I spent last Thanksgiving having dinner with my sister-in-law, her family, and their friends. For dessert, my husband's aunt brought a beautifully crafted and incredibly expensive cake from Dean & Deluca. It's the sort of thing that I could only ever consume under one of two situations. The first one was that I experienced during the holiday. That is, someone who makes a lot more money than me offered it as a gift to a group of people I was dining with. The other would be if there were free samples.
Though the cake itself was just fine, my favorite part of it by far were the marzipan apples that decorated the top. I've had various sorts of marzipan before, and the quality has ranged rather far and wide. Since delighting in those fancy little almond paste apples, I've been on a bit of a quest to find something similar that is more in my price range. The problem for an American is that marzipan is not popular here so you have to turn to European imports.
The truth is that I'd had Mozart chocolates of various types before in Japan. Every time a student went to Vienna, they would give my husband some sort of Mozart treat as a gift. Often, they had not traveled well, but they were still fairly tasty. However, after eating those marzipan apples, which were not adulterated with chocolate, I was hoping to track down something which was similar rather than "settle" for something covered in chocolate. I know that sounds like heresy. Chocolate is, after all, the food of the chubbiest pizza-faced gods. However, sometimes, you just want to have something in its pure form.
After some research, I learned that one of the reasons marzipan is enrobed in chocolate is that it does not do well once it is exposed to air. It has to be very fresh or it has to be hidden in some other substance to be good. Maybe one of the reasons Americans don't like marzipan is that the pure stuff is usually little faux fruits that tend to be sold in shelf stable packaging. They may look good, but I've heard they aren't much to write home about on the tast and texture front.
Armed with this information, I passed on the pink marzipan pigs on offer at Pier One Imports and decided to opt for the Mozart marzipan bars. I figured that, despite the fact that they are chocolate covered, it should be better marzipan in the middle. For those who don't know what marzipan is, it is, essentially, almond paste. It's made pretty much with sugar, egg white, and nuts with some various small additions (e.g., flavors like vanilla).
With so much chocolate involved, it's no surprise that the marzipan is not the primary flavor. The first thing that hits your tongue is sweet, milky chocolate. The texture feels quite decadent because it is so creamy, but the cacao level seems rather low. You get very little in the way of the bitterness and intensity of chocolate. I'm not even a dark chocolate fan and this was a bit too milky for me.
The volume of marzipan relative to the amount of milk chocolate is rather low, unfortunately. I should have heeded the illustration on the package in this regard. It's not exactly promising lavish quantities. The marzipan flavor hits after the chocolate and the strongest component is the pistachio. Though this includes almonds and hazelnuts, they tend to blend in rather than stand out as separate flavors. It's good, and has a nice, smooth, moist texture, but as someone who was eating pure marzipan "apples", I had hoped for more strength.
I can't say that this is a bad bar at all. In fact, it is quite enjoyable, but it didn't quite suit my tastes. I was looking for something in the wrong place. What I found was tasty, but not a fount of marzipan goodness. If you are looking for something lighter on that front, this is pretty tasty, but ultimately it was too sweet and didn't offer enough strong chocolate or marzipan flavor for me personally. I in no way mean to diminish the quality and tastiness of this, but I would not buy it again.
With so much chocolate involved, it's no surprise that the marzipan is not the primary flavor. The first thing that hits your tongue is sweet, milky chocolate. The texture feels quite decadent because it is so creamy, but the cacao level seems rather low. You get very little in the way of the bitterness and intensity of chocolate. I'm not even a dark chocolate fan and this was a bit too milky for me.
The volume of marzipan relative to the amount of milk chocolate is rather low, unfortunately. I should have heeded the illustration on the package in this regard. It's not exactly promising lavish quantities. The marzipan flavor hits after the chocolate and the strongest component is the pistachio. Though this includes almonds and hazelnuts, they tend to blend in rather than stand out as separate flavors. It's good, and has a nice, smooth, moist texture, but as someone who was eating pure marzipan "apples", I had hoped for more strength.
I can't say that this is a bad bar at all. In fact, it is quite enjoyable, but it didn't quite suit my tastes. I was looking for something in the wrong place. What I found was tasty, but not a fount of marzipan goodness. If you are looking for something lighter on that front, this is pretty tasty, but ultimately it was too sweet and didn't offer enough strong chocolate or marzipan flavor for me personally. I in no way mean to diminish the quality and tastiness of this, but I would not buy it again.
