This is another little treasure from Rainer and Oliver’s cave of plenty at Premier Food and Beverages.

Swiss chocolatier company Camille Bloch have long been famous in Europe since 1929 for their liqueur-filled chocolates such as kirsch, cognac, williams pear, brandy and grappa as well as their beloved classics Ragusa and Torino, but these mousse-filled ones have only been around since 2005.

There isn’t any information that states what percentage of cocoa solids are in it and the segments are rather large – like eight easter eggs.

I found – after a bit of intensely pleasurable experimentation – that the best way to enjoy one of these egg-shaped segments of mousse noir is to sample the chocolate itself first by nibbling all the corners off. It tastes like 50% percent cocoa solids to me, sweet, creamy and a nice introduction to dark.

Then when your fingers are starting to melt the chocolate and there’s no corners to hold, bite the egg in half and allow it melt on your tongue slowly and langorously. You’ll find that the mousse inside is dense, rich and creamy. As it should be, the lush chocolate coating lingers a little longer than the filling, heightening the lovely experience and tickling the taste buds. Then, when it is all gone, eat the other half and repeat the pleasure.

The ingredients and nutrition panels are fairly brief but I was surprised to see hazelnuts and soya flour there as neither were detectable by my palate. Camille Bloch’s Mousse Chocolat Noir isn’t super bitterly dark or super scarily posh, but a really genuine top notch block to enjoy at home on the sofa with a hot cup of tea, a decent DVD playing and your better half.

Kirsten Tibballs is one of Australia’s most respected and talented chocolate and pastry chefs, and runs the Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School with fellow expert Paul Kennedy. This diminutive pocket-rocket won the 2004 World Championships for her hand made chocolates and was also awarded a gold medal for her chocolates in the Pastry Olympics in Germany that same year. Here in Australia, Kirsten has also won numerous awards and competitions and regularly travels the world to participate as a judge in chocolate and patisserie events, teach others her skills and gather new ideas and techniques to bring back to use at her school in Melbourne.

Having already spent four weeks in Europe and time in Japan this year, Kirsten is a busy woman to catch. Today I interviewed her whilst she was busy running the first day of a two day course on Special Occasion cakes – the rich chocolatey smell of the cake mix was the first thing I noticed when I entered Savour; the second was how much the students were enjoying themselves.

Resisting the urge to ask one of them if I could put my head into their gloriously-filled mixing bowl of cake mix, I chatted with Kirsten in between her hands-on teaching. She had a calm and friendly teaching style which no doubt explains why many of her students come from interstate and overseas to attend her classes.

What is an average work day for you?
It’s very diverse. I teach on Mondays and Tuesdays; I travel around the world demonstrating with the four products I endorse – Callebaut and Cacao Barry chocolates, Boiron fruit purees used in professional kitchens and Demarle molds and pastry sheets; I judge international chocolate and patisserie competitions, work as a consultant in the chocolate and patisserie business; do product development for chocolate manufacturers, train up-and-coming chocolatiers in India and China because they don’t yet have the experience or infrastructure…

Wait a second – you do product development for chocolate manufacturers?
Yes, but I have to sign confidentiality agreements so I can’t tell you who!

So, is there anything such as work/life balance in your busy schedule?
I try but it can be difficult. My son is now three and I try to take him with me when I travel overseas but it’s not always possible. I also try not to work on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays but sometimes that’s when expos and events are on, so it’s a fairly constant juggle.

What does your husband want you to bring home after work?
He tells me not to bring anything home or he’ll eat it all. However he does love the Gianduja ice-cream that I make.

What chocolates have you made that you are most proud of?
The three that I made that won the 2004 World Championship – bear in mind that I trained for two years beforehand! One was a calvados and cinnamon sugar crusted liqueur enrobed in 70%; the second was a Cassis (blackcurrant jelly) with a 66% ganache and enrobed in a Tanzanian 75% dark chocolate; and the third was a caramel-based vanilla ganache that included six vanilla beans, leatherwood honey and milk and dark chocolate.

Mmm, I love honey and chocolate…
Yes, honey not only adds a wonderful flavour but allows the chocolate to be stored for longer because it’s a natural preservative.

What is the best chocolate you have tasted?
At the end of 2007 I was judging the World Chocolate Masters in Paris and the French competitor had made a peanut caramel with a dark ganache. It sounds simple but the chocolate had achieved the perfect balance of texture and flavour.

