Meat-flavoured chocolate might not be everyone's idea of delicious, but a Kiwi chocolatier claims her new salami-tinged treats are just that.
Sweet maker Hanna Frederick has developed venison chocolate truffles to feed dozens of meat lovers at a New Zealand conference.
Made from a blend of dark chocolate and ground-up salty dried meat, the morsels, shaped like tiny sausages, have a "delicious" salami aftertaste, she said.
"I think many people would say it's just too weird mixing meat with chocolate, but they actually go together amazingly well," Dr Frederick said.
"There's this smoky taste to start, then a strong chocolate flavour comes in, and at the end you have this wonderful taste of salami."
She said the snack, being served as a starter to 150 people at New Zealand's Meat Industry Association conference, had proven a hit with men "who can't get enough of it", but admitted women had been "quieter" in expressing approval.
"Women tend to love their chocolate more fruity, more feminine, and I guess meat doesn't have that feel to it."
This is just the latest in a string of quirky creations from Dr Frederick, a Hungarian-born food chemist who abandoned a corporate career to make chocolate.
She has already made headlines by feeding beer-flavoured chocolate to brewers and recycled orange peel-chocolate to waste management specialists.
In February, she released her most risque flavour yet, a chocolate injected with Tongkat Ali, a potent herb from South-east Asia which is claimed to stimulate testosterone production in men.
It was not a substitute for Viagra, but it would deliver a "small but noticeable" aphrodisiac effect, she said.
