Candy Review: Bubble Chocolate

Monday, October 19, 2009 - by Robby

I’ve been on hiatus from the candy world ever since I relocated to Montana for graduate school. My days seem to be riddled with homework and the correcting of grammatical mistakes made by the students in the freshmen composition course that I teach. Have you ever tried reading 24 essays for split infinitives, misuse of appositives, and the lack of proper semicolon use? Let’s just say it makes for a very draining experience.

Luckily, the kind folks over at Bubble Chocolate knew just how to perk up my day by mailing me a sample of their chocolate. In what world is free chocolate not a good thing?

I had never heard of this company, which makes sense considering they are new and based on the East Coast. But I have heard of and consumed similar products. Aerated chocolate, the candy term for such a confection, is something I first discovered in New Zealand with Nestle’s Aero, but have seen in many forms since.

For those of you not familiar with aerated chocolate, my best equivalent is to compare crème fraiche to meringue: they are both similar in consistency and appearance, but the latter is much lighter. Bubble Chocolate comes in two varieties: milk and dark chocolate.

Milk Chocolate: The chocolate bars are smartly wrapped in 3″x6″ box designed to appeal to a playful quality, but still retaining an air of elegance. Unwrapping this one, my bar had been broken in a dozen places, most likely due to shipping and handling. Aside from this minor defect, the chocolate looked beautiful.

Once broken or bitten into, a cross-section reveals a sponge hidden beneath the full chocolate shell. The “bubbles” are half-bubbles since once you see them it’s only because you have eaten the other half of it.

As for the chocolate itself, it was highly fragrant, denoting fruit essences. The taste is reminiscent of dairy milk bars by Cadbury and other European confectioners that avoid sour milk, oils, and corn syrup in their production, *cough*Hershey*cough*. Despite the fact that the bar broke in transit, the chocolate is far from flimsy with a firm, but not hard snap. The ingredients are simple: sugar powder, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, and vanilla.

Unlike other aerated bars I’ve consumed, this one doesn’t really carry all the trademark textures. You can’t really taste the pockets directly, most likely because the bubbles are pretty small and densely packed. Their presence evokes a somewhat grainy consistency, almost as if you were eating a moist slice of cake; however, the bubbles make the piece incredibly light on the tongue in terms of fullness and in turn easy on the throat, which is a smart move because this milk chocolate is a bit richer than your average bar.

Dark Chocolate: Coffee, cherry, and rum notes waft from this bar, which set up a hard-to-fulfill expectation of how it should taste. Like the last bar, this one was damaged in transit. I have made my affinities for dark chocolate over milk chocolate known, but every once in a while I find a product where the balance of flavor favors milk chocolate; this was such an instance.

The dark chocolate piece was a lot chalkier, with a bitter taste carrying that coffee essence, but no fruit or alcohol traits that would have complemented it. The taste was very filling in a robust way, but the texture didn’t quite mesh with the velvety or crisp expectation I have for dark chocolate. Clearly, some milk aids in the smoothing out of the aeration quality.

Overall, I think these are two fine products, but it’s the milk chocolate bar that really steals the show. It offers a delicious and novel twist on a classic candy, and it will pleasantly surprise you with the textures and tastes contained within, most likely due to the fine list of ingredients and quality it is made with. All-in-all, much better than the standard Aero bar.

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

• Bubble Chocolate Website