Not long ago I dedicated a post to my discovery of healthy chocolate thanks to coming across The Raw Chocolate Shop website. I’d not really been familiar with chocolate made from cacao and based on raw ingredients, so I was curious to find out and ordered six different varieties of bars and truffles to try. I was pleasantly surprised that the majority were tasty, naturally sweet and certainly satisfied my craving for it but without being too naughty and ruining my usual healthy eating habits.
From this I built up a good relationship with The Raw Chocolate Company via social channels, namely Twitter and Facebook. When I saw they put a call out looking for product testers to help them with developing a new product, I jumped at the chance and was delighted to be one of the lucky chosen few.
The product test challenge: I was sent two bags of the brand’s Vanoffe Mulberries, which are organic, vegan friendly, nut free and fair trade. Made from Turkish White Mulberries and ‘vanoffe’ consisting of Lucuma from Peruvia, vanilla sourced from a project called ‘Ndali’ in Uganda, cacao butter and powder from Peru plus organic coconut sugar. Bag 1 and Bag 2 contained the same ingredients but in varying quantities, so it was our job to feed back to The Raw Chocolate Company which one we prefered and why.
While I won’t disclose the difference between the two in this blog, I will say what I thought about the overall product, which will be officially launched in September this year – here’s what they’ll look like:
The Vanoffe Mulberries were absolutely delicious. I’d never tried, never mind heard of, mulberries before but eating them in this way won me over. They were soft and chewy in a very balanced ratio; neither too soft nor too crunchy, with a really pleasant texture. The taste of the mulberries went perfectly with the cacao butter and the rest of the ‘vanoffe’ ingredients, a sort of vanilla and toffee flavour going on. These bad boys had just the right amount of sweetness and were packed with taste without being too overwhelming or bland. It was actually quite tough to choose between the two varieties but the one I went for was more substantial and full of mulberries, making it winner.
Make sure you keep an eye out for these once they are launched if you’re looking for a natural and sweet treat. I’m a mulberry convert and am keen to try more products from The Raw Chocolate Shop which match (dried) fruits with the deliciousness of cacao products!