Ain't Found A Good Title Blog

November 18, 2016

Dark chocolate covered liquid center cherries are my favorite treat.  Come gift-giving holidays, the family gets off cheaply as this is my usual present.  But no complaints.  Will the addition of alcohol to the mix make these even better?

I first spotted these on Become Betty.  And a good thing, because these were hidden in a corner of the store I tend to avoid.  Betty (Brenda) reviews many food items at Trader Joe’s.  I tend to review only TJ life essentials; cheese, coffee, wine and an occasional beer.  And while on the subject of shout-outs, let me give one to my ancestral DNA unknown cousins in Hungary, where these fine chocolates are made.

Deconstructed, the dark chocolate shell is nice.  It’s not overwhelmingly dark (listed at 49% cocoa) but certainly not a milk chocolate. The cherry liquid center is alcoholic, mildly sweet and in some ways like an old cherry cough syrup. The label lists an alcohol content of 4.4% v/w probably derived from this liquid.  The cherries are small and slightly bitter, possibly from being pickled in alcohol.  Taken as a whole the chocolate and sweet syrup balance out the slight bitterness in the cherries creating a very good combination with a definite alcohol vapor effect running through the mouth and up into the sinuses.

The individual chocolates are nicely presented in shiny gold-colored foil wrap and kept separate in the box by a gold plastic “egg carton”.  The wood grained box is sort of funky.  With the contents so nicely presented, the outside could be more elegant.  Considering there are 33 chocolates in the box, this is a bargain.

But to answer the question above, overall the alcohol slightly detracts from the chocolate covered cherry experiences I’ve had in the past.  That’s not to say I couldn’t sit down and eat half, or more, of the box at one sitting.  They’re still very good.  But if you emulate my gluttony, don’t drive.  That 4.4% alcohol adds up quickly.

Calories:  160 per 3 pieces     Price: $5.99 per box

Tags: calories, candy, confection, dark chocolate, food, hungary, liqueur cherries, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's

This entry was posted on 11/19/2016 at 03:47 and is filed under cooking and related items, food, Trader Joe's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.