Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate (Rainforest Alliance)

Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark ChocolateI mentioned a while back that Mars was going to convert all of their Dove Chocolate over to Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa this year. I saw the first bars in the store sometime around New Years and picked up this Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate.

The bar was on sale for $2.49, so it’s a pretty good deal for a 71% bar that’s 3.3 ounces. The nutritional panel lists that half the bar is a single serving. The 42 gram portion is 20 grams of fat. Good fat, of course… it’s made with cocoa butter which is supposed to be pretty good for your heart or at least not bad for it.

The bar looks like all the other Dove items these days. It’s seductively smooth with easy to break off domed pieces. The snap isn’t quite stiff, but not soft either. It’s, well, I can’t describe it any other way except fatty. See the above fat content for confirmation.

Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate

The Dove flavor profile is always a bit thin for my tastes, it’s like the chocolate is parallel to the cocoa butter instead of integrated. That may have something to do with Mars’ proprietary Cocoapro flavanol enhancement. Perhaps there’s some sort of process that it goes through that sanitizes it in this manner. The good news is that in this bar, that’s less of an issue. The melt is wonderful, buoyant and soft without a hint of grit. The cocoa flavors are lightly bitter, woodsy with a floral note that I don’t get from their regular dark. The melt is like a pudding, soft and creamy but still quite thick.

I had a few Dove Promises in the regular dark to compare. The regular dark is quite sweet and again, a little thin on intensity though a well rounded brownie batter chocolate flavor. I much preferred the 71% and didn’t feel like the lack of sweetness was a compromise. The deepness of the flavors was much more concentrated. I’ll be curious to see if these show up in the foil-wrapped Dove Promises line.

I know that in many stores this will be one of the few certified sustainably sourced bars, so it’s nice to finally have a choice when you’re at the drug store or a big box retailer.

Related Candies

  1. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
  2. Six Kilos of Felchlin Arriba 72% Chocolate
  3. Rain Republic 70% Cacao from Guatemala
  4. Amano Dos Rios 70% Chocolate
  5. Dove Beautiful vs Bloomsberry Beauty-Bar


Name: 71% Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $2.49
Size: 3.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 169
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Mars, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, 7-Worth It, United States, Walgreen's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:48 pm Tracker Pixel for Entry     All NaturalCandyReviewMarsChocolateEthically SourcedKosher7-Worth ItUnited StatesWalgreen's

Comments
  1. This is real, tangible progress! Any word on allergen the statement (is it possibly vegan)?

    Comment by Hannah on 1/31/13 at 6:40 am #
  2. Cocoa butter is constituted of roughly equal parts:

    oleic acid – same monounsaturated compound found in olive oil; raises HDL “good cholesterol” (protects the heart);

    stearic acid – a saturated fatty acid, behaves differently from other
    saturated fats and does not raise blood cholesterol; converted to oleic acid in the liver;

    palmitic oil – saturated, and could increase cholesterol levels & heart risk;

    It also contains much smallers amounts of other fatty acids like linoleic acid.

    In the end it is pretty much a cholesterol-neutral load and sort of a wash. Also because it is relatively indigestible it passes right thru the GI tract and out the… well you know what.

     

    Comment by jason on 1/31/13 at 8:58 am #
  3. Cybele's avatar

    Thanks Jason. I’ve done quite a bit of reading on it, and have been keeping up with the latest (industry subsidized) studies about cacao and its effects on the body. But I’m sure reader appreciate a much more in depth approach than I usually provide. I don’t know if it helps, but my cholesterol levels are just fine.

    Hannah, there was actually no allergen statement on the package. I understand that the new Dove factory in Elizabethtown, PA is nut free & peanut free (the add the nuts & peanut butter in another facility, I think in Chicago), but they still don’t say that on the package. They don’t say anything about gluten either, which is strange. There is a small amount of dairy oil in there, enough to bump the cholesterol up to 5 mg (though my guess is if someone had a lactose intolerance issue, not an allergy, this bar would be fine).

    Comment by Cybele on 1/31/13 at 9:47 am #
  4. Cybele,

    I do not know how you do it. You are one of the natural wonders of the world to be such a candy champ and not have metabolic syndrome.

    God bless you.

    Comment by Jason on 2/01/13 at 6:50 am #
  5. Looking at the packaging and the chocolate bar, itself I’d say that’s called Galaxy over here in the UK (Dove is a brand of soap for us!). Although, I’ve not yet seen dark chocolate from Galaxy over here.

    Comment by Nikki-ann on 2/03/13 at 1:41 pm #
  6. I loved this product, but it seems to have been discontinued…does anyone know if that is a temporary situation, or could recommend something similar?

    Comment by Mike on 11/03/13 at 5:35 am #
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