Monday, January 9, 2017

Near Perfect, The Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Are Worth Tracking Down While You Can!


The Good: Great chocolate mint flavor, Bag has mild savings over individual truffles, Decent bulking, Good ingredients
The Bad: Environmental impact of packaging, Milk chocolate is a bit mild.
The Basics: Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles are one of the pleasant surprises of the Lindt line . . . making me hope that they will return next year!


My wife has truly made me come around on how I consider milk chocolate. My wife is a huge fan of white chocolate and milk chocolate, whereas I am very much a lover of mint chocolate and dark chocolate - the darker (to a point) the better! My wife has, in our many conversations as I review foods, pointed out that I have a tendency to be harsh on milk chocolates based on the fact that they are simply not dark chocolate and she has made me come around on that point. While I was unable to truly defend myself in my discussion with her - I HAVE had perfect milk chocolates, they were Belgian and shaped like sea shells!, I just ate them all before I could review them! - she adequately convinced me that I cannot punish milk chocolate candies for the simple fact that they are not dark chocolate. So, when I sat down to review the bag of limited edition Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles, I went into it with that mindset and a very open mind.

And the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles were near-perfect. While my wife - who is a strong critical-thinker like I am, not one who loves everything she encounters - told me she would have rated these a perfect 10/10, I could not get myself there. I went through several truffles for enjoyment and several for a very clinical review tasting and even without punishing the Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles for not being dark chocolate (my wife suspects dark chocolate would overwhelm the mint), the chocolate flavor of just the milk chocolate in the truffles was not chocolatey enough to satisfy me. To be clear, these are an awesome truffle and one of the best representations of mint chocolate I have yet reviewed, but even as a milk chocolate, the milk chocolate flavor does not pop enough on its own to wow me.

Basics

Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles are a limited edition chocolate from the Swiss chocolatiers Lindt & Sprungli (or, at least, their U.S.-based subsidiary based in New Hampshire)! Each truffle is a one inch sphere of chocolate with a shell about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a thick chocolate mint cookie ball inside. Each of the truffles comes individually wrapped in a bright green and white foil wrapper, which has green and red stripes in the white section. It is worth noting that while I usually rail against the environmental impact of such things, it is hard to imagine Lindt Lindor truffles not wrapped, so my environmental complaints about the packaging are mostly lip service. The individual wrappers keeps each truffle 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 cookie-filled ball inside. In this form, the 6 oz. bag, the individually-wrapped truffles are packaged together in a thick foil paper bag. This size has fourteen truffles, so they come out to about fifty cents each, and the thick foil paper bag does little to protect the spheres. The bag is not resealable, though this matters very little considering that the truffles do not go bad as they are individually wrapped and get devoured quite quickly by anyone who loves mint chocolate!

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 chocolate truffles one wishes to eat. There is no surprise way to unwrap or eat Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles, though I always recommend unwrapping the truffles before eating them.

Taste

Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate lindor truffles smell nicely like peppermint, with a slightly muted quality based upon the chocolate that it is mixed with. Usually, peppermint has a cold sharpness to the aroma (and flavor); the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles have the distinct peppermint smell paired with a slightly sugary finish instead of anything truly cold, like one might expect. The result is a bouquet that hints at the delightful peppermint cookie middle of the truffle without truly giving away all of the flavor secrets in the aroma!

On the flavor front, the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate have an appropriately milky exterior that almost instantly blends with the peppermint cookie pieces inside the ganache. The exterior milk chocolate is mild on its own, though it is not waxy or overly soft. But as the milk chocolate begins to melt away, it blends with the mint flavors inside. The crunchy peppermint cookie bits inside the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles instantly infuse the milk chocolate with peppermint in a delightful way that makes the two flavors inseparable; if one bites into the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffle, it tastes homogeneously like mint chocolate! The blend of chocolate and mint is delightful, even if the chocolate is not the most assertive chocolate flavor.

The Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles have a mild, cool, peppermint flavor that lingers in the mouth for about five minutes after the last truffle is consumed.

Nutrition

The Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles 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 milk chocolate, vegetable oil and sugar. Still, there is - delightfully - nothing unpronounable in these candies.

A serving of the Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles is considered three balls. From three truffles, one consumes 220 calories, 150 of those calories being from fat. There are five milligrams of cholesterol, minimal sodium (45 mg) and 2 grams of protein in each three-truffle serving. There is also 4% of one's daily calcium and 4% of the RDA of Iron and Vitamin A in three spheres, so there is a little something to rationalize gluttony to!

Honestly, these are candy and anyone looking to them for actual nutrition needs to wake up to reality. 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 marked as kosher (dairy), but are not gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

The bags of these Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles remain fresh for quite some time. However, even the bag notes they ought to be kept in a cool environment between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Kept in such an environment, these would have remained fresh until June 30, 2017, had my wife and I not gobbled them up before the end of January 2017, and that makes the limited edition truffles a great value. 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 cleanup is essentially done! 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

Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindt Lindor Truffles are delicious and very much worth hunting down for the brief time they might remain available following the winter holidays. While my wife and I might have marginal differences on how amazing they truly are, we very much agree that they are worth getting while we can!

For other Lindt Lindor Truffles, please check out my reviews of:
Citrus Lindor Truffles
Cappuccino
Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Peppermint

9/10

For other chocolate reviews, please visit my Chocolate Review Index Page for a full listing of all I have currently reviewed!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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