Butlers: Pink Himalayan Salted Caramel Chocolates

Okay, I've probably been bending the chocolate rules a little too often lately. And normally I wouldn't bend them for packaged chocolates (that is, chocolates with a long shelf life versus fresh ones that only last two weeks). But World Market just gets me in the shopping mood, I guess. And I fell for the whole pink Himalayan salt and pink chocolate thing.

In fact, the pink chocolate is white chocolate that has been colored with beetroot. This way it looks the same color as pink salt. It's pretty. Honestly, as well, I was interested because Butlers Chocolates is from Ireland and I don't know if I've ever had any chocolate from Ireland. Just seeing the different ways that various countries approach chocolate can be worth bending the rules a bit occasionally.

I do appreciate that these are labeled as chocolates and not as truffles. Structure-wise, they're little, square chocolate cups with the top half of the inside being pink chocolate and the underneath being caramel. There is some salt on top, too. Very much the look of a dessert.

You definitely get a sweet, slightly chalky-flavored confection chocolate taste. There is, after all, white chocolate; that's where that chalk-reminiscent taste comes from. Now, the label calls the outside milk chocolate, but it's 58% cocoa. Americans would call that dark chocolate, so there is one little detail that's different with this being from a different country. Again, I kind of appreciate it being called milk chocolate because it certainly isn't dark. It's kind of a standard middle ground confection chocolate.

The caramel is nice, flowy and vanilla-flavored. Interesting way that they further reinforce the salted caramel aspect: there is salt on the bottom of each chocolate. So it hits your tongue as soon as you bite in. Pink salt is less salty than standard salt, so they did have to add a visually noticeable amount for it to be salty. It is certainly a noticeably salty flavor, though not too strong, either. Definitely a good balance.

So it's a nice little salted caramel chocolate, it's pretty, and it has a long shelf life. As chocolates with long shelf lives go, certainly this is one of the better ones. While not perhaps the best chocolates I've ever had, they're quite nice.