Waitrose Belgian Chocolate Amaretto Cherry Dragées

According to the packaging:

“The term dragée (from the french to dredge or sprinkle) describes the painstaking process of creating a coating layer by layer. Since only the very best will do, these dragées have been made for Waitrose by a continental Master Confectioner using quality ingredients sourced from around the world.”

So now you know.

Frankly, I think it’s more likely that a marketing person somewhere just found a foreign word they thought would look cool on their packaging. These are really just dried cherries with some flavouring and extra sugar dipped in chocolate.

The “dark chocolate” coating is smooth and shiny (thanks no doubt to the glazing agents listed on the ingredients), but has virtually no flavour of its own. That’s probably down to the fact that it’s only 45% cocoa solids.

If you let it melt away in your mouth, eventually you get to a sweet sugary coating that surrounds the cherry. But there’s still no real flavour until you bite into the fruit.

The cherry itself is quite tart and tasty, but it’s very dry. It’s almost crunchy, rather than the plump, juicy fruit I was hoping for.

My overall impression is that these are “sweets” rather than real chocolates. I’m quite happy to munch on them, but I still feel I’ve been conned by the pretty packaging with the foreign words I didn’t understand.

So rather than buying these, I’d recommend making your own chocolate dipped fruits. It’s easy, and the results look so much better.

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