Spicefreak

Hey there everyone, it’s just gone easter but, today, I’d like to look at some chocolate anyway. A couple of bars from a creator we know well but haven’t previously seen any snacks from.

Yes, this week, I’m taking a look at Daddy Cool’s new chocolate line:

Both white, this time around, but one with cranberries and a hint of habanero, while the other is clearly caramelised, making it the only chilli product of its kind. Both put their flavours first on the label but, on closer inspection of the chocolate, their peppers are also quite hard to miss:

Those spots of orange and red look like very generous hints to me. Yet flip them over and we can see that Daddy Cool’s have been just as generous with the fruit and fudge.

These chocolates are going to be fiery, certainly, but I expect that they’ll also be just as full of flavour.

Breaking into them, though, they’re a little less brittle than the rest of their kind. The snap is audible but far from firm, giving these chocolates slightly less of a physical bite than Dr. Burnorium’s or Grim Reaper Foods’. Yet they still melt, as expected, in my mouth.

The cranberry bar, in particular, is smooth, creamy and pleasantly vanilla. All three traits that pair rather well with the gentle taste of the dried berries embedded within. Though I do have to say that its habanero powder disappoints me.

It reaches a good, strong

3.5/11

Heat

sure, but that heat is harsh and abrasive. It strikes at the back of my throat and tongue with a sharp burn and fiery flavour that’s barely slowed by the dairy in this sweet treat. Not at all reduced by it and not at all at home in it.

Whereas the extra hot

4/11

Heat

from the ghost pepper in his second slab may still be fierce but at least fits in a little bit better, given the chilli’s signature slow burn.

That caramelised chocolate does exactly what I’d expect, starting out with sweet, slightly milky, cocoa butter-tinged notes of golden caramel – Reminiscent, as it’s maker says, of Caramac – before offering up large chunks of lightly salted fudge. All the while, hints of its deep red pepper peaking through.

It is not, to my dismay, the salted caramel that I love. It clearly isn’t made for fans of the original, french “salted butter caramel”, who like it nearly as salty as it is sweet. But then, not everyone wants that. Many seem to enjoy just a hint, like what we have here.

And it certainly isn’t bad chocolate.

To me, though, this bar is only half a point hotter than the first. Not even remotely worthy of being two steps up the heat scale.

Both feel stronger than the Fatalii Attraction, so I find it surprising that one is labelled “hot” and the other “mild”, with that sauce slap bang in the middle. Though, looking at their ingredients lists, it’s pretty easy to see why Daddy Cool’s might have expected them both to be milder that they are.

The cranberry white contains:

White Chocolate (97.5), (Sugar 46.5%; Cocoa Butter 29.5%; Whole MILK Powder 23.5%; Emulsifier: SOYA Lecithin <1%; Natural Vanilla Flavouring <1%), CRANBERRIES 2% and HABANERO Powder 0.5%

While the caramelised bar lists:

Cocoa Butter (30%), (Sugar 29.0%; Whole MILK Powder 25.0%; MILK sugar 5.5%; Whey Powder (MILK) 5.0%; Skimmed MILK Powder 2.5%, Caramelised Sugar 2.0%; Emulsifier: SOYA Lecithin <1%, Natural Vanilla Flavouring <1%; Salt <1%), 20g Salted Caramel Fudge (Sugar, Full Cream Condensed MILK, Glucose Syrup, Sustainable Palm Fruit Oil, Butter (MILK), Salt, Colour 150d), GHOST PEPPER 0.5%.

And, while there are a few other noteworthy things – Like the bracketed ingredients without a home in the caramelised chocolate or the fact that both fruit and peppers are marked as allergens – the biggest thing that I take away from these lists is that neither bar uses more than half a percent’s worth of chilli.

I wouldn’t expect either list to produce something this hot, just looking at the numbers, and maybe Steve Cooley didn’t, either. After all, he doesn’t actually make these particular products.

No, Steve, the guy behind Daddy Cool’s, outsources these treats to a chocolate company known as “Cocoa Drop”. He grows the chillies, makes the labels and almost certainly acts as the main brain in formulating the recipes but he’s a sauce specialist, not a chocolate one, and he hands over production to a more experienced chocolatier.

I can respect that – Knowing what you excel at and what to hand off to someone more qualified – but I feel like it might also explain why these aren’t quite up to Steve’s usual standards.

They’re good, don’t get me wrong. Cocoa Drop do know what they’re doing but, at the same time, I have had better chilli chocolate. Chilli chocolate that matched the perfection of his sauces.

These bars don’t quite do that for me, even if they are enjoyable, but I might still grab the caramel one again. His suggestion of grating it over dark chocolate ice-cream and my own idea of melting it into a white hot chocolate are both incredibly tempting.

So by all means, give them a go if the flavours sound appealing. That caramelised bar is, after all, an utterly unique form of chilli chocolate.