Hotel Chocolat – My First Ever Product Review

Hotel Chocolat

by Azélia on 19/11/2010

in Chocolate

Almost a year since I started this blog with all seriousness and like most bloggers I get approached by product companies but I’ve only decide now to accepted a free product to review.  Why?  Because I buy it anyway. Have been spending my pretty English pound there since a branch in my shopping centre opened a few years ago.  Oh I have spent sooo much in that shop.  It’s my reward if I have to shop.  I head for their dark selection.

I can have my cake and eat it with regards to the choice of dark chocolate.  They sell these little mini slabs of plain dark chocolate made from cocoa from different parts of the world, single estate chocolates and dairy-free flavoured dark chocolates, very important for me.  It was the very first time I came across Ghanaian chocolate which became my favourite, I mention it in my Tripple Chocolate Cookie recipe months ago, sadly the last few times I’ve visited the store they weren’t selling it.

I’ve lived in the UK long enough to acquire the normal cynicism when it comes to commercial selling so as I type I’m thinking about that.  Of course you’re going to say the chocolate is fantastic after receiving a free large box of it. For those who come on here and don’t expect this type of post I get it.  But by  now I hope I’ve also given the impression I don’t have qualms about saying what I mean.  I’ve acquired the British cynicism but I did forget to acquire the art of being reserved.  The terrible thing here is this post will look like a shameless plug for Hotel Chocolate because I don’t have to be convinced it’s a good product I’ve proved it over the years, so forgive me for this.  To make up for the guilt of eating free chocolate I have given a method of making your very own Hotel Chocolat Giant Slabs…ok it’s stretching it as far as making-up goes but cut me a little slack it’s nearly Christmas…she says stuffing face with chocolate.

Which chocolate you like is very personal, milk chocolate lovers tend to find dark chocolate too strong unless baked with sugar, butter and maybe cream and dark chocolate lovers tend to find milk chocolate too sweet, such as me (ok..secretly there’s about twice a year when I crave something sugary and daughter’s milk chocolate stash gets raided…but no one knows this…put it down to hormones).

In my household it’s the oldest daughter who’s a milk chocolate afficionado and incredibly fussy about plain milk chocolate you give her, don’t think about giving her Marks and Spencer’s Swiss milk chocolate as this normally chocolate obsessed child will say ‘no thanks’.

The Famous Giant Chocolate Slabs

Below is half of a Giant Cookie Chocolate Chip Slab and no it didn’t arrive like that.  You see what happen was, the large box of assorted chocolates arrived late in the day, too dark to photograph and  as soon as Bikerboy clocked his eyes on the box he pleaded with me to open it.  It was like letting the genie out of the box. Oldest daughter and her boyfriend couldn’t keep their mitts off this slab.  It’s £13.50 not cheap but if you look at the weight it’s  1/2 kilo of chocolate, just over a pound and for normal human beings it should last longer.

There is Rocky Road also popular with daughter, but you have dark chocolate varieties here.  And for those seeking a dairy-free version it’s  here, which won a gold medal at the Great Taste Awards.  If nothing else out of the whole range of Hotel Chocolat’s chocolates I can recommend the Giant Chocolate Slabs.  And this is because you’ll see a chocolate lover gasp when you give them one of these, they’re impressive…speaks to the childlike greed in all of us I think.

Christmas & Chocolate Orange

If I want to keep Bikerboy quiet for a little while, I place a box of these chocolate orange flavour disks in front of him.  He loves orange flavour chocolate. Terry’s chocolate orange was given to him every Christmas by his uncle and aunt as a boy and he associates chocolate orange with fond memories.  Why is there an association with Christmas and chocolate orange in the UK I don’t know?

It’s not my kind of chocolate but having tasted one it’s by far the best of its type I’ve tasted.   The dark chocolate is incredibly smooth, then the orange tang sets in and dominates for a while but then most importantly you’re left with an aftertaste of chocolate again, not cloying and not overly orangey sweet.  Looking on the back of the box the orange oil is made from Valencia oranges.  They have them in milk chocolate here.  These Orange Tangs, which I haven’t seen before nor have tasted them will be my next purchase, stocking present for Bikerboy.

I received the bottle of Caramel Drinking Chocolate, rich, chocolatey and sweet with full fat milk.  The jar on the right of dark drinking chocolate is actually my own I bought months ago, had put it in the back of the cupboard when kitchen was being decorated and forgot all about.  The full range of drinking chocolate they do is here, including one with a chilli kick which I’ve also bought before, the chilli is very mild, it won’t satisfy chilli fanatics, there’s a gingerbread flavoured one, a milk flavoured, there’s two dark varieties but don’t ask me the difference between the two.

