The Cocoa Trees, Mumbai

Focus Network Agencies (FNA), the Singapore based branded consumer lifestyle group, has partnered with Cosmo Fine Foods Pvt. Ltd., an Indian organization offering the widest range of international chocolate brands, to launch the boutique store range, The Cocoa Trees in India. The Cocoa Trees is a retail concept store which offers the widest range of international brands under its umbrella. Conceptualized in 2000, it has now grown into a retail chain of 36 boutiques across Asia with presence in China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The Cocoa Trees in India are currently in the cities of Mumbai, Pune and Goa. In Mumbai, the first store was opened at Breach Candy in 2011, and they have recently expanded with two new stores - in Nature's Basket, Bandra and at R City Mall, Ghatkopar. When I was invited to check out their new outlets, I felt exactly like Charlie must have in the chocolate factory. Upon entering the Nature's Basket outlet in Bandra, one is greeting with these huge banners to the left, which announce the presence of a dedicated chocolate section in the basement.

Down a flight of stairs, one sees gift baskets of chocolate things and exclusive shelves of mostly imported chocolate, but these are Nature's Basket properties.

The Cocoa Trees is bright section up front and unmistakable with its happy yellow interiors. Row upon row of the world's best chocolates is quite enough to drive a chocolate aficionado like me mad. In a perfect dream, I would have unlimited money and a super sized shopping cart inside The Cocoa Trees! :)

The Cocoa Trees stocks the best international and indigenous brands including Anthon Berg, Cadbury, Celebrations, Chupa Chups, Cote d’Or, Daim, Droste, Duc d’O, Fazer, Ferrero, , Gavottes, Goldkenn, Haribo, Hawaiian Host, Hershey’s, Jelly Belly, Jules Destrooper, Kagi, Kinder, Lorenz, M&M’s, Maltesers, Mars, Mentos, Merci, Milka, Ritter Sport, Snickers, Starburst, Storz, Swiss Delice, Taveners, The Belgian, Tic Tac, Toblerone. The Cocoa Trees also stocks rare brands like Frey, which are exclusively licensed to be sold only at their stores. Besides, new brands like Zaini which have all Disney characters in their edd-shaped chocolates, have been added.

I saw these cute Zaini chocolate boxes shaped like the Disney character, Lightning Mc Queen from the movie Cars and thought, THIS! my 3-year-old will love! Other kiddy touches like the Chupa Chups lillipop stand with giant lollipop-shaped containers, teddies holding candy and M & M stands shaped like their popular animated avatars make the store an altogether delightful place for young customers.

But there are plenty of things to get not so young customers like me excited too. For example, some unbelievable flavours like the Frey Lemon Pepper Dark chocolate! Lemon Pepper? But that's what one puts in their soup, right? I HAD to pick a bar up. Review will be up soon!

And then there were these Oreo boxes shaped like giant cookies that totally make you want to forget your diet and container after container of different chocolate flavours from Sorini and Ritter Sport Minis that are sold by weight. Mind-blown as I was, there was some space for heartbreak too when I noticed that the store did not have any Toblerone dark chocolate. Are you'll taking note, dear store owners?

After walking around and gushing over all these beauties, it was time to leave. I was presented with a gorgeous hamper from The Cocoa Trees that comprised a box each of some delightful Belgian Pralines, Jules Destrooper Belgian Chocolate Thins (biscuits) and Merci assorted chocolates. I was a little disappointed to find most of these melting by the time I took them home, but then these delicate exotic things can hardly be expected to withstand Mumbai summers.

Anyhow, what's a little melted chocolate when they're so darned beautiful and mmmm...-inducing? I tried German-made Merci first, which is a collection of 20 fine assorted chocolates. The flavours include Milk Chocolate, Coffee & Cream, Hazelnut-Almond, Hazelnut-Creme, Marzipan, Dark Cream, Dark Mousse and Praline-creme. They are ideally had at room temperature, but I had to keep them in the fridge to save their form. Even when hardened, they chocolates melt quickly in the mouth and lose none of their rich delightful flavours.

