The lovely people at Thorntons sent me a couple more blocks (actually they sent me a press release and I kind of demanded they just send me chocolate instead) and this particular limited edition block caught my eye. My attraction to pink packaging is starting to become worrisome…
The dark chocolate here is the same 60% Dominican Republic chocolate found in Thorntons’ award winning Macadamia block, and it’s every bit as delicious. It’s rich, smooth and intense without being overpowering.
I actually prefer this block to he Macadamia version, but as I mentioned in my recent Hotel Chocolat slab review, that’s mainly down to me being more of a fruit person than a nut person.
As you can see, the underside of this block is studded with small pieces of freeze dried raspberry. Like the box, they are bright pink in colour and give each chunk a crispy texture when you bite into it.
The raspberry flavour is wonderfully intense, building as the pieces hydrate in your mouth. This isn’t one of those generic fruit flavours, it’s unmistakably raspberry and tangy almost to the point of fizziness as the pieces melt.
I guess the closest competition to this block would have to be Thorntons’ own Milk Chocolate with Strawberry, which I thoroughly enjoyed. For me though, this wins hands down. The combination of the intense dark chocolate and tangy fruit works much better.
According to the PR blurb from Thorntons, this will be available for a “limited time” (how long, I don’t know) so at £1.79 it’s definitely worth sampling if you happen to be passing your local Thorntons.
Since the rest of the Chocablog team seem to be in a cakey/biscuity mood, I thought I’d join in and review these tempting little morsels from our old friends Thorntons. When I picked them up there was an introductory offer going on, but I’m not sure how long this will last.
As you can plainly see, what we have here is another award winning Thorntons product, proving that the company is indeed making great strides in reinventing itself as a purveyor of quality goods.
So what of the brownies? Well, as you can see on the package, they’re a combinaton of cake, fudge and chocolate. Here’s what they look like out of the packet.
They’re small but perfectly formed. They LOOK moist and inviting, and the chocolate coating is both generous and of suitably high quality. These little brownie bites deliver everything you’d expect. I had my first lot with a good quality vanilla ice cream and they were excellent. There’s enough of everything to let you know what you’re eating, and the three principal flavours of chocolate sponge, fudge and milk chocolate are perfectly balanced.
Perspnally I feel mini brownies are a rotten tease. I’d prefer full sized ones please.
There are plenty of cereals out there with some thin connection to chocolate, but this one seemed like it might be worthy of a review since it has pieces of chocolate in it versus a miniscule trace of cocoa powder. It must be a new offering: I’ve never seen it before, though I’m a Trader Joe’s regular. I was actually already in search of something new and different when I saw it.
Compared with all the Cocoa Puffs/Pebbles/Crispies, this cereal is targeted at a more grown population. “Gourmet” speaks of indulgence in quality instead of in your inner child, and the, in my opinion random, mention of inulin fiber introduces health benefits usually not in the foreground of children’s cereals.
Once it’s poured out, it looks like there’s a little less chocolate than in the picture.
Tasting some on it’s own, it isn’t very good. It’s, frankly, quite the opposite. It’s dull and awkward; sugar is it’s first ingredient with butter fat soon following. It is meant as a mix, though, where it does succeed, and it is better than other offerings. It also turns out that there’s enough for every spoonful. I really wouldn’t want any more than that. The flakes are the thicker kind used in healthier cereals, full of nice crunches of grains. They keep the chocolate grounded enough that it isn’t really a sweet cereal. Chocolate is still a heavy food, so I certainly won’t be making this a staple cereal. It’s more for switching out to every so often for variety and another good way to get away with chocolate for breakfast.
Safeway supermarkets (aka Woolworths in Australian states other than Victoria) have introduced a brand of ‘fun sized’ chocolates in several varieties that are shameless copies of big sellers and are considerably cheaper than the similar-sized bags produced by Cadbury and Nestlé. At first glance, none of the names are appealing, but the one being scrutinised today is ‘Vault’.
At first I assumed that because they were fun-sized bars, ‘Vault’ meant that it would give you the energy to leap up high in the air and vault over your obstacles and so forth but it seems as though it is instead meant to be a treasure unleashed from a safe. Whatever.
As with most supermarket in-house brands, the real manufacturer is not revealed on the packaging except to say that Vault was made in Germany and packed for Woolworths Australia and Progressive Co New Zealand.
I’m sure the makers of Snickers won’t be pleased because they look and sound like an exact replica to me: ‘milk chocolate coated mini bar with a soft fluffy centre filled with caramel and roasted peanuts.’ And, when eaten they taste exactly the same as well. A generous covering of sweet, milk chocolate over the fluffy nougaty stuff, lots of crunchy peanut bits and gooey stretchy caramel. To be fair, I should have had a couple of fun-sized Snickers alongside for comparison but there was nothing jarringly different or inferior about these Vaults. On the plus side, they’re a lot cheaper than Snickers.
Ingredients panels can often leave a bad taste in my mouth and today’s was a tad depressing. Whilst it was good to see that nearly a quarter of the bar consisted of peanuts, it was bad to see cocoa butter languishing distantly behind the usual villains of sugar and glucose syrup (ie double sugar), condensed milk and vegetable oil. The chocolate itself is said to contain at least 27% cocoa solids and was quite acceptable in this; whether it’s edible on its own remains to be seen.
Fat wise, these little fun sized fellas still pack a punch – six grams in each, with 2.5 grams of those being saturated fat. That means if they ever put out a full sized bar at say, 60 grams, it would be packing roughly half your daily fat allowance of 18 grams and half your saturated fat content if cholesterol is a problem. Best stick with a mere single fun sized one then.
