The Madelaine Chocolate Company are most known for their seasonal chocolates. You may have seen their chocolate bunnies around for Easter. This April, they introduced a new line called Duets. These round chocolates chocolates are filled on one half with one flavor, on the other with a second. I like the idea of having dual flavors, but “Made for two or just for you” I can’t picture. Sharing a box of chocolates is enough; why share a single chocolate?
The big, plain, white and purple box doesn’t speak volumes. Normally, though, they come in stand-up bags; this is just what I was sent to sample. Coming to the Duets themselves, we find four pairs, all in milk chocolate. If you did want to share one, I can say that it would be simple to do so. Just give a twist and a pull and the two halves split apart, though the fillings don’t each stick to their sides so easily.
I started with the Peanut Butter Caramel. The sticky caramel is a bit better than average, but the peanut butter was disappointing. It tastes creamy, oily instead of peanuty. Not bad, and probably more like most actual peanut butters on the market. The Milk Truffle White Truffle is a real duality. The milk truffle has an artificial taste, but I rather like the white truffle. It has a very small flavor of your average white chocolate to set against the milk chocolate shell.
The Raspberry Peanut Butter is the winning peanut butter and jelly combination, but in this case you end up with three elements of sweet put together, including the milk chocolate. The raspberry is a sweet, liquidy jelly tasting more of sugar than raspberry. Not my thing, and again, rather like the average jelly out in stores. The Raspberry White Truffle has the same problem — sweet without a very compelling element.
My opinion is that these are completely average chocolates and that there are better ones on the market. I would personally rather spend about the same amount on some Ghirardelli squares. That said, when I thrust a handful of Duets at my brother, saying, “Try one so you can tell me what you think,” he thought it was great. And when I started absentmindedly eating another, I enjoyed it. They’re good to eat, and it stops there.
It seems the folks at Mars UK have a bit of a thing for Galaxy at the moment. Not only have we just seen the relaunch of that 70s classic Galaxy Counters, but now it seems they want to steal some of Cadbury and Nestlé’s thunder by putting air bubbles into their chocolate.
Not exactly original perhaps, but I thought it would be interesting to see how it compared to the other bubbly chocolates on the market, not to mention the ever-growing line of Galaxy branded chocolate.
As is often the case with Galaxy, one of the most noticeable features is the shape of the bar itself. So here we have yet another curvy design, that does look rather tempting when combined with the glossy – if rather pale – milk chocolate.
I say ‘milk chocolate’, but obviously like the rest of the Galaxy range, this has some of the cocoa butter replaced with cheap vegetable fat, and is only 25% cocoa solids. But still. At least it’s pretty to look at.
You do get a decent amount of air for your money too. As you can see, bubble size is quite large and closer to Nestlé’s Aero than Cadbury Wispa.
The texture is nice and light, but those bubbles have a real affect on the flavour as well. They seem to amplify the creaminess and sweetness of this already sweet and creamy chocolate. That’s probably exactly what the average Galaxy lover wants, but for me it’s just far too sweet and tastes more like sugary milk than it does chocolate.
As with the rest of the Galaxy range, if that sweet, milkiness appeals to you, then I’m sure you’ll love this, but it’s not something I’ll be buying again.
These little 20g bars were part of my haul from the Rococo stand at the Southbank Chocolate Festival last month. Rococo do a range of these little ‘Bee Bars’ in both milk and dark chocolate varieties, but I thought I’d start with these dark chocolates flavoured with rose and jasmine essential oils. There is also a violet bar in the in this range, but I wasn’t able to get hold of one of those. Maybe next time.
The packaging is, as you would expect from Rococo, very pretty, with flower designs printed on thick, rough paper. The inside of the wrapper has feintly printed rococo designs, as well as more detailed information on the chocolate itself. Oh – and a voucher. Collect 8 of them and they’ll send you a free bar!
I thought it would be particularly interesting to compare these two bars for the simple reason that rose is one of my favourite chocolate flavourings, while jasmine is one of my least favourite. I wanted to know if the rose would live up to my high expectations, and if the jasmine could finally change my mind.
Both chocolates are 65% cocoa solids and have a nice, minimal ingredients list. The rose bar is flavoured with natural rose essence and natural vanilla, so as you’d expect, the taste is evocative of Turkish Delight. The flavours are soft and subtle, never overpowering the chocolate. The chocolate being relatively sweet itself makes this the kind of chocolate that it’s all to easy to lose yourself in.
Now the jasmine. This has always been something that has ben a little too flowery for my tastes and often ends up reminding me of scented soap. The Rococo bar is made with jasmine tea as well as essential oil, so the most noticeable difference between this and the rose bar is that it has bits in it.
The aroma is nice and subtle, and the flavour starts in a similar way, with nice honey-like notes complementing the chocolate. But as the chocolate melts, I’m left with the unescapable fact that I just don’t like jasmine. It’s much more subtle than Matcha Chocolat’s Jasmine Tea, but it’s still not for me. I’m quite sure that this is just down to my own personal tastes though. This is a well made, quality bar of chocolate.
I’m really looking forward to trying the violet bar, and the beauty of these smaller format bee bars is that you can just pick up a selection and decide what you like before moving on to the bigger bars. Give them a go.
More from the Galler stable, this time in the shape of a more orthodox selection of milk chocolate pralines. Inside the long, thin tin you’ll find these.
Perhaps it has something to do with the order in which I came to Galler products, but I did find it hard to get excited about these in the way that I had with the Kaori set (still a recommendation to anyone looking for a gift) and Les Elémentaires. I think I came to associate Galler with slightly unusual, exciting and vibrant flavours, none of which one would find in a praline, and that’s a little unfair on these pralines.
These aren’t the cheapest pralines available, but neither are they the most expensive. Put alongside Galler’s more unusual creations, this sort of thing seems a little run-of-the-mill at first, but then you remember that these are the Belgian classics, and Galler make pretty good pralines and truffles. Personally, if I was shopping for Galler chocolate I’d be headed straight for the more unusual items, but if you’re merely looking for a small, attractively presented tube of delicious, unchallenging pralines, these will do the trick admirably. Were I to have to choose between Galler’s truffles and their pralines, I’d have the truffles, but not everyone prefers silky smooth over vibrantly nutty.
‘These’ are 30% cocoa milk chocolate hazelnut pralines. They’re made with powdered full cream milk, so the chocolate really does have a milky kick to it, and the praline filling is nutty, rich and done as well as you would expect from a leading Belgian chocolate maker. The shells are quite thick, and the filling seems to start to crumble as you find it due to the amount of hazelnut in there.The chocolate is smooth, silky with a good flavour (augmented by the milk powder) and a clean finish. The nuts in the praline have a full flavour and balance perfectly with the chocolate.
As with all Galler products, these are available online at Galler’s website but I’d save up a bit and treat yourself to something a little more unusual.
