and Chocolate tarts.

The Chocolate Cup Mango Mousse was one of the most interesting-looking things on the menu, so I went for it first. The mango mousse is served delicate rose-shaped chocolate cups, which need to be inverted to be served. Interestingly enough, Baking Magic serves only eggless desserts at the cafe. They include eggs in their recipes only if a custom order so specifies. The mousse was quite fluffy and delicious by itself, but with the chocolate, it acquired a different, more brilliant personality. 'Embellished' with edible glitter, the mango mousse-filled chocolate rose makes for a very tempting dessert.

Mango mousse in chocolate cup

Next up was the Chocolate Overload, a chocolate pastry true to its name. Made from alternating layers of chocolate cake, chocolate cream and chocolate icing and topped with chocolate bars like Kit Kat and 5 Star, this one sure is the right indulgence for chocoholics like me. Soft textures and rich chocolaty flavours make this one great dessert.

Chocolate overload

I was almost dying of overeating at this point when Nalini suggested I try their chocolate waffles. And who can say no to chocolate waffles? Since the chefs had left for the day, Nalini herself whipped up a waffle for me and boy, was it lovely! Filled in with chocolate and topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, the waffle was a decadent treat. The waffle itself was a tad thick (I like mine much thinner), but when there is so much chocolate to go with it, who cares?

Chocolate waffle

Since I was almost dead from a chocolate OD, I decided to take the chocolate tarts home rather than stuffing my face some more. When I tried them later, I found the chocolate filling to be creamy and not-too-sweet and the tart crust nicely crumbly. I was one happy girl at the end of the day. :)

Baking Magic is making magic with its baked goodies and confections in Khargar and if you are any place near, it's a must-go-to place. Chocosopher recommends.

RATING: 3/5

Baking Magic

Shop no.9, Regency Gardens, 

Sector 6, Kharghar, 

Navi Mumbai

9819819932 

9769619932

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BakingMagic

Hot dark chocolate at Le Cafe, Chembur

Finally! A decent cup of hot chocolate.

After my disastrous run at Costa Coffee (where both the hot chocolate and the Beglian Chocolate Frappe suck) and at The Chocolate Room, where the hot chilli-infused chocolate is just so, I was beginning to lose hope. Can no one make a decent cup of hot chocolate, I asked of God. And the answer lay right in my neighbourhood! Since the hotel Jewel of Chembur opened, all their F&B spaces have been talked nd written about. I frequent their pub, Astrix, but I'd never tried their restaurant, Moksha or cafe, Le Cafe... until today.

The pretty cafe overlooks the busy station road and has a lovely ambiance. I settled in with a friend at a cozy corner table and without thinking twice, ordered the hot 'dark' chocolate. I had to put this 'famous' cafe to the chocolate beverage test, given my bad experience with them so far. A cup of steaming hot chocolate was presented to me in some time with a 'Facebook F' dusted on it. Why it was written in the reverse is anyone's guess.

I didn't care really, as long as the hot chocolate was good. I took my first sip and baby, I was in love! The beverage went down my throat smoothly, its dark and sweet flavours warming my heart more than anything. I sipped on gleefully while my friend tried to suppress his amusement at my orgasmic expressions. But I couldn't care less. I HAD FINALLY FOUND A GOOD CUPPA HOT CHOCOLATE!

Past the froth, the hot chocolate looked deliciously dark and I should have remembered to ask the cafe what drinking chocolate they use. I'm fairly sure it was drinking chocolate and not a melted chocolate-milk infusion. It still was very rich and delish. However, I have to admit, it started tasting extremely sweet halfway through the cup. Not that it stopped me from downing it wholly! This monsoon, you must have this lovely hot dark chocolate from Le Cafe, if you're in Chembur and need some heart warming.

