Puckerbutt – Linda’s Level Up Dark Chocolate Bar (Mild)
On a recent order from Puckerbutt Pepper Company I had to get my total up a bit in order to get free shipping, and as I’d already selected the remaining sauces that interested me from the company and that I hadn’t added to my stockpile yet I decided to throw in this chocolate bar.
Linda is Ed Currie’s wife, and Puckerbutt makes (or made) a hotter version of this chocolate bar featuring Ed’s name and likeness as well, which was unfortunately out of stock at the time I made my order. Looking at the back of the label it appears Puckerbutt outsourced the production of these chocolate bars to Willy Pete’s Chocolates, which, after checking out their website, makes a wide variety of spicy chocolate bars.
Linda’s Level Up is made from dark chocolate with a caramel interior that’s spiked with cayenne pepper powder. I found the texture of the chocolate to be too waxy and the caramel layer a bit too thick which made the bar bend and not break into chunks easily. The flavor of the chocolate and caramel are slightly chemically – nothing too offensive, but it’s clear we’re dealing with low quality chocolate (later confirmed by the ingredients). The cayenne pepper flavor is very present and gives a little bit of burn in the back of your throat.
The trouble for me with this bar is that the chemical flavor of the chocolate mixed with the cayenne powder made for an unpleasant taste combination. Chocolate and chile peppers can have a beautifully synergistic relationship, even going back to the days of the Aztecs cocoa and chiles were often served together, and the combination is not uncommon even in Mexico today. I think that this would have worked much better with a high quality high cocoa content bitter chocolate as well as if it had incorporated some warming spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg which can act as a bridge between the chocolate flavor and the chile pepper flavor.
As it is I can’t recommend this particular product. Perhaps if Puckerbutt chooses to reintroduce these bars they can find a supplier that uses high quality ingredients and tweak the recipe a bit. There’s potential here, but this was a miss for me.
Ingredients: Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel and Cottonseed Oils, Nonfat Dry Milk, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Cocoa Glycerol Lacto Esters of Fatty Acids, Soy Lecithin, and Salt. Caramel Filling: Corn Syrup, Sweetened Condensed Milk, Coconut Oil, Sugar, Water, Glycerol, Monostearate, Artificial Vanilla Flavor, Ascorbic Acid, Citric Acid, and less than .0025% Calcium Chloride, Cayenne Pepper.
Heat Level: 1/10. There’s a bit of burn at the back of the throat but that’s as much from the chemical aftertaste as it is the cayenne