When the father of one of the founders of Chuao developed type 2 diabetes, he (the co-founder of Chuao) went to work to create a chocolate bar that his father could eat and that also met hist standards for taste and edibleness. This is a challenge that many chocolatiers have been working on and that few do very well, and one of the reasons why is that most chocolatiers don’t make their own chocolate and are therefore captive to what they can purchase from the large manufacturers. I doubt that Chuao is making their own chocolate and I doubt that they are large enough to request a custom formulation (not enough volume to make it economical) from one of the large manufacturers, but they’ve managed to create a trio of very welcome additions to the world of sugar free chocolate bars ...

Type(s): Prestige Chocolatier, Eating Chocolate, Sugar-Free/Low Carb
Taste Rating: Very Good to Superior
Overall Value Rating: Very Good

How did they do it? By adding flavorings to the bars instead of just melting down bulk couverture and molding it plain or adding some nuts. The flavors are well-balanced and add that little bit of taste that is missing when you take the sugar away. All three bars use maltitol as the sweetener and include butter oil to soften the texture of the bar and add some richness to the mouthfeel. What is nice about the use of the flavors, apart from the fact that are just nice flavors, is that the normal maltitol aftertaste is not in evidence (but see the note about this at the end). On the minus side, the smell of chocolate is not very strong when you open the wrappers.

While all three bars say the chocolate is “infused” with the flavors I doubt that this is technically correct, as an infusion is where a flavoring ingredient is soaked in water or oil to extract the flavor and the liquid is incorporated into the product as the flavoring. In these cases, because of the texture, it is more probable that the flavoring ingredients are ground finely and added to the chocolate during the final tempering process.

The three flavors are: Milk Chocolate with Earl Grey Tea, Dark Chocolate with Coffee and Anise, and Dark Chocolate with Cinnamon, Pasilla Chile, and Cayenne Pepper. All three bars are very well made.

Surprisingly, the milk Chocolate with Early Grey bar is the “snappiest” of the three bars with a much firmer initial bite than the other two. The initial small is not overly sweet and contains a mild citrusy hint of bergamot, the flavoring of Earl Grey tea. At the first bite the bergamot flavor becomes apparent then disappears under a rush of sweetness only to reappear again and then dissipate until it is a very faint memory on the finish. There is a very slight texture which I attribute to the tea leaves. The common caramel notes of milk are not evident.

The Coffee and Anise bar has a nose where the anise is more evident than the coffee but in a nicely nuanced balance. The snap is crisp and as with the Earl Grey bar, the flavors tend to beat in and out, first coffee then anise then coffee and with the final taste in the mouth being anise. There is a slight pastiness near the finish that is probably attributable to the butter oil and there is a nice toothy crunch to the bar which probably comes from the coffee grounds. The long finish is pleasantly redolent of anise which, as the copy on the bar wrapper suggests, would make it a nice complement to an after-dinner espresso.

The Spicy Maya bar with cinnamon, pasilla, and cayenne is, in many ways, the most interesting of the three. It also has a nice snap and an inviting nose (although as mentioned above missing much chocolate smell) with no hint of the peppery fire inside.

In fact, the peppery fire is not at all evident when you first start chewing the bar. The sweetness of the cinnamon is the strongest note until the point where the chocolate is almost completely melted in the mouth. Then the cinnamon nicely complements the growing heat of the pasilla (which is quite mild actually) and the cayenne peppers. The fire lingers quite pleasantly, but I don’t think it would work in conjunction with an after-dinner coffee or other beverage.

Earlier in the review I mentioned that one of the things I liked about these bars is that the characteristic aftertaste of maltitol is not noticeable. That’s true, to a point. If you eat one of these bars and don’t drink or eat anything else for three to five minutes, then suddenly you’ll notice the taste of the maltitol. This has nothing to do with the product that Chuao makes, it’s a result of using the maltitol. The fact that it takes so long to appear is pretty remarkable, however.

The bars are available on the Chuao web site (link below) and are sold in sets of three (one of each flavor) for $15. Each bar is 80g (a little less than 3 ozs) so the final cost of $5/bar is about $28/lb, which seems a little high at first. However, for the diabetic chocophile who does not want to compromise on taste when it comes to indulging in chocolate, the price is representative of the quality of the product.

Taking everything into consideration, these are among the best sugar-free chocolate bars on the market. Though sugar free they are not low-carb, however, and they do not make a low-carb claim. What makes them better than virtually all of their competition is the use of flavors combinations that are attractive in and of themselves, irrespective of their use in sugar-free chocolate.

UPDATE(S):

Read the other review(s) of Chuao Chocolatier here.

Company Information:

Chuao Chocolatier
The Lumberyard, Suite C-109
937 S. Coast Highway 101
Encinitas, CA 92025
888-635-1444
http://www.chuaochocolatier.com