chocolate bars ?

PabloLerntKochen said:
It's just chocolate 🍫 😋
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Just remember that the biggest "chocolate" companies in the world are Mars, Mondelez, Hersheys, Ferrero and Nestle. Mars is crap, Mondelez is crap, Hersheys is crap, Ferrero mostly sells Nutella and Nestle is, well, ok. I watched with dismay as Mondelez dismantled Cadbury's, making the bars smaller, filling them with more and more sugar, less and less chocolate and basically, destroying the brand (for me). You can't compare mass-produced, industrialised chocolate with "fine" chocolates, especially Swiss and Belgian brands.
Chocolate ain't just "chocolate"!
 
well i hate to disagree with you, but to me nothing beats a " hershey bar with almonds "
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
what is it like now?
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I have no idea.

Please don't take that the wrong way. I thought you had picked up on the fact that I'm from the UK and only moved to Australia in 2016 on a 4 year work visa. Then covid hit and so on. We've only held Aussie citizenship for less than 2 years, so my experience of Aussie chocolate that isn't vegan is nil. I'd never been to or visited any country in the southern hemisphere before moving out here in 2016.

I can however talk about hotel chocolat from its rebranding 2 decades ago. We used to get the monthly tasting box when it was first launched when I could still consume small quantities of dairy milk if I was very careful. My full blown allergy to dairy only started 15 years ago after I got very ill. I can also talk about the amazing chocolatiers in both Germany and Belgium... I went to school in Germany for a semester.

As for the vegan stuff in Australia, it is very similar to the UK vegan chocolate scene. There are really bad ones, there are OK ones and if you are lucky enough to find some, there are some really good ones that you'd not know they were vegan or dairy free. I've found 2 such chocolatiers down in Tasmanian who are both Belgium born, bred and trained chocolatiers. I've also found a company that imports Booja Booja chocolate but that melts very very easily even here in the colder part of Australia.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
I have no idea.

Please don't take that the wrong way. I thought you had picked up on the fact that I'm from the UK and only moved to Australia in 2016 on a 4 year work visa. Then covid hit and so on. We've only held Aussie citizenship for less than 2 years, so my experience of Aussie chocolate that isn't vegan is nil. I'd never been to or visited any country in the southern hemisphere before moving out here in 2016.

I can however talk about hotel chocolat from its rebranding 2 decades ago. We used to get the monthly tasting box when it was first launched when I could still consume small quantities of dairy milk if I was very careful. My full blown allergy to dairy only started 15 years ago after I got very ill. I can also talk about the amazing chocolatiers in both Germany and Belgium... I went to school in Germany for a semester.

As for the vegan stuff in Australia, it is very similar to the UK vegan chocolate scene. There are really bad ones, there are OK ones and if you are lucky enough to find some, there are some really good ones that you'd not know they were vegan or dairy free. I've found 2 such chocolatiers down in Tasmanian who are both Belgium born, bred and trained chocolatiers. I've also found a company that imports Booja Booja chocolate but that melts very very easily even here in the colder part of Australia.
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Doh of course you wouldn’t know what the dairy stuff tastes like now, my bad 🙄

That is the same as the UK on the vegan front then (and all chocolate fronts 😆) some good, some bad and some ugly!

I don’t know why I assumed your cycles would have taken you to Australia before, possibly because it and New Zealand are popular places on peeps round the world hit list 🤷‍♀️

Love a bit of Booja Booja.
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
I don’t know why I assumed your cycles would have taken you to Australia before, possibly because it and New Zealand are popular places on peeps round the world hit list 🤷‍♀️
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They were on the list of countries to visit, but life took an unexpected turn after a pack of 5 feral dogs attacked us. Both of us were bitten, hubby first and when I went back to help him, I was seen as pack leader and ended up in a fight for my life against 5 dogs. 2 major arteries, a major vein and a major nerve were severed or torn in my left leg in the attack, so we had to take time out after a bad infection set in. I needed over 115 stitches. I stopped counting them at 115... I had the surgery done under local by choice. We were very fortunate not inky with the care we received whilst in that country but also in that we saw a side of that country we would not have ever seen had the incident not happened. It's hard to explain because of what happened and it ending our tour, but we came away with a completely different (better) view of the population of that country. We also learnt not to judge a people by a country's politics.

We do know Scandinavia exceptionally well. Our first tour was on Denmark, leaving the car at Harwich and cycling onto the overnight ferry to Esbjerg. Plus our big tour went all the way to NordKapp first before heading south. We had many months in Scandinavia as a whole.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
They were on the list of countries to visit, but life took an unexpected turn after a pack of 5 feral dogs attacked us. Both of us were bitten, hubby first and when I went back to help him, I was seen as pack leader and ended up in a fight for my life against 5 dogs. 2 major arteries, a major vein and a major nerve were severed or torn in my left leg in the attack, so we had to take time out after a bad infection set in. I needed over 115 stitches. I stopped counting them at 115... I had the surgery done under local by choice. We were very fortunate not inky with the care we received whilst in that country but also in that we saw a side of that country we would not have ever seen had the incident not happened. It's hard to explain because of what happened and it ending our tour, but we came away with a completely different (better) view of the population of that country. We also learnt not to judge a people by a country's politics.

We do know Scandinavia exceptionally well. Our first tour was on Denmark, leaving the car at Harwich and cycling onto the overnight ferry to Esbjerg. Plus our big tour went all the way to NordKapp first before heading south. We had many months in Scandinavia as a whole.
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I’m surprised 5 dogs didn’t finish you off, they‘re not known for stopping once they start!
Probably missed something but I’m at a bit of loss about which country you were in when attacked that you ended up with a better view of?
 
PabloLerntKochen said:
Okay sorry I was just trying to talk down the "complicated" part, but thanks for the explanation.
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No, no - no need for an apology! The process is, as you say, fairly simple because there's one main ingredient and some sugar, or milk, or maybe not.
But look at this. These are the ingredients of a "Hersheys Bar":
Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Nonfat Milk, Milkfat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor), Corn Syrup, Sugar, Rice Flour, Nonfat Milk, Coconut Oil, Cream, 1% or Less of Mono- and Diglycerides, Salt, Barley Malt, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor. Contains: Milk, And Soy Ingredients.
Then you've got this, from Franceschi chocolates, their Rio Caribe 60% cacao:
Ingredients: Cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar
 
Yep, that's for the mass to make millions.
What I like are special spices like vanilla, pepper corns, tonka, chilli and ginger in high quality chocolate.
 
grumpyoldman said:
i have been think about making my own chocolate bars lately, has anyone here ever tried it ? if so how did things turn out ?
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I made one on my own just to experiment something new to me, and I must say that it was good. Perhaps beginner's luck.
I used cocoa beans, cocoa butter and flavoured it with white pepper.

I recently bought in England a bar of Tony's Chocolonely chocolate with caramel, pecans, it was a gift but I devoured it at the airport :laugh:, I loved it.
 
i have been reading the pages of the "chocolate Alchemist " and for the life of me i can not understand why anyone would go to such trouble to make something so simple , so complicated !!!
 
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