Lily O’Briens Desserts Collection
Lily O’Briens is an established brand from Ireland and have been creating fine quality chocolates for around 15 years. This rather attractive box caught my eye, and when I discovered that the contents were based on a number of classic desserts, I thought it would be fun to review it.
There are a total of sixteen chocolates in the box, four each of four ‘desserts’, and two of those we’ve come across before. Yes, this collection contains a Crème Brûlée and a Tiramisu, which immediately begs comparison with the mighty Lindt Petits Desserts range which is held in such high esteem here at Chocablog.
The Crème Brûlée comes in a white chocolate cup with a crunchy sugar topping which conceals a disc of more white chocolate, a creamy filling and a little blob of what seems to be caramel in the base. The white cream centre certainly bears the taste of a Crème Brûlée, but I found the use of a white chocolate made the whole thing very sweet, especially with the additional sugar topping. The centre may well be full of interesting flavours, but that amount of sweet white chocolate seems to overpower the overall flavours.
The Chocolate & Toffee Pudding comes in a milk chocolate cup, and contains a very pleasant tasting combination of flavours. The toffee filling is soft and not too rich and combines well with the chocolate. It’s a tried and trusted combination, done very well.
The Amaretti Torte has a mildly alcoholic flavour to it but is very similar to the Chocolate & Toffee pudding in its construction. A darker cup balances the flavour well, and at 55% the dark chocolate isn’t going to be too sharp a contrast with the sweetness of the range.
The Tiramisu comes in the same milk chocolate cup as the Chocolate & Toffee pudding, and was my favourite of the four. It’s a little on the sweet side but has a very pleasant authentic marsala flavour to the filling,
Overall, these chocs are the sort of thing I’d buy as a gift rather than for personal consumption. They’re very well presented and pay a fairly reasonable homage to the desserts they imitate. However, the Crème Brûlée and Tiramisu chocolates don’t come near to the Lindt versions we have reviewed in the past, but that would be a very big ask.
In general these tend to be quite sweet, and while the chocolate is of pretty high quality they’re not the sort of thing you’d buy for the cocoa content alone. They’d make a very pretty present for someone you love, and offer a nice twist on the theme of desserts.
Posted by Simon on 24 Mar 2008 at 12:03 PM
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Filed in Reviews under assortment, ireland, lily o'brien.
