I’m an old fashioned girl and like to call a spade a spade. This is not to say that I like being nasty, or that I find outspoken people attractive. No sir-ree! When I say that I like to call a spade a spade, I mean that I like chocolate companies to be honest about the contents of their products, and what I mean specifically, is that an orange cream centred chocolate should be labelled as an orange cream centred chocolate - preferably with a picture of a skull and crossbones beside it.
I am what I call an adventurous chocolate eater. If it’s there and it’s covered in chocolate, contains chocolate or even looks slightly brown, I will eat it.
UNLESS it has an orange cream centre.
You could swathe an orange cream centre in exotic dark chocolate made from cocoa beans plucked from plants that have been grown in a glass house made from Bohemia crystal and watered with the tears of Gaelic fairies and I still wouldn't touch it. Not even if those same cocoa beans had been roasted by a snow leopard on the peak of Mount Everest, then ground beneath the heels of Fred Astaire's dancing shoes. Orange cream is orange cream and not to be eaten.
Get the idea?
Now shift your mind to yesterday morning when I was presented with a beautiful Swiss Chocolate Selection - white box, gold print, deep blue satin bow, shiny round sticker that looked like an Olympic gold medal. I am a great fan of chocolate delicacies in pretty boxes and often present them as a gift to those I hold in high esteem … and sometimes to those I hold in low esteem, when they are in need of buttering up (or chocolating up, as I like to say).
I removed the blue ribbon, lifted the lid, inhaled the chocolatey aroma and began to nibble my way through one delicacy after another until - SHOCK! HORROR! - I bit into the Swiss equivalent of an orange cream centred chocolate. ORANGE CREAM!! Can you believe it? I certainly took some time to reconcile myself - and my reeling taste buds - to the fact.
Now you can call an orange cream chocolate a Cœur á l’Orange but it still won’t lift it above the level of a despicable orange cream. Why would you spoil an otherwise fine box of chocolate delicacies by tossing an orange cream in amidst such culinary aristocrats as the Amande Croquante, the Triangele aux Noisettes and the Amande de Luxe?
You can see from the photos of the Chocolate Identification Card (below) that I have given each chocolate a score out of ten as soon as it was eaten (You should try it some time. It lifts the chocolate eating experience to a whole new level of sophistication.) One chocolate scored seven, two scored nine and three scored a perfect ten. (Three types of chocolate were totally absent from the box but that is separate issue which I simply cannot bear to talk about at present.) The Cœur á l’Orange, however, received a shameful zero. It does not take a mathematical genius to realise the meaning of such a score.
Obviously, an evil villain (think Moriarty, the Penguin, Wile E. Coyote …) has been hiding in the Swiss chocolate factory, deliberately sabotaging the work of the great artists who have hitherto been dedicated to producing fine products that are rich in cocoa and devoid of citrus fruit.
And so I must end this blog for I need to be concentrating my energies on writing to all the Swiss chocolatiers to warn them of the dangers at hand. No thanks needed! The capture and imprisonment of the fiend and the exclusion of this offensive chocolate from all chocolate selections as soon as is humanly possible will be reward enough for my efforts … oh, and a box of assorted chocolates including every single one of the specimens shown on the Chocolate Identification Card wouldn't go astray, either!
Zero out of ten!!!! Not even the cunning heart shape could cover the tragedy within.
Try ranking your chocolates as you eat them. It is wonderfully fulfilling and adds an element of education and sophistication to working one's way through an entire box.