Tirol Chocolate – Panda Black Cheesecake

You know when you have enough positive experiences with a brand or company that when they release something new you just kind of mindlessly go with it and assume it will be great? No? Just me? Ok…well I think I’ve reached that point with Tirol. I’ve been on a bit of a Tirol binge if you haven’t noticed. It isn’t like the chocolate itself is spectacular quality or anything, but the sheer creativity and variety of flavours is really what gets me. Also, props to their art department. Something about their standard sizing makes them almost collectible. I’ve really only known about them for a little over a year, but they have skyrocketed into my heart among the hall of fame along with Haribo, Jelly Belly and a select few other brands.

Part of the difficulty with Tirol though, is that they just aren’t very popular outside of Japan it seems. They release a lot of flavours, and my options to obtain them are quite limited, unfortunately. It’s because of this I have to put in a lot of effort to try and get them, often at a premium. But the chase is part of the fun I guess. I found out about this one by chance, as with a few other varieties I will be reviewing soon. I didn’t really read the description of this one before I bought it, but I saw a panda on it and figured, ehhhh – what’s the worst that could happen? This one is called Panda Black Cheesecake. I’m not sure what or how this relates to pandas, but anything cheesecake related, I am down for. As a random note, where am I supposed to get good cheesecake in the frigid North? Most of the people I’ve asked say Cheesecake Factory, but I’m still on the fence about that place. Moving on.

This particular flavour is one of the larger variety – the ones they sell individually as opposed to in packs of seven like the standard size. In my experience so far, the more unique and interesting flavours tend to come in the bigger piece. I guess the slightly bigger size gives them the ability to get more creative with the filling. The standard size ones have interesting flavours, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that texturally, there seems to be a lot less wiggle room to get creative, and they tend to use similar jam/liquid or biscuit styles to try and simulate experiences. Though to be fair, restrictions can also breed more creativity in design. Either way, big props to them.

Usually I can smell a slight scent or whiff through the packaging, but not this one. Seems to not have much smell. As I open this wrapper, I am greeted with pitch black. I guess it makes sense why theirs a picture of bamboo. It seems like the chocolate is coloured using bamboo charcoal. I still don’t see why the panda is there, but I guess bamboo is associated with pandas, and they wanted an excuse to include a panda for marketing purposes? I still can’t really smell anything putting it up to my nose, but I do a very faint lemony smell. Also, can we talk about how black this is? This is kind of unsettling. Like looking into the dark abyss, and coming to terms with the darkness within my own heart. Is it this dark? Is there redemption for someone with so much darkness? Is there no escape?

Part of me was expecting the centre to be white or a light colour, hence the name panda cheesecake. Turns out the centre is just as dark as the outside. The darkness within is just as all-consuming as the darkness on the outside. This is starting to take a turn…

Hesitantly, I take a bite, expecting that at any moment a dark portal will open up and take hold of me, never to let go. That being said, it tastes….pretty awesome. The outer chocolate doesn’t really have much taste to it, but the centre has a really nice cream cheese flavour and captures the cheesecake flavour really well. Just a note that it’s the good kind of cheesecake, the baked one. The no bake cheesecakes tend to have more of a jelly like consistency, but this is a lot like the western style cheesecake. The inside is dense (albeit dark) and feels substantial to the pallet. The smell of lemon I detected is present in the flavour. The lemon isn’t ever present though, and is more of an aftertaste. I almost thing the lemon was put there to help as a preservative than anything else. Either way, it works well as a flavour here.

If you can get paste the complete and utter darkness of this chocolate, I would highly recommend it. As unsettling as it might be to look at it, it has an amazing flavour and texture. This is definitely one of the favourite varieties of Tirol I’ve had so far, and I’m guessing they’ve done a flavour like this before, but in a less unsettling package. 9/10 would do again.