Four squares of dark chocolate filled with a creamy macadamia base, freeze-dried raspberry and toasted buckwheat for crunch. Around 2 g of sugar per square, from dates. Vegan, organic, hand-made in France. 4 x 20 g.
CONTAINS MACADAMIA NUTS
Macadamia is a named tree nut under EU allergen law and it is the base of the filling. Check the box for the full declaration and for traces of other nuts.
And a warning specific to this variety: macadamia nuts are toxic to dogs. Not just the chocolate — macadamias themselves cause weakness, tremors, vomiting and hyperthermia in dogs, usually within twelve hours, through a mechanism that is still not understood. Combined with the theobromine in 75% dark chocolate, this is one of the worst things in the shop for a dog to find. Do not leave the box out.
Why macadamia is the right nut here
Macadamia is the fattiest nut there is — around 75% fat, and unusually high in monounsaturated fat, higher even than olive oil in proportion. That is what makes macadamia butter so extraordinarily creamy: there is very little else in it.
It is also the mildest of the nuts, which is why it works under raspberry. An almond or hazelnut base would fight the fruit; macadamia carries it.
The raspberry
Raspberry is one of the few fruits that gets more intense when dried — remove the water from something that is 85% water and what is left is acid and aroma at several times the concentration. That sharpness is what cuts through the fat of the macadamia and the cocoa butter, and it is why the combination works.
Toasted buckwheat
The crunch, and a good choice. Buckwheat is not a wheat and not a grain — despite the name it is a pseudocereal related to rhubarb and sorrel, and it is naturally gluten-free. Toasted, it has a distinctive nutty, faintly earthy flavour; in Eastern Europe toasted buckwheat is kasha, and it is a staple.
The sugar, honestly
About 2 g per square, from whole ground dates — genuinely low for a filled chocolate. But date sugar is still sugar, and low sugar is not low calorie: macadamia is 75% fat, and fat carries more than twice the energy of sugar per gram. These are not diet chocolates. They are richly satisfying ones with very little sugar in them, which is a better thing to be.