Tirol Chocolate – Chocolate Croissant

Not to sound like a Seinfeld comedy special, but what’s the deal with croissants? Why are they so magical and seem almost impossible? I’m sure a lot of you think I’m insane, especially the bakers. There’s just something about them that convinces me they can’t be real. What we can all probably agree on though, is I could never make something so tasty myself. Maybe I just have a thing for food that has multiple layers, like onions or bean dip. The way that croissants leave a flaky mess behind and have a light texture to them, despite all the fat and butter that’s used to make it. Magical.

The piece is a tan brown on the top, and a medium brown on the bottom. You can tell the emphasis is going to be on texture here, as the bottom reveals a lot of tiny little pieces which I imagine are crumbs or pieces of puff pastry. A quick sniff confirms that it does indeed smell like a buttery croissant.

The texture is the star here – it’s not quite like a cookie bar, and while it has a nice crunch to it, it melts away pretty quickly. Kind of like a croissant. Imagine that. It does indeed remind me of eating a chocolate croissant, if it was a little stale and not quite as flaky. Bonus points for not leaving TOO much of a mess. This will leave more crumbs than your typical chocolate though, so be warned. The experience is worth the potential mess though. Just great all round.

In terms of flavour there isn’t a whole lot going on. It really just tastes like mild chocolate with a vaguely butter sweetness. Without the texture, there’s not a whole lot that sets this chocolate apart from a normal milk chocolate square. I guess I can kind of imagine a somewhat inexpensive chocolate croissant being similar; the aforementioned chocolate is there but it’s not too plentiful so it’s somewhat mild and muted. Same deal here, I guess.

If you’re looking for something that has that sort of flaky texture of a croissant trapped in a chocolate, this is a good try. In fact, it kind of reminds me of a somewhat light, crunchy chocolate bar. It’s nothing too crazy or far out, but it has a decent mouth feel to it that I could see being a staple flavour for them. Maybe someday when the world goes back to normal and I can source ingredients like yeast reliably, I might try to make my own. But maybe it’s better I not do that, since I don’t want to take away some of that magic. Like that old saying about watching sausage get made. In the event that I did manage to make really good croissants, my waist would hate me, so best to let sleeping dogs lie.