Chocolate and raspberry is a classic flavour combination, for the simple reason that it works. It’s quite easy to make something chocolatey and raspberry and have it work, but it’s something else to make the combination stand out in the sea of mediocrity.
Not only does Norman Love make the chocolate-raspberry combination sing, he does it twice.
His raspberry heart is gorgeous. It’s a white chocolate shell decorated with red cocoa butter. The key here is that the cocoa butter spray isn’t opaque. It’s sprayed in a gradient, so you can still see the white chocolate peeking out and it’s visually interesting – almost 3D.
And inside? Inside is a perfectly smooth, white chocolate-based ganache that is fruity and buttery. The white chocolate compliments the raspberry perfectly without being heavy or cloying, and through some crazy miracle, there is only the faintest milky aftertaste from the white chocolate.
And then there’s the raspberry dome. The shell is absolutely perfect: a thin layer of dark chocolate that is a thing of beauty. It’s decorated with swirls of red and white cocoa butter, and it’s stunning. Inside is a positively juicy raspberry ganache. First, you taste the punch of raspberry, which mellows to the bitterness of the dark chocolate, and finishes with the cocoa notes of the dark chocolate.
Put another way, the raspberry dome is like the love child of dark chocolate and dark raspberry. And when I say raspberry, I don’t mean a light, pink, frou-frou raspberry. I mean a late season raspberry that you want to squish between your fingers.
And this love child? It’s wearing a red dress and stilettos and it’s going to break your heart.
