Breaking Off A Piece

When I wasn’t getting my head shaved, riding around in a ridiculous Camaro and being a robot during the Las Vegas/Los Angeles jaunt I recently took, I was visiting one of my best friends, Sara Bar.

She had recently returned from a wedding in Belize (of two very nice people who were unfortunate casualties of the Great Bike Adventure Debacle of 2015), and when not taking Max Bar and I to Ross Dress For Less because one of us split our pants, she showered me with chocolate bars she had procured out there.

It was a pretty tasty adventure getting through them all; I opened the last one this morning. While they all had fun little eccentricities, they pretty consistently featured the bitter notes of the cacao bean at the front of each bite, to fade away into varying degrees of sweetness as it melted in my mouth. I don’t know if that’s a trait inherent to Belizian chocolate or a byproduct of its organicness and/or freshness, but it was apparent.

My thoughts:

Cocoa Nib Crunch (pictured)
– So, I might be revealing my lack of formal candy bar education, but what the fk is a cocoa nib?
– Like, is it a part of the plant? I’m assuming?
– If they’re what I’m assuming they are out of context, the nibs served as fine, bitter crunchies interspersed within the milk chocolate, adding texture and an almost soft-serve-twist-cone commingling of flavors.

GOSS White with Vanilla Bean
– Never have I ever had white chocolate that tasted like it was actually chocolate. Usually it is creamy and waxy and probably just yogurt.
– Until I ate this bad boy.
– It was very much still white chocolate, but with a more natural, gently bitter flavor. Top marks.

Dark Milk
– Bitter at the front and then creamy sweet the rest of the way.
– Definitely a milk chocolate, but about as bitter as a Hershey’s Special Dark. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

Unprompted Photo of my Parents’ Dog, Peaches
– OH HEY DER LITTLE PEACHES. DON’T WORRY, IT’S ALL GOING TO BE OK.

Dark Chocolate with Black Pepper
– They put pepper in the chocolate.
– Why did they put pepper in the chocolate?
– Why don’t I dislike the pepper in the chocolate?
– But really. They put pepper in the chocolate.

Dark Milk Chocolate with Coffee
– They put coffee in the chocolate.
– That makes sense. It was really good.

Light Milk
– Only the faintest hint of bitter.
– Flavor similar to CDM, just with stronger cacao.

Once again, all of the thanks to Sara Bar for her generosity.