If you say the phrase “American chocolate”, chances are you’ll think of Hershey’s. Which to many Europeans really isn’t chocolate at all. The mission has been to start exploring some genuinely good and interesting American chocolates… so here I am with a Mokaccino bar from Tcho. I’d actually heard of Tcho before I came to Texas.
To create our “Mokaccino” bar we take super-premium coffee beans from our friends at local micro-roaster Blue Bottle Coffee and grind it into our custom dark milk chocolate for a real caffeine punch. If you are looking to recharge during the day, this bar will definitely get your engine going.
Coffee? Chocolate? It’s hard to say no to that combo.
Before writing this review I had a gander at their website. They’ve just released a Toasted Cornflake milk chocolate bar, which has me a) pretty excited and b) pretty disappointed – because in Texas there’s no way I’m ordering chocolate online for delivery. I also spotted something left over from Christmas which sounds incredibly good: Eggnog (“White chocolate with vanilla, nutmeg and rum flavor”). I have my fingers crossed that this bar makes a comeback for Winter 2020! (When hopefully Texas isn’t as hot as the surface of the sun.)
Now you might be wondering why I’m getting excited at the other flavour combos from this brand before I’ve even told you how I felt about the Mokaccino bar. Really that should give you a hint at just how much I liked this chocolate.
Opening the packet and taking a sniff, this stuff smells like roasted coffee beans. It’s a smooth, rich and slightly bitter coffee aroma. It has me giddy with glee because it smells gorgeous.
I had the chocolate at room temperature and found it smoothly milky, with a lightly silky mouthfeel from the melt. There’s a beautifully rich but unchallenging flavour from the chocolate. By that I mean it doesn’t strike as particularly earthy or full of berries. There’s a subtle sort of citrus to it that reminds me of grapefruit in passing, but I must stress this is not a fruity chocolate. To me, at least.
At almost 50% cacao, milk chocolate lovers might be surprised by the flavour. It isn’t dark-chocolate-bitter or higher-percentage-cocoa harsh – it just has more flavour and a little less sweetness than you might be used to.
Despite sugar leading the ingredients list, this bar isn’t sugary sweet, plus it delivers a cocoa-forward richness that I really enjoy.
Now then, the coffee. Unlike many bars that incorporate some sort of ground coffee, this chocolate is perfectly smooth. There’s no gritty little bits of coffee beans littering the block and making it a chore to consume. While I love coffee flavours I hate the texture of the beans themselves in foods.
I found the coffee flavour plenty strong enough – like an espresso rather than a latte. It’s roasted with a hint of smokey char to it and lingers long after the chocolate has melted away.
If you’re on the fence about whether you like coffee in chocolate, this probably isn’t for you. Both the chocolate and coffee flavours are well defined, nicely strong enough individually but work very well together indeed. It’s a beautifully executed pairing.
I found a couple of squares at a time was more than enough to satisfy, which meant this bar lasted a few days. It’s one I wanted to take the time to enjoy, rather than something like a block of Milka that I’d destroy for fun.
To sum up: I liked it and will happily buy it again when the coffee-chocolate urge strikes. Thumbs up!
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