Thursday 6 October 2011

A Piece of Forest

Well, within the world of catering there was only one event of any real importance taking place in the UK and that of course was the "Great British Bake Off" final. Forget X-Factor and Come Strictly Prancing or whatever it's called these days!  Well, I actually love both of these but the GBBO has just got better and better.  The Facebook servers must have been lit up like a Christmas tree with all the catty, I mean, well informed and objective comments from baking ladies around the country!  Congratulations to Jo Wheatley,  who is from Southend-on-Sea and a fellow Essex lady.  My cravings for all things sweet just go through the roof when this programme is on. Darn you! Darn you GBBO!


Unfortunately, a rather well endowed squirrel stole the show.  Within seconds the Twitterazzi were Tweeting pictures of the animals attributes around the world.  I could almost hear Mary Berry choking on her meringue. That certainly boosted your rankings, hey BBC2?


This leads me nicely into the next Zotter post, A Piece of Forest, a place where you might find squirrels and fluffy monsters...yeah, ok I think you get the picture.




Described as Chestnut and Milk Couverture. I quote, "The piece of forest is filled with cranberry ganache (somebody has made a typo and put canache) on home-made nougat with walnut oil.  This irresistible filling is covered with sweet chestnut coating, which has been newly developed by Zotter in its chocolate factory".  The reason they've called it, A Piece of Forest will become clear soon and you'll be able to see the wood for the trees!






The bar has a chunky, clunky feel to it that makes it feel bigger than its 70g.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of bloom on the bar as it was a sample and has probably been in and out of crates for a few weeks.  Bloom is caused by temperature fluctuations and whilst not aesthetically pleasing it will not do you any harm.  Sweet milky chocolate aroma wafts up through the air as I breathe deeply.  This is a 40% milk chocolate. 65% of the ingredients are Fairtrade and a big % of the products are from controlled organic cultivation. I'm not really getting the chestnut or walnut as the tart, sharp cranberry is very powerful and floods out the other flavours.  The soft ganache is very pleasant and the bar works well I would just like a bit more walnut and chestnut.


Not bad for a posh piece of Turkish Delight!  Overall an enjoyable bar of chocolate scoring 6/10 for flavour.  As usual Zotter score highly for their presentation.  Priced at £3.35 from Confection Affection!. As I mentioned before the bar is so named because Zotter are committed to a project in Laos under the leadership of the WWF and Austrian Federal Forests. For each "piece of forest" chocolate sold, a new tree will be planted in the rainforest.


Well done Zotter!

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like a lovely mix of flavors! Too bad the nuts were more prominent in the mix though.

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  2. Lisa, many thanks for your comment. It was indeed a good mix of flavours which is not always the case with Zotter bars.

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  3. Thanks for this interesting article. I live in Styria and the factory of Zotter is situated not far away from my home. I often visit his factory for tasting the latest products.

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