At INR 550, this 250 g pack of 20 assorted chocolates makes for a wonderful gift idea, and if it is a chocolate aficionado you are trying to impress, look no further. You will say 'merci' to me for this one.

Next up was a pack of four Belgian pralines, so amazing I would have been happy only kissing them. Too bad they had melted a lot as well and needed refrigeration and eventual eating. I know, what a hard life I have. :D The Belgian pralines from... duh, Belgium, are crafted to perfection and are almost worth their price (almost 50 bucks apiece!). For those who don't know, regular pralines refer to a confection made of nuts and sugar, but Belgian pralines have a hard chocolate shell with a soft (sometimes liquid) filling. They are also referred to as chocolate bonbons or Belgian chocolates.

The four pralines in this box included a white chocolate, a milk chocolate, a dark chocolate and a dark chocolate with nuts. Delicate doesn't even begin to describe these lovelies and they were lapped up before one could say 'Bless The Cocoa Trees'.

And finally, there was a chocolate-biscuit pack from a brand that's completely new to me - Jules Destrooper. The Belgian biscuiterie (my favourite new word!) is over a hundred years old and if I've never heard of it, that must be because very few, if any, places in India import it. But that's changing, of course, because of The Cocoa Trees. The best, most exotic chocolate brands of the world are now available under one roof.

The 100 g Jules Destrooper pack of Belgian Chocolate Thins are nothing but chocolate coated crispy biscuits. The kinds of chocolate are the usual dark, milk and white, only Amazing with a capital A. The biscuits are of just the perfect hardness and crunch and taste unbelievably good in combination with the chocolate. Because these babies melted too, I have no idea whether there are 10 thins or five in that pack - they got stuck, I think. Nevertheless, they are well worth their INR 275, and I most definitely recommend it, as I recommend a visit to The Cocoa Trees.

Seriously people, whether or not you are a chocolate aficionado, make one trip to experience the unique concept of this store. Also, people who are clueless about gift ideas, The Cocoa Trees is the answer to all your prayers.

Address: The Cocoa Trees, @ The Nature's Basket, Hill Road, Bandra, Mumbai
Website: http://www.thecocoatrees.com/
Phone: 022 - 26425050, 26421122
FB: www.facebook.com/CocoaTrees

Ritter Sport Hazelnut

Soon after my first tryst with Ritter Sport, which happened to be with marzipan, the Universe sent some more Ritter Sport my way. This time it was a dear colleague, who brought back some chocolate from abroad (mostly because I threatened to let him not enter office if he didn't). I had heard good things about Ritter Sport Hazelnut, so there was much cheering and happiness for his choice of chocolate.

The now-familiar block was eagerly opened and done correctly this time as should be with Ritter Sport's trademark Knick Pack. The single-layer packing is ergonomically designed and comes apart easily with one flick, provided the chocolate is firm at the time.

The Whole Hazelnuts variety is just one of their mind-boggling range (29 in all!) and I found the quality as great as the last time. I am beginning to see why German chocolates (like most German things) are known for their consistency and quality. The perfectly smooth chocolate bar is characteristically square with 16 (4X4) sections. I learnt recently why Ritter Sports bars are square. Apparently, the Clara Ritter, one of the founders, suggested making a chocolate bar that would fit easily into any sports jacket without breaking. Hence the name and the shape.

The chocolate bar has lovely roasted whole hazelnuts (23%) and a generous number of those too. They are perfectly crunchy and one wonders about the marvels of packaging that help keep them fresh for so long. The chocolate is of the milk variety with 30% cocoa and 18% milk solids.

The 100 g bar costs INR 150 and is definitely on my favourites' lists.

