Wittamer Sugar Free Milk Chocolate

At the same time as buying the Wittamer Classic Carré I thought I’d try some sugar free milk chocolate as I’m interested to see how chocolatiers cope without sugar when trying to make luxurious chocolate. Here Wittamer use Maltitol which is a sugar alcohol that has somewhere between 75% and 90% of the sweetness as normal sugar but has fewer calories, doesn’t cause tooth decay and has a reduced impact on blood glucose levels – so they say.

In the past I’ve not had a great experience with sugar free chocolate as it always seems to have a strange flavour, and so does this bar. The aroma gives away that this bar isn’t any ordinary. There’s a very buttery nose and an artificial backdrop that just seems too unnatural to taste pleasant.

But this is where I hate myself. I actually do like it. It’s got that milk chocolate addictiveness that milk chocolate should have. It’s too creamy to be something you could polish off without feeling you’ve eaten a tub of clotted cream, but there is a strange quality about it. It’s sort of like a Big Mac, you know you shouldn’t enjoy it as its not prime beef, but you do find yourself craving some. With this bar I know its missing sugar, I know its missing depth and great flavour but it works on some sort of serotonin level where you just have go back for more.

I wish I didn’t like it as the absence of sugar is like having a seaside with no sea, sun loungers, towels or ice cream – it’s just sand at the end of the day. And this is just chocolate, nothing great, but you can’t help snapping another piece off.

Excuse me whilst I go to confession.