Why do you use only Callebaut chocolate?
They have a huge range of product to choose from, and despite being the largest in the world they haven’t sacrificed quality for quantity. For example they have six ranges of praline pastes, and a lot of other chocolatiers don’t have even one kind available.

Every chef has a disaster they wish to forget – what was yours?
When I was an apprentice I was supposed to be making lamingtons. After soaking the sponge cake squares in icing, they were then meant to be flipped into the coconut. Mine ended up being flipped out onto the floor. (Smiles) I haven’t made any lamingtons since….

Who inspires you?
So many chefs (lists a few that all sound French to my non-French ears). Mostly though it’s the other chef who works here at the school, Paul Kennedy. He and I fire off each other and inspire each other. He even made the chocolate sculpture at my wedding which we had in place of a traditional wedding cake. Also, I tend to find a lot of ideas overseas, especially Europe. We want Savour to continue to be the leading chocolate and patisserie school in Australia.

I’ve heard that many chefs and stores hate the Australian weather when it comes to chocolate.
I don’t have a problem with it, as long as it’s stored correctly. I know of someone who makes chocolate in Far North Queensland and there it really is difficult with intense tropical heat and mould. Here in Australia we have the benefit of having opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere. There, when winter, Valentine’s Day and Easter are over, it becomes a very slow time for chocolate, but for us, it’s now our cold time and we’re still loving and eating it.

What is your favourite guilty meal at home?
I love creamy pastas and we have a great Thai take-away around the corner.

What chocolate do you eat when you’re at home, on the lounge, relaxing?
Like my husband, I very rarely eat the naughty stuff at home because it’s all around me at work and I’m always trying new tastes and recipes when I’m here.

What ingredient is your greatest extravagance?
For me it’s cooking equipment rather than ingredients. My husband is an accountant who sets a budget for the business, so I often have to hide things from him!

Being surrounded by such rich and wicked ingredients, how do you take care of your health?
(Laughs) I don’t! I do go to the gym though, and I don’t drink tea, coffee or alcohol and I’m a vegetarian.

So does that mean you don’t match wines with chocolate?
Oh no, I’m not a totally strict non-drinker. I did a course on wine-matching in Paris with a sommelier there who showed us how to match everything from Muscat to tequila, even music. These days, I need to work through the food and wines and match it all beforehand using my own tastes and senses.

I have to know: what is the Anti-Aging chocolate class all about? Have you finally answered everyone’s prayers?
Savour is the only place in Australia you can try Callebaut’s new anti-ageing chocolate. It has nine times more polyphenols (‘good’ antioxidants) than red wine and five times more than green tea. Eight grams of this chocolate per day is all you need, about 16 buttons.

(She gave me some milk and dark buttons to try. It certainly tasted good and I was going to suggest that if sixteen buttons per day does the trick, surely 160 would be ten times more effective but decided that I could try that myself at home).

What do you dislike about your job?
Having to teach students how to roll a paper piping bag. It is a difficult thing to learn and each person can take a long time to get the hang of it. Matter of fact, I’ll be teaching these guys later today!

What do you like about your job?
The flexibility and the constant learning. The second I stop learning in this industry, I’ll retire.

She answered the last question with a smile on her face and I suspect it will be many years before retirement features in her plans.

Amella caramels are each made with cocoa butter and fruits or vegetables and hand-dipped in chocolate, creating a rather unique product. Equally special are the small rectangular boxes they come in. Their design is old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and the material used has a handmade feel.

I received a sample of each of their three caramels. Starting at the white chocolate end of the spectrum, we have the Carrot Cake caramel. The top is white chocolate, over a beautifully dark orange-colored cocoa butter caramel, with pecan pieces and carrots. It has a definite carrot cake smell and tastes like that’s what you’re biting into. The caramel is nice and chewy like a heavier cake. The white chocolate lends sweetness to the mixture, and while the pecans are soft enough that they’re not very crunchy, they do add a pleasant taste and texture. I found myself sad as I closed the box on the two remaining Carrot Cakes, but there were more to try.

The Passion Fruit caramel is dipped in milk chocolate. I’ve finally realized that I don’t like passion fruit, yet it was perhaps all the more clear after making this discovery that this is a high-quality product. Though the bite is too much for me, the passion fruit has a strong tropical fruitiness. It’s a very fresh flavor. Their flavors are meant to work as one unit, but what I can taste of the chocolate and caramel as individuals is good.

