Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants

Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants. Mint chocolates in foil, in a bag with a bow.

Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants are mint chocolates individually wrapped in foil by Summerdown: a soft peppermint fondant beneath dark chocolate with 55 percent cocoa, packaged in a 100-g bag with a bow. No open box, no milk chocolate, no candy.

Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants are filled mint chocolates from Farm Summerdown in Hampshire, with a fondant core and chocolate shell flavoured with Black Mitcham mint oil from the farm's own fields. If you want to offer something small to three guests after dinner, you face a familiar problem. Open a 200-g box, take out three pieces, and the rest dries out over the weeks or takes on the smell of the kitchen cupboard. These chocolates solve the problem with foil. Each piece is sealed on its own, and the bag only reveals as many as are needed at the time. Around twelve chocolates are in the 100-g bag, sealed with a bow that needs no gift wrapping.

Cool core, bitter shell, and the rustle before

Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants first taste of bitter cocoa, then of cool fondant, and the mint lingers in the mouth. The shell is thin and barely breaks. Beneath it lies a light core that gives softly but does not run.

The mint tastes round and without sharpness because Summerdown ages the oil in barrels before use. The fondant is sweet, and the cocoa with 55 percent holds its own against it. The finish is cool alone, clean and without scratchy peaks.

Before the taste comes the unwrapping. The turquoise foil rustles, the chocolate beneath shines matt, about the size of a two-euro coin and significantly thicker. Eight grams weighs one piece, a portion that fits next to an espresso cup.

Anyone expecting dark chocolate without a sugar core will find these chocolates too sweet. The fondant makes up 62 percent of the chocolate, the chocolate 37. If you want it dry and bitter, you are better off with the thin discs from the farm. Here the core is the centrepiece, the shell merely frames it.

The temperature noticeably changes the chocolate. From the refrigerator, the core is firm and the coolness sharply defined; at room temperature, it becomes creamy and the sweetness comes forward. Both states have their admirers, and the bag allows for both.

Three pieces on the saucer, the rest remains sealed

Extra Dark Peppermint Fondants come to the table with the coffee, one chocolate on the saucer, still in the foil. Unwrapping is part of it. One piece is enough for an espresso without sugar, and also for a dark roast filter coffee.

At Advent, the wrapped chocolates fill an Advent calendar with 24 doors; two bags are enough for this. On the colourful plate they lie between nuts and mandarins, and because they are packaged, they do not take on the scent of the citrus peels. For guests who still have a train or car to catch after dinner, a chocolate to take away is the more polite form of a digestif.

Everything with bitterness or roastiness suits drinks. An amaro, a glass of port wine, a strong Assam without milk. A sweet dessert wine is not suitable; its sweetness clashes with the fondant. If you want to stay alcohol-free, add a glass of cold water with a slice of lemon, which extends the mint.

For a dessert without effort, place an unwrapped chocolate on a warm, not hot, crêpe and fold it up. The shell melts in one minute, the core remains as a cool point inside. Two chocolates per crêpe are enough; more makes it too sweet.

Good to know: Above 25 degrees the fondant becomes soft and the shell matt; therefore, the bag does not belong in a coat pocket in summer. Cool and dry at 16 to 18 degrees, it keeps well for two years. Anyone who prefers the soft core without paper and in a larger quantity will find it in the After Dinner Creams from the same farm.

Single Estate, Heritage range and a core of crystals

Summerdown has grown only one plant at Basingstoke since the 1990s: English peppermint Black Mitcham. All the oil for the farm's chocolates comes from these fields. In wine, this is called single estate, and the farm uses the term for its mint with the same ambition. No purchased flavouring, no oil from another harvest.

The fondants belong to the house's Heritage range, the darker line for all those to whom the milk chocolate varieties are too soft. The shell contains at least 55 percent cocoa. This is less than a dark chocolate to bite into, but enough to carry a sweet core.

The core itself is a fondant, and fondant is sugar in a certain order. Sugar syrup is boiled to around 116 degrees, cooled, and then moved for as long as it takes to break into tiny crystals. These crystals are so small that the tongue no longer feels them individually, and so numerous that the mass becomes white. The enzyme invertase then slowly breaks down part of the sugar and keeps the core soft for months.

The foil is more than decoration. Aluminium foil lets neither oxygen nor moisture nor foreign odours reach the chocolate. Each chocolate thus gets its own packaging, regardless of whether the bag is open. Fat bloom, the grey veil on old chocolate, thus occurs much later. The wrapping already takes place at the farm in Hampshire, where the chocolate and paper come together directly after coating.

Twelve chocolates, one bow, no gift wrapping

What distinguishes these chocolates from the box is the quantity and the form of presentation. Around twelve pieces in the transparent bag, sealed with a bow in cream and mint, ready without gift wrapping. This is the size for a thank you to a neighbour, for the colleague to say goodbye to, or as an accompaniment to a bouquet of flowers. With a small tag on the ribbon, the bag becomes a place card on the festive table, and every guest takes their piece home.

For a round of eight people, the bag is too small; for that, there is the box. For a dinner with three or four, it is just right, and what remains waits packaged for the next occasion. Anyone who wants all four mint varieties from the farm in one gift will reach for the Ultimate Mint Collection, which also contains these fondants.

One bag that suffices for three guests and still experiences the fourth evening, because each chocolate remains sealed on its own.