Here’s another of Thorntons‘ (so far quite yummy!) range of bars. This time it’s “Milk chocolate finished with dark chocolate, with a crunchy peppermint truffle centre”. So let’s see what it’s like…
Well first impressions are good. Nothing too extraordinary, but a nice looking little bar of chocolate. But the real story here is the intense peppermint smell that hits you when you open the wrapper. If you’ve ever had a Kendal Mint Cake (which is basically just peppermint oil and sugar), you’ll know the kind of thing.
I was quite surprised when I cut the bar in half.. rather than the gooey white filling I was expecting, was a smooth milk chocolate truffle with lots of small, minty crystals.
The truffle is soft and smooth with a satisfying crunch from the crystals, but the overwhelming flavour is mint. Lots of mint. There’s a little bit of cream in there, but not much chocolate flavour.
That’s all fine if you like mint… and you’re in a minty mood on a particularly minty day. But I wasn’t feeling overly minty when I sat down to review this and consequently found it a little too much.
Make no mistake though, this is another quality product, and infinitely preferable to something like Nestlés After Eight Bar or Mint Aero. You just need to be in a very minty mood to get the most out of it.
After reading Simon’s Twix White review, I spotted this variety. Apparently, it’s been around here in the US for a while, but I’d never tried it.
The format is the same as a standard Twix, but with peanut butter instead of caramel and a chocolate biscuit instead of a white one. The peanut butter smell instantly reminds you of a Reese’s Cup, but there’s a difference. Reese’s tends to be on the greasy side, but the biscuit part here protects against that. It also adds an element of crunchiness, but I still find I prefer this new experience to Reese’s. It isn’t bad on its own, either, if the sugar doesn’t bother you.
There’s barely any chocolate taste hiding in there, though, but that’s okay since Twix doesn’t claim chocolate extremes. It’s only the addictive flavors and textures that carry this one through.
Here in the UK the Co-Op has always been at the forefront of the Fairtrade movement, and nowadays it sells more Fairtrade chocolate than all of the other supermarkets put together. For over five years the Co-Op has been working with cocoa farmers at the Kuaka Kapoo co-operative in Ghana, and this bar has been produced to celebrate that anniversary.
At 51% cocoa, it’s a little less ‘dark’ than one might imagine, but it still manages to deliver a satisfyingly rich cocoa flavour. The addition of cinnamon, ginger and cardomom (fairly traded, naturally) and a little orange oil means that almost as soon as it starts to melt, this bar delivers a very pleasing citrus and spice taste. One could almost describe it as ‘Christmassy’.
It’s not entirely dissimilar to Green & Black’s Maya Gold in both content and flavours, although I would suggest that this bar is a little softer in the mouth and has a little more orange taste than the G&B version. It’s also slightly lower in cocoa solids, and consequently a little milder. The Ghanain beans work very well with the mixture of citrus and spice, making this bar all too moreish.
If you have a Co-Op near you, it’s well worth checking out, primarily because it’s rather tasty, but also because when you buy this you know your money is going to the people who grew the beans, not to some huge multinational – and that can never be a bad thing, can it?
If you read my review of this bar’s sibling, Apricot Crumble Crunch, you’ll know I found it a little bland. A nice idea, but the fruit in particular lacked any real flavour.
My hopes for this bar were a little higher, primarily due to the fact that (a) I like cranberries and (b) they naturally have a stronger flavour than apricots. That said, some of the comments about this on the Apricot Crumble Crunch bar review weren’t exactly encouraging…
Once again, it looks just like a big bar of solid Dairy Milk from the outside. Not much to report here. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any real fruity aroma either.
Inside, the chinks of fruit are a little more noticeable than in the apricot bar, but I think that’s just down to the vivid red colour.
Of course, the important thing is the taste – and unforunately Cadbury seem to have gone and bought their cranberries the same place as their apricots. They have slightly more flavour, but not much – and not enough that I would have known I was eating cranberries unless the wrapper had told me. The granola is nice though. It has more crunch and more flavour than the crumble in the apricot bar. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it has more flavour than the fruit in either bar.
I’m not usually the kind of person who studies the ingredients list on chocolate in-depth, but I wanted to know exactly how much cranberry there was here. The wrapper states it has “Sweetened dried cranberries (11%)” which seems good, but then it lists the ingredients of the cranberries themselves “(Sugar, Cranberries, Rice Flour, Sunflower Oil)”.
I know cranberries require a bit of sweetening up, but according to that, sugar is the primary ingredient in these particular cranberries. Hmmm.
All in all, I did prefer this to the apricot bar and actually quite enjoyed it. But if I’m buying a fruity bar of chocolate, I’d like to be able to taste some fruit in it. I’m hoping Cadbury will come out with a “new improved” version of this at some point, because I like the idea – but the execution leaves something to be desired.
