As I was passing through my local Foodland the other day, these caught my eye. Partly because I saw my own name (admittedly, with the alternate spelling, but nevertheless) – and partly because of the magic words: “Turkish Delight”.
I haven’t heard of Ashley’s chocolates before. Checking the pack shows an ingredients list in 9 languages – and it turns out that the manufacturer is in Birmingham. It seems reasonable, then, to assume these are going to be available in about ¾ of the whole wide world. Which, as we’ll see in a moment, is a shame. I also did some searching to try and locate the manufacturer, and this turns out to be pretty much an impossible task – all we have to go on is Birmingham, and a UK postal code. No web site, and Mr Google turns out to be of no assistance at all. Nor does the UK White Pages. Curioser and curioser.
Anyhow – beyond the sleuthing, I was itching to try these and see if they are as good as some of the other TD’s I’ve sampled before. Or perhaps, just see how they compare to a Fry’s (Cadbury).
Cutting and removing the cellophane from the box had me off to a good start – a big strong whiff of rosewater. MMmmmmmm! This should be OK then. How wrong I was.
On the inside, we find a very pale chocolate. I suppose I should have read the back of the pack, had I done so I may well have left these on the shelf: sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, glucose syrup, whey powder, water, cocoa powder… somewhere in there is flavour. OH. DEAR. The chocolate, as you can see from the picture above, has a slightly spotty, gritty appearance – as though there are tiny white specs in it. Weird. And it is compounded using cocoa powder. Not chocolate at all then. The “flavour” is unspecified, so is the cocoa percentage.
These smelled sweet. And taste of nothing much apart from sweet. That big fat whiff of rosewater – I think that was the flavour escaping, and once gone there was none left. Oldest son does not like Turkish Delight – on the grounds there is no flavour I got him to try one of these. His verdict: Meh. The Lady of the House says: Way too sweet. No flavour.
The pack claims “serving per pack: 4” in the nutrition panel. How anyone could eat more than one of these is beyond me. Way too sweet. Low quality chocolate. No flavour. Yuk.
Now I see why the manufacturer can’t be located. These are not good. I don’t think we will be able to eat the rest. If you come across these and you like sweet and bland – buy a shopping trolley full. Otherwise, don’t bother.
This was the little box I was presented with after having challenged Paul Wayne Gregory to pick his favourites from the selection on offer at The London Chocolate Festival. He also gave me a lollipop, but that’s a different story.
As far as I remember, his choices were (from left to right) hint of liquorice, caramel and passion fruit – but I don’t have a menu to hand and I do have a terrible memory!
The chocolates all look beautiful. All dark with a glossy finish, and each with a single strip of a slightly different colour and orientation, indicating the flavour.
Hint of Liquorice
Biting into this, and I’m suddenly not so sure it’s the liquorice one. The smooth and soft centre initially tastes more like rum, with a slightly alcoholic flavour, but as that fades, a sweeter, slightly peppery flavour comes in. In summary, I’m still not sure exactly what’s in this one, but it’s very nice!
Caramel
This was a surprise. A caramel that doesn’t come with added sea salt! A rare find in this day an age, but a welcome one. The consistency and texture of the caramel here is much more like you’d find in something like Cadbury’s Caramel than one of Paul A. Young’s salted caramels.
It’s smooth and glossy on the tongue, but of course tastes vastly superior to anything mass produced. The flavour is buttery and not too sweet, and you really do get to taste the wonderful smoky caramel flavours. The sweetness complements the rich dark chocolate perfectly.
I love salted caramels, but this is something different. It’s just as sophisticated, yet manages to bring back the memories of all the caramels I ate as a child too.
Passion Fruit
Dark chocolate with a sweet and light passionfruit filling. The combination of flavours works exceptionally well, with first the sweet fruitiness appearing, followed quickly by the tangy citrus flavours and finally the rich, slightly bitter cocoa flavours. A refreshing and uplifting little chocolate that leaves me wanting to go back and buy more. I think this is my favourite of the bunch.
Overall, a great selection of beautiful and delicious chocolates. They set me back £1 each, so they’re not at all cheap. But then I did get a free lollipop too.
I hope I haven’t taken long enough getting to this bag that the “New” sticker is wholly meaningless; I promise they were new (to the U.S., that is) when I bought them. And the best before date is still for two more months; the chocolates themselves show no signs of staleness. So pretend that they just appeared on store shelves this week.
This bag has a disappointing look to it: plain and boring, nothing draws me to it except that it’s Lindt so it might be worth trying. I went for the assortment to try all the flavors at once. They are: hazelnut praline, cappuccino, and caramel. All are milk chocolate, which is good for me since I realize it’s Lindt’s milk, not dark, chocolate that I like. In contrast with the bag, the coloring on the individual chocolates I do like — still simple, but more appealing.
The hazelnut praline is dressed in blue. The chocolate wears stripes of darker chocolate, with crisped rice showing from underneath. The rice I felt disturbing to the smoothness at first, but these aren’t Lindor truffles. As your mindset switches over, the crunching, coupled with the taste of hazelnut, tricks you into thinking that’s hazelnut instead of crisped rice (there are actually a couple hazelnut bits, but nothing much). The rest of it is smoooth, milky — so I like it because I like hazelnut.
Donning a cream wrapper is the cappuccino. Nice and fresh coffee smell; the cappuccino taste has a strong impact without being overly strong itself. Not so milky, overall, as the hazlenut. Again, I like it because I like coffee in chocolate. Last is the caramel, in golden orange. The caramel is quite nice: it has sugar and vanilla tastes that don’t scream out artificial. This is possibly the best of the three just because it’s carried out nicer than the usual specimen of this flavor.
So they’re nice, but that’s all. I feel the same way about Lindors, except when one is in my mouth and I submit to its smoothness. The Fioretto collection doesn’t act the same way — they stay at the level of okay.
Yet another from the (seemingly endless) range of Thornton’s slabs (are they trying to outdo Nestlé’s Japanese KitKat range?) this slab comes with added health benefits in the form of ‘Acticoa‘ – apparently two squares a day is enough to ‘help you feel great’. I’ve tasted Acticoa before when I reviewed Cocoa Farm’s bars, but this slab is slightly different in that it contains wild blueberry and raspberry.
At 63% cocoa it’s definitely dark, and the smell of the fruit hits you as soon as you open the wrapper. A bitter undertone of cocoa quickly softens off as the chocolate melts and the fragments of dried fruit come into play. The sharpness of the cocoa is well balanced by the slightly sweet berries, making for a rather pleasantly fruity affair. The chocolate isn’t too dark and bitter but does pack enough of a cocoa punch to satisfy those who prefer the dark stuff, and the fruit serves to cut the cocoa a little and provide a sweet balance.
Personally, I quite like the taste of berries and chocolate, and the combination of blueberries with raspberries means that neither flavour dominates, so it isn’t just a variation on raspberry chocolate, or a version of blueberry chocolate with added raspberry. The two flavours do work as a combination in their own right.
All things considered, I’d have to say that this is probably one of my favourite dark chocolate slabs from Thornton’s range. Flavour wise it’s less subtle than some of the prize-winning slabs we’ve reviewed, but if you’re a fan of fruity chocolate I’d definitely give this one a try.
