Before I get to it with the actual article, I have to say, I really think I have something going with this blog. I’ve created a place and purpose for reviewing and sharing beautiful teas and chocolates. Pretty amazing, right??

We recently went on a trip to Medford, Oregon. It was our last summer trip and while it was sad to say goodbye to our trip and the summer when it was over, we had a lovely time on our spontaneous little vacation.

While there, we also snuck into Ashland, a really great town that happens to be the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A place like that needs great shops, restaurants and accommodations, and it sure does!

If you feel like walking or wandering, Lithia Park is one of the most beautiful parks I’ve been to. There are over ninety acres to meander through with playgrounds, duck ponds and lots of other great features.

Ashland also has a wonderful downtown with lovely shops and restaurants, and it just so happened that while going in and out of them, we found a few specialty chocolate bars.

Today, I want to share the two bars we tried from Mast chocolate; the Goat Milk Chocolate and the Vanilla Chocolate. While doing a little research, I found some controversy about the Mast Brothers and their chocolate (you can look it up on your own if you’re inclined to), but I found the packaging lovely, the flavors interesting, ingredients simple, and I don’t regret my purchases.

Goat Milk Chocolate

Ingredients: 60% Cocoa, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Goat Milk Powder

I love the texture of this chocolate. It was very smooth and creamy! The slight tang of the goat milk mixed with the creaminess of the texture combined to make it sweeter, like a regular milk chocolate.

Another great thing about the Goat Milk Chocolate is that if you have dairy sensitivities, but are able to have goat milk, this could be a great option for you!

I love cheese (note to self; also begin tasting/reviewing/sharing cheese), especially on some freshly baked artisan bread. I like goat cheese pretty well, but a really nice herbed goat cheese is fantastic! If I didn’t have that goat cheese flavor so familiarly on my tongue, I would purchase this again. As it is, I know too well what goat cheese tastes like and so that flavor was much more prominent to me than it might be to a person that isn’t so in tune with that flavor. It sort of made me feel like there was cheese in my chocolate!

I so enjoyed tasting this with my family! If you haven’t yet had Goat Milk Chocolate yet, I’d suggest giving it a go if you happen upon it in a shop, simply for the experience.

Vanilla Chocolate

60% Cocoa, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Buttermilk Powder, Vanilla Beans

The Vanilla Chocolate was quite delicious! It’s definitely a higher quality 60% cocoa chocolate, and reminds me of other dark chocolates that I’ve had, but this one has a really nice flavor to it. Although I didn’t get a really strong hint of vanilla and wished that I would have, it changed and enhanced all of the usual cocoa flavors that one usually experiences while having a piece of chocolate.

The most enjoyable bit is that it has really nice, rich flavors—you can actually taste the cocoa quite well in a very natural, earthy way and not so much the sugar, which often masks the true taste of the bean.

Comparison

What I found most interesting while tasting the two back to back was that the chocolates, though both 60% cocoa, had completely different textures due to the type of milk used. The Goat Milk Chocolate is very creamy, while the Vanilla Chocolate is much less so.

The slight tang of the Goat Milk Chocolate was starkly different from the deeper taste of the Vanilla Chocolate, which was my preferred flavor, although my preferred experience was tasting the Goat Milk Chocolate.

I’m going to tell you now; on my website, I will not be reviewing things that I don’t enjoy. Though I wouldn’t necessarily purchase these flavors again (simply because I’ve tried them and enjoy trying new chocolates), I would buy Mast chocolate again—they have an Olive Oil Chocolate that I want to try next time!