RATING: 4/5

 

Parle Golden Arcs Choco Filled Rolls

This curiously unbranded product has been in the market for a while now and thanks to its promoted page on Facebook, has a great fan following. What I want to know is why Parle doesn't want its name stated clearly on the packet. It may have to do with Parle's primary positioning as a 'affordable confectioneries' brand, and Golden Arcs doesn't exactly fall in that category. Although at INR 35 for a 150 g pack is cheap, it is definitely not in the Parle G category - a product most associated with Parle.

Golden Arcs obviously wants to compete with the chocolate-filled cookie category, which has become very popular lately, with products such as Sunfeast's Choco Fills entering the market. Golden Arcs is much more competitively priced and will offer stiff competition to high priced products in the segment. Not to forget, it offers a number of fruit flavoured varieties, as opposed to the competition that offers only chocolate.

As for quality, they aren't far behind, though the packaging is a little sloppy. The plastic tray inside my pack was breaking apart, as you can see in the picture above. But the pack is designed well and looks premium.

The product itself is also decent, shaped square with a crunchy and not-too-dense cookie exterior. The inside is filled with gooey chocolate, which is rather sweet to taste. But the biscuit and chocolate come together well and make for a decent enough product. While Parle's Golden Arcs aren't quite at par with Choco Fills, their pricing point is their winner. Chocosophy recommends!

RATING: 3/5

Lindt Excellence Dark - A Touch of Sea Salt

When I started this blog, I liked Lindt the best. Seven months and nearly a 100 posts later, I still like Lindt the best. What I love about Lindt, as a brand, is their inventiveness with flavours and willingness to push the boundaries. Sure, there are other brands out there that experiment with flavours, but few do it as successfully as Lindt. The last brand I was really impressed by was Elizabeth Shaw, which equalled Lindt's standards of excellence. But brands like Elizabeth Shaw are difficult to find in India, and Lindt has to be the go-to brand when one is seeking truly fine chocolates in India.

Because Lindt is so easy to get in local Indian markets, one can get the most recent flavours released in the international market. I spotted a pack of Lindt Dark chocolate - with A Touch of Sea Salt not long ago and was most fascinated. Yes, chocolates with salted caramel have been around for a while, but I've not seen any other brand with this kind of flavour. A pack was duly bought and brought home. Between reviews, I had to keep this pack in the fridge for a little while, which resulted in a fat bloom (the whitish layer you see on the bar in the pictures), much to my disappointment. Even after I left it out for a while, the lovely dark colour did not return.

But given that the chocolate has only 47% cocoa solids, one shouldn't perhaps expect too dark a colour. But because fat or sugar bloom does not affect the taste of the chocolate, I didn't fret too much. The chocolate has a beautiful rich aroma, although the chocolate is not as rich as its higher cocoa ratio cousins. Left on the tongue, the chocolate melts beautifully, releasing its semi-sweetness and eventually a salty flavour from the salt crystals embedded within.

It's hard to explain how salt and sugar complement each other so nicely, and you had best experience it yourself. That said, I wouldn't rate it as highly as a Lindt Dark Chilli Chocolate or a Lindt Dark Wasabi Chocolate bar. Priced at INR 235 for a 100 g bar, it isn't all that expensive and if good quality dark chocolate is what you want, Lindt is your best bet.

RATING: 3.75/5

Win Win Magic Crunch chocolate-filled corn snack

I think I'm convinced that Gujju businessmen are demi gods. Name it and their stores have it. Not necessarily greatthings, but yes, allthings. I chanced upon a product by a Malaysian company called Win Win Food Industries, written like this ---> Win 2. It is a corn snack with a chocolate filling called Magic Crunch. Win Win Foods makes a range of snacks and confectioneries, ranging from bakes potato crisps to biscuits & cookies, to flavoured breads. The company's products have many credentials including being No GMO (genetically-modified organisms), Halal certified, vegetarian and ISO certified. But that's no guarantee for taste, eh?

Yup, in my experience as a chocolate reviewer, all Malaysian chocolate products have been consistently crappy. And Magic Crunch Corn Snack with Chocolate Filling is no exception. Magic Crunch has another better looking variation - a dark snack with vanilla filling, but I'm guessing that's not great either.

