Lily’s Salted Almond and Milk

July 26, 2018

A couple of years ago I reviewed the Lily’s 55% chocolate bar sweetened with stevia. Ever conscientious of lowering my sugar intake, and because it’s been a while, I grabbed another Lily bar when I was out shopping. This time it was the 40% milk chocolate salted almond sweetened with stevia. I also wanted to revisit that 55% dark, so I grabbed one of those too.

I was encouraged by the fact that the salted almond bar has a higher level of cacao than most milk chocolate bars. Since this bar has 40% (where many have much less), my expectation was that it would be quite flavorful.

How Did Lily's Salted Almond Taste?

What did I discover? The milk chocolate was, indeed, very flavorful but my biggest surprise was the salt! The salt was overwhelming. Sometimes the crystals were so big, they didn’t melt in my mouth until I felt a burning sensation. Yikes!

Saltiness aside, the almonds were nice and crunchy and had good nutty notes.  The chocolate was subdued, but I could taste some roasted cocoa and some mild earthiness. There was a strong buttery flavor with intense toffee notes. It fell a little “flat” at the very end where the flavors of chocolate and toffee abruptly disappear.  The salty aftertaste lingers.

I switched to the 55% dark, and right away I could tell that the milk chocolate had more flavor complexity. I was hoping to find some nuance or terroir in the dark chocolate, but the flavor was too restrained. The dark chocolate’s cocoa notes were somewhat muted and hard to find. Overall, I didn’t really enjoy either bar as much as I thought I would.

Back in 2016, I was impressed with the 55% dark bar and gave it higher accolades than I do today. I think that if refined sugar in your diet is a concern for you, then these stevia sweetened bars would be an okay alternative to traditional chocolate. You give up flavor when you do that though.

Maybe I’m getting really picky as I get older, but today I would say the trade off isn’t worth it. Find an excellent chocolate with a high percentage of cacao (thus lower sugar), and eat that instead. I’ve reviewed plenty of these over the years so I’ll make a list of my recommendations and have it for you in the next post.

If you’re a milk chocolate lover, there are some “dark milks” out there where the percentage of cacao is 55-65%, yet still has milk added to tone down the bitterness of dark chocolate. I’ll have some of those listed as well.

Enjoy chocolate as it was meant to be. Just be smart about it!

If you would like to try these, here's a 12-pack at Amazon. There is also a single bar option, but it was not economical at the time of publishing this article. Click the 12-pack link and scroll down for other options.

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Bryn Kirk
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