The other day I took a trip to Reading in order to do a little shopping, and quite by chance I found myself wandering along Harris Arcade, a rather old fashioned passageway of glass-fronted shops which is home to an eclectic assortment of book, retro clothing, rare record shops, and the rather splendidly named Strange Sweets.
Strange Sweets is one of those lovely old retro sweetshops, with jars and jars of boiled sweets in ranks along the walls which very much reminded me of my parents’ sweetshop in the 1970s. However, the thing(s) that caught my eye were in their ‘Imports’ section. Alongside various Hershey Bars (ick) and other products like Milk Duds and Reese’s Cups, there sat a couple of Australian Cadbury Bars.
Now, I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but in Australia Cadbury’s chocolate contains no palm oil. Yes, that’s right. The good people of the Antipodes decided they didn’t want Cadbury fooling around with their chocolate, so they got organised, petitioned the company, did a bit of boycotting, and the company gave in to their demands. How good is that?
I’m not entirely sure that Kraft would respond in the same way, but if enough people make enough noise (and start buying other confectionery) it can make a difference. You have been told. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
So, the first bar I bought (at a whopping £1.40) was this;
Yet another Dairy Milk variation, and definitely another ‘lazy’ Cadbury product (as in “What can we combine with the same old milk chocolate in order to produce yet another product?”) this bar contains biscuits and ‘Cherry flavoured jellies’. Yum.
I have to say that it’s been a long time since I ate any Cadbury chocolate, but this was noticeably less greasy than I remember. With such low cocoa content I wasn’t expecting loads of flavour from the chocolate. It’s sweet, it’s ‘chocolatey’ and the jellies were really, really, chewy. These little blighters would play havoc with your dentures, believe me. They’re also ‘cherry flavoured’ – sweet, slightly sickly and not terribly cherry-like.
Definitely not to my taste at all, but an improvement on the UK’s Dairy Milk. Was it worth paying way over the odds in order to see what Cadbury’s chocolate used to taste like? Yes and no. It was interesting, but ultimately still disappointing.
I wasn’t going to review this. Partly because Deanna has already briefly mentioned it, but mainly because it’s my comfort food. The kind of chocolate I buy to cheer myself up, rather than to tell other people about.
But when I got home, I couldn’t resist taking a photo or two, and by the time I’d got down to the final chunk an our or so later, I was feeling better and decided to tell you about it.
Manjari is a 64% Madagascan dark chocolate. It’s the standard by which all Madagascan chocolates are judged, and is widely used by chocolatiers and patisseries around the world. It’s the basis for such classics as Paul A. Young’s Marmite XO bar.
What makes it so popular? It’s an incredibly light and fruity chocolate with a natural citrus edge. If you’re the kind of person that thinks dark chocolate is bitter and dry, pop a small square of Manjari in your mouth and prepare to have your mind – and your taste buds – blown away. And that’s just from the unadulterated, unflavoured version.
This particular bar has small orange “nuggets” embedded in the chocolate. They’re basically little pieces of candied orange made from sugar and fruit purée.
These fruit pieces complement the natural citrus notes of the chocolate itself without overpowering them. The chocolate hasn’t been loaded with orange oil, so you still get all the distinctive Manjari flavours, just reinforced by the citrus orange. And as orange chocolates go, this is really, really good.
But there’s a catch. You see, despite this high praise, Manjari Orange just isn’t as good as the unflavoured version. Yet as a consumer, I can only buy this flavoured bar in my local Waitrose. Don’t get me wrong, it makes me very, very happy that Waitrose stock Valrhona at all, but I would much prefer to be able to buy it in a “pure” form.
Still, if you love the chocolate and orange combination, and you’re looking for something a bit special, then you probably won’t find much better than this. Definitely worth seeking out – you should be able to find it at your local Waitrose in the UK, or check out the links below if you’re in the US.
I can’t recall ever having reviewed a box of Lindt chocolates before, which is remarkable considering the amount of their products we’ve collectively muched our way through here at Chocablog.
