The only camel's milk chocolate I've tried is Al Nassma. Ironically, I brought a bar to work today. Only 2% camel milk powder, so not sure if what I'm tasting is camel milk or the honey they also add to it, but it's interesting.
Camel's milk chocolate can be very delicious. As with all milk chocolates, the final flavor depends as much on the other ingredients and the process as it does the source of milk - but if done right, it makes a beautiful product.
The strangest chocolate things i've ever had? Bacon grease enrobed in milk chocolate (a Georgian - the country, not the state) favorite), and chocolate covered squid.
Although by now it is old news, one has to admit that the first time they saw a Voges Chocolate Bacon Bar they likley raised an eyebrow. I know I did, and then Iwas hooked after one bite! John R.
I made a wasabi pea praline for fun, it was a very interesting flavour. Would I make it again, probably not unless specifically asked as it was a very unique taste. One was enough for me. Although some of my asian friends enjoyed them significantly more then I did.
I made the garlic chocolate truffle last night - but I added sea salt - some loved it and others passed on it. I made a panko with sea salt chocolate truffle and it was Ok - but nothing special.
The halavah with chocolate sounds great!
Hello All
Am new to your forum and new to the business of chocolate truffles. Been making truffles since 2001 and gave to family and friends and later to clients and decided that this would be a good year to start a business in chocolate. So any advice or comments are welcomed. Your subject today is Weird Flavors and Inclusions in Chocolate - several of the truffles I prepare are made with fennel and ginger and sea salt, cayenne and chili powder, basil and cinnamon, thyme, pop rocks, balsamic, halavah, cardamon and saffron and more -
Trained as a food chemist, Melbourne's Chocolate Diva, Dr Hanna Frederick, is now consulting with large chocolate companies on her theories of taste and sensory analysis.
"Shes pioneered beer-flavoured chocolate and kangaroo and venison salami chocolate, so what could Hungarian-born chocolatier Hanna Frederick come up with next? Here are four recent taste sensations.
Mmor Mountain Goat High Tail Ale Chocolate Truffle Hanna finally uncovered the secret of how to coax malt to compete . . . and win . . . against dark chocolate. The result is pure harmony! It's Mmor's Mountain Goat Hightail Beer Truffle . We have tried beers from all over the world, but we found the perfect one here in our own backyard in Melbourne, says Melbourne's Choc Diva Dr Hanna Frederick. The new dark chocolate truffle is being rolled out for Good Beer Week in Melbourne. Mountain Goat Hightail is an English-inspired Amber Ale, light copper to light brown in colour, with a balance of caramel and malty flavours. Hanna, a trained food chemist, found a trick that allows the floral components of the 71% Dark Belgian Callebaut chocolate to come through to match the strong hoppy and malty notes. The Hightail Chocolate Truffle has its own nose too. You can smell a mixture of toffee and fruit aromas with a lovely aromatic lift. Burnt phenolic even nicotine characters with fresh slightly sweet flavours.
Mmor's Dracula's Last Kiss Garlic Truffle Draculas Last Kiss - garlic chocolate truffles with dark moulded lips and white chocolate fangs! It is a whole new world of flavours, said Hanna, whose company Mmor Chocolates in now Collingwood is world renowned for exciting chocolate ideas. It took me back to my Transylvanian heritage to create a vampire-killing flavour, she said. Her result is an extraordinary taste sensation of luxurious chocolate paired with the tangy taste of roasted garlic.
Mmor's Ghost Pumpkin Pie Chocolate Draculas Last Kiss complements her other Halloween truffle, the famous American Pumpkin Pie flavour, shaped in the head of a ghost featuring real baked pumpkin filling, with cinnamon and other sweet pie flavours. I love it, says Hanna. I think there are so many more opportunities for these kinds of flavours!
Mmor Kangaroo Salami chocolate Another taste sensation is the amazing Kangaroo Salami chocolate . Using smoked salami from a bespoke producer in South Australia, some people find this to die for. It is especially good before dinner as a starter or hors d'oeuvre. You can taste little bits of meat along with some amazing smoke and chilli.
Trained in chocolate-making in Australia, Hungary, and New Zealand, Dr Hanna Frederick is a former food chemist who gave up the corporate life to follow her passion and make chocolate. Her Collingwood Mmor Chocolates Szaln, where the window is dressed up with pumpkins, jack o lanterns and spider webs, produces more than fourty flavours. Hanna has made headlines around the world with her innovations, as her website shows . Her beer-chocolate mentioned in the New York Times and her aphrodisiac-chocolate made with exotic herb Tongkat Ali was reported in the USA and Europe on the Fox news network.
Hanna lovingly calls her taste sensations couture chocolat , as you'll see in her blog "My Philosophy of Couture Chocolate" . Chocolate is the ultimate pleasure-food, she says. There will never be enough ways to indulge in this gorgeous elixir. And if garlic is not your thing, try the spring season flavours: Jasmine Tea, Lavender, Rosewater Cardamom, all topped with edible flowers. Here you can see Hanna applying the fresh dried Jasmine blossoms."
