After meeting some friends at a Caffe Nero over the weekend, I found myself with a couple of interesting chocolates from Italy that I managed to hold on to long enough to review.
Attibassi Gianduiotti
This tiny (10g) pyramid of chocolate was something of a surprise. I was expecting a solid chocolate, but instead got a solid, smooth praline with a delicious nutty flavour.
I’m sure this is a perfect accompaniment to a nice cup of coffee, and just the right size too. But I’m not much of a coffee drinker, so I’m pleased to see that these little chocs come in 500g boxes. Now if I can just get them to sell me a box!
Loacker Tortina Original
This is more of a chocolate biscuit than a… er… chocolate chocolate. I’m not much of a biscuit person, but I did like this. The Tortina consists of layers of wafer with a hazelnut filling, perfectly covered in milk chocolate.
The result is light and crispy with a hint of chewiness. I wasn’t quite as fond of the nutty flavour in this one as the Attibassi, but the chocolate was delicious and again I’m sure this would be great with a good cup of coffee.
Overall, I prefer the Attibassi, but the moral of this story is clear. Next time you’re in your local coffee shop, try the chocolates! You never know what little gems you might uncover.
Oh – and thanks to Paola who bought these for me. 🙂
Although we enjoy our work here at Chocablog, it’s always heartwarming to receive positive feedback from a review. It’s even more heartwarming when a manufacturer or supplier gets in touch and offers more free samples for review, and those lovely chaps at Chocolates Direct did just that after I posted my review of the Dolfin Hot Masala bar last week, offering up the Dolfin taster selection for my delectation.
In case you haven’t seen this, the ‘pack’ consists of four milk and four plain bars, each of which represents a unique taste from a different part of the world. Each of these bars is totally different from the others, which to my mind makes them a great gift for the chocolate lover in your life. It’s a pretty safe bet that you won’t have seen at least one or two of these flavour combinations anywhere else before!
So let’s get started:
Cocoa Beans from Ghana
A smooth, fine milk chocolate blended with nibbed cocoa beans from Ghana, which add a subtle yet intense cocoa finish as you nibble the little pieces once the chocolate melts away. The inclusion of these tiny pieces of cocoa gives the whole taste experience a final lift as you release that cocoa intensity. Lovely.
Green Tea from Japan
I mentioned in my review of the Masala Bar that I rather fancied getting my hands on some of this, as I’m rather partial to Green Tea anyway (oh, yes, and the odd bit of chocolate too). Well, I’m delighted to report that this is another winner. The bar has a slightly ‘rough’ texture on the tongue, but you get an immediate release of an intense tea flavour which gives the smooth milk chocolate a distinctly richer, darker undertone. Another winner in my book, and one which made me very happy.
Green Tea and Jasmin from Morocco
Not my first encounter with a milk chocolate and flowers combination, but equally bizarre. The scent of Jasmin flowers is intense to say the very least, and the bar has a grainy texture which I also found a little strange – presumably the green tea, as the Jasmin content was flavour only. Of the four, I’d say this was the ‘odd’ one, and most likely to divide opinions amongst anyone tasting it. Not in itself unpleasant, but definitely left field.
Hot Masala
This is the bar I originally reviewed, but in miniature form.
This is definitely a winner. Like a cup of milky chai with a chocolate twist. A subtle blend of warming spices which compliment rather than overpower the delightfully smooth milk chocolate. I went into some detail in my original review, but if you can’t be bothered to have a look, take my word for it when I say that this is well worth a try.
So there you have it. Next time I’ll review the four dark chocolate bars. No doubt there will be a similarly eclectic range of flavours on offer.
For most of us, Cadbury is the faithful standby. The readily-available, ever-dependable, reliable old friend. Dairy Milk tastes nice. It’s not startlingly brilliant but it’s not saliva-suckingly awful either.
Every now and then, however, Cadbury Australia likes to develop a few new quirky flavours to add to the Dairy Milk range. They invariably fizzle out because, when the main ingredient is the same old Dairy milk chocolate, there’s a finite limit as to what you can do with it.
Thus, I present you with two blocks from their optimistically-entitled ‘Desserts’ range: Fudge Brownie and Boysenberry Shortcake.
Let’s start with ‘Fudge Brownie’. To say that this flavour was a disappointment is rather like saying that Hitler was a bit of a grumpy bum. This sickly sweet, brown syrup inside the chocolate was about as comparable to a fudge brownie as Jordan is to natural-born beauty.
It was awful! The filling didn’t even taste like chocolate, let alone ‘fudge’ or ‘brownie’ – it might just as well have been sugar syrup with swamp mud mixed in for some authentic-looking colour.
In fact, it i rather tempting to report Cadbury to our nation’s Advertising Standards Council for being so blatantly untruthful in their advertising and labeling of this particular product.
Perhaps the rage and indignation will be quelled as we move on to the second ‘dessert’, Boysenberry Shortcake. Then again, perhaps not.
This Boysenberry bogus was almost as flavour fooling as the far-fetched ‘Fudge Brownie’. In reality it was a strawberry-like runny filling with what felt like tiny flakes of desiccated coconut inside. It was only after reading the back of the label that I found out those coconut bits were actually one per cent shortbread crumbs. Wow – a whole one per cent. Again, I’m wondering just how Cadbury can dare label something ‘shortcake’ when it comprises only one hundredth of the entire product. If they were going to be honest, they could have called it ‘same old strawberry with fiddly bits’, but I suspect it may not fly off the shelves as fast.
These two ‘flavours’ will fizzle out just like their other attempts have. People will be curious and buy them to try and, after one taste, won’t be buying them again.
Cadbury, get it through your heads – people buy you for your get-what-you-pay-for, safe-as-houses Dairy Milk, not your ridiculous attempts at new flavours which are, quite frankly, insulting to our taste buds and brain cells!
I’m happy to announce the winner of the Christmas “1Kg of Dairy Milk” competition is Fay Trezise from Worcestershire.
Congratulations Fay, your chocolate is on the way!
Thanks to everyone who entered, and don’t forget to stay subscribed to Chocablog because we’ll be having more competitions in the new year.