Moving both up and down the choco-spectrum is the Black Forest. The caramel has Amarelle cherries and 70% dark chocolate, but is dipped in white chocolate, which is in turn sprinkled with bits of dark chocolate. These all seemed to have extra trouble pulling away from their papers, maybe from the extra melting quality of the added chocolate? Anyway, this one turned out to be my favorite. I usually do love chocolate caramels since caramel is already a fun thing and having chocolate only makes it better. There’s a standard tart/sweet effect here with the cherries and white chocolate, with the dark chocolate bridging the gap between them. I think there’s a little too much white chocolate, but once it melts away, you can still reach the richness of the dark chocolate. It’s just how any good dessert should be, yet so often isn’t. You don’t want the taste to go away, so you settle into a chewing/sucking combo to get the most out of it. One piece can go such a long way.

Amella has come up with a way to reminisce over other edible experiences while still embracing a new take. Definitely recommended.

Another little box of truffles from the Cocopia range, I chose these for tasting because I always had a thing for black forest gateau as a child. In fact I have a vague memory of there being some form of chocolate with black cherry in it when I was smaller. (Answers on a postcard…)

I’m not sure these earn the epithet of ‘Luxury Artisan Chocolates’. After all, they’re a couple of quid a box and they’re sold in Tesco, and I think we all know that isn’t the sign of a true luxury artisan product, don’t we?

Opening the box revealed half a dozen quite attractive looking truflles, made with a 70% cocoa dark chocolate shell which houses a dark truffle centre filled with chopped cherry. A quick sniff upon opening the box confirmed that there were indeed cherries (and natural cherry flavourings) around, which was a promising sign.

Obviously, being factory made chocs these were never going to have the whisper-light freshness of something from a true artisan chocolatier, but they did a pretty good job of delivering what had been promised. Slightly sweet, cherry rich and with good chocolate flavours, they didn’t disappoint in that area. The truffle filling was well balanced and didn’t cloy the palate at all either.

I think these are more your posh pocket money present chocolates. Something to buy your first serious girlfriend or a slightly upmarket Mothers Day gift from a small child or teenager. Artisan they may not be, but they’re not half bad for the money.

Oh what promise these start with. A name like Orange Bliss means something special, something out of this world!

HOWEVER, I’m sorry, but a maker called “Ultra Fine Foods” doesn’t have much of a ring to it, and I find it puts me off a bit. The name just seems a bit pretentious.

Ignoring that, I felt the need, the need for… chocolate. And these little goodies were sitting in the kitchen patiently awaiting their fate. Time to suck ‘em and see if reality met the promise of the name; and especially after my last experience with the Kaoka Noir Orange, which was pretty damn good.

So I was looking forward to trying another Orange choc creation. Sadly, I have to report these chaps are a disappointing. The chocolate is fine. The orange isn’t. By this I mean the orange just isn’t there.

These guys a pale imitation of the revered Fruchoc. The Fruchoc is a very regional, very local creation, and I’m reliably informed that they are sold in the State of South Australia, and nowhere else. About 67 million of them are sold each year, and absent South Aussies who are pining for their Fruchocs have to content themselves with buying supplies by mail order.

Clearly, somebody else is trying to muscle in on the act by making an imitation. They failed.

These little chaps are about the size, shape, colour, and construction of the Fruchoc. But the execution has not quite made the grade. The chocolate, as I said above, is Ok. Good in fact. But the fruit in the middle is just plain. Ordinary. Nothingy. The test is simple. Suck on a Fruchoc and let it melt slowly until only the fruit in the middle is left. Chew it: Flavour - Lots. Now suck one of these Orange Bliss things. Let the chocolate melt away. The fruit in the middle has a strange texture. I’m too polite to say what it makes me think of. Then chew it. No orange. Nothing really. Just stuff.

We are having no trouble ploughing through the packet, and the kids pronounce them to be “OK”. But these are nothing special.

Ingredients

• 2-300g Gianduja
• 300ml cream
• 1tsp vanilla essence

Here’s a fail-safe dessert recipe for those of us who may be huge fans of fancy desserts (especially those featuring chocolate) but aren’t fans of fiddly cooking techniques, washing up lots of paraphernalia or have much time to spare. Here’s my take on chocolate mousse with only three ingredients.

