Guest Chocablogger Michael Edwards is back with more Canadian goodies…
Rogers Chocolates have been a mainstay in Western Canada since 1885. Based in Victoria, British Columbia, they make a more time-honoured range of chocolates including their signature Victoria Creams, a box of which I was hooked up with by their marketing coordinator Natasha.
Everything about the Victoria Creams screams tradition. From the classic red box to the individually wrapped chocolates nestled in the shredded paper inside, it is easy to believe that nothing has changed about them in more than 100 years. And that’s one of those warm, fuzzy feelings that some things are just fine the way they are.
The most obvious thing when opening the box is the size of these. These chocolates are enormous, with each one weighing in at an impressive 45 grams and measuring about 5 cm long; these are not one bite chocolates. If there was some kind of Ultimate Fighting Championship for chocolates, these would be more than able to take care of themselves – you get the idea. They’re big.
There’s a wonderful thick dark chocolate shell around every cream centre that adds some snap. The bittersweet chocolate is apparently 63% which is a good thing because it really helps to offset the sweetness of the insides. And the creams are just the way they should be – nice and smooth, with plenty of flavour. They are 16 different flavours available on a regular basis, plus a few seasonal ones like Cranberry and Eggnog. In this particular one pound box, there was Strawberry, Raspberry, Orange, Maraschino Cherry, Peppermint, Vanilla, Coffee, Chocolate, Maple and Caramel.
The absolute pick of the bunch is the Peppermint which is a beautiful balance between the sharpness of the mint and the slowly emerging sweetness of the chocolate. Very yummy. The fruit flavours are more subtle than expected, probably because of the natural flavourings that don’t overpower. My least favourite was the Maple which was just too much because of the maplely sweetness – one little bite and I was done. I did keep returning though until it was gone; persistence is always a good idea.
The biggest problem, if you can call it that, is that most people could probably only manage one or two of these in one sitting because while they are definitely not unbearably sweet, they do provide a good old-fashioned sugar rush. That’s probably while they are still around after all this time.
And I’m back with yet another Reese’s offering, this time it’s “milk chocolate, peanut butter, crispy peanut butter candy and peanuts.” It sounded something like a Butterfinger, so I decided to do a side-by-side comparison.
Butterfingers usually aren’t my favorite choice – I don’t notice them much before they’re in my hands. Once there, though, I’ve always found them curious. A mess of crumbly, crunchy orange sugar (oh, it’s supposed to be “peanut-buttery?”) in milk chocolate. It does have a vague peanut taste, if you’re looking for it. It’s really the texture that I find entertaining: crumbly and flaky, all sticking to your teeth. The little bit you can taste of Nestle’s milk chocolate isn’t bad, either. A Butterfinger is basically all sugar and texture indulgence; it’s for when you want something that’s complete junk food.
The Reese’s bar is different. The peanut-encrusted milk chocolate surrounding its own crumbly inside has that unique Reese’s peanut and salt smell. There’s more chocolate in this one, as well as more flavors in general. It also seems more buttery, despite the other’s name. While not giving a real fresh peanut butter taste, it is a more real one, what with all the peanut pieces. It obviously, then, keeps up in the texture department. I’m calling this one a snacking candy.
So I find that Nestle and Hershey have a very different approach for each of these. They’re not very comparable; the one unique common factor is the filing, yet the Reese’s has a more delicate and smaller inside than the harder and more prominent Butterfinger one. I’m calling the Reese’s Crispy Crunchy (surely they could’ve come up with a better name?) the better of the two, though that doesn’t mean I’m giving up a lifelong acceptance, however mild, of Butterfinger. It’s just that that one’s sugar and nothing more.
I’ve been eating Gü products of one sort or another for a while, but for some reason it hasn’t occurred to me to write anything about them until now. Dom wasn’t too pleased with his Gü chocolate experience, but I’ve only ever eaten their mousses and desserts, until now.
These new ‘Naughties’ come in a variety of flavours, but I picked out the Rocky Road tub as my first. The ‘Naughties’ branding had me thinking about the Filthy Food Company and their fresh cream bites (currently languishing in the ‘where are they now?’ archive, products no longer on sale in Sainsbury’s, website abandoned). Luckily for Gü there isn’t the ridiculous ‘ooh Matron’ style innuendo and sauciness that accompanied the Filthy products (although I’m not sure I’d want to ‘Get naughty on the road’ – isn’t that encouraging careless driving?).
So what do we get in the tub? Sixteen chunky little Rocky Road bites formed from caramel, cherries, raisins. marshmallows and biscuits, wrapped in a 36% cocoa milk chocolate. The chocolate coating is fairly generous, but with all of that caramel and marshmalllow in there these were always going to be very sweet, and sure enough they have a whopping sugar content. The structure of the Rocky Road bites is quite remarkable. They obviously survive shipping and being carried home just fine, but as soon as you bite into one it’s all over as they start to break up. Quite a feat to produce something that’s so structurally sound up until you bite into it.
There’s definitely chocolate there, and when you catch a taste of it it is quite rich, smooth and verging on the darker side of milk, but with all of the other sugary, sticky, fruity stuff that’s been crammed into each piece these are not for people who wish to enjoy the flavours of good chocolate. I found myself agreeing with Dom’s assessment of the Caramel chocolates – way too much sugar which just seems to obliterate a lot of potentially interesting flavour combinations. However, as a sweet office treat in the afternoon (with a cup of tea at around 4pm to provide a sugar rush and defeat the mid-afternoon slump perhaps?) or something to nibble in front of the telly, these probably fit the bill rather well. I’m sure the majority of kids would really go for these as well, so rather than getting ‘naughty’ on the road these might well serve to pacify child passengers – at least until the sugar rush hits them and they have to be strapped in tightly!
Too sweet for my tastes if I’m honest, but the ever-expanding range of Gü desserts does seem to have something for everyone, and I shall certainly be looking more closely at more of their products in the near fütüre.
It’s been a while since I reviewed any Greek chocolate, so I thought I’d delve into my chocolate stash and find one of the bars sent to us by reader George Loumakis.
According to George, this bar is “an absolute classic in Greece, arguably the most popular chocolate bar here and has been around since the 1950’s totally unchanged”.
So is it any good, or is it just something that’s popular because it’s always been around?
As you can see, it’s a fairly ordinary looking block. It doesn’t look particularly classy – even the typeface the chunks are embossed with looks a little cheap.
The 28% milk chocolate is very sweet and not particularly great. There’s no nasty vegetable oils in it, but I detected a slightly artificial flavour to it. But something interesting happens when you bite into one of the small almond chunks – they suddenly release their flavour and when combined with the chocolate, the overall taste becomes similar to that of a Snickers bar. Sweet, nutty, chocolatey and really quite moreish.
There’s really nothing special about it, but then there’s nothing special about the KitKats, Mars Bars and Bountys of this world either, but they sell in their millions. And I think that’s why this bar succeeds. It’s a cheap, tasty snack. It’s certainly not a gourmet product and I wouldn’t buy it now – but I don’t think I would have complained to find a bar in my lunch box as a kid either.
