Sugar Savvy

Last week, I had the pleasure sampling some interesting chocolates made by Chuao Chocolatier, a San Diego-based artisan chocolatier.

The concept, as written on the promotional pamphlet, is “to combine chocolate bar with bonbon, and offer a slim but satisfying chocolate decadence with less than 60 calories per serving”.

I was excited seeing the five little packets of exotic flavor combinations inside the square brown box. They did a good job in packaging as all the wrappers come with bright and cheerful color, pretty enticing to consumers like me, who are attracted to eye-catching packaging. I picked up the one with yellow wrapper for my first experience of ChocoPod. The flavor combination was banana brown sugar caramel in milk chocolate, aptly named Banana.

I must say that I was a bit disappointed after the initial excitement. Even though Chuao Chocolatier pride themselves with “using fresh and natural ingredients to create confections that arouse one’s senses with unusual, unexpected and delicious experiences,” I found the banana flavor in this ChocoPod to be more artificial than natural. And sure it’s unusual and unexpected, but certainly not in a positive way. It is really a tooth-aching-sweet experience.

The good news is, other than the Banana, the rest of the ChocoPods delivered what they promised.

The next ChocoPod I tried, Candela, was a dark chocolate with spicy macadamia praline. I liked the contrast of the silky smooth dark chocolate with the crunchy macadamia praline. The taste is pleasing - nutty and not too sweet. However, I didn’t detect even a faint hint of spiciness in the chocolate. Not really sure why they have to mention “spicy macadamia praline” on its wrapper at all.

Modena, which has strawberry and balsamic caramel in dark chocolate, tastes okay. It was certainly better than Banana, but I would have loved it more if they had packed in more strawberry flavor.

Passion is a dark chocolate with passion fruit caramel has a floral taste. It has nice constrast of sweet filling with bittersweet chocolate.

My favorite from the batch is Picante. It was a ChocoPod with spicy cabernet caramel in dark chocolate. The flavor is complex and unusual. And I like the spiciness that comes with it. Not overwhelming but enough to excite your senses. Also, it doesn’t have the kind of grainy texture one associates with chocolates with an alcohol-based filling.

To see other offerings from Chuao Chocolatier, go to their website at http://www.chuaochocolatier.com/.