Chocolate and ginger is one of my favorite flavor combinations. And I’m picky about my combinations, as I frequently mention, in the interests of full disclosure. I don’t like all kinds of crazy different stuff mushed together. I have a lot of faith that if society in general has decided that chocolate is good with coffee, but there’s no long tradition of chocolate-blueberry, there is probably a good reason for this.
But ginger is one of those things that really works with chocolate – and yet, it’s not that easy to indulge in it. It’s just not practical for me to buy a whole box of Theo chocolates every time I’m in the mood for their fantastic chocolate-ginger piece.
And while it’s not that hard to get chocolate-covered crystallized ginger, I find that it really leaves something to be desired in terms of mouthfeel. It can be too sweet, and that squoody texture of crystallized ginger is not a real pleasure, and there’s also sometimes the stringy bits left after you chew for a while… basically, there is a probably a reason why that’s always been kind of an obscure specialty sweet.
So when I saw this bar, I snatched it up. And I was not disappointed. The dark chocolate is good, the ginger flavor is strong, the whole thing is not too sweet, and there’s no nasty squishy bits of crystallized ginger. I like the texture of the chocolate very much – it’s not too snappy, and I like the way it melts in my mouth fairly quickly.
It’s also – aside from not being an entire one pound box of bonbons – a nice little size of bar. The one bit of warning is that instead of squidgy crystallized ginger bits, this has dried shreds or shavings, and a lot of them. And you definitely can end up chewing on a bunch of them at the end of a bite. They don’t bother me, but it might not be a texture that everyone will love.
By the way, despite the dried texture of the ginger, this really has the taste of ginger root, not the taste of powdered ginger that you associate with gingerbread and other spice breads. I’ve never really understood how those flavors can seem so different when one is a dried, powdered version of the other, and it’s even more mysterious that this tastes like the fresh root when it’s dried. But I don’t care about the technicalities. I am very happy to be able to get this flavor in a chocolate bar and dare I hope, could this be the start of a trend?
Very cool! I’ll have to see if I can track one of those bars down in my neighborhood to give it a try. I’m a huge fan of ginger.
And as for the dried, powdered version tasting different than the original – most spices (like ginger) are used dried, so the fact that the root is sold and used fresh always struck me as unusual, anyway. And it happens frequently that drying an herb or spice dramatically changes the flavor. For instance, fresh cilantro is known for its crisp, slightly metallic twang – the taste that one could imagine from smelling a freshly mowed lawn. Dried cilantro, on the other hand, tends to have a slightly sweet, cinnamon flavor.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:03 am