It was fun to see Baggallini's new products for Spring (hint: teal ["lagoon"] and magenta ["orchid"] are hot! hot! hot! right now - FANTASTIC!) After perusing the new offerings, I also wandered the entire store.
You canNOT just walk in and out of Bibelot. You MUST browse!
So it was that I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon these little gems just calling my name:
I didn't know if these Lake Champlain organic chocolate bars were new, or just new to me (and, as it turns out, to Bibelot). After reading Lake Champlain Chocolate's website, I believe the packaging was re-designed, perhaps that's why they didn't look familiar. But I'd never bought one before.
I, along with the rest of the free world, am currently obsessed with all things Salted Caramel. Add Salted Caramel to Dark Chocolate, and there's no possible way I could resist.
Although I consider dark chocolate an essential part of a healthy diet (sincerely!) I still forced myself to eat dinner before sampling these. (It was cauliflower crust pizza so it wasn't much of a punishment.)
I really like Lake Champlain chocolates. How can you not love something that's made in the picturesque and amazingly quaint Burlington, VT? And you can often find mini-bars or even little squares of their chocolate, so you can taste test. (I've found them in stores from Minnesota to New Orleans, that's the entire length of the Mississippi River!)
Salted Caramel – Description from package front: "dark chocolate bursting with salty-sweet caramel." OKAY, bring it on!! Organic, 57% cocoa. Fifty-seven percent is not as dark as I'd like (I love to keep my cocoa count above 70%) but we all have to make sacrifices.
At first taste (which, by the way, was two squares, for a total of less than 1 oz – entire bar was 8 squares and 3 oz. total) I was immediately impressed by the dark, liquid caramel oozing out. Delicious!
However, I didn't get a huge salt taste. In fact, after eating both squares, I didn't really notice any salt at all.
Being a trooper, I tried another 2 squares the next day. This is a delicious, albeit messy, dark chocolate caramel bar. I just didn't notice even a hint of salt taste or texture.
Spicy Aztec – Description from package front: "bold dark chocolate with cayenne, pumpkin seeds, and cinnamon." Their errant (superfluous?) use of the serial comma aside, ALL of these ingredients are on my health food list. Again, seriously. Also 57% cocoa and organic.
This bar was H-O-T HOT from the first bite. In fact, I hadn't even bit into a square entirely when the cayenne hit my tongue and stayed there.
I am NOT the stereotypical Minnesotan who's afraid of heat, or any spice for that matter. I LOVE hot food, spicy hot chocolate, you name it. That said, the cayenne was a bit overwhelming. I only noticed a small hint of cinnamon.
I did like that you could immediately see whole pumpkin seeds within the chocolate. They were really crunchy too. For some reason, this surprised me. But I loved it.
Overall, I really liked this bar too. I love hot pepper dark chocolate. Once I accepted that the first taste is cayenne and there's a long after-burn, this was a pretty fun bar.
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