These Cadbury ‘Bars of Plenty’ have been around for a while now, so I thought it was about time I tried one. The basic concept is a Dairy Milk bar stuffed with as much other stuff as humanly possible. Presumably so you can’t taste the chocolate any more.
There are currently three flavours in this range. In addition to this bar, there’s ‘Toffee Apple’ and ‘Roast Hazelnut & Honey Roast Cashews’, neither of which particularly appeal to me. But then Dairy Milk doesn’t generally appeal to me these days either, what with its minuscule 20% cocoa solids and added vegetable fats.
But it is what it is, and of course it’s highly unlikely Cadbury will change it. Suffice to say, it looks, feels and tastes like Dairy Milk.
The interesting part of this bar, is all the other stuff inside it though. And those shortcake and fruit pieces are actually quite nice. Obviously, it’s very sweet, but the shortcake adds a light crunchiness to the bar that somehow manages to make it more pleasant than your average non-stuffed Dairy Milk bar. They’re never to hard and never too soft, and unfortunately make this bar far too easy to scoff in a single sitting.
The cranberries are quite passable too. The flavour is subtle though, so there’s none of that lovely sharpness that you often get. They are (apparently) infused with strawberry and elderberry, which no doubt softens the flavour and gives them a fruitiness more like raisins than tangy cranberries.
All in all, this bar is like a lighter, more summery Fruit & Nut bar, and I quite enjoyed it. I would have liked it even more with a better quality chocolate, but I guess you can’t have everything.
I don’t believe this is an entirely new Lindt product, but as I don’t remember seeing it before and as it features one of my favorite chocolate combinations, hazelnut, it had to come along home with me. Being milk chocolate, it was also just the thing my sweet tooth happened to be seeking.
There is a 34 percentage of hazelnuts, but no word on the cacao content. From its darker shade and more firm taste, it seems to lurk on the darker edge of milk chocolate. If you’re still not a milk chocolate person, you’re in luck: there is also a dark version of this bar.
Both whole hazelnuts and caramelized pieces are used here, meaning that there is quite a bit of crunch. As you can see, there is a good amount of them scattered about the chocolate. Every so often, you get the more crystal crunch of the caramelized pieces to add some variety. The back of the wrapper calls this “the ultimate indulgence for hazelnut lovers.” True if it’s the whole hazelnuts you like. Normally, though, I prefer the smooth and impeccable blending of hazelnut and chocolate. Well, guess what? That’s here, too.
Tasting a bit of the chocolate without any nuts in it, the hazelnut taste is still there in the creamy, milky, chocolatey flavor. Whether that’s rubbed off from the rest of the bar, an inherent nuttiness, or just leftover from the previous mouthful, I like it. Lindt milk chocolate has enough creaminess to it that even paired with major crunching, it holds its own.
This is what Lindt does for me — a sweet indulgence with their milk chocolate and a nice flavor combination to add to it. Nothing new about this bar, but it comes along with a guarantee of enjoyment. Now if you’ll excuse me while I go hide the second half from myself.
We’ve looked at a couple of solid chocolate bars from Beschle, so now it’s time for some truffles. Previously, Simon had loved his Fleur de Sel & Pistachio bar, while I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the milk chocolate Montélimar.
As you can see, the packaging is similar to the bars. A simple and elegant black box, with the Beschle coat of arms and logo. All the details about these particular truffles is printed on a separate sleeve that slips over the box and keeps it all together.
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the sleeve – and hence all the important information – that came with mine, but luckily the Beschle web site lists the contents:
Grand Cru Criollo Maracaibo
Finest truffle made of Grand Cru Maracaibo 65% cocoa.
Grand Cru Trinitario Madagascar
Finest truffle made of Grand Cru Madagascar 64% cocoa.
Grand Cru Santo Domingo
A fusion of two Grand Cru chocolates: Maracaibo and Rio Huimbi.
So what we have is three simple, unflavoured truffles. This box of 9 will set you back 19.30 Swiss Francs, which is roughly £12.
Are they worth it? Well, there’s no doubt there’s some interesting cocoa flavours going on here, but they’re certainly not the kind of chocolates you’d want to eat every day. They’re all quite similar in taste and texture, and I think they might be a fun addition if you’re having a little chocolate tasting party and want to talk about the subtle flavour differences with your friends.
Personally though, I wasn’t that keen. The centres are firm, bordering on chewy, and the chocolate shells are dry, to the point that eating any more than a couple of chocolates becomes a chore.
I would love to see something like this done with in a much lighter way. These truffles have a decent cocoa content, that seems to have been done at the expense of texture and interestingness. It’s all just personal taste, but I don’t think I would buy them myself.
I didn’t really plan on getting all topical with my chocolate reviews, but yet here I am with some Icelandic chocolate which really shouldn’t have been able to make it across the ocean to Canada considering the flight situation during the past few weeks.
And I’d really like to say that I won’t be making any more jokes of a volcanic nature before this review is over, but I really can’t. Sorry.
Anyway, Nói Síríus have been making chocolate in Iceland since the 1920s, and this bar has apparently been packaged the same way since 1933. I mention that because the packaging is really unique – the bars are wrapped in wax paper, something which gives it a real old-fashioned feel even if it isn’t particularly secure. Mine had a few holes poked through where the chocolate was visible because the paper was torn.
Initially, the chunky dimensions of the package made me think that this was going to be a hard chocolate to take a bite out of, but I was quite surprised to find two slabs on top of each other inside. The chocolate has a decent sheen and the texture is relatively smooth with just a hint of grain.
The taste is definitely more sweet than bitter – the first listed ingredient is sugar and it really does taste like it. But once that sweetness subsides a little, vanilla comes in to save the day before running away to finally reveal the slight bitterness. It takes a long time to get there, but eventually the chocolate turns into what it says on the wrapper.
A decidedly OK bar of chocolate, and not much more. But if you happened to be, for example, stuck on an island in the North Atlantic, unable to get off because of some kind of natural disaster, you probably would be happy enough munching on this until the deadly ash cloud rescinded.
Definitely not the worst thing to come out of Iceland recently…
