When on a trip to Hawaii earlier this year I wanted to make sure I brought home a good supply of Hawaiian Host Macadamia Nut chocolates as I have received them as a present in the past and loved them.  When we got there though I found that there was a massive number of different macadamia chocolate options to choose from, not to mention other types of chocolate so I decided to start my chocolate reviews.  I always make sure I try any different chocolate I come across so I figure I may as well write about it as well.

One of my chocolate obsessions is finding a good pineapple flavoured fondant chocolate.  It is surprisingly hard to find suggesting people as a whole aren’t quite as into pineapple as a chocolate filling flavour as I am.  Regardless I always try to keep an eye out for a place that might sell them.  The places that I have found so far was a chocolate shop in the Munich air port in Germany (I didn’t catch the name), from Haigh’s chocolates in Sydney (and probably their Melbourne and Adelaide outlets too) and See’s Candies in the US.

In Hawaii we also came across this chocolate shop called the Kauai Chocolate Company which was in this little town called Waialo that seemed to specialise in taking tourists out on whale watching boat rides.  The Kauai chocolate Company chocolates had all sorts of tropical fillings made from produce that could be found on the Hawaiian islands so I felt sure that they would have an absolutely delicious pineapple filled chocolate.  Sadly when I asked the guy who served me said that they were all out.  They had multipacks of their filled chocolates such as:

I asked whether there might be a pineapple flavour in this pack, but the guy said that there wasn’t.  There also wasn’t a key that went with the chocolates to tell you what the flavours were.  The guy did go through them for me, but I didn’t quite catch them all.  I figured I would try and guess them when I got them home.  The flavours that I could manage to work out are shown on the second picture above.  To my surprise one of the flavours was pineapple which was great.  It would be well worth the company coming up with a key to there chocolate flavours so that not only could their customers more easily identify the various flavours, but so that their staff could as well.

The first flavour I tried from the box was the banana (shown above).  I found the flavour of the filling very intensly flavoured like an over-ripe banana, so while the flavour was true to life, it was a bit intense for my liking.  Even more intense though, if such was possible, was the dark chocolate which covered this particular centre.  To me the dark chocolate was a bit overpowering, probably chosen to compete with the intense banana flavour.  I did not think that the dark chocolate flavour complemented the over-ripe banana flavour very well.   The centres seemed to be butter creams but they were not very good butter creams as they were a bit oily and the butter flavour tried to compete with the other flavours, whereas in my opinion it should be just a medium which carries the other flavours.  The centres seemed to have been enrobed in a thin layer of chocolate and then hand dipped to create the outer shell and the various coloured markings piped on top in  coloured white chocolate, or candy melts (I couldn’t tell which).  I found the chocolate shell was quite thick, and the chocolate not that good.  It certainly wasn’t couverture chocolate.  It lacked flavour, and it didn’t melt in the mouth very easily.  It didn’t go quite as far as leaving an oily film on the roof of your mouth but it wasn’t far off.  Having tried one, you weren’t left with the feeling of looking forward to another one which to me is the hall mark of a good chocolate.  You shouldn’t want to stop at just one.  With these chocolates, however, one was plenty.

The next flavour I tried was the orange stripped ones.  I couln’t quite tell what the flavour was meant to be and that was with the list of possibilities given on the lid (see the first picture above).  I thought it might be mango, but mango is usually so distinctive that you can’t really mistake it, so perhaps it was some bland paw paw or something.

The green topped chocolate was also a mystery.  The filling was green and it didn’t taste fruity or nutty.  My best guess was that it was a green tea flavour, but that did not seem to be one of the options on the lid of the box.  The filling was less sweet than the others.  It was not too bad a flavour.  The centre could have been a bit softer, you don’t want to have to chew a butter cream or fondant centre.

The white and yellow swirls were the pineapple.  As my favourite chocolate flavour of course I am super critical of pineapple flavoured chocolates.  The pineapple flavour was actually very good.  The acidity of the pineapple overcame the oiliness of the butter cream and the flavour had a good volitility too.  Again the fondant could have been a bit more liquid.  I liked how the pineapple centre was paired with milk chocolate which I think goes better with pineapple than dark chocolate does and with better quality chocolate and a thinner shell this would have been quite enjoyable.

In addition to the chocolates I got in the mixed box I also bought a couple of guava flavoured chocolates.  Guava is a difficult fruit to do well.  It ripens very fast so it is hard to capture its flavour at just the right point.  Miranda fruit juice company are the only ones who are able to do it justice I think in their fruit juice drink, and that is only 25% or so fruit juice.  This chocolate was noticeably guava flavoured.  It lacked the juiciness of guava and was not able to compete with the oily butter cream of the centre.  You ended up with the sensation of a mouth full of butter that tasted vaguely like guava.  Nice presentation though I rather liked the purple, pink and white swirl on the top.

So overall these were not my favourite chocolates I have ever tried.  Definitely worth a try, in the same way that Hershies chocolate is worth a try if you have never had it before, but you probably wouldn’t want to make a habbit of it.  I rather suspect the chocolate has been adjusted with vegetable shortening in order to increase its melting point to better suite the tropical climate of Hawaii, a necessary precaution I imagine if you do not want a shop fill of chocolates with fat bloom.  Despite being appropriate to the climate, unfortunately doing this does not leave the chocolate with a nice mouth feel and it is too difficult to melt in your mouth and so the chocolate flavour is as a result much less intense.

If you are passing by the Kauwau Chocolate company I would say they are worth a look, but perhaps stick with the chocolate icecram which is absolutely to die for.