Darker than Black, Week 24: Vosges Super Dark Guajillo & Chipotle Chili
Last week softlykarou brought home a sesame-based dessert from Golden Pacific, so I called off Darker than Black in favor of delicious bean paste. This week we return to the world of dark chocolate with something I should have gotten to a long time ago.
Dear reader, let me tell you something about our system for chocolate tracking--it's nonexistent. We buy chocolate that we think looks like it would be delicious, it would be fun to write about, or both, and then it all gets thrown into a bag that we keep on top of our fridge. When the time comes, we reach into the bag and pull one out. We don't track how old they are, when we bought them, and we certainly don't have some kind of first-in, frat-out rule. Sometimes I wonder if this is affecting the quality of the chocolate and how we like it, but the entire point of this is that it's less work than Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries, so I don't want to put in the effort to develop a system.
You will see how this is relevant in a moment.
It was so shiny that I couldn't quite get rid of the shadow.
We were a bit worried when we opened the packaging on this bar, since the chocolate had the tell-tale smoked sheen that chocolate gets when it starts to oxidize. It also had a neat swirl to the colors, with darker and lighter colors mixed together. softlykarou thought it might have gone bad and so we bit into it with some trepidation, and while it had gone a bit brittle with time, it still tasted great. The chipotle taste came through clearly and the guajillo provided a low heat in the back of the mouth that grew with each bite, but never so much that it overpowered the chocolate. Forget what I said last time, this would be perfect for making Mexican hot chocolate.
It would probably be perfect for eating fresh, too. I don't know exactly how long ago we bought this, but it was probably something like three or four months ago. This is the problem with not labeling things and getting chocolate faster than we can eat it. Now that I'm writing this, there's a very slightly unpleasant aftertaste that I'm positive comes from the oxidation. Straight from the store and eaten while the ink on the receipt is still wet, I bet it would be amazing.
I look the color effect, but it's not a good sign.
softlykarou's OpinionI was a little worried about this chocolate having aged, since it had been a while since we bought it. While it looked a bit lighter, it still tasted good. I liked the spice, the heat built on itself with each bite, meaning it encouraged me to keep eating rather than just blasting me in the face with it or totally burying it. I generally enjoy Vosges, so I'd buy this again.
I would buy it again too. And maybe write a date on it so we don't wait months to eat it. It's still bothering me a bit, wondering how exactly the taste was damaged by how long it took us to get to this. I'm not going to do another post on it--we have too much chocolate to write about as it is--but I'll almost certainly buy it again and try it immediately.
Dear reader, let me tell you something about our system for chocolate tracking--it's nonexistent. We buy chocolate that we think looks like it would be delicious, it would be fun to write about, or both, and then it all gets thrown into a bag that we keep on top of our fridge. When the time comes, we reach into the bag and pull one out. We don't track how old they are, when we bought them, and we certainly don't have some kind of first-in, frat-out rule. Sometimes I wonder if this is affecting the quality of the chocolate and how we like it, but the entire point of this is that it's less work than Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries, so I don't want to put in the effort to develop a system.
You will see how this is relevant in a moment.
It was so shiny that I couldn't quite get rid of the shadow.
We were a bit worried when we opened the packaging on this bar, since the chocolate had the tell-tale smoked sheen that chocolate gets when it starts to oxidize. It also had a neat swirl to the colors, with darker and lighter colors mixed together. softlykarou thought it might have gone bad and so we bit into it with some trepidation, and while it had gone a bit brittle with time, it still tasted great. The chipotle taste came through clearly and the guajillo provided a low heat in the back of the mouth that grew with each bite, but never so much that it overpowered the chocolate. Forget what I said last time, this would be perfect for making Mexican hot chocolate.
It would probably be perfect for eating fresh, too. I don't know exactly how long ago we bought this, but it was probably something like three or four months ago. This is the problem with not labeling things and getting chocolate faster than we can eat it. Now that I'm writing this, there's a very slightly unpleasant aftertaste that I'm positive comes from the oxidation. Straight from the store and eaten while the ink on the receipt is still wet, I bet it would be amazing.
I look the color effect, but it's not a good sign.
softlykarou's OpinionI was a little worried about this chocolate having aged, since it had been a while since we bought it. While it looked a bit lighter, it still tasted good. I liked the spice, the heat built on itself with each bite, meaning it encouraged me to keep eating rather than just blasting me in the face with it or totally burying it. I generally enjoy Vosges, so I'd buy this again.
I would buy it again too. And maybe write a date on it so we don't wait months to eat it. It's still bothering me a bit, wondering how exactly the taste was damaged by how long it took us to get to this. I'm not going to do another post on it--we have too much chocolate to write about as it is--but I'll almost certainly buy it again and try it immediately.