Chocolate for breakfast?

Chocolate for breakfast? Why not?

Dorset Cereals have kindly sent me some packs of their Chocolate Granola. Well, frugal as I am, I can never say ' No!' to a freebie. Especially if it adds some luxury to the breakfast table. When I was first approached by Dorset Cereals I must admit that I was dubious about their chocolate granola cereal. Chocolate is for treats and gooey puddings I thought.

Thinking about it, it may not be as odd as I initially though. The French eat chocolate for breakfast in the form of lovely warm crumbly pain au chocolat or even dip warm croissants into bowls of hot chocolate. In the Philippines they eat a sticky rice porridge called champorado with lots of chocolate mixed in and crisp fried, sun-dried fish on the side. In Spain they eat chocolate con churros- hot chocolate with doughy fritters.

Chocolate makes you feel happy due to the alkaloids, theobromine and phenethylamine which are present in it. Wikipedia suggests lots of health benefits for chocolate. So what could be more ideal?

So what does the Dorset cereals chocolate granola taste like? Well, it's very pleasurable. Initially it's very sweet tasting, then you get the bitterness of the fair-trade dark chocolate and then coconut drifts over your palette. It's chewy but nicely so and doesn't go soggy. As it's made with Fair-trade dark chocolate, oats, sunflower seeds, coconut and barley flakes I bet it would make a really good flapjack. I have a very savoury palette but I have to admit it's very moreish. More often than not, I found myself tucking into it in the evenings when I was flagging and wanted something naughty to indulge in. The rest of the family like it as their 'special weekend breakfast'. Chocolate is usually rationed in our house as our 5 year old gets rather bouncy on chocolate but because this is good quality chocolate, to our surprise he doesn't get bouncy and we all heave a sigh of relief. In fact breakfast eating the Dorset Cereals Chocolate granola was very pleasurable. Much more so than our normal cereals.

We all felt like we were getting a treat and we left the breakfast table smiling after a great start to the day.