Sunday, August 29, 2010

Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier Tea Collection

Here's a set of interesting truffles I found to be duly appropriate- Keepitcoming was recovering from a brief malady, so tea-flavored confections couldn't go wrong. This particular set is from Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier, and features four truffles in Earl Grey, Rose, Blueberry, and Jasmine.The four truffles are enrobed in dark chocolate, ranging from 61%-70%, and feature flavored teas infused within the ganache itself. This may have been the first issue we had with these. Rather than the essences of the flavors in an oil or powder, the teas were used, possibly yielding a weak flavor.We started with earl grey, a particular favorite tea of mine. The dark chocolate paired well with the slightly astringent flavor, carrying a heavy bergamot and lemongrass spiciness in the first five seconds, but then tapered out to a mild chocolate and little else. Where I would have loved to taste a little cinnamon, orange, and more peppery spice, the midpalate was very short and unsatisfying. The chocolate was delicious, but I was really looking for that flavor to carry through until the end.The next flavor was rose. A similar effect occurred here- we enjoyed a luxurious chocolate truffle with a nice fruity shell, but would have never guessed that this was a rose-flavored confection. There was no floral notes in the first truffle, though Keepitcoming tasted a very faint rosiness in the next. It was a very pleasant truffle but touted little else.The blueberry truffle was the most satisfying of all the flavors sampled. From the entry, it had a distinctly fruity, dark taste, and was pleasantly grainy with the pieces of blueberry. The chocolate, a lighter dark, was paired well with this flavor and counterbalanced the dried jamminess of the berries themselves. There was no distinctive tea flavor here, but it was a fantastic fruit truffle and maintained an accurate representation of its ingredients.The last truffle in our tasting was a jasmine truffle. This had a flavor that reminded me of wild grapes, a very tart and tangy flavor underneath the smoothness of the chocolate. After knowing its flavor, it might have been more easily matched, but as an unknown taste, it's rather murky and indistinguishable.In all the chocolates, the ganache was rich and creamy and fantastic on its own, but might have been too rich and overwhelmed the subtleties of the tea flavors.

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