If you love those Christmas spiced biscuits, I have some lovely seasonal flavours for you. Table’s 62% Christmas Milk bar, £6.50/70g, reminded me of them, but in chocolate form. Made with Dominican Republic cocoa, orange zest and mixed spices, it has got a lovely creamy, milky taste with a lingering flavour of all those spices.
I’m featuring heavy on Zotter’s ‘hand-scooped’ bars, because I love them at any time of year, but especially this one. These bars are, aside from brilliantly descriptive, a gorgeous hybrid between a chocolate bar and a chocolate from a box of assorted centres – for when you also want that squidginess. They remind me, a little bit, of those Milk Tray bars you used to buy… filled chocolates but in a bar (anyone remember those?). But these Zotter bars are so much better.
Zotter’s Plummy Krampus, £5.95/70g, is a delicious sandwich of 60% dark milk chocolate covering rum-pickled plums with a layer of marzipan and white chocolate, warming and indulgent. Perfect for this time of year.
Elf’s Delight, £5.95/70g, is a 50% milk with a brown-butter ganache that tastes very fudgy. No alcohol in that one and it struck me as quite a child-suitable bar.
Be warned, though, the Mulled Wine, £5.95/70g, tastes super boozy. A 40% milk with a red-wine ganache, it warms the cockles of your heart as you’re eating it. And finally, O Thou Joyful Day, £5.95/70g (no idea where or how Zotter gets these names), is a vegan bar, with a lightly whipped cashew-milk-and-rum mousse in a 70% dark coating.