RATING: 3.5/5

Cadbury Bournville Cranberry

Mondēlez International is a busy company and constantly trying to make the people of the world fat with its new creations. It is, afterall, the world's largest chocolatier and candy maker and among other hugeass brands, it owns Cadbury. The latest product they've been making a lot of noise about recently is the Cranberry Bournville. I've tried the Bournville Almond variety before and wasn't too impressed by it, but then a chocolate reviewer's gotta do what a chocolate reviewer's gotta do.

I still find it laughable that 44% cocoa is proudly sold as dark chocolate in India AND has takers. But then anything above 35% qualifies as dark chocolate according to EU regulations, so it's okay. Another thing that caught my attention was the Queen's seal on the packet and it turns out Cadbury is a multiple Royal Warrant holder.

According to Wikipedia, Royal Warrants of appointment have been issued for centuries to tradespeople who supply goods or services to a royal court or certain royal personages. The royal warrant enables the supplier to advertise the fact that they supply to the issuer of the royal warrant, so lending prestige to the supplier. Royal families of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, among others, allow tradesmen to advertise royal patronage.

Anyway, coming back to the new Cranberry Bournville, when their FB page started rubbing in product posts relentlessly in my face, I had to pick a bar up. Although, I must admit their chocolate pairing suggestions in these posts are quite useful. The dark-ish bar is apparently made from the finest Ghana chocolate and is fairly smooth. It has cranberry AND almonds in it - something nut allergy people need to watch out for.

The sour dried bits of cranberry make for a wonderful contrast to the sweet-ish chocolate and the almonds lend it desirable crunch. I must admit that this Bournville experience was somewhat better than my first. The 80 g bar costs INR 80 and mostly your money's worth. Go try it.

RATING: 3.5/5

Gandour Safari

I've been dreading this post but I must take my newfound role as a chocolate blogger seriously, no? I've hated Safari for as long as I can remember, but a chocolate as 'popular' as this one had to be reviewed. So I brought home the smallest bar I could find to check if it was still as bad as I remembered it.

Safari is a milk chocolate made by Gandour, a Saudi Arabia-based company that's more than a century old! Gandour makes a range of chocolates (which, I'm pretty sure, are as shitty as Safari), and Safari is one of their most recognised products. It's either me or the Saudi nations just DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE! Any and every chocolate product that I've tasted from these countries have scored exactly the same points - ZERO.

Safari is no exception. With a wafer and cereal core and caramel layering, the milk chocolate is covered with rice crispies on the top (which look like warts, urgh!). Sweet as hell, ugly to look at and with an all-over-the-place texture, Safari makes for a terrible gustatory experience. Their only saving grace is the packaging. I couldn't finish even this tiny 20g bar that cost me INR 5, and I never waste chocolate. So yeah, Safari retains its position as the yuckiest of chocolates, at least in my book.

RATING: 1/5

Bagrry's Choco Delight Healthy Crunch Multi Grain Breakfast Cereal

For a long time, the consumer of breakfast cereal in India had two polar opposite choices. Either you bought the humble Mohun's Cornflakes by the kilo or you cringed at the prices when buying Kelloggs' products. With Bagrry's India Limited, a middle ground has opened up, with the consumer getting a lot more quality and variety in affordable prices. Bagrry's has a range of products including oats, muesli, bran and bran-fortified cornflakes that all come in sugar and 'no added sugar' varieties.

I'm not a great fan of breakfast cereal, but I've had Bagrry's products before and found them satisfying in terms of taste, quality, packaging and price. I recently picked up a refill box (available in large jars as well).of their Choco Delight Healthy Crunch Multi-Grain Breakfast Cereal that additionally has almonds, raisins and ah, CHOCOLATE!

For those who like their breakfast chocolatey, this is an excellent alternative to the sweet, sugary chocolate cereals one finds in the market. Yes, it is not as tasty, and may not appeal to kids as much, but it is so much healthier. Because it has chocolate (9.3%), there is some amount of  sugar (6.2 g/100 g), but as you see, the quantity is not alarming. The chocolate taste is just enough and more than the cereal, you feel it in the residues left behind in the milk.