Firstly, get yourself some Gianduja. The key to getting away with making such an easy dessert is to ensure that you have the best quality ingredients. Gianduja is the delicious, hazelnut-milk chocolate that any truffle maker or chocolatier worth-their-cocoa uses.

So, visit your gourmet deli or market or, like me, see Kirsten at and buy a brick of heaven for about a fifth of what you’d get it for when it’s merely melted and reset into a different shape.

Then, snap off a quarter (200 to 300 grams) and chop it into rough chunks and put into a microwave-proof bowl.

Put in the microwave for one minute on ‘high’ (but at 700 watts, not 1200 or it will burn). Take it out and give it a good stir through for about a minute, so that the blobs continue melting. Nuke for a further 20 or 30 seconds if blobs remain blobby.

In a separate bowl, add a teaspoon of vanilla essence and then pour in 300ml of cream. Use a whisk or egg-beaters to thrash the life out of the cream until it thickens to very soft peaks.

Then, as quickly as you can, add the cream to the melted chocolate and start whisking as though your life depended on it (this is so the chocolate and cream blend seamlessly rather than have the chocolate separate and go all grainy and dotty).

After a minute or so, it will look like this:

Don’t, whatever you do, be distracted by the self-pitying whines of the dog outside the kitchen window. Be strong; chocolate is poisonous for our furry friends and you have more work to do!

When the cream and chocolate is combined, spoon it gently into some serving glasses. I found some retro 1970s champagne saucers that cost me 10 cents each and are the right size for the mousse.

Pop some cling film over the mousse glasses (I put them on a tray and cover the tray) and put in the fridge for an hour or so. Before serving, add a small blob of cream on top and, if you’re really good, serve with a fresh fruit platter. Then get into licking the beaters, spoons and mixing bowls clean – you deserve it, after all.

Everyone – even Dark Side Devotees – will gobble it down and remark on how ‘divinely retro’ both the dessert and glasses are. Trust me.

If you insist on using dark chocolate, get 300g of Lindt Excellence 70% instead of the Gianduja and do everything else the same. Once again, you’ll be praised, worshipped and adored.

Having recently visited and loved Max Brenner’s, it was time to try some of their chocolates that are displayed as reverently as jewellery in glass cases.

Lovely shop assistant Siwei had thoughtfully written a kind of tic-tac-toe inspired diagram that listed the flavours I’d selected, just in case I’d forget when I got home. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, as surely chocolates that aren’t exactly cheap would be easy to tell apart?

Just to be sure, though, they are:

Top row
Dark chocolate with raspberry, White and milk chocolate mousse, Praline mixed with roasted coconut.

Middle row
Dark chocolate ganache with lemon peel oil, Dark chocolate ganache with spices, Dark chocolate truffle

Bottom row
Luxury truffle (dark), Luxury truffle (milk), Praline cream mixed with peanut butter.

I very carefully cut each one of the nine little art works in half, not only to photograph but also to share with my husband Love Chunks and daughter Sapphire, who always know when it’s time to hang around nearby. However I need to apologise to Dom because my greed and need were too great to stop and take any further photographs.

Firstly, the negatives, which to be honest aren’t really negative. Yes, the luxury truffles (milk and dark) and the dark chocolate truffle sound nice but here’s a shout-out to posh chocolate makers everywhere – please STOP dusting them in cocoa. All it does it leave dust marks on my front, mess on my fingers and fill my mouth with dry and bitter dirt before any nice chocolate flavours emerge. So, three out of nine here were already little dust bombs (with two looking more like something my dog tends to leave in our front garden) that overrode the actual chocolate inside. Oh well.

Luckily the rest of the six were j-u-s-t fine. The four stand outs – and ones I’ll be buying more of were the dark chocolate with raspberry – fine dark filling with tiny raspberry seeds to remind me of the quality ingredients; Praline with roasted coconut – a triumph with the coconut shreds producing an extra crunchy toffee flavour; Dark chocolate ganache with lemon peel oil- delicious and delicate and Praline cream with peanut butter – a sensation of milk chocolate, peanut butter and a pinch of saltiness that was utterly delicious.

The dark chocolate ganache ‘with spices’ was nice, or OK. Nothing earth shattering and the milk and white chocolate mousse got the same reaction.

In summary, I can see that I’ll just have – yes have to, dear reader – go back and try them all so that I can formulate my own collection of stand outs. All without cocoa dust, of course.

