Over the course of Labor Day weekend, I was fortunate enough to have old friend Brian Bar and new friend Sonia Bar pay me a visit from their current home of Indianapolis. Before we grabbed dinner, caught up and reminisced of college hijinks, Brian and Sonia perused the vast aisles and departments of Eataly, an Italian ubermarket (or would it be supremomarket?) that peddles all sorts of wonderful treats.
Big fans of BOaP, they were kind enough to pass along some fancy-ass Italian candy bars for me to check out.
The first, pictured above, translates roughly to Baratti & Milano White Chocolate with Champagne and Black Currants. I translated that by reading the back of the package after opening the bar, failing to notice the picture on the front and puzzled as to why this candy was not brown-colored.
Oh hey der white chocolate.
Once I forgave myself for making generalizations about candy bar packages, I broke off a piece and dove in. The white chocolate itself was wonderfully creamy and complemented the strong but pleasant berry/grapey flavor of the black currants. It’s hard to nail down how big of an effect the champagne had; I can’t say I explicitly tasted it in there, but at the same time, I had very little to compare it to, so it might have made a big difference when compared against a bar featuring only white chocolate and black currants.
At the end of the day, it was a very wealthy man’s purple-flavored chocolate bar, and I mean that wholly as the complement that it is and not how it reads.
The second bar they brought was a Rossella dark chocolate and blood orange bar.
I have never understood the fascination that candy companies have with orange and chocolate. The combination to me seems to go together like peanut butter and mint: Sure, they are both tasty things, and if you tell me they are good together I will go about having an adventurous palate and say that I can taste the complexity while really I’m not getting this at all.
But this was blood orange, dammit, and that ups the stakes. I’d give it a shot with an open mind.
And you know what? It was pretty good!
The extra bitterness of the dark chocolate served to squelch a little of the sweetness of the orange zest, and I think the addition of blood really helped the overall flavor combinations. As a nice extra bonus, the bar had a bit of a granular texture from residual sugar crystals, which provided a crunch that really brought things around. While it definitely wasn’t a bar I could eat in one sitting, it was a fun thing to explore.
Much appreciation to Sonia and Brian for their generosity, and apologies to Brian for telling Sonia about that time he dressed up as Princess Zelda for the midnight release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Breaking Off A Piece 