Charlie Harvey

Vegan Chocolate Review: Black Widow Dark Naga Chilli Chocolate

Black Widow Chilli Chocolate with Naga Jolokia, Lemon Oil and Geranium from Grim Reaper foods

This guest chocolate review first appeared on eleanorg.org.

black widow chocolate bar wrappper

I’m going to come out with a bit of heresey in the very second sentence of this review. I’m not that fussed about chocolate. There, I said it. Its not that I hate it. Its just that I don’t get what all the fuss is about it. I can review cider as soon as look at it. But chocolate?

I am helped out in my task by the fact that this chocolate is chocolate of the vegan-friendly type. And that its got chillies in it. You see, meh as I am about chocolate I have something of a passion for spicy chillies that make my ears bleed.

Black Widow doesn't quite do that. The chilli is actually a rather subtle undertone rather than the dominant note. That rôle is taken by the geranium essential oil that grim reaper have flavoured the bar with. The geranium is subtly enhanced with a twist of lemon oil all backed by a kick of naga chilli.

Now, I have to confess that, though the blend is pretty delicious, I was a little disappointed not to have something more incendiary. The packet promised "sinfully wicked" which, to me, means, "burns a bit". For readers who have yet to experience the delights of the Naga Jolokia chilli is amongst the world’s hottest, weighing-in at 850,000 scoville heat units, Tabasco sauce is around 3,000 SHU and the world’s hottest chilli, the Dorset Naga kicks out an insane 1,032,310 Scovilles. So, this ought to have been painful to eat. It wasn’t.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. The geranium and lemon gave it an intense turkish delight-like kick. The chocolate was smooth, a little on the sweet side for me, but I tend to favour bitter chocolate. It felt balanced and the cheeky kick of the chilli gave it real character. I would definitely recommend it to my non-chillihead pals. The chilliheads I would tell to melt this stuff down, dip scotch bonnet peppers in it, chuck them in the fridge and then snack on crunchy chocolate coated chillis.

2012-09-04 by Charlie Harvey


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