Eclipse Chocolate: Sea Salt Nib

Well, good thing I didn't pick up much chocolate while I was in California. I've still been kind of off schedule on posts, which means that chocolate posts can really start piling up.

While I didn't visit Eclipse Chocolate itself, I did get one of their bars from Rust General Store in Old Town San Diego. Now, Eclipse Chocolate, unless something has changed, doesn't make their own chocolate. That is, they don't make it from the bean; they make flavored chocolates and bars from the couverture.

Unfortunately, this chocolate seems a little old. It's a little hard and less quick to melt. Unless I'm reading the blurry best by date wrong (which is possible), it, ah, was pretty close to that date when I bought it. Kind of a shame and kind of odd given that Eclipse is in San Diego, so you'd think that Rust would be able to buy from them more often rather than buying less often, only to have unwanted stock siting on shelves overly long. Then again, I guess it's hard to guess about customers' wants, anyways. You think that they'll want to buy chocolate but then all they buy is candy, perhaps.

Tangent over. This particular bar is the Sea Salt Nib, which is "dark chocolate flecked with lavender herbed sea salt and candied cocoa nib." It's a 55% cocoa. Sometimes, yes, I do get tired of all the salted chocolate. I like salt, but I just get tired of the combination. This bar offers something unique, though.

The nibs work well with the salt because when you crunch on them, it feels like it's the salt that you're crunching on. Obviously, though, that isn't the case, because the salty level would be much higher, much too high, if the salt were so greatly crunchy. So with these two elements being there together, the crunch of the nibs is able to highlight the saltiness while also allowing the salt to remain at the proper proportion.

The chocolate is on the sweeter side of dark chocolate, since it is, after all, only a 55%. Not too much, though, just enough to keep the chocolate casual and focused on flavor combinations rather than simply chocolate flavors.

And the lavender? Well, if the label didn't say lavender, I don't think that I would know that there is lavender. I don't know if this is because I'm fairly immune to lavender as both a scent and a flavor. I use a lot of lavender scents at home and the black tea that I usually drink in the mornings has lavender in it. So it might be that I just don't notice it much unless it's strong. Once I'm looking for it, I imagine that I can detect a little bit of that peppery flavor in here, but I'm not certain. Even if it isn't strong with lavender, though, the salt truly is excellent.

The lavender element sounded like it would be the one to push things over the edge here, yet it was the addition of the nibs that made this bar unique. The nibs are what ended up making it stand out and what kept my interest even when other salted chocolates start to leave me bored after a while.

Eclipse Chocolate: Cinnamon Brown Sugar

Just as a very dark chocolate tests the skills of a chocolatier, a sweet chocolate tests the grounds for a chocolate maker. If they can't put together sweet flavors in a way that is still gourmet, then they are making confections, not chocolate. So I consider it okay that, when I visited the Eclipse Chocolate cafe and shop, the one chocolate bar I picked up was a 38% milk chocolate, by name the Cinnamon Brown Sugar. I'm done with choosing chocolate because I think it's what I should be getting: I'll choose whatever I feel like instead. If it's a sugary milk chocolate, then so be it. I'm the one who's going to be eating it, anyway. (I really need to elaborate someday on my progression from very dark chocolate when I was younger to more milk chocolate as I get older . . . )

At about nine inches, this 75 gram bar stretches across a whole page of paper. You don't usually see such long bars of chocolate; I'm not sure whether or not I like the shape. It does, however, remind me of the candy bar Charlie bought in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory--which makes me further glad that I picked out a sweet chocolate. I suppose the size makes it stand out and makes it recognizable. It somehow also looks both masculine and feminine at the same time; it's bold because it's different, and yet it's sort of delicate because it can break more easily than a flat bar.

The bar is divided into nine chunks. They're tastefully shaped so that the curve of the chocolate echoes the curve in the Eclipse logo. But while the large size of each piece seems to fit milk chocolate, I can't find myself liking this size for a more serious dark chocolate. Maybe that's the idea: maybe Eclipse Chocolate doesn't want to be overly serious. 

This chocolate smells wonderful. The description calls it "milk chocolate flecked with muscovado sugar, cinnamon bread crumbs, and sea salt." That description has promise in it. Cinnamon is wonderful in chocolate, a rich-tasting sugar sounds good, and sea salt is the popular addition these days. The aroma is intense cinnamon, like from fresh churros. It's very sweet, like the sweetness of a thousand desserts. 

When you bite in, the tendency is naturally going to be to keep on chewing: all those tiny bits of toasty bread have to be crunched. As you crunch, you come across the sea salt here and there and it helps to take off some of the edge of the sweetness. So you're crunching through bread crumbs, melting through chocolate, and sucking on salt all at once. Although 38% cacao isn't the lowest percentage as far as milk chocolate goes, this one ends up feeling rather on the lighter end of things, probably because of how many flavors it has to compete with. And on top of the sugar that was already in the chocolate, Eclipse added the muscovado sugar, so this is quite a sweet chocolate bar. 

