Raven’s Range
Blather around a virtual range

Monday, 21 July 2008 09:13

Endangered Species Chocolate: Smooth Milk Chocolate

Filed in Blog, Reviews

Here is my first ever chocolate review. I had fun doing it. *grin*

There are a whole series of Endangered Species bars of chocolate, but I am on a quest for great milk and great white chocolate so that shaped my picks. When trying to decide between the many varieties, I ended up dropping this one, so knowing that the next person in line would probably be disappointed with the likely result of this, I bought it. (And I dropped it when I got home, too–go me!)

The bar is 3.5 ounces, or 85 g. .The outer wrapping is kind of an unexciting cafe au lait color, with a photograph of a sad-looking sea otter. A lime green band notes that 10% of the net profits from this manufacturer are donated “to help support species, habitat and humanity.” It also boasts a 52% cocoa content, which I knew from the start was too dark to hit the spot for a great milk chocolate. Were it not for my attack of dropsy this likely wouldn’t have been my first choice, simply because I found the wrapping rather dull and figured it would be too dark.

Chocolate The ingredients were: cocoa mass, whole milk powder, unbleached water-filtered beet sugar, cocoa butter, lactose, soy lecithin (as an emulsifier) and natural vanilla. The cocoa is sourced from small family farms, i.e. ethically traded.

The bar was slated as being two servings, with each serving being 240 calories, including 16g of fat, 10g of which was saturated, 15mg of cholestorol, 25 mg of sodium, 20g of carbohydrate, 1g of fiber, 19g of sugars, and 3g of protein. For what it’s worth there’s also 2% each of the RDA of vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C and 10% of the RDA for iron.

There was an inner wrapper glued to the outer one, which meant it didn’t come off cleanly (it ripped a little and for the photograph I had to turn the chocolate over and rewrap, which given the breaks was not easy). The inner wrapper is plain slightly matte silver foil and, again, unexciting. However, inside the main wrapper is a mini-essay about the otters, a blurb about the company’s fair trade policies, and…ooh! a 25c coupon for a 1.4oz specialty bar. Nice!

Inside, the chocolate (albeit scarred by now) was pretty-looking. 15 “squares” were raised at the center and marked in thin, diagonal lines. The chocolate tended to break awkwardly while at fridge temperature (I can’t keep it at room temperature–that’s too variable in here) but once it warmed it broke fairly easily and with a nice snap. I’d estimate the thickness at the apex to be around an eighth of an inch, perhaps a little more.

The overwhelming smell was of cocoa, and to me it smelled more like dark chocolate than a milk. The first taste was also of cocoa, rather bitter. Only after a moment or two did the milky flavor kick in; I couldn’t detect the vanilla at all. The chocolate melted fairly slowly and the sensation was of thickness and flavor coming out, almost as though the milk were a filling rather than an ingredient. The aftertaste was rather bitter and lasted at least for a quarter of an hour.

I had my chocolate in five servings (it’s hard to split a 15 piece bar in half!) and the three pieces were perfectly satisfying. I noticed that when I had my second piece, which by now had warmed up somewhat, the bitter flavor went away much more quickly and the milky flavor was more noticeable. From then onwards I made sure to eat the chocolate at a little over fridge temperature as it gave a much better flavor with less of the bitter aftertaste. The bar did grow on me but it’s still not sweet and milky enough for me to call a great milk chocolate. It is, however, very smooth, just like the packaging promised.

I also noticed that this manufacturer has various “filled” milk chocolate bars, including almonds and rice crunchies, so I may well revisit at a future point.

The website for Endangered Species Chocolate LLC is located here. They operate out of a facility in Indianapolis, Indiana and sourced the cocoa for this particular bar from Nigeria.

Chocolate I do applaud the company’s efforts to engage in fair trade and conservation. The company was founded in 1993 to bring awareness of the species currently on the USDA’s endangered species lists…and more. There’s a blog on the website and lots of information about the products and where they came from.

I bought the chocolate at Tops Super Foods in Weaverville for something like $3.50, but I’ve also seen it in drug stores and regular old supermarkets. It’s a good quality chocolate, but it’s not milky enough and so the quest continues. ;)