Poco Dolce Bittersweet Chocolate Bars

Time for the last items from the package from San Francisco’s Poco Dolce, and there isn’t a bit of their delicious, delicious toffee anywhere to be seen. Instead, their Bittersweet Bars blend together their chocolate with some interesting ingredients. Like everything else they make, there is a deliberate attempt to ensure the bars aren’t too sweet and that means more of their beloved grey sea salt being thrown in for good measure.

That works especially well in the Olive Oil Bar which has a deceptive amount of creaminess considering this is a relatively dark chocolate. The percentage isn’t listed, but I’d put it at about 60% and the olive oil flavour is quite restrained compared to some I’ve tasted, plus the frequent punches of salt stops the bar from being too one-dimensional. All in all, a lovely, well-balanced bar of chocolate.

The Hazelnut Bar, on the other hand, is not very subtle at all. This time the chocolate has a generous amount of Hazelnut Butter from Oregon mixed in, and that makes for a rather splendid nutty flavour which is more reminiscent of a good praline instead of a solid bar of chocolate. Really yummy stuff.

The downside? The bars are a little on the petite side – just 50g and in deceptively large packaging – but they are incredibly rich and I found it hard to eat one in a single sitting. I’m not saying I couldn’t with a bit of persistence, but this time around I found myself having the occasional nibble instead although that might have been because I wanted it to last. Or at least last longer than their Toffee Squares did.

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