Yet I think I would still call it a gourmet candy bar. It satisfies the sweet tooth, that's for sure, but sometimes we need things to satisfy our sweet tooth. And why reach for a Milky Way that's going to disappoint you with its cardboardness halfway through when you can have a sweet bar that still has some thought behind it? Sure, it's a tad on the greasy side, but the overall combination of ingredients and flavors is quite nice. The milk chocolate, the cinnamon, and the sugar are the familiar and safe ingredients. The salt adds a contemporary, more adult edge to it. And the bread (which I have only had in one other bar, from Theo) adds something silly that also makes a lot of sense. Just picture a piece of toast with sugar on top, a cup of hot chocolate with cinnamon, and a little salt to lick off of the palm of your hand. The Cinnamon Brown Sugar takes all of that and melds it into one seamless chocolate. 

Eclipse Chocolate: Drinking Chocolate & Truffles

That's it, I'm moving: there just aren't any chocolate shops where I live. Not only are there none in the area, but in the whole state (sort of). It's terrible. 

But I know, the lack of chocolate shops is just one of the prices I have to pay to live where it is beautiful. I know. And it's probably for the best, anyway: this way, chocolate remains special because it is more scarce. So any time that I go out of state, I try and look up chocolate shops around where I'll be. I usually try and visit at least one of them. So my "at least one" shop for the San Diego area was Eclipse Chocolate. I thought perhaps breakfast there would be nice since they also serve food, but that never happened. In addition to food, chocolate, desserts, hot chocolate, and tea, they also serve alcohol, so there is quite a variety of what they have on offer. It's nice to have options.

When I looked up the place, I saw that it was near Balboa Park, which is where the museums are. I thought, oh, good, it's near the fancy area. Well, the particular corner where the cafe is isn't particularly fancy--but the shop is nicely designed and very clean. With blue and white, it's made up to be a hip hangout spot. Since I went there after lunch, all I ordered was a drinking chocolate. And since it was after lunch, I went for a lighter milk chocolate versus something heavy and dark. The Cardamom Rose Milk Chocolate (with soy) was my choice. 

The good-sized white mug came with two fresh marshmallows. I pinched a taste because they were so pretty, but didn't eat them because I'm one of the people who don't really like marshmallows. The chocolate was good, and I was glad that I didn't order something dark because if it's dark, I prefer a much smaller serving. The rose gave it that soft, floral feeling, while the cardamom added a touch more spice and movement to keep it all from becoming cloying. All very pleasant for an afternoon drink. 

On the way out, I picked up two truffles and one chocolate bar. The bar I will save for a later post, but the truffles I will address now. The first was a champagne truffle, which I chose since it's a kind of must-have flavor. There may have been something more to the name, but I don't remember what it was. There is a dried cranberry on top, which I'm not sure I get, but the chocolate smells fragrant and the ganache looks smooth when you cut it open. 

The mouthfeel is also smooth without being plasticy; the flavor is rich and light at the same time. There are rich cocoa notes, possibly a hint of salt from the other truffle, and a berry-like flavor for a splash of color. It's a nice truffle, maybe not the best I've ever had but of course a thousand times better than mass-produced chocolates. 

The second truffle was the Lavender Sea Salt Caramel, which is a rectangular chocolate with sprinkled salt and lavender. I think it was available in milk and dark; I didn't specify which one I wanted, so I ended up with milk, which I think goes better with the caramel, anyway. As you can see, the caramel is semi-stiff, so it doesn't flow out on its own. While the lack of messiness is nice, I would have preferred a less chewy caramel: chewiness always feels less fancy to me. It does, however, taste nicely of vanilla and sugar and whatever else caramel is composed of. 

I'm starting to get tired of hearing of salted caramels because everyone does them, but the addition of lavender in this truffle makes it more unique and entertaining. Lavender does, after all, have a zing to it that is not entirely unlike the zing of salt. Now, the salt is still more prominent than the lavender (and it's delicious, flaky salt, by the way), but the lavender still adds some of its floral, citrus pop. I like this subtle addition to a popular chocolate flavor. 

Now that Eclipse Chocolate has passed the taste test, I can go on to praise their other aims. They work with Guittard Chocolate (which has long been one of my favorites) for ethically-source chocolate, they use organic ingredients when they can, they don't add vegetable fats to the chocolate, they produce their chocolates in small batches (as you can already tell), and they donate a portion of profits to charities. So, yes, Eclipse Chocolate has a lot going for them, and I am a bit jealous that California has places like this and Arizona, basically, does not.