Tirol is a famous brand of chocolate in Japan that's available in every convenience store. The interesting thing about it is that it is tiny, around 2-2.5cm by 2-2.5cm, and while it has standard flavours, there are usually very interesting and unusual flavours that rotate. A long time ago, I featured Sweet Potato Chocolates with Mochi and Bean Fillings by Tirol, and now I finally get to add 2 very interesting flavours to that - Mont Blanc Chocolate and Earl Grey Affogato by Tirol.
Before the individual reviews, here are some pictures of how they look side by side. The top chocolate coating colours are so different. Unexpectedly, the earl grey affogato chocolate looks like normal dark chocolate, despite my expectation for it to be like a milk tea.
The mont blanc chocolate, however, does look like the colour of mont blanc cream.
This flavour was actually released slightly earlier, but I waited until I got the mont blanc one before I tried the first one.
It was really remarkable, because despite how normal the chocolate looked, the earl grey fragrance was very intense, almost like a strong, fragrany, herby aroma with exotic notes from a thick milk tea.
The chocolate coating did seem to be dark chocolate, and the dark chocolate bitter notes, thick nuttiness and depth did come through, adding crucial depth and dimension to the lush aromatic top notes and the milky tea flavour.
Overall, if you love aromatic and creamy Japanese earl grey milk teas, you will probably love this.
This was ingredients list. (Click image to enlarge.) Like most flavoured Japanese chocolates, this does contain vegetable oil, so it was not made with pure cocoa butter. The only ingredient specific to this flavour is the "earl grey tea powder". Everything else can be found in regular chocolate, although they may have added more milk for the creaminess. It seems like they used a really good earl grey tea powder or else knew how to process it to bring the fragrance out.
Finally, this was the store display. There's not much additional information on the card.
Mont Blanc Chocolate
Next, the Mont Blanc Chocolate was also quite interesting and well done. The taste was excellent, but the ingredients list was especially fascinating.
It was clearly nutty, earthy and with clear chestnut notes that carry a hint of coffee caramel notes. There were also creamy vanilla notes.
It also featured bits of crunchy biscuit inside, breaking the homogenous taste, which can be too heavy sometimes with al the cream and vanilla, with a different texture. (It is faint in the image but is where the left bump rising into the liquid filling is.)
Although there was some liquid-like filling, I'm not sure what it tasted like. In my mouth, everything blended together and I could not distinguish it separately.
Here is the ingredients list. (Click image to enlarge.) Inside the Japanese chestnut (waguri) sauce, there were other interesting ingredients. For example, they did use real cream and kanten in the sauce, so it seems to not have been the clear liquid part of the filling. They also used almond powder, interestingly, which may have provded some nutty and creamy, coconut-like notes. And now here's the interesting part - they actually used cultured butter!!!
I have never seen it listed as an ingredient in chocolate before, let alone something you can get for cheap in the convenience store. There's also condensed milk! And for the cookie, they used butter cookie, as opposed to the usual cookie dough or commercial cookie made with vegetable oils.
Finally, here is the in-store display card, which explains that there's butter cookie bits and Japanese chestnut sauce inside. I also love that they came in 3 colours (pink, orange and yellow in pastel shades) despite the same flavour. It made each one very uniquely pretty.
Discover other unusual chocolates
- (mentioned) Sweet Potato Chocolates with Mochi and Bean Fillings by Tirol
- Pudding KitKat - Chocolate you can bake into a cookie. Have a bake, have a Kitkat!
- White Sesame Seaweed Chocolate by Fossa
- Drifting Snowflake Jasmine Green Tea Chocolate by Fossa
- Chrysanthemum Tea Chocolate by Fossa
- Kobe Pudding KitKat
- Peach Parfait KitKat
- Hojicha KitKat
- Orange Mango Chocolate by Royce
- Peach and Earl Grey Tart by Tully's Coffee, Japan
- Earl Grey Financier, Pie d'Amandes (Almond Pie Pastry) and other pastries by Butter Butler, Tokyo
- Yam Mont Blanc by KOKO Cafe and Patisserie, Singapore
- Earl Grey and Pandan Gula Melaka by Bee Cheng Hiang
- Cultured Butter, Hazelnut and Earl Grey financiers by Chihiro Sweets Shop
- Brown Cultured Butter Financier, (Candied) Orange Financier and other premium gourmet French bakes by Noix de Beurre
- Purple Sweet Potato Mont Blanc by Cafe Kuriko
Comments
Post a Comment