Chocolate from Trader Joe’s

I went to Trader Joe’s in Ann Arbor for the first time to see what kind of chocolate they had. The funny thing was that all the chocolate was up near the registers, with the exception of a few things farther back in the store. They had some maple chocolates but it had vanillin and other yucky stuff in it so I passed.

A couple things I will point out right away:

1. All these pictures are of chocolate bar wrappers (with a few exceptions) because I bought these a while ago and chocolate doesn’t last long at my house.
2. These bars were incredibly inexpensive which is very unlike Ann Arbor, which was voted the most over priced town in the Midwest a few years back.

Here’s what I bought:

These first two bars are Trader Joe’s brand and it says Product of Belgium on it. Not much info on the label except that the Dark bar (56% cacao) has “butter oil” listed as an ingredient. It listed cocoa butter as a separate ingredient so I’m not sure what they mean. Dairy butter? Odd. Anyway, the dark bar was just ok. The Milk bar was just marvelous! Very creamy and yummy, with a slight sticky feel to it. They sell them in little packets of 4 bars each, and I would definately buy the milk bar again.

The Trader Joe’s Reserva Chocolate bar (73%) was the worst chocolate I have ever tasted. I thought nothing could top the horrible flavor of Korkunov, but this one did it. Very bitter with a rotten flavor to it, like it was spoiled. The label says product of Switzerland and the ingredients are very simple, and it does not contain vanilla. According to the back, this chocolate is made exclusively from bean from Sao Tome, which is off the west coast of Africa. That there tells me they are likely Forestero beans, which are not to be used for flavor in your chocolate bar. Dreadful. This bar is still completely intact except for the small piece that I spit into the garbage.

The Trader Joe’s 73% super dark bar was pretty good. For some reason I didn’t down write much about it in my notes, but its all organic and has a reasonable flavor.

The Trader Joe’s Dark Truffle bar was very good with an extra smooth texture and nice flavor. I would buy this one again.

The Trader Joe’s Milk Truffle bar was ok except it did have a slightly bitter overtone to it, which I don’t like in a milk bar. It also had canola and safflower oil in it which is kinda odd to me but I guess good if you are looking for more unsaturated fat in your diet. Ofcourse, maybe you should be limiting your chocolate bars and looking for unsaturated fat someplace else instead.

These two tins by The Chocolate Traveler were kinda cool. They are about the size of the new Altoids Citrus Sour tins and the chocolate inside comes in little wedges, like a pie. The milk chocolate was really good, very smooth and just delicious. In the ingredients they list lactose, which I had not seen before. The dark (70%) was just ok. It didn’t have vanilla in it and tasted kinda plain for a semi-sweet chocolate.

These two are made by Villars, and I thought it looked funny to see the registered trademark symbol next to the word “Swiss” on the box label, although it is a product of Switzerland. The dark bar (72%) was bitter and bland and not worth eating more than a small bite. The Milk bar was very nice, and it had a different kind of flavor. Kind of like a faint maple flavor or something like. Very smooth and not sticky at all. I noticed they had whey listed as an ingredient so maybe that was what the taste was.

This last one is also by Villars, labeled Chocolat A L’Ancienne. The picture is awful but it says it is authentic swiss milk chocolate, made with exclusively with real Swiss milk. None of that imported Austrian milk here! :) It had whey listed on the ingredients like their other milk bar. This chocolate bar was just delicious! It had a very heavy milky taste to it, almost like sweetened condensed milk if you’ve ever tasted that. There was a funny grainy feel to it, but other than that I really liked it. I will definately buy one of these next time I’m in Trader Joe’s.

That’s all for this week. Hope you all have a good weekend running and racing!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Chocolate Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.