I offered my three taste testers the option to use this member of the Nestle Noir collection as an ingredient for chocolate chip cookies. They declined and opted to eat it plain. Despite it's intense chocolate name, it smells rather sweet to me compared to other dark chocolate bars (except for the cheaper drug store varieties). It was the only one from the Nestle Noir collection that wasn't finished in one sitting - there's still a piece lingering in my kitchen cupboard.

In all fairness, my taste-testing panel are not known for their sophisticated palettes when it comes to dark chocolate. I'm amazed at how well much they liked the other bars in the Nestle Noir collection. Part of the appeal were the bits of surprises in the other bars.

As for me, I really liked the smell and texture of Nestle Noir Intense and I'm going to try it in chocolate chip cookies and bark as soon as I'm able to indulge in my favorite food group once again.

It's funny - out of all of the Noir bars, I expected to like this one the best. I was a bit shocked to see that it was my second least favourite from the line.

While tasting the four bars, I had purposely left this to the end of the line to taste. Having sampled a pretty good dark chocolate base in the other bars, I expected to encounter the same flavour in the straight-up, chocolate only bar. I was disappointed to say that I didn't. I feel like the chocolate in the chocolate-only bar was less complex and less flavourful then the bases used in the mix-in bars. That made me sad.

Chocolate shouldn't make a girl sad.

Damn you, Noir Intense. You deserve a fist shaking for your inability to live up to expectation.