I have not enjoyed the past three Cadbury Desserts flavours I’ve tried – Lemon Cheesecake, Fudge Brownie or Boysenberry Shortcake but somehow the idea of Crème Brulee inside a thick coating of Dairy Milk was shouting out my name from the chocolate shelves as a possible source of comfort during a particularly powerful PMS-y week.
The first thing I noticed that whilst it was the same price as Cadbury’s standard 250g blocks it was only 235g – the classic ‘savings by stealth’ method used by a lot of food companies these days to hide cost increases. Turning over the wrapped showed me that if I was my usual piggy self and ate 100g of the stuff, then I’d be having at least 12% of my daily protein intake and 28% of my energy requirements. That might be handy to know….
The view of the filling did not look alluring – we couldn’t see any of the caramelised pieces depicted on the wrapper illustration and the cream filling looked kind of flat and depressed. Still, I’ve never been one to be put off by appearance and waded in bravely.
Maybe this is fourth time lucky for Cadbury Desserts range because they’ve got the crème brulee flavour spot on. This is a lovely, creamy mixture with tiny crunchy chips of caramel that crack as you chew through the soft stuff and are the last things to dissolve on your tongue. Being a crème brulee filling it is very sweet but thankfully doesn’t resemble a cheap condensed milky muck mix. Even Dark-devotees Sapphire (aged 8) and Love Chunks (40) loved it and we did actually eat it after our main meal, as a pseudo dessert with a cup of tea (me), wine (LC) and cold milk (S) in front of a DVD. The block disappeared within minutes, to the great disappointment of all three of us.
Chillingly, the ingredients list does a sterling job of putting me off trying to buy and inhale another block straight away. It consists of 52.6% sugar and 34.9% fat, so there’s only a measly 12.5% left for other hopefully more healthy ingredients. The filling mix wasn’t a turn on – vegetable oil, milk solids, wheat glucose syrup, emulsifiers, flavours and colours and yet grudgingly, I must admit that it tasted pretty damn good.
The fact is we all wanted more and will certainly be seeking out this block again. Perhaps to be eaten whilst simultaneously running on a treadmill.
I had hoped to visit a chocolate shop while I was in Slovenia but the May Day bank holidays put paid to that idea as most of Ljubljana was closed on the day we were there. I had to settle for one of a range of bars on offer at a less specialized shop, and so I plumped for this milk chocolate and crunchy caramel combination.
The chocolate is made with 30% milk solids and is fairly sweet in itself. It also has a slightly musty background taste to it – poor storage or shipping conditions perhaps?
Tiny fragments of caramel are scattered liberally through the bar and have lent their flavour to the chocolate, as well as providing a more direct flavour when you’re finishing off the last few that haven’t disappeared with the chocolate. The caramel has a good, strong burnt sugar flavour to it.
All in all, a fairly pleasant if unremarkable bar. Having said that, I’m not sure I can think of a UK equivalent caramel chips and chocolate bar. This seemed to be a fairly generic Slovenian choc bar, so I’m guessing that like the majority of Europe they’re used to a wider selection of more adventurously flavoured confectionery.
Obviously it’s not worth going all the way to Slovenia to try this, but if you happen to find yourself in that vicinity at least you know that there’s reasonable chocolate to be had.
Here we have another South African offering. According to the wrapper, it’s “Rich creamy Nestlé milk chocolate with Aero® centre and filled biscuit wafers.”
That’s a fairly lengthy description for a simple bar of chocolate, but once you bite into it, it becomes quite clear what this really is – an outright copy of Cadbury Time Out. Only the chocolate has been changed to protect the innocent.
This Nestlé bar shares most of the features of the bar it’s (apparently) copying. It’s quite light, quite crispy, reasonably chocolatey, and a little… boring. But having said that, this is the nicest of the South African chocolates I’ve tried so far – and also the first time I’ve seen Nestlé do anything interesting with Aero.
The chocolate in this particular bar did taste as though it was on the verge of going a little stale, but that’s not entirely surprising given it was manufactured over 10 months ago and has travelled half way around the world. It was still quiet edible, and quite satisfying with a nice cup of tea.
My daughter and I were perusing the plethora of Mothers’ Day chocolates on sale at our local K-Mart the other day when this rather attractive Chinese-style box caught our eye. It had been marked down from $20 to $5 and yet was nowhere near its use-by-date.
Now, the Chinese manufacturing industry (toys in particular) hasn’t been enjoying particularly good publicity of late and the shoddy little ‘Lucky Chocolates 200g’ sticker hastily stuck on the lower right of the box probably didn’t fill any of my fellow choco-shoppers with confidence. However, at 75% discount, we thought they were worth a try and if not, my daughter would at least have found herself a nice trinket box.
We got a rather nice surprise when we saw just how attractive they were, and hoped that the lettering on each chocolate wasn’t saying anything untoward. They also smelled delicious and reminded me of the delectable odor of warm chocolate during my recent tour of the Haigh’s factory.
At 30% cocoa solids, these adorable little squares tasted like a creamy blend of milk and dark chocolate and had a delicious sprinkling of finely chopped almonds throughout. They melted in the mouth easily and lingered on the palate afterwards. Not too sweet but not bitter – just moreish, with my daughter eating four and wanting four more. They would be an ideal ‘introduction’ to the world of dark, darker, darkest chocolates for those still wavering on the milky side.
It was comforting to read the remaining ingredients listed and not see anything other than the usual elements found in good chocolate: cocoa butter, full cream milk powder, cocoa mass, sugar, almonds and vanilla flavouring.
The table stuck underneath the box tells us they were manufactured in China, but distributed here in Australia by Evans Confectionery, ‘Quality Confectionery since 1939.’ Never heard of ‘em. No website for Evans was found, just listings in business directories. No other mention of who made them in China and, perhaps, we’re better off not knowing. A little bonus buy.
