Ballantyne Exotics Luscious Berries

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on February 1 2010 | Leave A Comment
Ballantyne Exotics Luscious Berries

We found this rather generous 300 gram box of goodies some time ago, and it has been sitting in The Stash ever since, waiting for an opportunity. Trouble is, The Stash is growing, and causing household friction: “Use up some of that chocolate so we have room for other things!” OK – who needs telling twice?

The box says this is “Luscious Berries – Selected Exotic Berry Flavoured Fruit Pieces Coated in Milk, Dark and White Chocolate”. Inside the box is a bag with a LOT of little balls in – white, light and dark – all slightly glossy – that’s the glazing agent 904 – whatever that is.

There is no special aroma – something we really should expect with a product like this, which means it must be Taste Test Time. Of course, I haven’t just done a taste test myself, I’ve passed them around the family. The universal reaction is “wow!”, followed by “fruity”, followed by “what flavour is it?”

Ballantyne Exotics Luscious Berries

If you know the flavours, then you can tell them – or perhaps if you have an exceptional palate. For us mere mortals, reading the side of the box is essential – strawberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in milk chocolate; blueberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in white chocolate; and raspberry flavoured fruit pieces coated in dark chocolate. My emphasis on “flavoured” – that means go read the ingredients.

After finding out the flavours, I can pick the blueberry – which is subtle at the best of times (like scoffing down a punnet of blueberries) – so this is a pretty big achievement. I really can’t tell the strawberry, it’s just fruity. I think I can pick the raspberry. Without knowing though, I really would struggle to pick them.

A check of the ingredients shows that the fruit stuff is apple puree, dried apricots, and dried apple with a mere 2% actual berries. The chocolate blends are shown as the milk chocolate being 28% cocoa, and the dark 49%. Not very dark, really – enough to show it’s a different colour.

Don’t get me wrong about the downsides (not much berry in spite of the name, and the dark not being very dark) – these are very very edible indeed. The family come grazing by to vacuum up a few more each pass by, and as I write this I have to keep sampling. Because they contain a fair amount of fruit, eating the 300 grams in a sitting is likely to have unpleasant consequences. But it’s tempting to try.

If you put these out for a dinner party, or BBQ, as a nibble, starter, desert, post-desert whatever – they will go down very well indeed.

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Comments On This Post

  1. I absolutely hear you on the needing to eat more to buy more! That’s what I tell people when I start giving them chocolate and they thnk I’m being too generous – “You have to help me eat it so I can buy more!” 😀

    Would probably pass on these those… it takes a very special kind of fruit to work with chocolate in my mind, and I don’t think “flavoured” pieces would quite cut it for me!

  2. I think that you cannot judge the chocolate on what it looks like. As a saying goes that “Don’t judge the book by it’s cover”, so though the little balls inside the Luscious Berries are simple to look at and their is no aroma. The most important is how the taste is.

    Thank you for the post…

    🙂

  3. So nicely put – “unpleasant consequences” – and a fair warning. It’s easy to forget the fruit part whan it’s wrapped in chocolate.

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