A Chocolate Review

Diane ordered me an extremely bittersweet task: a comparative review of two of my favourite chocolate truffles around, Trader Joe’s Truffle Bar and the brand-new Hershey’s Truffle Kisses, and provided me with the materials to deliver a good job. So, I took on the mission of trying both ambrosiae and enlighten those stuck with the tough choice.

Hershey’s is probably my favourite industrialized chocolate, and it’s one of the things I miss the most in Spain. Everytime they release something new, it’s certainly worth trying, because being such a small-town-America mentality company, if they’re releasing something, it’s gotta be good! Recently, I was amazed to discover that they exist only in three countries outside North America. I felt really blessed for being brought up in one of them. So, just imagine all the resistance new projects for new chocolate has to overcome within the company’s board of directors before it reaches the candy shop. Like babies born before the 18th century, every new treat from Hershey’s is victorious just for making it to the factory.

Trader Joe’s apparently has tons of neat stuff to try, and looks pretty experimental, risk-taking and avant-guarde from a distance, especially by the reports Diane deliver me regularly, so the fact that the Truffle Bar stood out within the wealthy and colourful treasure chest is worth notice. It’s definetely my favourite bar available, and probably the coolest idea in the history of Chocolate since the English added milk to it.

So, I was basically torn. However, while the Hershey’s Truffle Kisses are certainly delicious, I decided to stick to the Trader Joe’s Truffle Bar, for a myriad of reasons. First, because a bar truffle is certainly more innovative than a kiss truffle. TJ’s definetely has some merit in inventing a new way to deliver my favourite variety of chocolate.

Moreover, the filling of the bar is more creamy and less solid, like truffle fillings are supposed to be. When you bite a truffle, you’re expecting your teeth to sink slowly in the thick, silky core of dark chocolate and fat after it breaks through the hard shell of milk chocolate. Yum… The Kiss, however, feels too homogeneous on the way to its core. So one more point for the Bar!

Finally, I’ll risk to say the Bar has a merit in taste, too. Again, the Truffle Kiss is for sure a real delight, but it doesn’t taste like an actual truffle as much as the Bar does. There’s a bitterness to the traditional truffle that apparently Milton’s heirs were not able to reproduce faithfully in their new product. Trader Joe’s candidate, on the other hand, even when refrigerated, renders the exact sensual experience a homemade truffle would.

So, if you cannot get both, I say: go for the Bar! And ship me some if you like this review and find it helpful.

Or get me a job as a chocolate conoisseur. I have what it takes.