Ressana Raspberry

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on August 12 2009 | Leave A Comment
Ressana Raspberry

Another visit to my local butcher means it’s time for more strange foreign imported chocolatey goodness. Or so I thought.

Today’s pick of the crop is “Original Biscuit Ressana Raspberry”, which the box proudly proclaims to be a biscuit with Fruit Rapsberry Jelly: A promising start. Just ignore the carefully whited-out price label that I could not remove.

Something that tickles my fancy is that this is manufactured (according to the Gold label thingy on the front of the box) “by original technology”. It’s not often you tout your claims to technology in chokky bikky manufacture, but there you are. I’m even more tickled by the manufacturer: Swisslion Agroplod, in the republic of Macedonia. A few of our big western companies need to take lessons and get names like that; names with character and soul.

So with some anticipation we finished Sunday lunch and said “how about a nice chocolate biscuit to go with a cup of tea”. We all agreed that was a smashing idea. A quick diversion to photograph the box and the biscuits was in order, then some serious eating and taste-testing.
Well, boy am I disappointed.

Ressana Raspberry

There was a very strong berry smell when I opened the pack. That must have been it for the berries, though. I think they escaped at that point. In terms of presentation we have a small biscuit with a splodge of sweet stuff on top, and a thin smear of chocolate. From one biscuit to another, the splodges are in different places – some in the centre, some way offset to the side. The box picture and the reality are not quite in alignment. According to the label, the berry jelly comprises 38% of the product, and the chocolate is 20%. Further, the chocolate is supposed to be 47% cocoa solids.

The splodge of sweet stuff is not the nice red berry colour shown on the box, it’s more of a pale pink/brown. It’s also quite a thick jelly, so it has a texture closer to rubber. And the only real flavour is sugar. Similarly, the chocolate is just nothingy. I’ve tried, in the name of science, eating a few of these upside down so the chocolate hits the tongue first, this makes a marginal improvement with a hint of cocoa and berry flavour coming through. You have to search hard for it though. I don’t know how they do it, but there are not many things where the chocolate is there in name but not flavour.

And finally, the biscuit has a curious texture: not crisp, not soggy either, but somewhere in between. It sort of melts away.

Don’t get me wrong – these are perfectly edible. But I’m sorry to say, they just don’t float my boat.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Laura

    I think you were expecting a little too much from a Macedonian imitation of the legendary Jaffa Cake.

  2. Christine

    I was just going to say that these look like mutant jaffa cakes…

  3. Natalie

    first thing that came to mind was – they’re jaffa cakes!!!

  4. The ‘real’ ones remind me of the black rubber bath plugs and maybe they tasted about the same too?

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