The Good: Taste wonderful, Great bulking, Generally decent ingredients
The Bad: Still pricey, Not the best example of chocolate mint flavor
The Basics: A good, but subtle, chocolate mint truffle, the Mint Chocolate Lindt Lindor Truffle is worth stocking up on.
There are few things on this planet that I enjoy more than chocolate mint, at least from a culinary perspective. Sure, sunny days and lovemaking under the stars are great, but chocolate and mint can make life worthwhile any time, anywhere, with others or completely alone. I cannot remember how many times I have changed my entire mood by having a good chocolate mint candy. One of the staples in my arsenal of feeling better is certainly the Mint Chocolate Truffle from Lindt's Lindor Truffle collection. After a long time buying them at the overpriced Lindt store in the local mall, I started buying them in bulk on-line and now I feel free to feed my negative moods a treat whenever I truly feel I need to.
Lindt's Mint Chocolate Truffles are not perfect, though they are very close. I tend to like darker chocolate and the Mint Chocolate Lindor Truffle is more milky in its chocolate than it is dark. As a result, it is robbed of perfection even in bulk, but it does come close!
Basics
Lindt Lindor Mint Chocolate truffles are one of the standard ten chocolate truffles from the Swiss chocolatiers Lindt & Sprungli and their U.S.-based subsidiary. Each truffle is a one inch sphere of chocolate with a shell about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a softer Mint Chocolate ball inside and that center ball is a white center that looks just like the creamy ganache that it is supposed to be. Each of the truffles comes individually wrapped in a green foil wrapper. This is a distinctive wrapper on its own and none of the other Lindt Lindor truffles have a green wrapper. 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 chocolate globe sealing in a near-solid chocolate ball inside. In this form, the 120 count box, the individually-wrapped truffles are packaged together in a thin cardboard box. This size has one hundred twenty truffles, which lowers their overall cost to about thirty cents each. 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 box and then opening one of the plastic wrappers around the actual chocolate truffles one wishes to eat. There is no special way to unwrap or eat Lindt Lindor Mint Chocolate truffles, unwrapping the truffles before eating them is certainly the way to get the most out of their taste.
Taste
There is a fairly mild scent to these Lindt Lindor Truffles and these smell exclusively of mint. The scent is more peppermint than spearmint, but it is a muted peppermint scent. The smell does not carry any of the milky chocolate or more subtle cocoa scents with it.
On the tongue, the Mint Chocolate truffle does melt slightly and with a little pressure, the chocolate shell gives way to the minty center. The Mint Chocolate taste is more buttery than possessing the sharpness of mint and I've found for a better blending of the flavors of the chocolate and mint, it behooves the consumer to freeze the truffles. Somehow, that makes them burst more vibrantly with both the chocolate and minty flavors. On their own, though, the flavors are recognizable as both milk chocolate with mint and a minty center, but it is not the most robust, zesty or even interesting mint taste one has ever encountered. For a subtle mint chocolate treat, the Lindt Lindor truffle does an excellent job of not overwhelming the consumer.
Nutrition
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 dark sweet chocolate, vegetable oil and sugar. There is nothing unpronounable in these candies. The fact that these do not taste so overwhelmingly like mint is no surprise when one considers that peppermint oil is the final ingredient in the list!
A serving of the Lindt Lindor Mint Chocolate truffles is considered three balls. From three truffles, one consumes 220 calories, most of those calories being from fat. There are less than five milligrams of cholesterol, 15 mg of sodium, and there are traces of protein in these truffles. There is only 2% of one's daily iron and 4% of one’s daily calcium in three spheres, so it is not like these will just leave your taste buds satisfied without giving anything to your body. But still, they are not terribly nutritious.
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 box of these Lindt Lindor Mint Chocolate 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, these will remain fresh until December 31, 2010 (which is pretty good when one considers I originally purchased the box in March of 2010) and that makes the bulking of the truffles a great value. Given that they are individually wrapped, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.
As for cleanup, all one needs to do is throw the wrappers in the garbage! 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 cleanup, be sure to consult a fabric guide for whatever you stained.
Overall
Lindt's Lindor truffle line is enhanced through the presence of a pretty wonderful, if subtle, Mint Chocolate flavor which is best purchased in the 120 count bulk box!
For other Lindt Lindor Truffles, please check out my reviews of:
Orange Chocolate Truffles
Coffee Lindor Truffles
Stracciatella Lindor Truffles
8/10
For other candy reviews, please check out my index page!
© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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