Chocablogger Kath has been at it again. It’s bad enough that we can’t keep her off the radio, but it seems she’s now having trouble keeping out of the papers too!
Click the image to view full size or you can read the article on the paper’s web site. Oh, and if you’re interested, you can read Kath’s original Creme Egg Love Story too.
From French supermarket chain Carrefour and by way of Doha, Qatar, this 64% cocoa bar with pear and caramelised almonds caught my eye while I was over there last December. It’s rare to see pear chocolate, and certainly in bar form. This bar promised 10% pieces of dried pear (which had been made from pear puree with added pineapple fibre for some reason) and 6% almonds.
I picked this up because I don’t often see pear chocolate, and because I liked the sound of the caramelised nuts, but when I read the back of the packet I found that I was also in for some apple and pineapple fibre as well as the 35% pear puree and pieces of pear. I can only guess that the pineapple fibre was there to hold it all together.
It’s a little odd on the palate this one. I’d have expected the chocolate to start melting a little quicker than it did, but perhaps the fibrous extras and the fruit content make the process a little slower. What you do get is an almost immediate blast of pear flavour, then the chocolate starts to kick in alongside.
Once it gets going, the chocolate melts pretty quickly, and soon I found myself munching on a combination of pear and nut pieces, which were eminently palatable.
A very enjoyable bar, this one. Reminiscent of summer afternoons in England, which probably aren’t that much different from a winter’s day in Qatar after all!
I couldn’t tell you if Carrefour France sell this (you can just make out ‘Qatar Only’ stamped on the box) but if they do it’s one to keep an eye out for.
The first thing I need to tell you about these Rice Krispie Squares is what came in the box along with the free sample pack. Kellogg’s were kind enough to send me a press release written on edible paper, a chocolate-scented candle in a tin, a bag of marshmallows and… a chocolate fountain.
A chocolate fountain!
As an impartial reviewer, I feel it’s my duty to let Chocablog readers know about this kind of thing and that it won’t affect my review in any way. Oh no. Honest.
With that out of the way (have I mentioned how much I love Kellog’s lately?), let’s get stuck in!
These are a new take on the old Rice Krispie Squares that have been around for ages (and that kids have been making at home since the dawn of… er… Rice Krispies, probably). They’re exactly the same, except completely covered in a chocolate flavoured coating, with a few small chunks of milk chocolate thrown in for good measure.
Of course, this isn’t Lindt chocolate. It’s probably one of the least “refined” chocolate bars I’ve tasted in the three years I’ve been doing Chocablog. What they are is deliciously tasty and moreish.
The ‘chocolate flavour coating’ is very sticky and tacky. There is a very slight chemically taste to it, and once you’ve eaten it, it gets stuck in your teeth for about 14 weeks. It’s almost impossible to get any sense of the quality of the chocolate (and there is real chocolate in there somewhere), but frankly it doesn’t matter.
This is a snack rather than a ‘proper’ chocolate, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The kind of thing you buy with the intention of putting in the kids’ lunch boxes, but end up ‘accidentally’ eating yourself.
My only problem is that I managed to scoff mislay all four bars in half an hour and now I want MORE!
David Jones is perhaps the poshest of Australia’s department stores, with their food hall nearly as legendary as Harrods’. Brushing aside their specialist butcher, baker, cake selections, delicatessen, greens, sushi and salads are, naturally, their chocolates.
I’ll save their truffles for another less hot and melty day because this time DJs sleekly innocuous gold boxes grabbed my attention. Not because they’re particularly enticing, but because it seemed like a better way to take home chocolates packed snugly rather than rattling around in a paper bag rapidly getting squashed and drippy in my backpack.
The blurb on the back of box emphasises that the white chocolate contains 16% minimum cocoa solids; the milk chocolate has 29% and dear old dark has at least 59%. It was also nice to read that the box is made of break-downable, ‘earth-friendly materials’ and that even the plastic tray inside is made of vege matter that dissolve quickly. So quickly, in fact, that there were huge holes appearing within an hour of us opening up the box.
Look at them – aren’t they lovely with their coloured-chocolate paint
Predictably, my husband Love Chunks and daughter Sapphire chose the moment of opening to stubbornly hang around, insisting on trying their share. Batting them away I managed to try the mint first (the one with the green leaf) which was a pleasant truffle inside but could have been a bit stronger in order to cut through the chocolate. The strawberry chocolate was sensational and it was easy to taste the real fruit inside. The nut-nougat crème (the one with the white swirl) was also very, very nice.
Having had my first three selections as dark ones, the fourth was the milk chocolate coffee-walnut. This was also particularly good and made me note that it would be worth finding out if David Jones do this in dark chocolate as well.
Love Chunks gave top marks to the dark rum-n-raisin and the milk caramel (white top). The orange-topped one was a milk orange chocolate that didn’t seem to create an enormous amount of ecstasy but he was pretty impressed with the milk hazelnut. Sapphire loved the dark cherry which was like an upmarket version of Cadbury’s Cherry Ripe inside but she was so-so about the mini coconut rough. None of us knew why DJ’s had to include a boring plain white disc in the box when they have so many other flavours to choose from and Love Chunks could not even work out what flavour the rectangle milk-chocolate was supposed to be.
So, a bit of a mixed bag of different flavours – and success rates – to try, but we did find some some real winners in there (strawberry, rum-n-raisin, nougat and cherry) that we’d like to buy more of individually.