Bittersweet Chocolate Pearls

Edible ball bearings!

Dark chocolate is a fickle thing.  Unlike milk chocolate where there are extra things thrown in like vanilla and milk (duh) to lighten the taste, dark chocolate's flavour is largely carried by the type of cacao bean with different growning regions resulting in different tastes and the fillings or items enrobed in the chocolate.

What's great about dark chocolate is that to fulfill that really strong chocolate craving it take far less than with sweeter milk chocolate.  I love a piece of really good dark chocolate over a whole block of sugary inspid milk any day.  Lindt Excellence Orange Intense is a particular favourite.

These little gems were a welcome surprise,  I was given them by my brother W.  He actually raided some of my Haigh's Dark Peppermint Frogs so bought these as a peace offering.  If this is what I'm gonna get everytime he eats some of my chocolate then I beg him to do it everyday.

I was presented with a clear cellophane package with nothing on it other than a label that reads "Bittersweet The Chocolate Boutique" there is no ingredient list or other information, not even a weight or package size.  It doesn't even tell me what it is!  Fortunately brother was able to relay information about what the product was.

Inside there were little balls of dark chocolate, really small like little ball bearings or those irritatingly hard silver balls than people put on cakes.  They're all fairly uniform in size, with a very shiny surface indicative of well tempered chocolate and rarely do you get two stuck together.

Inside the little balls of mystery is a crunchy middle, it tastes and feels like a cereal, maybe puffed rice.  It's hard and the distinctive crunch and relative bland taste of the cereal is delicious against the really dark chocolate.

I snipped the top off the bag I was given and stored them in a screw top jar, they've kep very well for almost three weeks, they still taste and look exceedingly fresh.  In fact a small thing that pleases me infinitely about the Chocolate Pearls is that unlike other chocolate balls these do not rub against each other in a way that damages the surface, they all remain shiny and perfect.  Nothing ruins a good bag of chocolates like dull surfaces from being bashed together.

Bad new is these little delights are only available from one place, Bittersweet at the Barracks in Brisbane, so if you live in Brisbane then lucky you!  If you don't then check out their website as they will deliver. 

The Final Verdict: 4 - These were gorgeous, tasty and satisfying without needing to eat a whole pile.  The downside was the lack of information on the packet, not even ingredients, nor could I get any info about this product from the website.  I would buy them again, and better packaging would life my rating.