Battle of the Drunken Chocolate Figs

A couple of months ago I found John & Kira's and ordered this chocolate tower:



The larger, bottom box has 15 bonbons, sampling of each of their available flavors.

The box on top contains 6 drunken figs. John and Kira describe their figs much better than I can: Noted for their extremely thin skins and sweet, almost candy-like taste, our Spanish figs are filled by hand with a silky dark 64% Valrhona ganache flavored with Whiskey and enrobed in a thin layer of dark 54% chocolate. The Calabacita variety of fig is grown by a family owned company in "Los Llanillos" in the village of Almoharin located in the Extremadura region of Spain.

They were really good, and I don't know why, but I had two left as of today.

But an interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago. While browsing through the HotPaella Web site looking for Spanish foods, I found this very similar product. called Rabitos Chocolate Stuffed Figs. Instead of whiskey, this one has brandy. This is how they describe their product on the HotPaella Web site: Pure Decadent Bliss! Decadent brandy fudge stuffed dried figs dipped in chocolate. Although the figs are from Cáceres (that's also the Extremadura region), we think they’re grown in the Garden of Eden!

Last night I broke into the box to look at it because my friend Karen was visiting with her husband and I intended to give her a sample. To my delight, each of the figs was individually wrapped!




Well, I couldn't let this moment go by without doing a side-by-side comparison. So I cleansed my taste buds today and got down to work.

Here's a photo of both types. The Rabitos is on the left, and John & Kira's on the right.




While the chocolate on the Rabitos was noticeable darker, both chocolates enrobing the figs tasted great.

Here's a shot of each type cut open:

The enrobing chocolate on the Rabitos was a lot less likely to crackle and fall apart. While I've had the John & Kiras for a longer period of time, I tried cutting them open the week I got them and had the same results. In order to to take a picture, I tried sticking the chocolate that had fallen off back onto the fig. In the end, it didn't make for a stunning picture, so I never bothered to post it at the time, but here it is:

As for the flavor and texture of both fig brands, they were awesome. There was a slightly different taste due to the difference between the brandy and whiskey and the amount of liquor. John & Kira's goes light on the flavoring it adds to chocolate in general. Rabitos had more flavor added by the brandy.

If I were to have tasted these blindly, I don't know which I would have chosen, to be honest. I enjoyed them both.

As I stated earlier, I really love that the Rabitos is individually wrapped. And maybe that is why it was less prone to chocolate crumbling off the outside - it had less exposure to air.

The biggest, most notable difference between these products was the cost.

At John and Kira's, a 12-piece box of drunken figs costs $34.00. That's a lot of money at $2.83 per fig, plus shipping.


The Rabitos figs (through HotPaella) are $12.95 for a 9-piece box (that's $1.44 per fig) and you can get a 16-piece box for $18.50 (that's only $1.16 per fig), plus shipping from California.

I will get the figs from HotPaella next time.