Friday, August 3, 2012

Lindt Excellence: Caramel with a Touch of Sea Salt

One of the cool things about being selected as a member of the 150-person Lindt Excellence Influencers Club is that they ask us what we think about their new bars.

Most importantly, that means that in the process of gathering our thoughts, they send us free chocolate.


Score.

Since I'm in the middle of heavy triathlon training right now, salt is always on my mind. I lose of a lot of it sweating through 3-hour runs and 6-hour bike rides, so I naturally went for the Caramel with a Touch of Sea Salt first.


The bar has a brown sugar aroma, accented with a hint of woodiness, and the base chocolate has a smooth, creamy melt.


This bar is very strong on salt, which starts dissolving immediately and obscures most flavor from the chocolate. A few hints of coffee and mint accent a cream-heavy flavor, but it is the salt that is most apparent.

And that caramel?


Hard crunchy bits that stick to your teeth. Not ideal.

Overall, unbalanced and a bit disappointing. If I think it has too much salt, it’s very salt heavy.

5 comments:

  1. Eek, I dislike crunchy caramel.

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh no! I love salted chocolate, sad to hear this one is disappointing. I have seen those bars, and imagined the caramel to be soft.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We have the Salted Caramel bar here in Dubai. I was not really impressed with this one perhaps because I had high expectations. The trouble with Lindt is that their packaging and concepts promise far more than they are able to deliver given the commercial / mid-to-mass-market nature of their operation. If you were to make this bar at home by sourcing a quality dark chocolate and making the salted caramel yourself, you can easily deliver better results and you needn't be that talented - you just need a good nose / palate / sense for what constitutes good chocolate and the right shade of caramel.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the best dark chocolate I've ever had! I am a huge fan of these chocolate bars. Delicious.

    ReplyDelete