Latest news with #CocoaRunners
Telegraph
09-07-2025
- General
- Telegraph
This own-label white chocolate tastes better than a Milkybar: 29 supermarket bars tried and tested
Purists may claim that it isn't chocolate at all, but the sweet, mild flavour of white chocolate is curiously comforting. According to Chantal Coady, the chocolate maker and retailer known as 'the Chocolate Detective', it's actually not that surprising: the sweet lactic notes 'might be the closest thing to breast milk', she explains, and trigger a subliminal sense of childlike bliss – for some of us at least. White chocolate is legally chocolate as long as it contains at least 20 per cent cocoa butter and 14 per cent dry milk solids, but there's another reason that connoisseurs should not completely dismiss it, says Spencer Hyman, the co-founder of speciality chocolate retailer Cocoa Runners. 'Even though it doesn't have the tannins and anthocyanins that you get in dark or milk chocolate, the cocoa butter itself actually has some flavour and aromas,' Hyman says. This is especially true when the cocoa butter hasn't been industrially deodorised to remove its natural scent, although sadly most has (want to taste the real deal? Try Chocolarder's 40 per cent pure white, made with undeodorised cocoa butter; £6.95 for 70g). Having tasted 29 bars from the high street (saving a high-end product taste test for another day), I can confirm that there are still good options to be found on supermarket shelves to satisfy that white chocolate craving – including cooking chocolate. Skip to: Traditionally this is higher in cocoa butter than regular chocolate, and designed to melt evenly: could it be more delicious to eat? Read on to discover which version is worth adding to your cookies, and which bar is best for a nibble. The taste test Zero-star white chocolate
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
Notes on chocolate: a reluctant tip for Valentine's Day
A few readers have been writing to say that some of the chocolate I've recommended is out of stock – sorry about that, but craft/small-scale produce is like that. I'm afraid further disappointment may ensue this week with me mentioning Luisa Abram's chocolate. Abram is a Brazilian-based chocolate-maker who works with micro-lot, wild-grown cocoa from the Amazon rainforest. I wrote about her a few years ago, concentrating on the dark milks. But this time, rooting round for something to make my chocolate-chestnut pancakes with, I found some of her 70/80% chocolate – and it's all superb. This is where things get frustrating, because stocks come and go; like I say, this isn't mass-scale produced chocolate. A little understanding and patience is needed. But you can always keep track of stock on the Cocoa Runners website. My favourite, the 81% Purus River – so good it almost did taste like a dark milk – is not currently available, but should be later in the year. We are a smidge away from one of my least favourite days of the year: Valentine's Day. I'm not a fan of chocolate-giving just because it's commercially prescribed… But! Islands Chocolate (whose massive 2kg bag of 55% dark milk chocolate buttons I absolutely covet, but can never seem to justify) has a choconut spread (£8.95), which is jam-packed with hazelnuts, and being repackaged for this time of year with the message 'Spread the love'. I like that as it's universal, non-committal and, of course, the actual product is delicious.
