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For me, coffee and chocolate are the best of friends, and a combination I never tire of eating. Whenever I get a selection box of chocolates, the café latte or cappuccino chocolates are the first ones I nab (seconded only by chocolate-covered marzipan and Turkish Delight).
But British bean-to-bar maker Seed Chocolate has created a chocolate bar that pairs the seldom-seen combination of chocolate, coffee, quinoa and magnolia.
Along with the purple hibiscus chocolate bar, I knew I had to order this one to see what it was like. Swayed by a time-limited discount code, I snapped up a selection of bars, with the coffee, quinoa and magnolia bar being one of them.
Packaging
Yodel delivered my parcel with complimentary water damage to the box, but thankfully the chocolate bars inside survived, albeit broken into pieces.
The packaging can best be described as minimal, but Seed Chocolate is running a crowdfunding campaign to fund the switch to more befitting zero-waste packaging in the near future.
The bar arrived in a clear plastic bag, with a Seed Chocolate logo sticker on the front. On the rear, a hand written label detailed the ingredients, batch, and best before date (it had just shy of six months on it).
Seed Chocolate Coffee, Quinoa & Magnolia Dark Chocolate ingredients:
Organic cocoa beans, organic unrefined cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, organic coffee, organic quinoa, edible flowers, salt.
The label lists quinoa as an allergen, while the website also states there may be traces of milk, nuts, peanuts and gluten. The website also states this recipe is free of soy and dairy, and is vegan-friendly.
Seed Chocolate Coffee, Quinoa & Magnolia Dark Chocolate Bar Review
The face of the chocolate bar is formed using the same decorative cacao pod mould used for the hibiscus chocolate I reviewed previously, and the 100% cacao bar I'm reviewing soon.
The rear is teaming with toasted quinoa, Bojangles coffee flecks, and magnolia leaves. Incidently, the magnolia leaves are foraged by hand, pickled, dehydrated, and salted in what can only be described as a labour of love.
The aroma of the Peruvian dark chocolate is rich and mildly smokey and woody. I also pick up subtle fruity notes in the background too. There's a faint glimmer of coffee but it's not as central as I expected it to be. I anticipated heady espresso aromas but instead the coffee fragrance is incredibly subtle.
On tasting, there's an awful lot going on, so you need to bring your A-game when feasting on this grown-up chocolate bar.
A salty start makes way for the very mild coffee flavour to come through. The flavour of the chocolate tries hard to break into the overall taste but the crunch of the toasted quinoa seeds intervenes. When the chocolate notes finally do appear, they are mildly smokey, with a hint of berry vibrancy to them.
There are also glimmers of floral notes (almost violet in nature) that I mostly detect right at the end. The finish is mildly bitter, with the earthy notes of the cocoa beans lingering longest along with the toasted notes of quinoa.
I had expected a full-on coffee flavour but it's not that type of chocolate (the coffee haters amongst you can breathe a sigh of relief). Instead, this bars draws on the finer qualities of the coffee, quinoa and magnolia flowers to each control a different dimension in this bar. The flavours are imaginatively balanced, and the finish of this bar is clean and crisp.
This is definitely a chocolate bar to savour. There's a lot going on and it's far too easy to wolf down without truly appreciating the delicate balance between all the ingredients. That said, because there's so much going on, this 52g chocolate bar will not last long, as you'll want to eat more and more to unlock all of its secrets. My bar lasted over just two sittings, and the experience was totally different with each bite.
Seed Chocolate Coffee, Quinoa & Magnolia Dark Chocolate Bar Review
RRP: £7.95 | Seed Chocolate | Shop now
A complex dark chocolate enhanced with the subtle additions of coffee, crunchy toasted quinoa, and fragrant magnolia. One to be savoured, it's a careful balance of flavours in a very delicate chocolate bar. If you've always hated coffee chocolates, this bar might make you rethink everything.
Where to Buy Online
You can buy this bar directly on the Seed Chocolate website (£7.95).
This is a limited edition bar made in small batches, so if coffee, quinoa and magnolia sounds as curious to you as it did me, get it while you can.
Coffee and chocolate - a marriage made in heaven or the worst combination ever? Let me know which side of the fence you sit in a comment below.
