Way back when, the Kath-that’s-moved-on reviewed the South Aussie classic – the Fruchoc. Go read the review.
There, now, doesn’t that make you feel better? Want one? Difficult because although Mr Robern Menz makes about 67 million of these things each year, but they are not sold all that far and wide. Desperate expats resort to things like relatives to send surreptitious parcels of them around the world.
I’ve been known to make myself sick on Fruchocs, although it’s not the chocolate that causes the trouble, and it does require scoffing down about a whole bagful in a sitting. No, that yummy peach and apricot centre does all the damage. What kind of damage is left to your imagination. Mind you – I used to work with a chap who would go buy a bag from the local vending machine and eat the lot in about 7.3 seconds. Now HE had the constitution of an ox. But I digress.
How, how, could the humble Fruchoc be improved? An impossible task? A herculean effort? Perhaps infuse it with the finest nectar from the rarest flowers, perhaps a shimmer of gold leaf as a coating?
Nah. Use Dark Chocolate.
These little babies are quite a bit harder to find than the regular Fruchoc. The chocolate is 50% cocoa, and in spite of being packed in a plain plastic bag hung off the supermarket shelf, they have been glazed with 904 – whatever that is – which keeps them from having the white marks of chocolate that gets a bit knocked around. So they come out nice and shiny. The chocolate is sweet, but not excessively so, simple, slow melting. And the apricot/peach centre is the same sweet dried-fruit soft-chewy texture that all Fruchocs have.
Stick a pack of these in front of family while they are watching “Inspector Morse” and they are all gone in a flash.
Bliss!
I’m always a bit wary of health claims attached to chocolate. We all know that dark chocolate is good for you. I don’t need to have it metaphorically (or even physically) shoved down my throat.
This box – found in Tesco – caught my eye because it epitomises everything I dislike about this kind of marketing. The box is plastered with logos and health claims to a point where the packaging just looks cheap and tacky.
What we actually have here is cranberries, flavoured with orange juice and covered in 63% “Acticoa” dark chocolate.
Acticoa is a product of Barry Callebaut (the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer), which is specifically formulated to have higher levels of anti-oxidants. Annoyingly, the Acticoa web site itself makes yet more dubious health claims, including “keeps you young and fit” and “protects the brain”. Seriously.
Marketing hype aside, what’s more important is how they taste. Thankfully, the answer is “pretty good”.
The chocolate itself is a little bitter, and covered unnecessarily in shellac (that’s squashed beetles to you). Personally I’d rather have seen these with a matte finish or dusted in cocoa powder, but I’m sure Hadleigh Maid had their reasons for going down this route.
Once you bite into the chocolate, that initial bitterness is immediately counteracted by a sweet, tangy fruitiness that is really rather nice. The flavour is more orange than cranberry, but it’s a natural orange flavour, like fresh orange juice. The cranberries have a wonderful texture. They’re soft, light and chewy, and the overall effect is a little like a fruity, chocolate covered jelly baby. They’re really moreish. I ended up having to hide the box in the back of the cupboard to stop me eating them in one sitting.
To sum up, I’d like to see Hadleigh Maid tone down the health claims and design a prettier box, because they’re a really tasty little snack, and I’d recommend them on that basis alone.
Guest Chocablogger Michael Edwards from Canda takes a look at something local…
Laura Secord is a Canadian chain of chocolate stores along the lines of Thorntons that has never been my first destination when I needed a chocolate fix. My prior experience with them has been mixed, thanks to their sickly sweet Easter Eggs although their cheap and cheerful French Mint bars were always good in an emergency. But my main reason for not frequenting there was that their products were overpriced and just not very exciting.
These days, however, they seem to be reinventing themselves to capitalise on the current popularity of chocolate and that means adding a new range of chocolate bars including Toffee Crunch, the afore-mentioned French Mint and the mandatory 70% (although surprisingly available with and without cocoa nibs) and 85%. My local shop didn’t have any of the more exciting ones, so I decided to stick with the 70%, trying both versions.
The packaging is really rather dull and not very inspiring, something that did help to keep my expectations down, with just a slight difference in colour between the boxes for each bar. The hermetically sealed foil inner packaging also reinforced that “mass produced” level of anticipation that usually precedes disappointment.
But it turns out that I was being too harsh because this is actually a pleasant little bar of chocolate. Side by side, both bars looked the same until flipped over when the generous helping of nibs can be seen in one bar. The initial burst of darkness that hits your nose once the foil is opened has some lovely fruity undertones, and best of all it doesn’t smell too sweet like many of the more popular North American allegedly dark chocolate bars.
The taste doesn’t quite deliver on that early potential though. The flavour collapses far too quickly and while the chocolate melts away smoothly, there isn’t much left behind to remind you of what just happened. That’s why the bar with nibs gets the nod of the head – having a few crunchy mementos to bite away at really does help compensate.
All in all, not a bad attempt and good enough to make me want to go back in to try out the other bars when they finally show up in my local Laura Secord shop.
Guest Chocablogger Natasha Faria from South Africa looks at a local offering…
Beacon has never really been top of my list when trawling the chocolate aisle, but my lover brought this home for me because of this very blog. How can a girl say no? His reasoning was that it says along the bottom of the wrapper (precisely where the light makes print impossible to read) – “Now unlocking the mystique of the cocoa bean”. Sweet.
Which is exactly what this chocolate is. Achingly, headache-inducingly sweet. Not too surprising when sugar is the first ingredient on the list and cocoa is sixth. Upon slicing it open, it becomes clear that the picture on the wrapper is either an intoxicated artist’s representation of what chocolate should be, or it is photoshopped to create the impression of a rich, decadent chocolate simply bursting with yummy fillings.
The truth is a little different. The filling makes up very little of the chocolate and there are not even biscuits in every square. The chocolate shell is almost grainy, and the vegetable fats and vegetable oil tend to leave a slightly bitter taste in the back of one’s mouth. Bleh. The fact that milk solids are a significant ingredient doesn’t tend to help it too much. In fact, this makes me think of the Easter Bunnies we used to make at school to raise funds for whatever – in other words, cooking chocolate. It even has that reminiscent hint of peanut butter, which is probably just the vegetable oil talking. Honestly, I was looking forward to this as I though the filling was quite inventive.
Trying the filling on its own provided a pleasant surprise, however. The very scientifically named “biscuit bits” (according to the wrapper) are nice and crunchy, although calling them biscotti may be a bit optimistic. The caramel filling is more along the lines of a caramel flavoured cream, and together with the biscuits, it’s not bad at all.
I think it’s safe to conclude that, at R10.75 (compared to Cadbury’s ~R15), you’re getting what you pay for.