My daughter and I though the best thing about the Caramel Drinking Chocolate one was these little white chocolate hearts you get throughout the mixture, we thought this would make an ideal present.

The chocolate box selection I received was the Be Pampered Chocolate Hamper and included, a large milk chocolate selection box called the Sleekster Milk Oblivion, I did try some but they were mainly devoured by daughter and friends, left behind the coffee flavour ones…I find not many people go for that one I wonder why?

In the hamper there was also small dark chocolate selection box called Serious Dark Fix Selection, the two chocolate slabs from Rabot Estate below, the orange flavour box above, small pink champagne box, and it was suppose to have a fruit & nut box but somehow that was replaced with ginger chocolate box, and as I hate ginger in sweet things it was enjoyed instead by the nursery school teacher.

Obviously I enjoyed the dark chocolate selection, you can see above half finished box.  Very rich with pralines and mousses and two of those I’m done for a bit.  My favourites as always are the ones with nuts and plain.

My absolutely favourite of the hamper was the specialist slab of 65% Rabot Estate and let’s face it, it’s not a surprise.

The strangest thing for me was the 70% bar from Rabot Estate again, I was expecting it to be pure dark chocolate but instead it had some milk chocolate mixed in and I just couldn’t see what it added to the party.

If I’m baking for milk chocolate lover I like to use 50-60% cocoa solids chocolate and if I don’t have that in the house I’ll melt a dark bar with a milk one but here I could not see an improvement or reason for doing it.  I can taste a very bitter taste from the dark chocolate, the type I don’t go for but some enjoy, on the smokey side.  When you’re tastebuds go past that smokey bitter taste you get a little taste of the milk come through, that’s ok but the worst experience is in the finish.  Like good wine you should enjoy the finish of a good chocolate.  The finish is all wrong, you get this very sticky cloying aftertaste which I don’t enjoy at all, not smooth lingering taste I love from my dark chocolate.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say and the pure dark chocolate slab 65% is almost finished and the mixed slab has hardly been touched, not even Bikerboy likes it and he tends to enjoy a wider range of darker chocolates than I do.

Here’s the hamper I received….

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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Debs November 20, 2010 at 7:08 am

Lovely review, how lucky to have decent chocolate so easily on hand. Not so easy here in Spain.

I’ve had another Co. ask me to do a review, but the delivery seems to have got lost in the post

Kavey November 20, 2010 at 10:08 am

I am biased but I think it’s possible to be honest and truthful about products when one receives freebies. I liked some of the items HC sent me to review but didn’t recommend a couple of them at all!

I love the hearts in that caramel liquid chocolate, they are pretty. I have a nearly empty bottle of the plain hot chocolate at work, a birthday gift from a colleague, am really enjoying it. And have the gingerbread one at home, very nice actually with decent ginger kick!

Azélia November 20, 2010 at 5:52 pm

Debs – maybe the postman ate it LOL! I have noticed in the last 4 years even supermarkets are now bringing out their own brand of specilaised single estate or single country chocolate or stocking say Rococo type of brands it’s fantastic result for us the consumer.

Azélia November 20, 2010 at 6:05 pm

Kavey – I saw your competition and then it occurred to me how incredibly selfish of me to scoff all of the chocolate and not give any of it away….oh well…I’m saving people from gaining the weight I just have…doing everyone a favour really :) …they wouldn’t thank me for gaining weight now before the Christmas party season just around the corner.

Foodycat November 21, 2010 at 7:50 pm

Like Kavey I think it is possible to review products and maintain your integrity! I think you have presented a really nicely balanced review of these.

Chef Dennis November 21, 2010 at 8:30 pm

what a great review!! You certainly must have been in chocolate heaven for quite awhile!
Cheers
Dennis

Your Eldest Daughter November 21, 2010 at 10:31 pm

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this but this is the first article on your blog I’ve read the whole way through :D probably because that hamper you were sent is part of the family now and it’s sad to see it mostly gone ):
Ok, so I was a little bit responsible, we all were!
(congratulations on still making an appetising photo out of a half eaten slab of cookie chocolate by the way, that’s a difficult thing to pull off)
C x

Azélia November 21, 2010 at 10:39 pm

As always my loving daughter you made me laugh… :) xxx

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