Baci Perugina Double Layer Candy Bar

You probably know Perugina from their famous Baci chocolate hazelnut-filled "kisses":



But they now have a NEW product, called a Baci double layer candy bar, and they sent us a few bars to try because they are awesome. So this package showed up in the mail:



What is inside the package? These things!



And what is inside that wrapping? This!



As you may have predicted from the name "double layer candy bar," these bars have, ahem, two layers. In the dark chocolate bars, one layer is dark chocolate, the other is hazelnut chocolate, and in the middle are actual hazelnuts. The milk chocolate bars are the same, only with a milk chocolate layer in place of the hazelnut layer.



The hazelnuts added a great textural element, making this extremely edible. I went through a bar much faster than I'd anticipated. It is very much for candy lovers: the chocolate is sweet and straightforward. Even the dark chocolate bars are only 51%, and they're counterbalanced by the gianduia layer, making this a bar that's much better for the milk chocolate fan than for someone looking for an intense dark chocolate flavor. I could see this going over big with the Toblerone crowd.

BOTTOM LINE: A classy candy bar perfect for fans of sweet chocolate, and of chocolate with pieces of hazelnut in it.

La Maison du Chocolat Valentine's and Easter Collection

Sorry not to have updated regularly, but here is some good news: La Maison du Chocolat's Valentine's and Easter collections!

First of all, La Maison has 4 special bonbons for Valentine's 2015.  Apparently these are developed, like, a year in advance, and initially conceived about a year before that.  Each year has a theme, and this year's is caramel:

All four were good and interesting.  My favorite, unsurprisingly, was the plain dark chocolate bonbon, sourced from a plantation in Venezuela whose beans gave a strong caramel flavor note.  Apparently, many people did a double-take, thinking there was caramel in there.  I didn't, but I did love it.

My second favorite, surprisingly, was the milk chocolate.  It has some rooibos tea and some other good stuff.  An interesting taste that was still both chocolatey and playful.

I did not get to taste the Easter design, but wow:

Check out the detail on the "leather"!  This is all carved by hand!:

Not many of these are made, and each takes a full day, done in assembly line fashion.  It's delivered to the various shops in several pieces, and then "glued" together with ganache.

Bottom Line: La Maison du Chocolat is good enough to get us blogging again.