I’m a chocoholic plebian I guess. Just like there are absolutely great pizzas and absolutely awful ones, the bulk are perfectly reasonable to satisfy a pizza craving. Same for chocolate. I prefer block dark chocolate when I’m going to eat “chocolate”. But if I’m eating candy, then most any mass market chocolate suffices (until you get to the real awful dreck that is most often chocolate “flavor” because there’s not enough to pass legal muster).
I’m a fan of chocolate bars with caramel and/or nuts. Hershey’s makes several I like. I also still like m&ms both plain & peanut. But they’re all candy not chocolate as the predominant factor.
I’m the same with wine. I appreciate a $200 bottle but that doesn’t deter me from drinking $40 bottles or even a $10 table wine. It’s all different and all has a place in my diet
This is true. I certainly enjoy a Totino’s frozen pizza more than I probably should.
However, there are options out there for higher end candy bars that, while relatively expensive, are far better.
The Snacker and The King from http://www.liddabitsweets.com/ are both excellent. The Snacker is basically a $10 Snickers bar, but holy crap is it good. I rarely get Liddabit because its expensive but when I do get one I’m always happy about it. They have an amazing cookbook that I highly, highly recommend.
I used to buy a candy bar most any time I went through a checkout line, and I LOVE trying new things, so even still I’ll probably grab any new candy bar that I see. But as I get older I find that I don’t want the candy just for the sake of sweet, but I want to truly taste each part of it. If it includes chocolate, then it has to be good chocolate.
I suppose I’ve gotten to the point, like a wine connoisseur, where the cheap stuff no longer interests me.
This kind, which you can find at Whole Foods for about $4 for 2 bars, is an enjoyable eating experience. It comes in a couple different levels of darkness/sweetness and has a lot more depth of flavor than a Hershey bar.
In conversations like this, I always think of imitation vanilla vs. vanilla extract. Imitation vanilla is a byproduct of paper making and it’s flavor comes from one compound, vanillin. Vanilla extract is made up of a couple of hundred different compounds that contribute to it’s flavor.
I like added complexity and details in my life. Real vanilla extract it is.
While I was in Iceland a few months ago, I came across several different Icelandic chocolates. I personally found this very strange, considering coca comes from the tropics and these fine chocolates are coming from Iceland. It’s truly a global community we live in.
Very nice work! The cutting board looks great, and the roots are very creative.
I would love to be making gifts this year. Thank you for sharing, and the inspiration!
…and this is traditional Icelandic chocolate. You know, from olde tyme Nordic historical-like recipes and what. I suppose cacao has been wandering the planet since the mid 17th century, so it could be incorporated into Iceland’s past to become traditional. Just not what I think of when I think of the land settled by Vikings.