I love ginger and chocolate! The first time I tried it was weird, but interesting - I didn't like it, but the flavor was sort ofhaunting. Now I can't get enough of it.
Turmeric sounds cool. If nothing else, it will be very bright in color!
Absolutely agree! That is the logic behind my pricing (and eating!) too. That said, some 'groceries' (well put!) are pretty involved. We do a candied ginger that starts with organic young ginger and after peeling, chopping, candying, drying, and getting it into a bite sized chunk of chocolate that actually looks pretty... Let's just say I'm overjoyed when people will pay top dollar for it!
As to weirdest inclusion, where I live the only one doing novel chocolate making is... me, so if I want something weird I have to make it. I haven't actually tried it before but I have turmeric root paste waiting in the fridge to become ganahe ... Should be interesting.
These sound great. I must admit -- not sure if anyone else feels the same -- but when I pay high-end prices for good chocolate, interesting flavors are awesome to have, but I'd prefer not to have a lot of groceries mixed in. Paying in excess of $50 per pound of chocolate is one thing, but I don't like paying that much for all the lower-priced "particulates", reason being that I'm actually getting less chocolate.
I'm not sure if this is weird or not, but after almost 2 years of experimentation, Ki Xocolatl will introduce two new varieties at the Fancy Food Show in New York this summer:
Dark chocolate with Key lime citrus
Milk chocolate with crushed tortilla chips
The first is like eating an Italian espresso. The second has that hint of corn and saltiness that marries well with milk chocolate.
I feel you at that one^^ I had that kind of flavour too, with a liquid filling
I never thought I would like any of the more savory herbs with chocolate, but I tried a sage truffle and a basil truffle that were both delicious. The basil with white ganache you mention sounds intriguing!
Definitely! I was very surprised at how good it was. 
That is cool. The place I live is known for fragrant woods (Taiwan), maybe I should give it a shot :D
Well, I just found out that it's actually wood infused, but it's still very interesting. One bar was made with Palo Santo wood-it's smoked, and the chocolate absorbs the flavor. The other chocolate I tried from that company was made with a bitter Italian drink. The whole line of bars is very good!
Ihave a running theory that chocolate goes with everything, but some of these combinations mentioned are challengingeven my particular brand of optimism.
This week I picked up dark chocolates with basil and white ganache, as well as one with roasted red peppers from Tifa Chocolate in AgouraHills, CA. Both are utterly delicious - strong basil flavor but it still works with itsheavenly chocolate robe.
I'll post pics and reviews of both soon (thechocolatetourist.tv/blog)!
That one was interesting. I liked it, but it's a strange one, for sure.
Oo I like this topic!
I have tried some strange combinations in chocolate bars before like potato chip, coconut curry and white chocolate olive, but I JUST stumbled upon Cocanu chocolates. Several of the bars have wood in them, and they are surprisingly good!
I just got to taste a pretty fascinating set of mushroom pralines, made by the fantastic hungarian chocolatier and bean-to-bar chocolate makers " Rzsavlgyi Csokold " ! Although I like combinations of savory/salty flavors with chocolate (such as more common classics with pepper, chili, or smoked salt...), I have to say that I was a little affraid of eating mushroom flavored chocolates. Their pretty box contains 9 pralines of 3 different mushroom flavors (Chanterelle, Morel and Porcini).
Guess what? They all taste great and I bet they make an incredible combination if eaten with a good, strong wine (the mushroom taste is not overly dominant though, which was probably a wise decision).
Coco Sala in Washington, D.C. sells chocolate covered bacon strips. I thought my kids would love it but the combination was just too much to handle. They love chocolate. And they love bacon. But not together!
I am going through the "Bean to Bar" program at Ecole Chocolat. The program includes tastings to compare chocolate from different regions, cocoa percentage, etc. I've found a couple chocolate bars that had the taste of smoke - one good and one bad.
The Michel Cluizel 85% Grand Noir had an incredible smokey flavor - reminiscent of sherry oak barrels burning in a barbeque pit, with a nice scotch whiskey lingering aftertaste.
On the other hand the Michel Cluizel Mokaya 66% Mexique had a terrible smokey aroma / flavor. While on the one hand it was somewhat bland, it had an unpleasant tobacco undertone. Made me think that they were smoking cigarettes or cigars while they prepared the chocolate! YECCH!
Very good points. I was merely restating the company's marketing. I will avoid that in the future without referencing peer-reviewed research.
Note that I did say that the best was 70% bittersweet even though it also had some camel's milk. So to your point, chocolate with higher cocoa content is better for diabetics, and in this case it is the best tasting chocolate with camel's milk anyway.
I have to butt in regarding camel milk. If the company actually says is has less lactose, fine, it may. If they say it has more insulin, then they're big-time confused or just misleading you. No milk has insulin. Further, it wouldn't matter if it did because you can't take insulin orally. If you did, it would be digested and denatured as a protein and would therefore have none of the effects you'd expect from insulin. For a diabetic, they'd probably be better off with chocolate with higher cocoa content than milk chocolate, which has more sugar than very dark chocolate. Sorry for the distraction -- I just don't like anyone being mislead, even unintentionally. OK, back to chocolate!
