Before
As readers will no doubt be aware, Cadbury in Australia have taken a lot of flak for changing the formulation of their chocolate – specifically adding the dreaded “Vegetable Fat” – which turned out to be Palm Oil. At the same time, the package sizes were reduced, and the block squares shapes were changed. The reaction from consumers was swift, with condemnation all around.
Cadbury have backed down, and are reverting to the original recipe. Whether they change the block shape and packaging remains to be seen. All the fuss, though, has been about the Dairy Milk range. But, horrors, there was little said about the Old Gold dark range.
My local supermarket just happened to have stock of the old and new recipe – the old stock being sold at reduced prices to clear it from the shelves. At the same time as changing the recipe, packaging, and so on they also changed the dark range around so that buying a like-for-like comparison was quite difficult.
Anyhow, I was eventually able to find what seems to be the closest possible before and after pairing – two samples of “Old Gold Dark Chocolate Original” with intensity 3. Now seeing as the formula was changed, they can’t both be “Original”, can they?
After
Obvious differences:
- The before is in the paper wrapper; the after is in a cardboard pack;
- The before is 220g; the after is 200g;
- The before has 45% cocoa solids; the after has 40%;
- The before has no dreaded vegetable fat; the after does – and the amount is not specified but it does rank 3rd on the ingredients list.
So, the change gives less cocoa – down to a mere 40%. That barely rates as a dark chocolate at all. The change is also supposed to improve the “mouth feel”.
In breaking a row off both, I really can’t tell any difference by the feel. They are both nice solid blocks which break with a pleasing snap. The mouth feel for both is much the same – in that they both melt away quite slowly to release their flavour. The bite, and the melt are much the same.
The only difference is in the taste: they are both fairly rich, satisfying, and quite sweet. The only difference I can pick is that the new version has a slight but noticeable harshness. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but the version without the vegetable fat is smoother, does not have the harshness, and is more enjoyable.
Interestingly, after I opened both, Oldest Son devoured most of the “after” block before I could write this review. He prefers it, he can pick that the “before” block has more cocoa. But he also agrees about the slight harshness in the taste of the “after”.
Because there was little comment from Cadbury about what they are going to do about the Old Gold range, I asked. The Fat Is Out! It seems that the new old recipe is now in production again, and will be finding its way through the warehouses and into our shops soon. So no Palm Oil in our Old Gold, either. A good outcome, that.
Chocablog continues to have it’s finger on the pulse with a review of Thorntons’ new Metropolitan Box, launched today.
After Dom’s lukewarm review of the Milan and Paris boxes, I approached these chocolates with a little trepidation. Opening the box and seeing “Shhh! Listen carefully you might hear the chocolates gossiping.” emblazoned on the inner cover didn’t do anything for my confidence. (Who on earth came up with that? They should be drowned in a vat of Hershey’s.)
I was, however, pleased to see that Keith Hurdman had managed to introduce a version of the Quince chocolate we’d had a taste of six months ago. Renamed ‘Q Couture‘ and given a fancy pattern on one side, it had a lovely subtle citrus smell to it, and in the mouth the gentle fruit tang of the Quince came flooding through as the shell gave way and allowed the quince ganache free to spread fruitiness over the palate. I liked it six months ago and I still like it now.
Vanilla Heights (the marketing people have had a field day with this collection) was a more subtle affair. Milk chocolate and vanilla, cosying up together in another soft ganache. Not overly sweet, with good balanced flavours, I’m pretty sure this will be popular.
Cloudberry Hill almost had me going all Fats Domino, but I’m not sure I’d go as far as saying it was a thrill. It’s certainly a good companion to the Quince chocolate, fairly delicate in flavour (so as to allow the milk chocolate to make itself known) and with a good clean finish. Another thumbs up.
The Praline Pizza reunited me with crisp feulletine combined with a hazelnut praline. I really liked the textures in this one, and the praline had plenty of rich hazelnut notes to add to proceedings.
In a similar vein to other chocolatiers Keith Hurdman has devised an orange blossom chocolate, pairing the fruity flavour with dark chocolate ganache wrapped in milk chocolate. It’s quite sweet, and delivers good authentic light tangy orange flavours which work well with the chocolate. It’s another ‘safe’ combination, but one which many people will reach for.
The last of the flavoured chocolates sees Thorntons offer us their own version of what is fast becoming a ‘must-have’ flavour. I’m talking salted caramel here, and with the likes of William Curley, Paul Young and Lauden producing quite frankly stunning salted caramels, I was interested to see how a Thorntons version would come out. The upper shell is quite thin, and very quickly disappears in a burst of caramel, and yes, there is sea salt there. It’s not the saltiest salty caramel in town, but I’m keeping Thorntons regular customers in the back of my mind, and I think after an initial hesitance most of them will find themselves enjoying this version.
