Dick Taylor Maple & Coconut Bar

The Dick Taylor Maple & Coconut bar sounds like a dream come true for me, but it wasn't what I expected. It's like that dream where you've gained the ability to fly, but you realize flying takes forever to get anywhere, and there is all sorts of birds and planes that get in your way.

I ordered this one from chocolatiers.co.uk, and as usual the shipping was top-speed and the service was great. I've never seen a site in the UK with such a selection, they're my favorite place to get gifts for my family here & I always throw on a little something for myself.

The packaging is really nice, with an illustration of a ship being built and some guys in wool clothing really sweating it out. I love the muted colors and the typography, and the texture of the paper feels raw and 'indie'. I suppose because it is. I just wish I could've loved the contents as much as I loved the outside, but this bar let me down on the inside, like so many Coreys.

Full disclosure, I did have this bar in the cupboard for about a month, so it might've factored into some of the things that I found to be 'wrong' with this bar - but really, I do think that this bar was just wrong for me, not wrong in general.

Unfortunately, that is not the sun shining artfully down on my Dick Taylor, it seems to be a kind of bloom. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course - it is only in that one corner, and I'm used to seeing bloom sort of all over a bar. Either way, I know that it is still safe to eat.

Hm, well, if it wasn't for the kind of unsightly light patch, this would've been quite a pretty bar, studded with caramelized coconut flakes. The bar snapped in two as I opened it, by the way, but that is because I have big ham hands when it comes to unwrapping things.

As it turns out, those caramelized coconut flakes are quite tasteless. Caramelized with maple, even. They don't even taste like coconut, & they kind of just get stuck in your teeth. I know that real coconut isn't necessarily a taste sensation, but I have eaten my fair share of fresh & dried, and it usually has some sort of flavor - these flakes just didn't. Maple didn't shine through either, but that I can forgive more quickly as I know that using maple as a sweetener when cooking or baking, especially if it is just a small amount, doesn't really imbue anything with a strong maple flavor. Just ask any of the "maple" cookies I've tried to bake that ended up as regular, albeit extra gooey, chocolate chip.

So, the two ladies I came to dance with stood me up - tasteless as they are. Shouldn't matter, sometimes the best things are the things you didn't expect.

Not necessarily in this case, at least not for me. I knew this was a dark chocolate bar, and I knew that I'm not really crazy for dark chocolate - I did buy it for the maple and coconut, after all. However, as far as dark chocolate goes, I can tell this is good stuff. It's fruity, but not citrus-y, semi-sweet with a kind of red fruit taste. Not bitter, not smoky, very edible. The snap seemed a bit off, but I think this had to do with the bloom, and I think that had to do with the heatwave we've had for the last couple weeks, being stored in my cupboard.

 Really, I think I would've liked it better if it didn't have any coconut flakes at all - in the end, they were just an extra thing to crunch and get in-between your gums. Without them this is a nice, well-rounded and easy to eat dark chocolate bar.

If you like dark chocolate and you're curious about this bar, I say go for it - maybe your palette will pick up on the subtleties I missed. However, if you're interested just because of the coconut or maple (like I was), I'd really have to say look elsewhere, as this one is a dark chocolate bar above all else.