It has been amusing for me to watch the popularity of dark chocolate grow. Remember when you were a little kid and Mom would buy the family those bags of Hershey's Miniatures so that everyone in the family could get what they want? In most cases, the bag of Miniatures experiences the "Special Dark Effect" -- the clear plastic bag is empty of all the Krackels, Mr Goodbars, and Milk Chocolates, and the Special Dark sits there until the bloom on it turns it into white chocolate because no one liked dark chocolate. Not in my family, The Special Dark chocolates always went first because I ate them all in one sitting. All the other kids' mouths were smeared over with sickeningly sweet milk chocolate, and i was just...weird.

As an adult now, I am not so into dark chocolate, and I think it has to do with how health-trendy it has become. You see, I am allergic to trendy food, and now that dark chocolate is almost luxury item and it's "hip" to be into 60%, 70%, even 80% cacao chocolates, I am *meh* about it.

Nonetheless, I was willing to give Dove's new line of Origins chocolates a try. The line of chocolate bars and squares are 61% cacao with pure cocoa beans from Ecuador, Ghana or the Dominican Republic. I tried all three, but to be quite honest, I couldn't really tell the difference in flavors. I just sort of expected the Dominican Republic bar, wrapped in paper printed with dark fuschia and flowers, to taste like...berries.


It didn't taste like berries.

The bar is shaped like any other bar, molded into small bricks that can be broken off one at a time. I am guessing that most people only need to eat one or two of the 1/2" by 1" long pieces at a time. Dark chocolate now, you see, isn't meant to be a candy bar -- it's for health, like a vitamin. Or medicine. In fact, the specific shape of the pieces on the Dove Origins bars reminded me a little of Ex-lax. Not to worry, Slashfood friends, dark chocolate is not a laxative (at least not that I know of).

The Dominican Republic bar tastes pretty much like any old dark chocolate to me, though it was much more bitter than the plain old Special Dark miniatures I loved as a little girl. A friend of mine who has a much more distinctive palate for dark chocolate said that it had the same waxy feel of most grocery store chocolates (she eats fancier dark chocolates). I didn't find it noticeably waxier, since all dark chocolate has a waxy texture to me.

Would I buy this chocolate on my own at Ralphs, Kroger, or Safeway? If it's more readily available to me, I probably would, though you know what I really want to do is rip into that bag of Miniatures on the bottom shelf.