Zotter Chocolate Christmas 2020 Selection

Posted by Dom Ramsey in Chocolate Reviews on December 4 2020 | Leave A Comment

It’s fair to say that 2020 hasn’t been the best year for most of us. I’m sure you’re looking forward to it being over as much as I am, and what better way to celebrate the end of a terrible year than by treating yourself to some great Zotter Chocolate.

When I’m looking to cheer myself, I’ll usually go for filled or flavoured chocolates more than single origin, high cocoa percentage craft chocolate. It’s quite easy to end up just buying cheep chocolate and feeling guilty, but Zotter is one chocolate maker that lets me satisfy my cravings in the knowledge that I’m getting the best quality, ethically sourced bean-to-bar chocolate at the same time. I’ve reviewed several of their chocolates before, and even visited the factory a few years ago – something I would highly recommend once we can all travel again!

With that in mind, I hit up the Zotter website and bought myself a little selection of Christmas themed chocolates to lift my spirits. Here’s what I ended up with.

Star With Almond Praline

Zotter’s Mi-Xing Bar range allows you to create your own large chocolate slabs in a huge variety of shapes and flavours. You can choose your base couverture, add fillings and toppings and really make it your own. For the lazy (like myself), they also have a “Best Of” selection of pre-designed slabs, and that’s what we have here.

There’s certainly a lot going here in this chocolate star – so much so that it’s practically a meal in itself. This is a raspberry, caramel and white chocolate couverture star with almond praline with mini cinnamon chocolate stars, cacao nibs covered in white chocolate, crispy passion fruit chocolate pieces, green tea leaves.⁣

What I like best about this is that each bite is gives you a slightly different combination of flavours. At 100g it’s the size of a large chocolate bar, but it’s so much more interesting. And I guess you could also put it on top of your Christmas Tree (well out of reach of small, hungry children of course).

Vegan Heart With Hemp Praline

Zotter have a lot of options for vegans, but I thought I’d go for one of the more unusual ones with this heart.

The underlying coconut flavour is quite strong in this one, and for my tastes it’s just a little bit too strong and I didn’t get a lot of flavour from the hemp. I did like the raspberry mini hearts and I think this would have worked very well with a more of that raspberry flavour. It’s just a touch too coconutty for my own tastes, and I think if I’d designed it myself I would have gone for a different base couverture.

Still. What could be more 2020 than eating your own broken heart?

Zotter Chocolate Hand Scooped Bars

These filled bars are probably what Zotter is most famous for. They come in a vast range of weird and wonderful flavours, several of which I’ve reviewed here over the years. I picked out a few from their Christmas range to try.

White Chocolate Mousse

White chocolate mousse with a white chocolate coating tastes exactly like you think it might. It’s creamy, sweet, soft and smooth. In terms of flavour, it’s very simple but it’s also more than a little addictive. White chocolate fans will love it.

Jingle Bells Rock

The name doesn’t give much away, but this bar has a marzipan and red wine filling that strongly evokes Christmas for me. The red wine flavour is strong, but balanced well with the marzipan so neither gets lost. I suspect such a strongly flavoured chocolate might be polarising, but I love it.

Fröhliche Weihnachten (Spiced Marzipan on Cinnamon Praline)

Another marzipan filling, this time with a hint of cinnamon spice and a subtly crunchy praline. The flavour is much less intense than the previous bar, making it very easy to eat the whole bar in 2 minutes flat. Ask me how I know.

Aus der Weihnachtswerkstatt (From The Christmas Workshop)

French white nougat with pistachios and hazelnuts in 60% dark milk chocolate. Who doesn’t love a good nougat? This one is a soft, whipped nougat with plenty of flavour and crunch from the nuts. There’s a lovely subtle honey flavour underlying the nuttiness and the whole thing works exceptionally well with the rich dark milk chocolate coating.

Himmlische Genüsse (Heavenly Delight)

A blend of butter caramel and praline with small crunchy caramel crisps in 50% milk chocolate. The filling for this one looks like the mousse-style fillings of the other bars, but it has a strong buttery caramel flavour. There’s a hint of nuttiness in the flavour and a nice little crunch to the texture. Again very well matched flavours, although this one is just a little too sweet for my own tastes. Of course, I still ate the entire bar in no time at all.

Glücksbringer (Lucky Charm)

A sweet 40% milk chocolate mousse with 60% dark milk chocolate coating. Very simple flavours here, but they work so well. The best part of this bar though is the texture. The soft creamy mousse filling is reminiscent of a Milky Way bar, but obviously done much, much better. The chocolate shell is thick enough to give a decent crunch when you bite into it before the mousse melts in the mouth. Perfect execution.

Overall, I’m very happy with my choices here, but the truth is that Zotter’s selection is so big that they have something to suit every taste and mood. Whether it’s as a gift to someone you love, or a treat for yourself you can’t really go wrong. When I ordered, international shipping was free for orders over 35 Euros and everything arrived in perfect condition in less than a week.