The final two chocolates are named Midnight Melt and Manhattan Melt (maybe “Midday Melt” didn’t quite have that ‘ring’) and are solid pieces of the two types of chocolate used in this collection. The dark chocolate version has good, bright citrussy topnotes coupled with a lively cocoa flavour, while the milk version (described as ‘exquisite with a crisp fruitiness’) is a 40% cocoa chocolate which will (hopefully) go some way to turning people away from inferior High Street chocolate products.
With milk chocolate from Ecuador and dark chocolate from the Dominican Republic, the chocolate itself wasn’t in question. What I wanted to know was whether or not Thornton’s were going to be challenging their customers with new and interesting flavours, and it would seem that times are indeed changing. Thorntons are never going to bring out a box of chocolates crammed full of wacky, adventurous and weird flavours – why would they want to alienate their customers? – but they’ve managed to push open the door of possibilities with this collection, and what’s more, I think it’s got the potential to sell rather well.
Just stop anthropomorphising chocolate, please?
TCHO first came to my attention when Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing mailed us to share their series of videos shot at the TCHO factory in California last year. You can see those videos here, here and here. If you haven’t seen them, I thoroughly recommend taking the time to do so – they’re a great insight not just into TCHO, but the artisan chocolate industry as a whole.
Having not heard about them for a while, I was surprised to find out that our friend Paul A. Young has done an exclusive deal to import TCHO into the UK. They were showing them off at the recent Chocolate Unwrapped event, and I took the opportunity to steal a few bars from Paul’s stand while he wasn’t looking…
As you can see, the bars are square, similar to the Thorntons blocks, but at 60g, these are a little smaller. The packaging is simple but rather beautiful, with spiragraph style patterns on the cardboard box which opens out to reveal the bar enclosed in gold paper. Very stylish.
Rather than adding flavourings to their chocolate, TCHO use a ‘colour wheel’ to describe the natural flavours the chocolate has. In addition ‘Nutty’ bar, there are also ‘chocolatey’, ‘citrus’, ‘fruity’, ‘floral’, and ‘earthy’. All adjectives you’ll find used to describe any good quality dark chocolate. TCHO deliberately don’t talk too much about origin or percentage (although this is a 65% cocoa solids bar). They see the flavour – the finished product – as being more important.
Despite the name of this bar, nuts aren’t the predominant flavour. It’s quite intense, and the main flavour I picked up on was like a black coffee. As the chocolate melts, it becomes sweeter and fruiter, then fades back to a slightly more bitter, earthier taste which is left with you after the chocolate has gone – something I wasn’t particularly keen on myself.
The texture of the chocolate is very appealing. It’s a thin bar and breaks with a satisfying snap, but starts to melt the instant it hits your mouth. You don’t need much, but it’s really quite moreish.
I also have the ‘chocolatey’ variety in my stash, so I’m going to save some of this to do a more direct comparison when I review that bar.
If you’re in the US, you can buy this from TCHO’s online store. If you’re in the UK, you’ll have to pop round to one of Paul A. Young’s shops to pick it up.
Which translates as ‘mountain of mushrooms’, so no prizes for guessing that inside the box were numerous chocolate and something (biscuit? Cake?) mushrooms.
Upon opening the box I discover that there’s an inner foil bag to keep the contents fresh. From the looks of the lid inner I might have some sort of code to enter on a website with the possibility of a prize. Somehow I doubt UK residents are eligible, and I can’t read Kanji, so let’s get to the important part.
Now I know I have a reputation as a bit of a chocolate snob, King of the ark Side etc. but these little mushrooms had me smiling as soon as I saw them. They’re made up of a very plain biscuit (think Iced Gems) capped with a mushroom shaped piece of milk chocolate. I have no idea about the cocoa content of the chocolate, but it’s very middle of the road. Not posh at all.
As a snack/nibble/TV watching treat they’re perfect. Biscuit and chocolate – crunchy and sweet, pop ’em in your mouth and munch away. The obvious attraction here is the novelty shape. We don’t have anything like this in the UK, so from outer packaging to contents they’re different, unusual.
From a serious chocolate tasting point of view, they’re bog standard milk chocolate combined with biscuit. Nothing unusual there. However, presentation is half of the battle, and they win points for novelty value, but I wouldn’t buy them as a gastronomic treat.
