There’s a lot of orange chocolate out there, from the ubiquitous Christmas chocolate oranges (in my household, it used to be a regular orange until we realized that chocolate was a) tasty and b) more likely to last more than a day) to bars with various-sized chunks of orange peel. Those can be problematic if they’re too big. Chocolate is not a food you should have to pick out of your teeth like celery.
This isn’t my first go-round with Seattle Chocolates’ orange bar; I get them every Thanksgiving from my fiancee’s family, since it’s their local brand. Does familiarity breed contempt? Or is this a delicious regular treat?
Presentation
A pretty classic bar with a simple wrapper that slides off and then dark foil around the chocolate itself. Each bar comes in four thick rectangles, and breaks easily. I’ve found the foil to be great at keeping mess under control – it breaks cleanly without being opened, and then you can pull out the piece or two you want and wrap it back up easily. It’s not silver foil either, which helps if you (like me) have a candy box full of a half-dozen silver-wrapped in-progress bars and face the impossibility of telling which is which. On this one, the shape and the color make it easy to distinguish.
The first bite
The orange peel is well-distributed throughout the bar, so you get a good balance of orange flavor and chewy orange bits. The chocolate itself (53%) is fine as a base but unmemorable (it has a dark chocolate shell on the outside and a milk chocolate (33%) inside.
Texturally, this is hard to take a little bit of, because the orange peel gets in the way and the chocolate itself comes off in big chunks when you bite into it. They’re thick sections, too. The orange peel adds some chewiness and interesting variation to each bite, and also makes you want to eat it in large amounts.
Overall
It’s all about the orange. This is a delicious orange chocolate, and although the chocolate part considered by itself is pretty unmemorable, it’s absolutely worth eating. I’m always happy to get these around the holidays!
Good for nibbling? Not really. The shape and taste don’t lend itself to savoring in little bits. I found myself looking for orange segments as the key flavor element.
Good for devouring? Absolutely.