The outer 'puff' is crunchy but oddly salty, which does not in any way complement the chocolate filling inside.   Placing salt and sugar in one confection requires the expertise of say, a Lindt chocolatier (Watch out for the review of Lindt Dark with a touch of Sea Salt!). The chocolate too is meagre and of a decidedly under average quality. In short, these chocolate-filled corn snacks suck.

A pack of 75 g costs INR 45 and is definitely not on the Chocosopher's recommended list. If chocolate-filled snacks is what you like, our homegrown Cadbury Bytes are a much better bet, though they might not be as healthy as a corn-based snack.

RATING: 2/5

Nestle Bono Chocolate Biscuit

This one seems to have travelled all the way from Brasil to my local supermarket and to my kitchen and into my mouth. And boy, what a wasted trip! I picked up a pack of Nestle Bono impressed by the fancy packaging, and also because I haven't reviewed imported chocolate biscuits in a while. And what a pity that Nestle, Brasil should dent the brand's image with this sorry product.

So, beneath this pretty pack are some of the lousiest chocolate sandwich biscuits I've reviewed. The cookie is overdone, and that makes it taste slightly burnt. It might be a faulty batch, but that's just too bad. One would expect stringent quality control from a brand this big. 

Coming to the cream, there's very little of it in every sandwich. The layer of dark-ish chocolate is so thin in the sandwich that the taste hardly registers. So I did what all good children should do; licked the cream straight off the cookie and that didn't impress me much either. A complete waste for my INR 50 for a 200 g pack. So, here's rating it poorly for taste, value for money and quality.

RATING: 1.5/5

Choco Swiss Cacao Premium Dark Chocolate

I came across this random chocolate called Cacao by an Indian brand, curiously named Choco Swiss at Landmark (Andheri), Mumbai. It had a curious-er website name that has a missing 'S' - www.chocoswis.com. No matter how dubious it all sounded, it was a new name and it had the impossible-to-resist deal of Buy 1, Get 1 Free. So, the Chocosopher had to give in.

Since the brand is completely home grown, with a Delhi-based company called Buttercup Confectionery making them, this 'misuse' of nomenclature didn't sit well with me. I was prepared to trash it, but I was surprised. The product wasn't half as bad. In fact, I was surprised that it even had a website. And if the website is to be believed, they supply chocolates to multinational corporations such as American Express, Standard Chartered Bank, Jet Airways, Blue Dart, Hutch, Grasim and IBM among others as part of their corporate chocolate gifting solutions.

The box quality was average, but the gold Egyptian design on a brown casing made it look quite lovely. One could easily ignore the juvenile name chosen for the product. Inside, uniquely enough, a plastic wrapper contained a foil-wrapped bar. The dark brown foil printed with the brand name gave way to a lovely bar of plain dark chocolate. Although the cocoa percent is not mentioned in the pack, I'd peg it at around 60%, going by its semi sweet taste. The texture was smooth, thanks to the cocoa butter it contains.

The quality is a notch higher than most Indian dark chocolates; although it might compare well with say, a Bournville. Given that plain semi sweet dark chocolates that are affordable are very difficult to get among Indian brands, Choco Swiss is a great find. Although this was a promo pack priced at INR 100 for two packs of 60 g, I daresay single packs will be priced around INR 50. I'd say they are worth it.


RATING: 3.5/5

Gold Standard Extreme Milk Chocolate Whey Protein

Page after web page has been written about the quality and performance of Gold Standard Whey Proteins, and I am a noob as far as fitness nutrition goes. But I feel compelled to write this review simply because of the chocolate angle.

I've been working out religiously for over a year now and I much prefer weight training to cardio (actually, I hate cardio). And since my trainer could not get me to do cardio or diet with any seriousness, he gently pushed me towards the path of protein supplements. I was very skeptical like all beginners, wondering if the supplements would bulk me up. But my trainer assured me that all it would do is build muscle quickly, thus helping me raise my metabolism and burn fat. There was also the question of price; I didn't feel very comfortable investing 6K on something I wasn't very sure about. 