A 425 g refill pack costs INR 170 and will give you approximately 15 servings. It's a fair deal, I think.

RATING: 3.5/5

Chocosophy news: Chocolate teas, portraits and breakfasts

Chocolate pixels make this Obama portrait

 
Sixteen freshmen from Israel's Holon Institute of Technology made this portrait of the POTUS or the President of the United States, Barack Obama recently. Made using 1172 'pixels' of white, milk and dark chocolate, this  portrait is a recreation of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign poster. The students presented Obama with this work of art along with a letter saying their lives too were "full of dreams and hopes" in the context of Israel's (perpetual) unrest. Well, now that's a sweet way of driving home a point! (Source)

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An all-chocolate breakfast worth 8724 calories!!!

Epic Meal Time, the new instructional cooking show whipped up this crazy all-chocolate breakfast that clocks in 380 gm of fat and 8724 calories! Basically, don't eat for the next two days if you go for this one. The creator chefs mixed in and coated bacon, eggs and potatoes with Nesquik powder, hollowed out sausages to fill them with Hershey's chocolate syrup, pancakes with double fudge chocolate in the batter and the French Toast stuffed with Nutella! The breakfast, of course, has to be washed down with a chocolate milkshake. If this isn't evil, I don't know what is.

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UK twins create chocolate-flavoured tea

This one should be happy news for tea (and of course chocolate) lovers. Newcastle-based twins Jodi and Stella Kean started experimenting with different kinds of teas after their tea bar business failed to take off. Stella told Express, “When the lease on the shop fell through we came up with the idea for choclateas. I don’t think people realise how many calories and how much sugar is in a cup of hot chocolate. We wanted to create something that felt like a treat but was healthy .”

“The main taste you get is tea, followed by the undertone of the flavour, such as pure dark chocolate and cocoa powder in the traditional-style choclatea,” Stella continued. Each cup has less than 20 calories, and other flavours in this range include chilli chocolate, peppermint chocolate, vanilla chocolate and wild berry chocolate. The range will be launched in the UK next month.

Ritter Sport Marzipan

I am ashamed to admit it, but this is my first Ritter Sport ever. Yeah, it is shameful that a self professed chocolate aficionado shouldn't have tasted even one of the forty million flavours that this brand seems to make. Well, not *those* many, but Ritter Sport has lots and lots of variations.

 I spotted this at my favourite supermarket cum stockist of imported maal, Chandan Stores on Sion-Trombay Road, Chembur, Mumbai. There were other flavours too, but when you're married into a Catholic family, it's like an ethical code to show favouritism to marzipan. Yup, I didn't know what it was before I got married, but five Christmases past, marzipan's become almost sacred. Who those who don't know, marzipan  is a confection consisting primarily of sugar or honey and almond meal. Commonly used as chocolate filling a la Ritter Sport or turned into variously-shaped and coloured sweets, they are a great festival favourite in Western nations, and of course, the pao community here.

Coming back to Ritter Sport's Marzipan, it is a regular German chocolate, and by regular German, I mean good chocolate. They are better, at any rate, than regular Indian chocolate. The marzipan is encased within the squared plain chocolate bar. The bar has 16 squares. Their plain chocolate has 50% cocoa solids; nearly as much as most Indian 'dark chocolates' have. 

The filling, as you can see, is quite generous. It is also quite flavourful, with the taste of marzipan coming through quite strongly. However, it is not overpowering, and the marzipan and chocolate complement each other well. 

These addictive things cost INR 150 for a bar of 100 gm and are fairly easily available in metros. They are also comparatively affordable and make for a great occasional treat, if you like flavoured chocolates.

RATING: 3/5

Chocosophy product launches: Tabasco, Weetabix, Maltesers

I dunno why all the chocolate action of the world should be taking place in the UK, but sigh... here it is.

