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Monday, February 07, 2005

Review: Chuao Chocolatier Sugar-Free Chocolate Bars

When the father of one of the founders of Chuao developed type 2 diabetes,
he (the co-founder of Chuao) went to work to create a chocolate bar that his
father could eat and that also met hist standards for taste and edibleness.
This is a challenge that many chocolatiers have been working on and that few
do very well, and one of the reasons why is that most chocolatiers don't
make their own chocolate and are therefore captive to what they can purchase
from the large manufacturers. I doubt that Chuao is making their own
chocolate and I doubt that they are large enough to request a custom
formulation (not enough volume to make it economical) from one of the large
manufacturers, but they've managed to create a trio of very welcome
additions to the world of sugar free chocolate bars ...

Type(s): Prestige Chocolatier, Eating Chocolate, Sugar-Free/Low Carb
Taste Rating: Very Good to Superior
Overall Value Rating: Very Good

How did they do it? By adding flavorings to the bars instead of just melting
down bulk couverture and molding it plain or adding some nuts. The flavors
are well-balanced and add that little bit of taste that is missing when you
take the sugar away. All three bars use maltitol as the sweetener and
include butter oil to soften the texture of the bar and add some richness to
the mouthfeel. What is nice about the use of the flavors, apart from the
fact that are just nice flavors, is that the normal maltitol aftertaste is
not in evidence (but see the note about this at the end). On the minus side,
the smell of chocolate is not very strong when you open the wrappers.

While all three bars say the chocolate is "infused" with the flavors I doubt
that this is technically correct, as an infusion is where a flavoring
ingredient is soaked in water or oil to extract the flavor and the liquid is
incorporated into the product as the flavoring. In these cases, because of
the texture, it is more probable that the flavoring ingredients are ground
finely and added to the chocolate during the final tempering process.

The three flavors are: Milk Chocolate with Earl Grey Tea, Dark Chocolate
with Coffee and Anise, and Dark Chocolate with Cinnamon, Pasilla Chile, and
Cayenne Pepper. All three bars are very well made.

Surprisingly, the milk Chocolate with Early Grey bar is the "snappiest" of
the three bars with a much firmer initial bite than the other two. The
initial small is not overly sweet and contains a mild citrusy hint of
bergamot, the flavoring of Earl Grey tea. At the first bite the bergamot
flavor becomes apparent then disappears under a rush of sweetness only to
reappear again and then dissipate until it is a very faint memory on the
finish. There is a very slight texture which I attribute to the tea leaves.
The common caramel notes of milk are not evident.

The Coffee and Anise bar has a nose where the anise is more evident than the
coffee but in a nicely nuanced balance. The snap is crisp and as with the
Earl Grey bar, the flavors tend to beat in and out, first coffee then anise
then coffee and with the final taste in the mouth being anise. There is a
slight pastiness near the finish that is probably attributable to the butter
oil and there is a nice toothy crunch to the bar which probably comes from
the coffee grounds. The long finish is pleasantly redolent of anise which,
as the copy on the bar wrapper suggests, would make it a nice complement to
an after-dinner espresso.

The Spicy Maya bar with cinnamon, pasilla, and cayenne is, in many ways, the
most interesting of the three. It also has a nice snap and an inviting nose
(although as mentioned above missing much chocolate smell) with no hint of
the peppery fire inside.

In fact, the peppery fire is not at all evident when you first start chewing
the bar. The sweetness of the cinnamon is the strongest note until the point
where the chocolate is almost completely melted in the mouth. Then the
cinnamon nicely complements the growing heat of the pasilla (which is quite
mild actually) and the cayenne peppers. The fire lingers quite pleasantly,
but I don't think it would work in conjunction with an after-dinner coffee
or other beverage.

Earlier in the review I mentioned that one of the things I liked about these
bars is that the characteristic aftertaste of maltitol is not noticeable.
That's true, to a point. If you eat one of these bars and don't drink or eat
anything else for three to five minutes, then suddenly you'll notice the
taste of the maltitol. This has nothing to do with the product that Chuao
makes, it's a result of using the maltitol. The fact that it takes so long
to appear is pretty remarkable, however.

The bars are available on the Chuao web site (link below) and are sold in
sets of three (one of each flavor) for $15. Each bar is 80g (a little less
than 3 ozs) so the final cost of $5/bar is about $28/lb, which seems a
little high at first. However, for the diabetic chocophile who does not want
to compromise on taste when it comes to indulging in chocolate, the price is
representative of the quality of the product.

Taking everything into consideration, these are among the best sugar-free
chocolate bars on the market. Though sugar free they are not low-carb,
however, and they do not make a low-carb claim. What makes them better than
virtually all of their competition is the use of flavors combinations that
are attractive in and of themselves, irrespective of their use in sugar-free
chocolate.

http://www.chuaochocolatier.com/
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Chuao chocolatier queda en California, pero tal como indica su nombre
[Chuao], solo utiliza el mejor chocolate del mundo, el chocolate venezolano.

T.Schmidt


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