Traditional Icelandic Chocolate Review, plus a Chocolate Glaze Recipe!

At HomeSense, I was surprised to find chocolate bars called 'Traditional Icelandic Chocolate', since I didn't know there was such as thing as Icelandic chocolate.

I was even more surprised to see the price. At only $1.99 for a 100 gram bar, these were the most inexpensive chocolate bars I'd seen in a long, long time. The ingredients looked pretty simple and natural, so I decided to buy two: a 56% (the package called it bittersweet, although one could argue that 70% is considered bittersweet these days) and a 45% semi-sweet.

The chocolate was perfectly good tasting. However, both were a little too sweet for my tastes. The 45% was definitely too sweet. Then again, I am used to eating 45% milk chocolate these days, which has less sugar than dark chocolate of the same percentage. I don't really see the point in 45% dark chocolate, because more than half of the chocolate bar is sugar (it should really just be called 'Dark Sugar' in that case).

But all was not lost, as sweet dark chocolate is always great for making chocolate glazes and ganache, or to bake with. I used the 45% chocolate to make a delicious chocolate glaze for an Ice Cream Cake (with a pie inside!) that I made recently. See the end of this post for my glaze recipe.

The website for the Icelandic Chocolate was not in English, but I found info on Wikipedia about Nói Sirius, the company that makes the chocolate. What I found most interesting was that chocolate is a mainstay of Icelandic culture, and, according to Wikipedia, "Eating a chocolate bar at 9 a.m. is culturally acceptable" (ref). So I guess 'traditional Icelandic chocolate' really means something in Iceland.

So overall, the advantages of these chocolate bars is that they were inexpensive, they had only 5 ingredients, and they are great for baking. I found them at HomeSense in Canada.

Simple Dark Chocolate Glaze for Cakes:

1. Mix 3.5 oz (100 g) of broken chocolate pieces together with 1/3 cup of heavy cream and microwave for 1 minute.

2. Stir until smooth.

3. Add 1 tbsp. corn syrup or agave to add a nice gloss and shine. Stir until smooth and pour over the cake.

Too sweet to eat?  Make a chocolate ganache or glaze with your chocolate bar!