For the Love of Chocolate
Mary loves chocolate.
More to the point, she loves dark chocolate. So for Christmas I gave Mary something I knew she'd love---a dark chocolate taste test. Seventeen different bars of dark chocolate of various brands.
The idea came from an article I'd read in Consumer Reports this past year. They'd done a taste test of their own on fourteen different kinds of dark chocolate, from the fancy organic kinds to the more consumer-based Hershey versions (not the well known Hershey bar, mind you, but their fancier dark chocolate versions). As I liked to think of it, it was a battle of local coop chocolate vs. nationwide drugstore chocolate (and that is where I got the various seventeen bars---throughout the year I bought any and all dark chocolates that I could find at the People's Food Coop and at Walgreen's).
Without giving the article away (because if you follow the Consumer Reports link above you'll only get the outline of the test, not the ratings---the results are for CR members only), what surprised me, and what Mary could not believe, is that Hershey's comes out on top. On the bottom was Newman's Own Organics.
Hence the idea for the taste test. It was more for me really---I just had to know, given no knowledge of the chocolate's origin, what Mary would really prefer.
So that is how we broke in the New Year. With four other family friends, who helped us break them into taste testing sized bits and label and number them to hide their identities. We decided beforehand though that seventeen was a bit to much to take at once, even in test tasting sized bits, so we just kept the sample size to a random six.
The results of the our sample of six? The top three (in no particular order, because everyone had their own personal top, but pretty much everyone agreed these were the top three) were...
I'll keep you posted as we get around to reviewing the other eleven bars....
More to the point, she loves dark chocolate. So for Christmas I gave Mary something I knew she'd love---a dark chocolate taste test. Seventeen different bars of dark chocolate of various brands.
The idea came from an article I'd read in Consumer Reports this past year. They'd done a taste test of their own on fourteen different kinds of dark chocolate, from the fancy organic kinds to the more consumer-based Hershey versions (not the well known Hershey bar, mind you, but their fancier dark chocolate versions). As I liked to think of it, it was a battle of local coop chocolate vs. nationwide drugstore chocolate (and that is where I got the various seventeen bars---throughout the year I bought any and all dark chocolates that I could find at the People's Food Coop and at Walgreen's).
Without giving the article away (because if you follow the Consumer Reports link above you'll only get the outline of the test, not the ratings---the results are for CR members only), what surprised me, and what Mary could not believe, is that Hershey's comes out on top. On the bottom was Newman's Own Organics.
Hence the idea for the taste test. It was more for me really---I just had to know, given no knowledge of the chocolate's origin, what Mary would really prefer.
So that is how we broke in the New Year. With four other family friends, who helped us break them into taste testing sized bits and label and number them to hide their identities. We decided beforehand though that seventeen was a bit to much to take at once, even in test tasting sized bits, so we just kept the sample size to a random six.
The results of the our sample of six? The top three (in no particular order, because everyone had their own personal top, but pretty much everyone agreed these were the top three) were...
- Equal Exchange Organic Very Dark Chocolate, 71% cocoa
- Hershey's Extra Dark, 60% cocoa (or as the label reads: "cacao")
- Endangered Species Intense Dark Chocolate with Cocoa Nibs, 75% cocoa
- Dagoba Organic Extra Dark Chocolate, 87% cocoa
(to be fair to this brand, this was one of Mary's top three, as she put it "It's the kind of bar was I can just have one square and feel satisfied", but was far too bitter for the rest of us) - Lindt Extra Dark, 85% cocoa
(tasted "waxy" compared to the others, and surprising because this was near the top in Consumer Reports) - Cadbury Royal Dark
(tasted "cheap" compared to the others... interesting, because it is made by Hershey's whose other bar rated top in both our taste test and in CR's)
I'll keep you posted as we get around to reviewing the other eleven bars....
posted by a n d y at
12:11 PM
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