Gold Standard is a product of American company, Optimum Nutrition Inc. (better known as ON), which, in turn, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Glanbia - a leading international cheese and nutritional ingredients group. After reading up a little about it online, I bought a 5 kg jar of Gold Standard Extreme Milk Chocolate Whey Protein, wanting to see what the fuss was all about. The world's best-selling whey couldn't be bad, eh?

I picked the Extreme Milk Chocolate flavour as the safest bet, not knowing what to expect of a protein supplement. But Gold Standard has more than 24 flavours, including unconventional ones like rocky road, root beer float, vanilla chai, and eggnog, besides many fruity flavours. There are variations in chocolate, like chocolate creme, chocolate malt, chocolate mint, double rich chocolate, and mocha cappuccino.

The powder is of a fine flour-like consistency, and the jar has a measuring scoop to help you define portions. A heaped scoop is about 30 g and considered the ideal portion size, especially after a heavy workout. One can have it either with water or milk (preferably low-fat); I've been told to have with with water to minimise fat intake. The powder mixes easily with both water or milk, provided you use a shaker. The label on the jar says it can be mixed well with a spoon too, but I've found it rather difficult.

When mixed only with water, the concoction looks dark brown and is thick, chocolaty, and rather sweet. It definitely tastes better with milk, like a chocolate milk shake would. It is a little creamy and is much more palatable than the water solution. However, one gets used to the water mix as well, due to the overall good taste of the product. From what I read on the Internet, I should find it difficult to appreciate other cheaper brands because I've started with what most call the best in the market. I reckon it is.


RATING 4/5

Elizabeth Shaw Blackberry & Ginger Dark Chocolate

Trust me, even chocolate tasting and reviewing can seem tiresome sometimes, especially if bad chocolates keep coming your way. I've had quite a bad run in the last few weeks and I needed something of Elizabeth Shaw's level to restore my faith in the greatness of chocolate.

The brand has a (slightly convoluted) legacy of nearly 100 years, started by one Elizabeth around the 1930s. The chocolate lover and maker christened her brand Elizabeth Shaw combining her name and her husband's old employer (a chocolate manufacturer). In 1968, her company was sold to a famous Bristol factory that had opened in 1881. The company has changed many hands over the last century, and its 105-year old factory was shut and the facility moved to mainland Europe in 2006. It is currently owned by a Nowegian company called Imagine Capital.

I saw these beauties (this, and an Almond & Pear dark chocolate bar by the same brand) at Food Fantasy, a specialty foods store in Chembur, Mumbai and HAD to pick them up.The sophisticated card paper-like packaging material and classy design were unmissable. I especially like the satin ribbon embossing on the upper left of the pack. Pretty, no? And who could say nay to the very unusual flavour combination of blackberry and ginger?

Wrapped in silver foil, these aromatic dark chocolate (57% min.) bars are rich all the way. See their lovely, glossy finish? That's one way to determine the smoothness of a chocolate bar even without tasting it. They also smell absolutely gorgeous, and you can tell what will go into your mouth next will be of superior quality.

The chocolate itself is one of the richest I've tasted in a while. It is intense and so flavourful that even one square satisfies your taste buds. There are very tiny candied bits of blackberry almost indiscernible ginger granules that come together in a harmonious flavour. The melt-in-you-mouth chocolate derives sweetness from the blackberry and there is a warm aftertaste from the ginger. The taste lingers in your mouth long after you've eaten the chocolate. It is smooth as smooth can be, given ingredients like cocoa butter and butter fat. In short, it's BLOODY LOVELY, and worth the INR 300 you pay for a 100 g pack! Chocosophy highly recommends it not only for its quality but also for its support of responsible cocoa farming. Elizabeth Shaw sources its cocoa from the Quality Cocoa for a Better Life program.


RATING 5/5