Darker than Black, Week 8: Vosges Super Dark Matcha Green Tea
Note: the “super” here doesn’t refer to the actual cacao content, which is only (
only
) 72%. It instead refers to the presence of “superfoods” in the chocolate.
I’ve been pretty happy with all the Vosges chocolate I’ve gotten over the years since I moved back to Chicago. I can’t tell you whether they’re really haut or not, but I do know that they’re close to my work, they have a lot of tasty chocolate, and they’re a great way for me to get a White Day present for softlykarou. It’s not something that I eat a lot of, because the serving size is half a bar and each bar is $7.50, so with the amount of chocolate I tend to go through that would increase our food budget by a measurable amount, but I do enjoy them when I get the chance. Today, we noticed that they had Vosges bars for sale at the grocery store and we were looking for more chocolate for Darker than Black--I’ve signed up for a couple chocolate subscription services in pursuit of both eating more chocolate and having a wider variety of bars sent to me so I don’t have to scour stores around here to find things to eat--so we grabbed one.
There were more available than the matcha one, but come on. What else am I going to pick?
All I can think of looking at this is “look at all that wasted matcha.
I was honestly expecting this to turn out like the Dark Cabernet Matinee, where the taste was mostly an advertisement for something that never materialized. I’ve been drinking a lot of matcha lately--I’ve gotten a lot better at making foam since that picture was taken, actually--and so I bit into the chocolate with my taste buds keen for the bitterness of matcha. And, much to my surrpise, it was there. There was no false advertisement at all. What would have been chocolate on the edge of too sweet for me was transformed into something delicious by virtue of the matcha’s bitterness.
If softlykarou hadn’t been there, I probably would have eaten the whole bar myself, even though it was melting in my hands as I was holding it. I’m used to the relatively immunity to melting that Lindt 90% provides. softlykarou looked at the sheer amount of melting chocolate on my hands at the end of our dessert and pointed out that she’d make a better sushi chef than me--there’s a belief in Japan that women make bad sushi chefs because their warmer hands ruin the fish as they shape it--which is something that I can’t really disagree with. I do have a pretty warm body temperature overall. Maybe that’s why I don’t care that much about Chicago winters.
In addition to the Japaneseness of matcha, it also has extraneous packaging.
softlykarou’s Opinion:I've been a Vosges fan since college and this isn't my first encounter with the Super Dark bars (the mushroom and walnut one is AMAZING). I have bought this bar for dorchadas before but I'd never had the chance to try it. At 72% it's not the darkest chocolate we've had, but the matcha added bitterness that gave more depth to the chocolate. The cocoa nibs gave a nice crunch with again, a hint of bitterness. The only thing I didn't taste was the spirulina but I'm pretty sure that's just in there to sell it to the ultra hip health conscious demographic. I would definitely eat this again!
I didn’t even know what spirulina was until literally just now when I looked it up on wikipedia. I certainly didn’t see it on the packaging when I was picking this out, and I have no idea what it tastes like. I especially like how the “risks” section in the wikipedia article about it is longer than the “Nutrient and vitamin content” section is. Superfood indeed! I mean, I suppose matcha can count, but since I can just make matcha for drinking, I don’t care that much about its health benefits. I care about taste, and it brought that in spades.
only
) 72%. It instead refers to the presence of “superfoods” in the chocolate.
I’ve been pretty happy with all the Vosges chocolate I’ve gotten over the years since I moved back to Chicago. I can’t tell you whether they’re really haut or not, but I do know that they’re close to my work, they have a lot of tasty chocolate, and they’re a great way for me to get a White Day present for softlykarou. It’s not something that I eat a lot of, because the serving size is half a bar and each bar is $7.50, so with the amount of chocolate I tend to go through that would increase our food budget by a measurable amount, but I do enjoy them when I get the chance. Today, we noticed that they had Vosges bars for sale at the grocery store and we were looking for more chocolate for Darker than Black--I’ve signed up for a couple chocolate subscription services in pursuit of both eating more chocolate and having a wider variety of bars sent to me so I don’t have to scour stores around here to find things to eat--so we grabbed one.
There were more available than the matcha one, but come on. What else am I going to pick?
All I can think of looking at this is “look at all that wasted matcha.
I was honestly expecting this to turn out like the Dark Cabernet Matinee, where the taste was mostly an advertisement for something that never materialized. I’ve been drinking a lot of matcha lately--I’ve gotten a lot better at making foam since that picture was taken, actually--and so I bit into the chocolate with my taste buds keen for the bitterness of matcha. And, much to my surrpise, it was there. There was no false advertisement at all. What would have been chocolate on the edge of too sweet for me was transformed into something delicious by virtue of the matcha’s bitterness.
If softlykarou hadn’t been there, I probably would have eaten the whole bar myself, even though it was melting in my hands as I was holding it. I’m used to the relatively immunity to melting that Lindt 90% provides. softlykarou looked at the sheer amount of melting chocolate on my hands at the end of our dessert and pointed out that she’d make a better sushi chef than me--there’s a belief in Japan that women make bad sushi chefs because their warmer hands ruin the fish as they shape it--which is something that I can’t really disagree with. I do have a pretty warm body temperature overall. Maybe that’s why I don’t care that much about Chicago winters.
In addition to the Japaneseness of matcha, it also has extraneous packaging.
softlykarou’s Opinion:I've been a Vosges fan since college and this isn't my first encounter with the Super Dark bars (the mushroom and walnut one is AMAZING). I have bought this bar for dorchadas before but I'd never had the chance to try it. At 72% it's not the darkest chocolate we've had, but the matcha added bitterness that gave more depth to the chocolate. The cocoa nibs gave a nice crunch with again, a hint of bitterness. The only thing I didn't taste was the spirulina but I'm pretty sure that's just in there to sell it to the ultra hip health conscious demographic. I would definitely eat this again!
I didn’t even know what spirulina was until literally just now when I looked it up on wikipedia. I certainly didn’t see it on the packaging when I was picking this out, and I have no idea what it tastes like. I especially like how the “risks” section in the wikipedia article about it is longer than the “Nutrient and vitamin content” section is. Superfood indeed! I mean, I suppose matcha can count, but since I can just make matcha for drinking, I don’t care that much about its health benefits. I care about taste, and it brought that in spades.