Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Dolfin Milk Chocolate Green Tea and Jasmine

If you hadn't already figured it out, Keepitcoming Love and I are connoisseurs of exotic flavor combinations. It's a little like being a connoisseur of exotic dancing- slightly bogus, but all about taste.

In any case, we're always excited to get a new treat in a flavor we've never had before, in this case, Dolfin's milk chocolate with green tea and jasmine. I've found that strong, Asiatic flavors like these are generally paired with dark chocolate, so this would prove to be a gastronomical experience to savor. Milk chocolate happens to be my favorite.The bar was the same size as the Dolfin hot masala bar, lilliputian with four sectors for eating, but unlike the masala bar, it was obvious that there was tea. In fact, the chocolatiers went so far as to mix small pieces of tea leaf and spice into the bar, so not only was the bar completely infused with the tea's flavor, it was texturally different, too, similar to poppy seeds with a slightly bitter crunch.The flavor of the milk chocolate changed drastically, as the spices provided a tasty buffer to all the sugar in the chocolate, which was still quite sweet. The green tea pieces added the most intense flavor, a slightly soapy, harby sweetness similar to green tea ice cream, and the jasmine gave the bar a spicy complexity and a fantastic floral scent. The chocolate bound the bar together and gave it a hit of sugar and rich cocoa that it definitely needed. Milk chocolate was definitely the right base for this, as the tea gave its own bitter flavor. With a dark chocolate, I could see the tea being pushed to the back burner, easily overwhelmed by the richness of a 60% dark, or the entire bar tasting too bitter from the darker elements.This was really a beautiful bar. Not only was it delicious, but it was visually pleasing and certainly different than many bars that have passed through Foodette. Our expectations were low after the disappointment of the masala bar, but this has drastically changed my opinion and I'm curious to see the other Dolfin offerings.

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