With Easter upon us, we've been busy reviewing lots of Easter-themed chocolates recently, but these little bags of Beyond Dark chocolate drops actually arrived a few weeks ago and were tucked away in the baking cupboard. I came across them earlier in the week and decided to give them a try.
I was surprised to see how perfectly round they are. In my experience, chocolate drops are usually a bit less regularly shaped ! They're also very small, about the size of midget gems, if you remember those. Here at The Madhouse, we all love chocolate but we do have a preference for milk and white chocolate over dark chocolate, so I wasn't sure what we'd make of these 70% Dark Chocolate drops. Well, I was actually very surprised - they don't have that slightly unpleasant bitter taste that I associate with dark chocolate. I would quite happily have sat and nibbled my way through the whole bag, especially as they are tiny so you can kid yourself that they're low in calories (well, they are if you only eat one or two, but they're just too nice !). Actually, they're not that bad - I've just checked and the whole 35g bag contains 189 calories. Beyond Dark is also very rich in antioxidants and 20g covers your daily antioxidant requirements, which is another good excuse for eating them !
We ate one bag as they were, and decided to try them out in cooking too. I was using up some over-ripe bananas in our traditional way, making a banana bread. (You can see our usual banana bread recipe here.) However, I decided to shake things up a bit this time and make muffins instead of one big cake, as well as adding the Beyond Dark chocolate drops.
If you think they look a bit strange, they're cooling down upside down and I thought I'd show you because you can see those lovely chocolate drops in there !
I used Muscovado sugar which gave them a lovely crunchy top and the dark chocolate really complements the banana flavour. Pierre and Juliette often turn their noses up at my banana bread (strange creatures !), but this time, they couldn't get enough. I'm not sure if that's because of the easier-to-hold muffin shape or the addition of chocolate though.
I've just noticed on the Beyond Dark website that they also have two flavoured varieties, Dark Chocolate with a Hint of Orange and Dark Chocolate with a Hint of Raspberry. They both sound lovely so I'll definitely look out for those. Coming from someone who doesn't often buy dark chocolate, that's high praise indeed !
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : 99p for a 35g bag
Available in Sainsbury's, Holland & Barrett's and independent stockists.
for more information : http://www.beyonddark.co.uk
Disclosure : I received some Beyond Dark chocolate drops in order to write an honest review.
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