Chocolate Week #5: Poco Dolce Popcorn Toffee

I liked going to movies alone as a teen, not because I had no friends, but because I had no friends and because I felt like it was an intensely intimate thing to do, sitting in the dark for two hours, watching people who couldn't sense you watching them. Come to think of it, that may have been why I had no friends. Regardless, I still think that going to see a film in theatres has a quiet potential to it, that, depending on the film, can drastically enhance or deaden the performance. And, hands down, one of the most appropriate things to accompany one of these films was the popcorn.
Nowadays, I'm much more inclined to catch an episode of Parks and Rec in bed with Miss Love than I am to catch a late night flick by myself, but it gave me pause for thought that I've never consistently loved or hated popcorn as a whole. I can't stand the kind that comes in three-flavor tins decorated with cute puppies or monster trucks and I'm ambivalent about microwave popcorn unless I've doctored it, but by far the most capricious of those corny treats is movie theatre popcorn. It's amazing for the first grease-coated inch and then it's disgusting. You leave after ingesting half of Idaho's yearly corn output and feel dirty. Eating Poco Dolce's popcorn toffee, however, lends an entirely new perspective to the age-old tradition of chomping down on toasted maize. Stuff is downright habit-forming, let me tell you. The thick toffee tiles, each containing a few pieces of popped popcorn, are covered in bittersweet chocolate and packed adorably into a squat tin. When this was sent over earlier this week I knew I had to feature it for Chocolate Week!
I've tried products from Poco Dolce at the Fancy Food Show that had blown me away in the past. These were no exception. Each piece was thick, buttery, and tasted like the Poppycock in a can my grandmother always kept around her house, with a caramely, toasted flavor. The dark chocolate cradled the toffee wonderfully and was perfectly proportioned. In her review, Cybele described these as being "beefy" which strikes me as the perfect assessment of these. They're small and thick with a gentle, yielding chew, but pack a powerful punch of flavor in them, a natural vegetal note that is only accentuated by the salt on top. Perhaps my only criticism is that in some pieces, the popcorn is very difficult to detect and they end up tasting like regular toffee. Albeit damned good toffee, but the popcorn nuance is somewhat lacking in those pieces. Still a gazillion times more satisfying to eat than toffee, and certainly better than suffering through those damned popcorn tubs Staples seems to have at a 75% markdown every day of the year. The wrath of jalapeno cheese-caramel styrofoam shall forever show upon my waistline and on my breath.

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