It makes sense to have Christmas chocolate bars versus other chocolate-based products. If you live in a big city, you can go buy wonderful truffles from a variety of shops. If you don't, you're stuck with what you can buy at grocery stores and other random places. And all of that has to be chocolate with a long shelf life--which automatically rules out decent truffles. So if a company wants to be nice and get some good Christmas chocolate out to us on the outskirts, they'd better make some of it into chocolate bars.
Last year, I spoke highly of Theo's Gingerbread Spice bar (click here for that review). The same store where I found that one had more of the holiday bars this year. I thought the peppermint one might be too close to a regular mint chocolate, so I chose the Nutcracker Brittle. I don't care for peanut brittle, but not to fear: this bar just has pieces of almonds, hazelnut, and sugar brittle scattered around. It's more like eating a nutty chocolate than peanut brittle, though the sugar brittle pieces do add a slightly different texture to it all.
It's much the same story as last year. The presentation of this chocolate bar is about as close to a wrapped box of truffles as a chocolate bar can be (don't you like how nice it looks against the pretty Downton Abbey wrapping paper?). This would be a lovely mini gift or stocking stuffer. At 85 grams, it's a large chocolate bar, making it enough to share or to hoard. The chocolate is Theo's 70% dark, so it's a nice change away from all of the milk chocolate and sugary dark chocolates floating around during Christmas. It's real chocolate, but still dressed up as holiday fun. The sugar brittle pieces are just a few steps away from rock candy bits--not enough to interfere, but just enough to make you pause and enjoy them. Normally I don't chew dark chocolate, but it's fine with such a crunchy bar as this.
And we must mention the good stuff, too. I'm fond of Theo because their chocolate is good and their company is aware of ethics. USDA Organic, Fair for Life, and Non-GMO Project Verified all apply here. Even the corn syrup is non-GMO, organic, and fair trade. The sugar is cane sugar and the vanilla is ground vanilla bean--not cutting corners here.
That should cover it. Theo is good, and both of these holiday chocolate bars are good. Merry Christmas Eve, all.
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