According to their web site, Whitakers have been around since 1889, so they’ve had plenty of time to get things right.
Mint Wafers are traditional after dinner mint chocolates, in the same style as After Eight. In fact, when you open the box, you’re immediately hit by exactly the same strong, peppermint aroma.
But unlike After Eight which have a creme filling, these wafers are solid, dark chocolate (55%). The peppermint oil is part of the chocolate itself.
Aside from the aroma, the first thing you notice about these is how uniform they are. Each chocolate is a precisely cut 58 x 30 x 3mm wafer (yes, I measured it myself) with a slightly rough surface on top and a smooth underside.
That rough surface is down to a generous sprinkling of granulated sugar within the chocolate. That might seem odd, but it adds a rather nice texture to these otherwise quite ordinary chocolates. Bite into one and you get satisfying crunch, but the sugar dissolves so you don’t end up with crunchy bits stuck in your teeth.
These work perfectly as an after dinner mint, but I did find is that the peppermint is a little strong for my liking. You can’t really get a good idea of how good the chocolate is, and I did start to get an odd, minty headache when I tried to eat five at once. But then I don’t think that’s what they’re designed for.
Here’s a very seasonal little stocking filler – Christmas Pud flavoured choccies from Sainsbury’s.
These were lurking under the tree on Christmas Day, and it wasn’t too long before I was beginning to wonder what they’d taste like.
The packaging was a bit of a surprise too – the top of the box lifts up and opens as it rises, a little like the Musical Box in Camberwick Green (ancient BBC Children’s programme).
The chocolates themselves were nestled inside, each clad in a very seasonal gold foil wrapper. Once unwrapped, they looked very appealing and quite pudding-like. I’m guessing that the white chocolate topping was there to represent brandy butter or cream.
Once bitten, they proved to have a lovely thick shell – no scrimping there – and a very soft, delicately spiced truffle filling which had fruity, mixed spice overtones and a sweet, creamy finish. It was after the chocolate was finished that the pudding flavours really came into their own, in a mildly pleasant way.
As ‘novelty’ chocolates go, I rather liked these. They weren’t particularly spectacular, but they were certainly the only Christmas pud chocs I’ve seen, and as such I’m glad I had a chance to taste them. There was nothing unpleasant or overpowering about them, and I did appreciate the fact that they had such chunky shells.
I suppose it’s unlikely that you’ll see these for long now, but if you do (and they’ll probably be on sale) I’d recommend them for the novelty value.
As luck would have it, our lovely neighbours Jill and Andrew invited us over to their house for pre-Christmas nibbles and drinks.
Conversations ranged from how weird the uninvited neighbours were, to what jobs we all had, to chocolate. Jill’s step-daughter is a Sydney-based food distributor of all things truly essential to happy living such as wonderful café-style cookies and chocolate – Fardoulis, to be precise. Fardoulis chocolates are made in Kogarah, New South Wales (not just the birthplace of Clive James) and feature high quality ingredients. No compounded oily stuff here.
And then things started to really feel like Christmas: Jill brought out a 5 kilogram box full of Fardoulis shell-shaped truffles. What a wonderful way to end a year for this Chocablog writer!
The rum truffle was a perfect combination with the rum cutting through the sweetness of the milk chocolate and lingering afterwards. To follow this with one of Fardoulis’ cappuccino truffles was a divine experience. Again, the genuine taste of the coffee was the ideal partner to the milk chocolate. Even better was that it was a warmish South Australian day, so the chocolates were soft and incredibly flavoursome.
Andrew then threw me a ‘Melon Illusion’ which ramped things up several notches. Despite sounding rather incongruous – milk chocolate with midori melon-flavoured truffle inside, it was a triumph. It had a floral, perfumy taste that wasn’t over-powering but left me (and the others at the table) wanting more. Which of course we did.
What was also nice to discover was their price per kilogram is significantly cheaper than Lindt and the (in my opinion) way over-valued Ferrero Rochers. At the time of printing, Fardoulis chocolates have yet to break into South Australia but I sure hope they do. I wish Jill the very best in her marketing methods and will most certainly be willing to hand over my hard-earned for any of their truffles. Besides, I’ve yet to try their mint, orange & macadamia, strawberry & macadamia, hazelnut praline, rum & hazelnut, baileys, cognac & hazelnut, strawberry champagne, cosmopolitan cocktail, honey & macadamia, ginger & macadamia, B52 cocktail and cherry cream flavours!
I spotted these in Sainsbury’s the other day and having enjoyed Lindt’s Creme Brulee chocolate so much I decided to have a try.
Filthy Chocolate are obviously selling themselves as a slightly naughty, decadent brand and their website is definitely aimed at reinforcing that perception, with it’s movies of bondage, chocolate being dripped on bare flesh and so forth. Even the stickers holding the box together are extolling the virtues of naughtiness…
Anyway, however you choose to play with your food, what we want to know is whether or not the product actually tastes good.
I have to say that I liked the form of the packaging. As you remove the lid, the box opens out like some sort of Cubist flowers, revealing the contents nesting in sellophane.
The ‘premium brand’ perception is further reinforced by the number of chocs in the box. £5 for 12 Creme Brulee Bites isn’t cheap by anyone’s standards (that’s 41p per bite!) so I was expecting great things from Filthy already.
That’s where it all went wrong. After all the hype, the anticipation, the build up, and the promise of decadent indulgence, these little bites turned out to be filled with a light, soft mousse-like filling, and it was all over in seconds. It was like fancying the pants of someone, having them flirt outrageously with you, promising you all manner of naughtiness, and then when it comes to the crunch what you get is amateurish, unsatisfyling and ultimately disappointing. How very sad.
I’m afraid I have to say that I think Filthy have spent far too much attention on their web site, branding and image and far too little on what really counts, which is good quality, great tasting product. The chocolate is okay, but the filling is about as substantial as a cloud.
On the base of the box is a note which says if the product falls short of expectations then you should be hard on them, and that they’d like that. Well chaps, here’s a sound spanking from Uncle Simon. I expect better next time.
