More from the Raw Chocolate Company after our review of their chocolate covered berries. A selection of dairy-free mini bars in an unusual range of flavours. Rich cocoa packed Pitch Dark at one end of the spectrum through to sweet caramel Vanoffe at the other. All of it raw and some of the bars sugar-free too:
Caramel Heaven: Vanoffe / Vanoffe Dark
Using coconut sugar as the sweetener along with naturally sweet lucuma, these bars are fantastic and are the company's best seller. The lucuma fruit has a caramel syrupy taste and this provides the toffee flavour as well as some of the vanilla, but an extra dose of vanilla is thrown in for good measure. The lighter bar, without the extra cocoa mass, has a paler appearance which reminds us a little of those Caramac bars that were popular in the 80s. The dark bar is less toffee flavoured, but more of a caramel infused traditional chocolate bar.
The Dark Side: Pitch Dark
A raw version of a high cocoa dark chocolate. Pretty conventional tasting but excellent quality. Raw chocolate at its most pure.
Goji Goodness: Gojiberry & Orange
Sweet and orangey in a good dark chocolate. The gojiberry taste is quite hard to pin down as the berries are added as powder rather than whole, and are just a little squeezed out by the orange. This bar is a bit like Green and Blacks' Maya Gold, being an orange flavour with a subtle 'something else' in there.
No added sugar: Orange with Xylitol / Mint with Xylitol
We can't say we're impressed with the sugar-free bars, as the sweetener affects the taste of the bars pretty strongly. Xylitol, like sorbitol and other similar sweeteners has a cooling effect in the mouth which feels very wrong for chocolate. It's an interesting contrast with Coyo yoghurt which also uses xylitol, but as a chilled dairy-style product is better matched to a cooling sweetener. The mint bar is the better of the two, and you could mistake the cooling taste as coming from the mint, but the orange bar isn't great.
The contrast between the sugar-free bars and the conventionally sweetened bars is pretty strong here. The xylitol-sweetened bars seem to be a little at odds with the raw, natural, organic nature of the company's product line, not least in the all important taste aspect.
If you try one of these bars for the first time, try one with sugar in...in fact try the Vanoffe one...we're pretty sure you'll like it! On the whole we can give The Raw Chocolate Co bars a lovely big thumbs up.
LINK: You can also read our review of The Raw Chocolate Co's chocolate covered berries.
Veganoo Score: ★★★★★
Raw Chocolate Company
Raw Chocolate Bars
Raw Chocolate Company
Raw Chocolate Bars
Veganoo Score: ★★☆☆☆
Raw Chocolate Company
Sugar Free Raw Chocolate Bars
Raw Chocolate Company
Sugar Free Raw Chocolate Bars
Footnote: Ingredients
Here are the ingredients panels from the packs we reviewed.
Sugar Free Orange |
Orange with Gojiberry |
Pitch Dark |
Sugar Free Mint |
Vanoffe |
Vanoffe Dark |
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