The Good: Good taste, Great bulking, Generally decent ingredients
The Bad: Still pricey.
The Basics: The Stracciatella truffle is a surprisingly flavorful truffle that makes excellent use of white chocolate by recreating a cookies and cream flavor in truffle form!
Stracciatella truffles are a mystery to many who wander into Lindt stores. The name tells the consumer nothing, at least those of us plebes that don't know (?) Italian. So, as tonight's public service message, Stracciatella seems to be a fancy way of saying "cookies and cream" at least as a flavor for Lindt Lindor truffles.
My partner, in a seemingly unending string of nice things she does for me, decided to pick me up some Stracciatella truffles. The Lindt Stracciatella Lindor Truffles arrived on my doorstep and I've been snacking on them pretty consistently since! Now, as I am halfway through the box of 120 truffles, I am surprised by how much I enjoy them.
Basics
Lindt Lindor Stracciatella truffles are one of the winter assortment truffles from the Swiss chocolatiers Lindt & Sprungli and their U.S.-based subsidiary. Each truffle is a one inch sphere of white chocolate with a shell about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a thick milk chocolate ganache ball inside and that center ball is a softer substance than the outer coating. Each of the truffles comes individually wrapped in a light blue foil wrapper, which one thinks would be easy to differentiate from the other Lindor Truffles. The light blue foil truffles each have a white snowflake on them and this is an easy truffle to recognize from the others. While I usually rail against the environmental impact of individually-wrapped candies, it is hard to imagine Lindt Lindor truffles not wrapped. This keeps each one clean, unmelted and intact.
Each Lindor Truffle is a sphere with a seam at the hemisphere that is essentially a white chocolate globe peppered with brown cookie pieces sealing in a near-solid chocolate ball inside. In this form, the 19.5 oz. bag, the individually-wrapped truffles are packaged together in a thin paper bag. This size has approximately thirty truffles. While this might still seem a little pricey to some, it is a decent price for chocolates of this quality.
Ease of Preparation
These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the bag and then opening one of the plastic wrappers around the actual truffles one wishes to eat. There is no special way to unwrap or eat Lindt Lindor Stracciatella truffles, though unwrapping the truffles before eating them is beyond common sense; it's just smart nutrition!
Taste
The Stracciatella truffles are a white chocolate truffle, with only a minor amount of cookie pieces in the shell, so the initial scent is very much a mild one that does not hint at quite what the taste might be. When one unwraps the foil around this candy, there is little to impress the consumer. As a result, one might be shocked when they place these truffles on their tongue.
The Stracciatella truffle melts on the tongue, though it is a fairly soft white chocolate. As the white chocolate melts away, there is an infusion of milk chocolate and the two mix on the tongue. The resulting flavor is one that is distinct to anyone who loves sweets: cookies and cream. The chocolate has an infusion of harder bits that actually taste like little cookie bits. This mixes the chocolate, cookie pieces and white chocolate with a flavor of something like a smooth Oreo cookie.
The Stracciatella is very sweet and the lighter chocolate flavor is over-the-top sweet without any dry aftertaste. The cookies and cream flavor is distinct and delicious and anyone looking for a very different truffle flavor will likely be quite happy.
Nutrition
Well, these are candy, so it is tough to look at these for something nutritious and then blame them for not being healthy. Lindt Lindor truffles are surprisingly good, though, which is probably why they are so expensive. The primary ingredients are sugar, cocoa butter and vegetable oil. Still, there is nothing unpronounable in these candies, which is something I have come to expect from Lindt.
A serving of the Lindt Lindor Stracciatella truffles is considered three balls. From three truffles, one consumes 230 calories, 170 of those calories being from fat. There is less than five milligrams of cholesterol, no sodium, nor any vitamins in these truffles, but seriously, did you think there would be? There is, however, 4% of one's daily iron and 2% of their daily calcium in three spheres, so there is something to rationalize gluttony to!
Honestly, these are candy and anyone looking to them for actual nutrition needs to get a reality check. These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they are produced on the same equipment that peanuts (and tree nuts) pass over. They are, not marked as kosher, nor gluten-free.
Storage/Clean-up
The bag of these Lindt Lindor Stracciatella truffles remain fresh for quite some time. However, even the box notes they ought to be kept in a cool environment between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Kept in such an environment, the bag of truffles my partner bought in April will remain fresh until the end of 2010. Given the more mild taste of this flavor of Lindt Lindor Truffles, they might actually make it to the end of the year! Given that they are individually wrapped in a very sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.
As for cleanup, throw the wrappers in the garbage and you've taken care of cleanup! Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If these truffles melt into most fabrics, they will stain. For that style of clean-up, be sure to consult a fabric guide for whatever you stained.
Overall
The Lindt Stracciatella Lindor Truffles are pretty wonderful and the instantly recognizable cookies and cream type flavor makes it a pleasure to stock up on this flavor.
For other Lindt Lindor Truffles, please check out my reviews of:
Lindt Raspberry Lindor Truffles
Lindt Lindor Orange Chocolate Truffles
Lindt Coffee Lindor Truffles
8/10
For other food reviews, please check out my index page!
© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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