I do love a chunky chocolate. The one I always wish I had to hand (but am also glad I don’t) is Me Chocolate bars – good chocolate, that also provides a good bite.
But I think I may have met my match with Temprd. It’s a small, Essex-based company that I came across at a farmer’s market. The bars come in two sizes: small (surprisingly large at 100g, £3.95) and large (200g, £5.95), across 14 flavours. It’s chunky and when I say chunky I mean almost impossible to break off, especially in the small bars where there’s less leverage. The moulds it’s made in are in a crazy-paving style and I struggled to get pieces off with my fingers, or my teeth, in the end going at it with a cleaver. The makers may want to look at this. Although I loved the thickness, the accessibility was not great.
This is gateway chocolate, perfect for those who find many of my recommendations perhaps a bit too scary. If you’re fed up with commercially made chocolate, but aren’t ready for a 55% bean-to-bar milk, then this is definitely worth considering.
The milks are 34% cocoa and the darks 55%, so nothing intense, and the flavours are really good. The milk orange crisp was yum, milky, creamy and with an excellently balanced orange flavour – my testers ate all of it while my back was turned. The dark with honeycomb bizarrely reminded me of childhood Bournville. Other good flavours were peanut butter and pistachio, and walnut and espresso. I wish I’d tried the milk caramel apple crumble, too, but by this stage, barely 10am, I’d had my fill.
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