This Veritas True Flat bar is constructed different than most: it doesn’t look like a typical chocolate “bar”… it’s just a slab of chocolate with cacao nibs sprinkled over the top. This bar is a 32% milk (hmm that’s the lowest cocoa percentage I’ve had in a while. This will be interesting). The chocolate is all-natural (hooray) and they claim to get all their cacao nibs from either the Ivory Coast or South America. That looks pretty good on the package, but I think most cacao comes from those two locations, so I’m not convinced they can claim to satisfy the “origin-seeking chocolate purist” unless they can truly specify a single origin of their chocolate.
The chocolate has a faint flowery aroma to it under the sweet cream.
The flavor is very sweet… I have difficulty tasting the chocolate at first. The small cacao nibs sprinkled on top are the saving grace of this bar: they add a satisfying crunch and a hint of the bitter cacao flavor that I really love under the creamy, sugary chocolate base.
How am I supposed to “taste” chocolates that have nibs…. I know that sounds dumb but…
For regular chocolate I break the square in half, listen to snap, smell, and put the half in my mouth to let it melt. I never bite the chocolate and if i need to break it into smaller pieces I use my tongue… This is how I was told to taste chocolate… but I may not be doing it right. Imagine that.. not eating chocolate correctly o.O
(a blog post on different ways to taste chocolate would be great!!)
Great question
In the case of the Veritas chocolate, the nibs were sprinkled on top, so I took the opportunity to brush off the nibs from one of the small pieces I was trying to taste the chocolate, and then ate another with the nibs on in order to experience the chocolate as it was intended – with the crunch included. A blog about tasting chocolate is forthcoming – good idea. If you want more serious reading on the subject I highly recommend a book by Chloe Doutre-Roussel called “The Chocolate Connoisseur”. You can read an excerpt of it from her website.