The wonderful thing about getting sent samples to review is that you end up with things you might not otherwise have tried. Despite positive reviews on Chocablog, I never had much interest in Ritter Sport. The name doesn’t appeal to me. Neither does the packaging. Maybe it has a more European style (does it, European readers?), but it just doesn’t spark up my own interest. Let’s move on now to what the taste test told me in these first four bars.
First up is a Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme, their newest bar. This one is decked up in pink to spread awareness about breast cancer. Ritter Sport is donating $100,000 to help the cause. Once I broke off a row to reveal the pink center, I immediately thought of the strawberry shortcake ice cream bars. Lowfat yogurt powder is listed in the ingredients, which is immediately apparent in the taste. A little crisped rice adds to the shortcake feel. The filling and chocolate work in more or less equal parts, though your attention naturally goes more to the strawberry. I can succumb to milk chocolate too well sometimes; this one started disappearing before me.
The Yogurt bar is also milk chocolate. Not being a yogurt fan, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but was pleased to find that it has more of a plain milky sense than a yogurt one. The creamy white center reminds me slightly of cream cheese. The texture being constant, your taste buds start to pair the two flavors together, making it seem like an extra-milky chocolate. It wasn’t my favorite, but for fans of this sort of thing, go ahead and try it.
The Alpine Milk Chocolate is a 30% cocoa; in addition to the “100% milk from the Alps,” I spotted hazelnut paste in the list. It’s there to find in the taste, too, adding that hint of earthiness to keep the milky sweetness grounded. Including richness even at 30%, this one is quite enjoyable.
Interesting to note about the Milk Chocolate with Butter Biscuit is that it is chocolate surrounding one large biscuit versus containing tiny bits. Increasing the magnitude, here at least, also increases the experience. Plenty of pleasant biscuit with moreish milk chocolate.
I hate to use this phrase, but they were better than I’d expected. The Strawberry Creme and Alpine Milk stood out most to me; I have no doubt, however, that the rest will have no trouble finding a home.
I don’t like writing bad things about small businesses, so I’m going to keep this review short.
They’re bags of “chocolate” “truffles”, that are made mostly of sugar and vegetable fat. They are basically the same, except one lot is rolled in cocoa powder (preferable), and the other in flaked chocolate. It’s somewhat unfortunate that the latter resembles Duc D’O’s truffles which looked a little like they may have been fished from a toilet. Is it that difficult to make chocolates look visually appealing?
Looks aside, the presentation isn’t bad. They arrive in a bright pink box with cute phrases like “please be gentle with me” and “just unzip me” printed on it. They’re mail order only chocolates, and while the packaging doesn’t scream quality, it does the job.
The problem is with the product. They are way, way, way too sweet and fatty. I could just about manage one of each before the sugar overload started to get to me. I don’t know why they contain so much sugar, or have been made with so much vegetable fat, but the end result is just sickly.
So while I like the idea of a nicely presented mail order chocolate gift, and I don’t have any reason to believe that the folks at Moko aren’t lovely people, the product itself needs completely rethinking.
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- Filed under moko, uk.
Time for another bar from Vivani, and this time it’s a very simple organic white chocolate with flecks of vanilla.
This is very different from the last white chocolate I reviewed. The disturbingly sweet Milky Bar Raisin & Biscuit seemed to be made predominantly from sugar, with added sugar, palm oil and a bit of sugar. This bar contains just four ingredients:
Cocoa butter, whole milk powder (40%), raw cane sugar, bourbon vanilla.
There’s no cocoa solids percentage listed, but given that the second ingredient accounts for 40% of the bar, there has to be at least that much cocoa butter. And it’s refreshing to see sugar coming below them both.
The high cocoa butter and low sugar content of this white chocolate makes a huge difference to the bar. For a start, it’s very soft. It “bends” rather than snaps.
The lower sugar means you can actually taste the cocoa butter too, although it has to be said, the dominant flavour is vanilla. The end result is something that tastes not unlike a nice vanilla ice cream.
Yes, it’s sweet, but never overly so. It doesn’t get sickly if you have more than a couple of squares. That does have the unfortunate side-effect that it’s a little too easy to find yourself scoffing it, then feeling horribly guilty for liking a white chocolate.
Maybe that’s just me. Suffice to say that if you’re a white chocolate fan, this is one worth seeking out.
Yet another visit to the local Vietnamese butcher, yet more Polish chocolate. The Wawel range carried in that place is just crazy, but I think I must have tried them all by now. Not everything ends up with a review here.
But I don’t know what I was thinking – I read the label – 70% dark chocolate and thought this would make an interesting comparison review. Perhaps do a side-by-side of a few 70% darks… Then checked again just before taking the photos and realised this is 70% with orange. Oh dear. Now I have some other 70% chocolates that will just have to be eaten. What a shame.
For comparison, a quick refresh on Chocablog for choc-orange brings back some fond memories: Delicaseys Orange Bliss, and the Koaka. Of coarse there are also some not-so-fond but we won’t dwell on those.
I have to start with the packaging on this. Yes, its just another 100g bar (at a very reasonable price – under A$3.00) wrapped in paper. Most packaging is something I don’t care a great deal about, but on this the gold lettering and general choice of colours is quite appealing.
Opening the pack reveals very little aroma, and unlike some of the Wawel range this is very nicely presented – nice colour and shine. That little discoloured mark you can see is the orange peel lurking inside. When they say this has orange peel in, they aren’t kidding. Breaking a piece off the block occasionally reveals the hidden treasure.
And it’s nice: really very yumbly. The chocolate has a rich and slightly vanilla taste, it’s not too sweet and there is the tiniest hint of bitterness; I’ve found many of the Wawel chocolates have a similar and quite characteristic flavour. Letting the chocolate melt away reveals little orange flavour bombs. Unlike some chocolates where the orange is infused, this does actually allow the chocolate and orange to be tasted separately; both characters are there for the testing. If on the other hand you just gobble and crunch the chocolate up you get the orange springing up pretty quickly. Either way of eating this is good!
For a low cost product, this is very good indeed, and puts other chocolates at double the price to shame. Worth a try.
