Today's review is for a rather special chocolate maker, one I have loved for a long time now but is rather difficult to find in UK shops. A handful of health food stores sometimes sell their bars, and you can also buy direct from Zotter's Austrian website and have bars delivered to the UK.
Zotter are an Austrian company making an extensive variety of unique bars, from their famous "hand scooped" range (see my review of their Coconut & Raspberry) with various fillings, to their Mitzi Blue discs that remind me of UFO's. I was kindly sent a variety of bars to try recently, so a big thankyou to Zotter for the opportunity!
I chose varieties from their dairy free vegan varieties, which they make a rather large number of. They even do vegan white and milk chocolates - check out the range if that's your kind of thing!
Today's review is for their Xocitto Choco Espresso kit. The box contained several chunky bars of 100% cocoa fine chocolate that are ideal for making a "Chocolate Espresso" with.
You can simply use hot water, and add milk as desired, but I chose to use Dairy Free milk to make a hot chocolate instead.
The bars have the Zotter logo as well as "drinking chocolate" and patterns imprinted on them, which looks very lovely indeed.
I boiled up some coconut milk (Koko brand) in a pan and added the bar whilst whisking. This produced a frothy hot chocolate and I have to say it was very tasty! I've made hot chocolate many times using unsweetened dark chocolate before and it often tastes bitter. However this Zotter version doesn't taste bitter at all; it's flavoursome and characteristic of good quality chocolate, and doesn't overpower the milk at all. It's a very tasty drink indeed, and probably a real treat on a Winter's day (I'm really not reviewing this at the best time of year am I?!)
Overall, these Xocitto Espresso sticks are a great product from Zotter and the small bars are so handy for making a luxury hot chocolate or "choco espresso" with, definitely better than regular cocoa mixes. It's also a bit difficult not to nibble on the bars whilst making a drink, they're so tasty!
8.5 out of 10.
