Babeland's Edible Body Chocolate

I'm another one of those girls who only kinda-sorta-a-little-bit likes chocolate sometimes, but keeps trying chocolate flavored body paints and stuff for those times, because when I want chocolate OHGODIWANTCHOCOLATE! Most of those chocolate body products end up being... horrible. They taste kind of like paint thinner and are all but brown water, or they're sticky and impossible to use, or are just over priced relabeled Hershey's syrup. Babeland's Edible Body Chocolate isn't anything like those.

First of all, the ingredients list is simple - as well as vegan, fair trade, and organic - and is made up entirely of things I can identify and have used in baking recipes before. The product has an 18 month shelf life, which should be plenty long enough to get it used up (especially if you get the little 1 oz jar).

Ingredients: Sucrose (Organic Sugar), Theobroma cacao (Organic Cocoa),

Cocos nucifera (Organic Coconut) Oil, Vitis vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil,

Vanilla planifolia (Vanilla) Extract, Tocopherol (Vitamin E)

Keen eyes that you all have, I'm sure you spotted that the first ingredient is sugar - so, obviously that means this chocolate shouldn't go anywhere near your vagina unless you enjoy yeast infections. The jar is as simple as the ingredients - dark brown with pink lettering. It's easy enough to keep out of sight, and should blend in with your lip balms or cuticle creams if you do leave it on your nightstand. Especially if you're already known to enjoy chocolate lip products.

Second, it's really thick, especially when it's cold. It's entirely solid at room temperature (at least at my room temperature - 65*F or so), and has a gritty texture like there are little bits of cocoa nibs still hanging around in it. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, if you like those dark chocolate bars with extra cocoa... which I actually do tend to enjoy. When it's warmed up, it's a good deal more liquidy and easy to paint with - though it still has some grit - whether you choose to use your fingers or an actual paint brush. I just go for fingers, since in my mind it's more fun to have them licked clean than to worry about losing a chocolate covered paint brush under the covers.

You are really going to want to warm it up, even though it's semi-usable in its solid state. It's just a liiiiiittle too grainy, too hard to spread evenly... so if you're trying to draw a picture or write something, it won't be as clear as you might like. I generally set mine on top of a warm radiator to melt, though leaving it in a sink full of hot water for a while should work just as well. I'd be hesitant to use a microwave, just because it might liquefy the jar as well as the chocolate.

The most important factor, of course, is the taste. As Babeland says, it's definitely a dark chocolate flavor, that to me has an almost coconut-coffee undertone. In fact, it reminds me pretty strongly of Edy's French Silk ice cream and Mounds candy bars. For me that's a pretty big plus, and the main reason I like this chocolate so much - if you dislike coconut, I'd stay pretty far away from this, since it's not easy to ignore.