• Bloomsberry & Co.: Peace On Earth Chocolate Bar

Review by Leona Wisoker: The Peace on Earth box says “May this chocolate bring you peace (and quiet) these Holidays, if only for a moment.” Beneath that is a note that this “premium milk chocolate” bar contains 34% Cocoa. 

The inside wrapper is more interesting: it seems to be a montage of wrappers created by Bloomsberry, some of which are really cute (“Hanukkah Nosh”, “girthControl Chocolate”, “Mother’s Little Helper”, for example). 

The chocolate inside, unfortunately, isn’t as amusing. It’s basic milk chocolate, the type of thing you’d expect to see in Easter Bunnies and chocolate coins and, well, funny-wrapper milk chocolate bars. It’s smooth, and sweet, and milky; not real heavy on chocolate flavor, but really high in sugary taste. It’s a chocolate bar that you could eat up completely before you knew what you were doing, and not even remember it the next day, except that you’ll feel just a little ill for some reason. 

Final verdict: Buy it for the wrapper, not the taste. 

As a side note, the main web site is one of the most annoying I’ve seen in a while. Lots of little cutesy animations and giggly sound effects to suffer through before finally getting through to a few promotion-heavy-information-light pages, and no mention of the “Peace On Earth” chocolate bar at all. Please don’t go visit the site. Really. (And if you do it anyway, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.)  Pass me the dark chocolate instead, thanks. 

Speaking of which…. 

Simple, stylish…I like it!

• Chocolove: Coffee Crunch in Dark Chocolate 

With a 55% cocoa content, as well as bits of ground up coffee beans in the mix, this is a much more memorable bar than the previous. The wrapper is a basic brown with black text; the graphics are based around an international-traveler theme. Inside the wrapper is a love poem–and no, I won’t tell you who wrote it. You’ll have to go find out for yourself! 

And this chocolate is worth tracking down–with a caveat: if you like chocolate-covered espresso beans, this is great. But if you don’t like really hard crunchy stuff (or, obviously, if you don’t like coffee), this isn’t the chocolate bar you’re looking for–move along. The coffee bean pieces lend a nice bitter snap to each bite, but can feel a bit gritty, like chewing a mouthful of coffee grounds (which is, after all, what you’re really doing). This is a chocolate bar you take one piece at a time, over several days; preferably at room temperature, as chilling the bar only increases the harsh crunch of the basic texture. 

I enjoyed it, however, and found the slight sweetness of the dark chocolate matched wonderfully with the bitter coffee pieces. I don’t know that I’d shell out for another bar anytime soon -– the taste does tend to stick with you for days afterwards -– but I’d definitely give it as a gift to another coffee and dark chocolate fan. 

The Chocolove website is here, and it’s much more informative and significantly less annoying than the Bloomsberry site. This site is well worth a visit, as it details a large, interesting, and varied selection of chocolate bars. 

Love and chocolate? Now that’s a winning combination I can live with anytime. 

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Leona Wisoker writes, sleeps, drinks coffee, writes some more, hunts down food with a sharpened paper clip and a stapler, then goes back to writing. It’s usually dangerous to interrupt any part of that process.