Recently, I was in an airport somewhere in Europe (it may even have been Heathrow, when I think about it) and spotted this box. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but I liked the look of it and so it came home with me.
Once I’d slipped off the band from around the box and removed various bits of sellophane and sticky tape, I was met with this:
Interesting – the gold coloured corrugated paper concealed the product, but I could see what flvours I was about to be exposed to. Five varieties of chocolate awaited my pleasure. Time to see what’s in the box.
How’s about that for presentation? I don’t know about you, but I was impressed. Yes, they may be ‘factory’ chocolates, and Lindt may be a huge multinational, but they still know how to present their product. I haven’t seen anything as eye-catching as this in a long time. The other thing I must note here was the smell – the aromas of milk chocolate, sugar and fruit wafting up from the box has my taste buds tingling in anticipation. Only one thing for it – time to get stuck in.
The ‘Noir’ chocolate was (unsurprisingly) filled with a dark truffle centre with cocoa nibs. Still quite sweet and creamy, the thick milk chocolate shell delivered most of the initial taste, with the cocoa nibs and truffle filling bringing up the rear. There’s too much sugar in this one to be able to really get to grips with the more complex cocoa flavours, but it’s still quite pleasant.
In Lindt world ‘A’ is for Stracciatella (of course). If you’ve ever had Stracciatella ice cream you’ll know that it’s a variation on chocolate chip – a creamy white vanilla ice shot through with layers of thin chocolate shards. The shell on this chocolate was the darkest of the group, and the centre was indeed a creamy white truffle with fragments of dark chocolate inside. The vanilla-and-cream flavours were good and strong, and the overall taste wasn’t too sweet. A good balance and a very good imitation of ice cream in a chocolate.
The nougat centre was a slightly more caramel coloured effort, with enough tiny pieces of nougat there to keep the tongue amused for a while. Good balance of flavours and lovely chewy little fragments of nougat.
Number four is the caramel chocolate. Not soft, gooey, runny caramel but a caramel flavoured centre with what can best be described as caramel dust floating around inside it. Again, this is quite a sweet chocolate but it certainly delivers the flavours it promises.
Last in line was a Noisette chocolate, chock full of hazelnut pieces which were suspended in another dark filling. The hazelnut flavours were there at first bite and persisted throughout.
So what was my overall opinion of this box? I’d say it was (as are most of Lindt’s products) very well made. It delivers the flavours it’s supposed to, and the presentation is superb. As is so often the case though, these chocolates are very sweet.
There’s not much in the way of complex cocoa flavours to be had here, but for your average chocolate buyer (or as a present for someone you’d like to impress) you could do a lot worse. Lindt’s chocolatiers are very good at what they do, but what they don’t do is produce the purer, more rarified chocolate which fascinates me and many others. What they do do is create chocolates that appeal to most consumers, and this box has enough in the way of taste and presentation to give it mass appeal. Just don’t think of it as posh, because these days you ned a lot more than a fancy box and a collection of slighty-too-sweet milk chocolates with slightly unusual fillings to cut it.
Every once in a while, I like to pick up something random from the shelves of Tesco for lunch review purposes.
Today I thought I’d sample some of their Finest range, so picked up these strangely packaged tiffin squares, which are held together in a form of plastic skyscraper for some reason. They’re dense, unbaked squares with crushed biscuit, glacé cherries, sultanas and coconut topped with a thin layer of milk chocolate.
The squares are almost brownie-like in consistency with a slightly doughy flavour. They are perhaps slightly dry though. Without the thin layer of milk chocolate on the top, they would probably fall apart as you ate them.
How do they taste? Well, they’re OK, but nothing spectacular. All the flavours come through nicely, especially cherry, and the milk chocolate (of unstated cocoa solids percentage) is above average. The only real let down is that they are just slightly too dry and crumbly. I found myself making a significant mess during the course of this review.
Overall then, a nice accompaniment to a cup of tea and a sit down, but nothing more than that. They won’t wow your VIP guests, but they’ll probably give your Hoover a good workout.