This is like the ultimate fantasy for a chilli chocolate fan. Empire Foodbrokers will soon be releasing the Tabasco Brand Spicy Dark Chocolate Paint Can and Tower to mainstream grocery channels in the UK. The release will take place at the IFE 13 (The International Food and Drink Event), the largest F&B event in the UK. According to Foodbev.com, the red Paint Can contains 120 chocolate wedges. Each dark chocolate wedge is infused with Tabasco spice, containing just 30 calories and 53% minimum cocoa solids.

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In what is being touted as the "biggest UK innovation of the decade", Mars has launched Maltesers Teasers. Teasers are chocolate-coated honeycomb balls in a block format and will be available in the UK from the 26th of March, 2013. This is the first major innovation by the company since it pumped a mindblowing $ 8.9 mn into R&D last year. Mars Chocolate UK trade communications manager Bep Dhaliwal told just-food.com, "The launch of Maltesers Teasers is set to re-energise the block category and attract new customers who are looking for a treat or for sharing with friends and family."

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Cereal giant Weetabix has finally gone chocolate, and is launching a multi-million dollar cross channel campaign to promote it. Ben Cooper, group brand manager at Weetabix said the campaign launch marks a “significant” investment for the brand.

“We want to communicate that Weetabix with Chocolate is Weetabix fuel with the added taste of Chocolate, making it an ideal option for Mums looking for a chocolate cereal. This new re-launch aligns the product with the brand’s ‘Fuel for Big Days’ campaign to confirm the product is Weetabix first and foremost,” Cooper added.

Sundrop Snack Break Chocolate Pudding

Sundrop, from the house of Agro Tech Foods Ltd., introduced the Snack Break Chocolate Pudding a while ago, positioning it as a healthy yet nutritious milk-based snack. I remember the first TVC of the product, especially the sublime smile on the face of the Buddhist monk on eating it. :) I can't find it anywhere on Youtube, but some of you might know what I'm referring to.

Since its launch, I've bought and eaten this product numerous times, and have found the quality to be consistent. The pudding is gooey and smooth and melts in your mouth. The chocolate is pleasantly flavoured and finishing the whole pack won't make you sick with sweetness.  

The fact that it is made of 30% skimmed milk makes it comparatively healthy. Other ingredients include water, corn starch, edible vegetable fat, low fat cocoa powder, salt, emulsifiers, stabilisers and artificial flavours. It has a great shelf life, but once opened must be consumed entirely. Priced at INR 30, it might feel a tad expensive, but makes for a good option for those who MUST east chocolate and crib about their weight all the time.

RATING: 3/5

Chocosophy news: Chocolate gods, rooms and cruises

Have your God and eat him too! At least the Brahmakumaris of Ahmedabad must have had something like that in mind when they decided to make this gigantic Shivling on Shivratri this year. The 17 ft. tall, 56 ft. wide structure has been entered into the Limca Book of records for being the largest ever chocolate Shivlinga. It weighs nearly 600 kgs and took six days to make. The installation was kept for three days for the festival and then broken and distributed to kids as prasad.

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In the meantime, sculptor Elena Kliment has created an entire room of chocolate in Minsk, Belarus. The 20 sq. m. room was created with 600 kg of chocolate and everything in the room, from the walls to the carpets to the furniture to the decoration is made of fine Belgian chocolate. The creation took two months to make and is part of an installation at a mall. It will be open to visitors till April 14, 2013, after which small pieces will be cut off and distributed.

However, this is not the first time such a masterpiece has been created. In February 2011, Mindaugas Tendziagolskis used 660lb of chocolate to design a chocolate dining room in Vilarus in Lithuania.

 

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And if worshiping chocolate gods and swooning in chocolate rooms isn't enough for you, you could go all out and opt for a chocolate cruise. yes! There are entire cruises dedicated to chocolate like this one by AMAWaterways to be held in April 2014, starting in Prague. Hosted by acclaimed American chocolatier Norman Love, this cruise aboard the AmaCerto features chocolate-making demonstrations, lectures and tastings, capped off with an ultra extravagant grand finale. It is the perfect cruise for chocolate lovers!