I didn’t buy this bag. I’ve had enough Hershey’s lately. But seeing as it was in the house, well, I couldn’t let it go without making a few comments. Let me just ignore the “truffle” part of the name, which there is no way I could agree with, even if it is just “filled with” instead of calling the entire chocolate a truffle. Anyway, they are in the Hershey’s Kiss format, which usually means a better taste to me.

My experience with these little things has been confusing. I had one at first and didn’t like it. At all. A couple days later, I thought they were rather good. So let me try and balance out these two opposite experiences.

These chocolates have very much of a warm, walnut brownie taste to them, especially with the inner filling. This means that there’s lots of chocolateyness and lots of sugar. So it follows naturally that the degree of liking will depend on the person and their mood. Sometimes you’re in the mood for simpler pleasures; sometimes you’re not. Then there are the people who don’t even like to “waste their time” with things like this. But for a small pleasure (like the brownies they remind me of), I’d say Hershey’s did a nice enough job.

I suppose it makes sense for a country that produces coffee to also have a cocoa growing industry, but Colombian chocolate is a little thin on the ground in my usual UK haunts. This bar is a 53% cocoa semi-Dark chocolate, fairly traded by Nacional de Chocolates, who have been in business since 1920.

The concept of ’semi-dark’ is intriguing, and I think it shows a difference in tastes worldwide. In the UK anything over 50% would usually be classed as dark chocolate, and I was intrigued as to how this might differ taste-wise from something I might call ‘dark’

As you can see, it’s darker than milk chocolate but lighter than a really high cocoa content bar might be. The smell of it is very ‘toppy’ - all citrus and light wood aromas with a slightly sweet note in there. This is further amplified when tasting. The chocolate melts very quickly, flooding the mouth with sweet citrussy high notes. I had the distinct impression that there was quite a lot of sugar involved as well, but the packaging doesn’t give a breakdown of content by percentage. Texture and sweetness-wise it reminded me of the Seeds of Change dark chocolate I recently reviewed.

It’s certainly not as deep tasting as a high cocoa content dark bar, and the more complex cocoa flavours are somewhat obscured by the sweetness, but it was certainly popular with my randomly selected tasting friends. I personally found it a little too sweet on my palate and found myself wishing for less sweet and more cocoa. It was pleasant enough, but not outstanding enough for me to want to rave about it to all and sundry. Perhaps it would work well as a ‘bridge’ between milk and dark - a ‘gateway’ chocolate, to use someone else’s terminology.

There’s no official UK importer for this product (I picked it up in Belfast) but I have a feeling that other delis and health food stores might stock it. I would certainly be interested in trying a darker Colombian bar sometime to see if the cocoa flavours are any more intense when concentrated.

We’ve mentioned before how impressed we’ve been with the way Thorntons are moving forward - in fact, we discussed it in depth when we met their head chocolatier Keith Hurdman a few months ago.

If the experts are to believed, this particular chocolate may be one of the best so far as the box proudly displays its Academy of Chocolate Bronze Award. I had been quite keen to try it, and luckily it turned up in our goody bags at the awards ceremony. Yay!

The format of this block is the same as the other Thorntons square blocks, except this one has a gold wrapper emblazoned with the words “award winning”, rather than the usual clear plastic wrapper. It definitely looks more appetising wrapped in gold, so I guess Thorntons are just going to have to win a few more awards so they can repackage the rest of the range.

The chocolate here is a Dominican Republic 60% and it’s really rather delicious. It has a bright, fruity flavour that instantly reminded me of Amano’s 70% Madagascar bar. It’s not bitter at all and is the kind of thing I could happily eat all day.

The caramelised macadamias add an interesting flavour too. They have just a hint of sweetness and a touch of salt with a very slightly burnt flavour coming in at the end. They’re finely chopped, so there’s no large chunks to contend with and they add just the right amount of crispy, crunchy texture.

I can certainly see why this won an Academy of Chocolate award - it really is rather good - and the fact that it’s available somewhere as accessible as Thorntons means that anyone should be able to get their hands on it.

Having said that, I can’t see it in their online store and I’ve not checked out my local Thorntons lately. If you do find it, let us know. And also buy some - you won’t regret it.

Update: I’m told by Thorntons that this bar is being introduced over the next few weeks and should be in all Thorntons stores by the end of the month. So look out for it!