Thank you so much for sending your positive thoughts and support to my grandpa and family after Friday’s post; we truly appreciate your well-wishes and your kindness. Grandpa thankfully came stoically out of what was a very long and difficult surgery, and is already charming the nurses with his jokes (we, his family, have always been charmed). Thank you again for your support. Big hugs back to all of you!
Also, as many of you surmised, this weekend most certainly necessitated much chocolate…
Vosges Woolloomooloo Bar
As I rifled through my slowly-dwindling collection of Vosges chocolate bars, trying to decide which flavour to partake in, the word “Woolloomooloo” jumped out at me. In turn, my hand jumped out at it.
Why, you may ask, this sudden movement akin to a cheetah leaping on its prey? Well, folks, Vosges Woolloomooloo Bar has a direct affinity with Australia, as it’s named after “the famed suburb Woolloomooloo in Sydney and meant to hono[u]r the Aboriginal claim to the scrumptious macadamia nut”. You might also be interested to know that, according to Wikipedia, the name Woolloomooloo could be derived from any of several Aboriginal words meaning, or else pronunciations of, “place of plenty”, “young black kangaroo”, “field of blood”, “windmill”, or “There’s wool on my loo!”.
Mmm, tasty.
I also wanted to eat this Vosges Woolloomooloo chocolate because its incorporated hemp seeds are illegal to produce and sell in Australia. Subsequently, by eating this chocolate I could totally feel, like, super totally, like, hardcore.
What’s that you say? You want me to stop talking peripherally about the chocolate and discuss the actual chocolate itself?
Spoilsports.
The Vosges Woolloomoolo Bar is comprised of 41% milk chocolate, roasted and salted macadamia nuts, Indonesian coconut, and hemp seeds. Upon unwrapping the bar, the reddish-brown colour of the chocolate combined with the visible nut-seed-coconut goodies lurking just below the surface put me in positive frame of mind. Adding to the air of possibility was the aroma, which clearly sent forth notes of coconut and caramel.
I took a bite. And then decided that, in a move away from my usual mode of reviewing, I would simply cut-and-paste my tasting notes into this post. Behold the way my mind works:
Deep cocoa, not too sweet, something nutty but unfamiliar, almost like sesame but more complex, earthier… hello, salt hit! I do like you! What is that lurking flavour, is it hemp? Coconut subtle, big tick, blends in nicely with the coconut, hemp, and macadamia into a complex nuttiness that plays with a taste-memory I can’t quite pin down…
… hello again, salt hit! You’re back again! If I were a deer, I’d lick you. Intense salt makes the chocolate seem almost fruity, there’s caramel, dulce de leche, faint pear, then again comes the salt hitting the back of the throat at the end. The milk chocolate has salted caramel, honey, cream notes. Sweet, yes, but layered with ebbing flavours. Delicious but subtle. Hemp provides something savoury, a bit like malt, maybe wheat? Chocolatey-chocolate, very subtle, perhaps too subtle…
And then a trigger went off in my brain and I went off on a lengthy typey-typey-story-to-myself tangent about something that happened last year. As we all know or could surmise, typey-typey-stories-to-ourselves usually best remain only typey-typey-stories-to-ourselves, not typey-typer-stories-to-the-blog.
Therefore the culmination of this chocolate review is:
The Vosges Woolloomooloo Bar could have been a bit punchier in its flavour, particularly in terms of the prominence of the macadamia and hemp, but all in all I’m not upset by the association of this chocolate with Australia.
(However, I’m far prouder of Canberra’s own chocolate maker.)
