Sainsbury’s Chocolate Spreads

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on August 3 2011 | Leave A Comment

I’ll confess, I’m not really a chocolate spread kind of a guy, but when Sainsbury’s told me they had a chocolate spread with popping candy, I had to try it. As I’ve mentioned many times before, everything is better with popping candy.

They also sent me chocolate spreads with orange and coconut, and their chocolate chip peanut butter.

The first thing to say is that I made the mistake of leaving the jars out of the fridge. The labels do say to store the spreads at room temperature, but on an unusually hot summer day, they were perhaps a little too thin, and the chocolate chips in the peanut butter had gone a little melty! Entirely my own fault, and these are very easily spreadable straight from the fridge.

As expected, the popping candy spread turned out to be my favourite. The candy pieces are very small, not like the Thorntons Cloudy Lemonade bar I recently reviewed, where the big chunks were clearly visible. But still, they had a nice crackle to them – particularly when spread nice and thickly over bread. It is very sweet – but if you’re buying a chocolate spread, that’s probably what you’re looking for anyway.

The chocolate orange spread tastes… well… like a Chocolate Orange. I’m not a massive fan of orange flavoured chocolate, but in this case, the addition of orange flavouring does take some of the sweet edge off the taste.

The coconut flavour spread is very similar, but with the addition of tiny coconut flakes instead of orange. This gives the spread a bit of texture and a flavour that vaguely resembles a Bounty Bar.

The chocolate chip peanut butter wasn’t really my thing. While you can see it chocolate chips, you can’t really taste them. I happened to have a jar of plain old Sun Pat peanut butter to compare this with, and I much preferred that.

So I don’t think I’d buy the peanut butter, but I might consider chocolate spreads if I was in the mood for something sweet and filling. Looking at the ingredients though, I did note that they’re mainly sugar and only contain 4-6% cocoa powder.

But the one thing that might ultimately prevent me from buying these myself is palm oil, third on the ingredients list, right after the sugar and and rapeseed oil. I’ve no idea where the palm oil in these products comes from, but you can read some of the criticism of its use on Greenpeaces’s website and Wikipedia. For all I know, the palm oil in these spreads may be entirely ethically sourced, but without clear labelling, I’ve no way of knowing.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Yasmin Selena Butt

    I saw these in store just yesterday and was curious, so your blog is a timely one! I might try the coconut & popping candy one if they’re ever on promo. One day I hope someone twigs to do a cherry choc spread! Agree with you on the palm oil..

  2. I bought myself the popping candy one the other day but haven’t opened it yet.

  3. Lindsay

    I have the popping candy one, it’s very tasty. But…. not quite as good as the mighty Asda White Chocolate spread. *drool*

  4. Hi Dom – really glad you liked the spreads!

    To your point about palm oil, I wanted to let you know that we have set a goal of using only certified palm oil across our entire own-brand product range by the end of 2014. We’re moving to sustainable palm oil category by category and in July 2011 completed the switch to sustainable palm oil in our 28 biscuit lines. In addition, all of our digestive & rich tea biscuits, standard bars of soap and crispy cereals are already made with certified sustainable palm oil.

    In the meantime, we believe customers should be able to see easily whether there is palm oil in our products. We were the first supermarket to identify palm oil rather than ‘vegetable oil’ on the labels of all fresh and chilled food, and now show this on all our food products. We have also developed our own logo to help customers identify easily where sustainable palm oil is being used in products.

    I hope this answers your question – if you’re interested, there is some more information about our approach to sustainable palm oil on our corporate site: http://ow.ly/5W4Sy

    Kind regards
    Thomas, Digital Media Manager at Sainsbury’s

  5. Clare

    I’m surprised it’s taken so long for anyone to produce any other ‘flavours’ of chocolate spread other than hazelnut. I don’t shop in Sainsburys as there isn’t one nearby however I may have to make a special trip to try the chocolate orange spread! A mint chocolate spread might be interesting as well.

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