Cocoa Boutique – A Review

Oh the excitement. The pleasure of an unopened box of chocolates just waiting to be discovered. The expectation is doubled when I don’t know what the box contains. I have, occasionally, been disappointed, but these chocolates were from Cocoa Boutique and I have reviewed them before, so I knew I was going to like them. They arrived rather mysteriously; I was not expecting them and had had no correspondence about it, but I am not one to turn down a box of nice chocolates that has been posted through my door. Cocoa Boutique is a chocolate club, so they are set up for parcels that can fit through a letterbox – I wish more would do that: better to be gratified instantly than to have to wait for a redelivery. This box was visually very pleasing and the enticing aroma of chocolate wafting up made me impatient to get stuck in.

Before even looking at the card to see what flavours awaited me, I followed the visual cues and went straight for the chocolate that appealed to me most. It was the Passion Fruit, a flavour I have a love hate relationship with when it comes to chocolate. Done well, it can be exquisite, but done badly it can taste synthetic and unpleasant. I was relieved to find, this fell into the first category. Paired with dark chocolate, it was sharp, fruity, aromatic and full flavoured, leaving behind a mixture of dark chocolate and passionfruit flavour that lingered on the palate for some considerable time after the chocolate had been consumed. I could quite see why this chocolate by Sun Trigg has won several awards.

Following this jump into the unknown and my lust being sated for a while, I was a little more restrained with my further tastings. I looked at the guide to see just what I had in store. There were some delicious sounding chocolates and flavour combinations, but my eye fell on the cocoa dusted salted caramel and as I would be addicted to these if my pocket allowed, this was my very next choice. The caramel was a little thicker than I’ve had before, but no less delicious for that and the salt erring towards subtlety brought out the flavour without tasting particularly salty. Note for CT: a box of these would be my idea of bliss.

Marzipan – just how I like it. It had a homemade feel and was almondy both in texture and taste without tasting of almond essence and it was not too sweet either.

Gazillionaires Shortbread – a fun idea, but sweeter than the salted caramel and like millionaires shortbread, just too sweet for me.

Double Praline – I enjoyed the two different flavours and textures stacked one on top of the other.

The Frothing Hot Chocolate was not only fun to look at, but contained a bit of a surprise – it was certainly very hot!

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All in all, I thought this was a good box of chocolates and I’d be happy for someone to subscribe me to the service for a while – hint, hint! There was a good mix of dark, milk and white chocolate and a varied mix of textures and flavours to make this a box that can be indulged in by one single chocoholic – why are you looking at me? Or it could be shared out amongst friends and family – there should be something here to suit everyone’s taste.