Hotel Chocolat, Salt and Pepper Egglets

I think I've mentioned in the blog before, I've dabbled in 'experimental' baking. By that I mean when I was a teenager I ruined many a batch of otherwise decent chocolate chip cookies by putting in like, anise or bits of gummi bears or something. I made olive oil brownies once, but not by following a recipe, just by substituting olive oil for the vegetable oil. It didn't turn out well. My largest screw up was definitely the time I added a bunch of black pepper to chocolate cookies. They tasted disgusting...Before hand, many of the issues just caused bad after-tastes, weird textural problems, and unseemly goo. These just tasted straight up horrible, and they looked like tasty chocolate cookies. You could see my gummi bear junk coming a mile away, but these were tricky, and tasted 100 times worse. That was the last gasp of my weird cookies phase.

So, from that point on I've been incredibly wary of black pepper with chocolate. Wary, but strangely drawn to it...I've just got to know if someone else can do it better.

Thus my purchase of Hotel Chocolat's Salt and Pepper Egglets. I really like the shape of these things, they're quite perfectly formed little eggs, and a decent two bite size. They're super smooth and glossy, too. There are a bunch of different varieties, and I would've reviewed the Strawberries 'n' Cream variety but I ate them so quickly I barely had time to consider how they tasted...except for delicious. Maybe I'll get another package before the end of the season!

So, these are praline filled eggs flavored with salt and pepper. Specifically, "a pinch of sea salt and a hint of black pepper". I'd say that was about right, yeah. The chocolate was the same mellow Hotel Chocolat milk chocolate, which is my favorite of the mid range milk chocolates. The praline is smooth and hazelnutty, with a really subtle hint of black pepper. It was hard to tell as I hadn't ever had the Hotel Chocolat praline in general, but I do think there was a bit of salt. The black pepper was really interesting, and subtle enough that had I not known that was the intention I'd just think it was a regular praline...maybe with a hint of chili or some other warming spice. I think these are super cute, both in shape and theme, and they are executed well. I'd definitely recommend having a box of these laying around at Easter!