This combo actually makes sense to me. The ouzo is kind of licorice-fennel flavor and the hot chili. I've occasionally eaten a bar from Vice chocolates in California that's 65% cocoa and is topped with dried figs and fennel seeds. I'd like it a little higher in cocoa content but I'm quibbling. Very good.
Oh, and I can think of another one: Once a friend of mine gave me Ouzo-chili-chocolate as a present. Maybe from Greece? I don't remember it. The only thing I remember is that it tasted way better than it sounds ;)
Aussie vegimite and white chocolate. The vegimite kind of caramilises and the sweet from white choc mixes well with the saltiness from the vegimite. We did them for Australia day and ANZAC day. Very yummy.
Once in Belgium I tried a chocolate with a chili-mango-taste. It was pretty odd and nothing I would eat a second time honestly..
I have tried camel's milk chocolate. Several years ago when the volcano in Iceland stopped air traffic in Europe I had to fly to India. I decided to stop in Dubai. On the way back home to the US I got stuck in Dubai for 24 hours (free hotel and food!). I bought several varieties of chocolate made with camel's milk, though I thought the best was the 70% bittersweet cacao, though it had some camel's milk.
By the way, camel's milk is healthier than cow's milk: according to the company, camels milk offers five times more vitamin C than cows milk, has less fat and less lactose and more insulin, making it a good option for diabetics and people who are lactose intolerant.
You can buy their chocolates by calling the company (Al nassma).
For me the weirdest combination so far were pretzels covered with chocolate. IDK if that counts as weird enough but that's all I've got now)
I believe (so I've been told) that this 'smokey' effect also changes the colour of the cocoa powder that is produced from these beans. I've actually got some in storage not that I would know how to turn them from "bean to bar". I agree with the minimum 50%.
I also happen to like the taste of smokey cocoa beans, at least those I've tasted. I'm sure there is "good smokey" and not-so-good smokey. I'd probably take such a bar as you described over one that was just bland. For me, it's how it tastes at about the 75% level. At 50% of below, you can disguise a lot.
When it comes to different flavours, I feel it is interesting to note the difference in origins of cocoa beans, for example, whilst nearly all European manufacturers stay away from Smokey Cameroon beans there are some factories that only purchase these smokey beans. In Douala and surrounding regions their cocoa beans are forced through fermentation with the aid of fires, they part sun dry and part artificially dry. However when the beans arrive in Europe if they have a smokey smell to them they are instantly rejected by the receiver most of the time as the flavour is affected. The rejected beans are then normally sold as salvage (tonnes of the stuff) however I had the pleasure to taste a chocolate bar made from these "smokey" beans and I thought it was rather unique and different yet still enjoyable. The barbeque effect was to my liking. Unfortunately due to the lack of demand these smokey beans are rarely used for chocolate making.
I believe more chocolate combinations are attempts by chocolatiers to widen their potential customer base.
I go the other way because I am prominent in healthy chocolates for folks with special dietary and/or religious needs.
Dave Lambert
David's Delicious Chocolates
I found a dark chocolate with a bacon taste in my wanderings.
Dave Lambert
David's Delicious Chocolates
the e home for healthy chocolates for folks with special dietary needs and/or religious needs
I think I tried chocolate covered bees when I was in high school, about a hundred years ago. Friends actually held me down on the floor and forced it on me. They're dried and granulated, so you could not detect any bees per se or even individual bee parts, only the knowledge of them andthe crunch that comes with granules of any kind. I didn't know much about chocolate then, so it was probably run of the mill quality. People do eat with their eyes and their heads however, so the thought was enough to cause me to not want it again. There are so many ingredients people have added to chocolate, I have to ask myself the point. More specifically, what doyou (the chocolatier) wish to get out of the combination with chocolate? If it's just to sensationalize the end product, fugettabout it, in my book. (The poop thing comes to mind here.) If to produce a real flavor sensation, terrific.
My ChocolateBanquet.com spreadsheet of flavors combined (purchased, made, tasted) with chocolate, now tops 300. In the hands of a true artist, almost anything can work -- even smoked salmon or anchovies (Modern Dwellers Choc. Lounge, in Anchorage AK). I've only come across one item I couldn't finish -chocolate covered insects, although I've been told I picked the wrong insect chocolate. Maybe when I'm feeling adventurous again I'll try chocolate covered ants. Yes, I love Zotter's sense of adventure (blue cheese, grapes). The camel milk chocs. aren't bad, no gamey flavor; but I don't care as much for sweet, milk chocolates (no matter what type of milk). Fun to hear what others are tasting.
OK, please tell me they dry it out and compost it first. Please. Of course, if it's composted and dried out, and they only add a tiny bit, it may be relatively harmless (although I still wouldn't recommend eating it). I know that when people speak of eating "alternative protein sources" such as termites, roaches, etc. these are often dried and ground into a course meal texture, so you really don't recognize the original ingredient. I'm adventurous, but poop is where I'd really draw the line, even if it's been autoclaved.
I have made chocolate covered gummy bears along with gummy worm bars...pretty good..different and fun! my favorite right now is caramel coconut!
