Affordable and higher than average quality chocolate for supermarket variety.

Our experience

There’s no way to say this but straight up and honestly. Lindt Chocolate has never been a favourite chocolate variety of MoMo & Coco’s…neither when we were young and it was one of our first chocolate experiences, nor when we are more grown-up now and have sampled chocolate all over the world. We don’t like the round Lindor ball ones, nor the petite truffle variety, nor any that one could find at its specialty boutiques or supermarket stockists. In fact, we have avoided Lindt unless it was for their chocolate waffles (see review here). So it was with some trepidation that we bought a selection of Lindt’s newest variety when they were offered at half price at our local supermarket. The consequence is that we may have found a few blocks to add to our supermarket chocolate shopping trolley! 🙂

The Coconut Intense is the sweetest of the range…and the most aromatic. When you unwrap the silver foil, that tropical scent is unmistakeable. From the very first bite, a full-bodied, creamy coconut flavour reveals itself. It is textured with flakes of dried coconut (and almonds?) to give a gritty mouthfeel. The chocolate ends quite sweetly, but the sweetness  doesn’t, fortunately, linger too long. A good one, but be careful with dosage because it can end up quite sweet even with the use of the dark chocolate.

The Orange Intense is certainly intense. The chocolate is about 65% dark chocolate variety (definitely not the professed 70%) and has a strange charcoal-like tone to it. We think it needs a darker chocolate variety to deepen the orange tone a little more. The orange takes a while to develop but when it hits, it hits with a hard edge. It is rather more like crushed Vitamin C tablets than the more characteristic fresh zingy acidity of the fruit. The orange lingers at the back of the tongue. It’s good, but in high doses, does take on a slight medicinal taste. A case in point of always remembering that chocolate is best in small, moderate doses. 🙂

The Passionfruit Intense is one of the two Lindt Excellence blocks that MoMo & Coco would consider repurchasing. A dark chocolate is infused with a fruit tone that is less artificial and more true than the Orange Lindt sibling, and also contains what we consider to be superfluous slivers of almond. Despite the list of ingredients stating that the passionfruit comprises about 3% of the bar, it nonetheless imparts quite a strong flavour which shows instantly and boldly, but tapers off quite quickly to leave behind chocolate that has a smoother, more pleasant texture than most of the other Lindt Excellence blocks we bought/sampled.

The Blueberry Intense is the most underwhelming of the lot that we purchased/sampled. It lacked the flavour power of its siblings in the Lindt range (we really cannot discern any blueberry taste), and reminded us why we didn’t quite enjoy anything from Lindt for such a long time.

Let’s end with our favourite of our purchased lot, the Strawberry Intense. For some sad reason, every other strawberry-flavoured chocolate that we have had has always been some artifical, sugary, squelchy, liquidised cream type. Lindt’s version here is one of the other that we would consider re-purchasing. It has somewhat unnecessary little pieces of freeze-dried berries embedded within that play more of a textural role than a flavour role. As a good chocolate block should be, regardless of whether it is flavoured or not, the chocolate takes centrestage, while the strawberry flavour is a spotlight on the stage, rather than vice-versa. Quite addictive.

Our verdict

Life must come with an appreciation of both the finest things and the more simple things. For bean-to-bar chocolate at its purest, unadulterated form, MoMo & Coco believe that the Monsieur Truffe range is very hard to beat. But, for flavoured treats, we can’t always have the dainty bites from the likes of Xocolatl, Chocolate Secret, Mamor, Paul A Young etc. In such absences, Lindt’s new Excellence flavoured block range adequately satisfies our chocolate cravings. Undoubtedly, there are a few underwhelming options in the range, and the chocolate itself predominantly errs to a sweeter, milk chocolate base, rather than its advertised “noir”-ness. But, they retail for around $3 a block not a tiny piece, are discounted during supermarket specials, comprise of at least 40% cocoa solids in each block, do not possess any of that nasty vegetable oil component commonly found in other chocolate brands, and easily broken up with a most satisfying snap. Overall, this Lindt range offers affordable sweetness of a good standard.

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Dessert adventure checklist

1. ☑ Dessert destination: Lindt Chocolate, at your local supermarket.
2. ☑ Budget: $.
3. ☑ Sweet irresistibles: Chocolate.
4. ☑ Must-eat: The Strawberry Intense chocolate block.
5. ☑ The short and sweet story: Affordable and higher than average quality chocolate for supermarket variety.

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