Until recently I hadn’t been into an Ikea for quite some time, although apparently a trip to Ikea on a weekend is fast becoming a National Pastime. Well, whilst on a recent visit to source lighting, I had a nose around the food section and discovered that Ikea sell quite a range of biscuits, cakes, and confectionery and with next weekend being Valentine’s – as I’m sure the majority of our readers are aware – they’re selling these.
From the makers of Dime (now Daim) come these little milk chocolate praline hearts. Twenty in a box for around £3, and you can pick them up on the way out after you’ve bought a few boxes of self-assembly furniture or a new kitchen.
Being ‘factory’ chocolate, the outer shell is very similar to their other products.. It’s sweet, slightly creamy tasting but without too much in the way of complex or distinctive flavours. Pleasant enough but relying heavily on sugar and smooth texture rather than any cocoa richness. The filling is a hazelnut praline and it’s smooth, rich and thankfully doesn’t add any more sweetness. The thick chocolate shell sticks around for a while after the praline has melted away, reaching a sugary peak before easing off into light cocoa notes. It’s a shame really – the only time I really tasted the cocoa was at the end.
A quick look at the ingredients and I see that 55.5% of the product is carbohydrates, and I’m willing to bet that a good amount of that is sugars. I have no doubt that Ikea will shift truckloads of these; a lot of people like their chocolate like they like their tea. Milky and sweet.
Not one to go out of your way for, but if you’re there next Sunday and you forgot the card, you may get to redeem yourself slightly with these.
THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED
Easter is approaching, so we thought it was only fair we gave away more chocolate!
This time, we’ve got together with our friends at HandyCandy.co.uk to give away a Jumbo Chocablocka Hamper and a bunch of Easter Eggs with a total value of £35!
All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning all this chocolate is to subscribe to the email version of our feed and then tell use the form below to tell us why you should win!
That means not only could you win all that delicious chocolate, but you also get Chocablog delivered to your inbox every day without having to lift a finger.
Rules
- To enter, you must be subscribed to our email updates service and use the same email address in the entry form above. You can unsubscribe afterward if you like, but you must be on the list on the competition closing date for your entry to be counted.
- One entry per person only.
- Chocablog staff writers may not enter. You have enough chocolate already.
- The competition is open to UK residents only.
- The competition closes on Friday 3rd April 2009.
- The judges’ decision is final.
- Rules are subject to change without notice (if we’ve forgotten something because we’re a bit slow)
Remember my poor little sister? The one stuck in Germany without Coconut Rough?
She came through with her side of a bargain. It seems that in Germany, and no doubt through other parts of Europe as well, Lindt release seasonal specials. A regular at Christmas is Cinnamon and Coriander – or Zimt und Koriander if you’re German. My sister, being descended from a canny Scot, doesn’t buy any of the seasonal specials at Christmas – oh no, she waits until after Christmas when the stores are running the stock out and then buys up big when it’s going cheap.
So anyhow, she posted one over, along with a few other goodies that will be reviewed right here, soon. I’ve been remiss, I have a bunch of things waiting to send to her but it has been so hot for so long here that I was concerned it would all be ruined in the postal system. After hearing about this one I’ve been hanging out for 5 months to actually try it. So after it sat for a week or two, the moment could be postponed no longer.
The opening of the pack produced the first disappointment. The Australian heat has done a bit of damage. The insides are whitened and slightly crumbly, so the look is not good at all. Nevertheless, a little discolouration never hurt anybody! On trying it, the texture isn’t all that good either. Heat be damned!
The flavour… on the other hand! Wow! I’ve never had anything like this before, this is really something. The cocoa is a mere babe, at 47%, and it looks to my schoolboy German translation as though it has butter fat (from those things that go moo) as well as the cocoa butter. It’s incredibly rich, so a square is enough. But that’s fine, because the spices, and the richness go together really well. I can’t pick that the spices are Cinnamon and Coriander – neither dominate, instead it’s just a rich blend of powerful flavours.
I did an experiment, seeing as the texture is all crumbly from the heat during transit. I melted a square, easily done in a cup that’s placed in a bowl of boiling water – a trick I heard somewhere for rescuing chocolate that’s heat damaged. Very quickly, it had all melted and I could spoon it out to set again. A soup spoon seemed as good a thing as any to set it in.
As you can see, we now have a nice, medium-dark, glossy chocolate all restored to a suitable glory. The effort was worthwhile, because a taste-test after this recovery showed that the texture was soft, rich and very smooth. The flavour is also improved – so it’s pretty much as Mr Lindt intended.
I’d really like to see these appear in Australia, even if only for a little while in the middle of our winters. Much like they appear for a short time in the middle of a German winter, this would make a really nice treat for a cold night sitting around a warm fire. How about it, Mr Lindt? Please? Bitte?
This is one of a small box of samples sent to us by Handy Candy – a ‘retro’ online sweet shop who’ve revently started selling US imports.
As with most (all?) Cadbury products in America, it’s actually made by Hershey.
According to Wikipedia (which I’m not entirely sure I trust) this ‘format’ originated in Canada under the name ‘Caramilk’. But then the same Wikipedia article also says this is identical to Dairy Milk With Caramel, which it emphatically isn’t.
As you can see, the 45g bar is divided into 4 chunks and it looks a bit like a Dairy Milk block, when you bite into a chunk, you can tell it isn’t.
The first thing you notice is that it’s sweeter than Dairy Milk (yes, that really is possible) and a quick glance at the ingredients quickly reveals why.
Ingredients: Sugar, sugar, corn syrup, inverted sugar, lots more sugar.
Obviously I’m paraphrasing… but there is an awful lot of very sugary stuff listed.
The chocolate is also slightly greasy in texture. It’s edible, but it’s not like the Cadbury chocolate we get here in the UK (which is by no means perfect, but it is better than this).
The caramel looks similar to the Dairy Milk caramel and has the same consistency. As you can see it slowly flows out if you cut a chunk in half.
But again, the taste is very different. I didn’t pick up any real caramel flavours at all here. Instead it tastes more like a liquid marhsmallow that’s been melted over a fire. It’s got the same sweetness and a slightly smoky flavour at the end. But it’s not really caramel – it’s processed corn syrup.
But even having said all that, I ate the whole bar. It’s not something I could particularly recommend, but sometimes it’s interesting to see what’s being sold on the other side of the world… and thanks to the Internet, I don’t even have to leave my chair to do it.
