The Lindt Excellence range of chocolate bars is divided into to broad divisions; those bars with specific percentages of Cacao, ranging from 50% to 99%, and then a wide variety of chocolate with flavorings. In terms of the flavored chocolate offerings, there's a series of Lindt Excellence Intense bars, in orange, pear and mint. My interest was piqued by the Lindt Excellence Intense Orange—quality dark chocolate flavored with orange peel or even an orange liquor can be quite lovely, and the neither Altereco's Dark Twist Chocolate, flavored with candied orange peel, or Endangered Species Zebra bar with citrus essence really quite work for me.

Lindt's Excellence Intense Orange is the typical Lindt 100 gram or 3.5 ounce bar, scored into ten squares of chocolate. It's their usual dark barely bittersweet rich and very smooth chocolate, but flavored with what Lindt describes as "delicate orange pieces and almond slivers." There really are bits of bitter sweet orange and orange peel, and, I think, an orange essence in the chocolate, as well is micro slivers of crunchy almond. The contrast of sweet/bitter, silky smooth chocolate/crunchy almond works very very well; this is pretty close to perfect in terms of what I want in dark orange flavored chocolate. I am very pleased. I look forward to more of this, and I definitely want to try cooking with it.

The Australian branch of Lindt offers what looks like a fabulous Chocolate, Orange, and Almond Brownie recipe, using about 1 and a half bars of this chocolate, almond meal, and Grand Marnier. You might need a metric converter since the measurements are all metric, but it's a very simple recipe and looks quite good. And, yes, of course I'm going to try them myself.