Finding Hershey’s stuff in the UK is still quite rare, but last time I reviewed a Reese’s branded chocolate, I was pleasantly surprised. So my expectations were a little higher with this than when I bought the Nutrageous bar.
Now I know Peanut Butter Cups are an American institution, but I’ve never seen them in the UK before – and I don’t think I ever even had them when I was living in the States, so this is a first for me.
“Cups” are like little cupcakes of milk chocolate with a peanut butter filling. They even come in a little paper case. They certainly look quite tasty and well made.
The peanut butter filling is very smooth, very light, very nutty and – unfortunately – very, very sweet. It could be delicious, but like so many American chocolates, they seem to have just gone overboard on the sugar.
The sweetness of the peanut butter kind of overwhelmes the chocolate, to the point that you can’t really taste it. But I suspect it’s only there to hold the filling together anyway.
If you can get past the sweetness, these are quite tasty… I’m just not sure I can get past it. I was initially disappointed that there were only three cups per pack, but having eaten all three, I don’t think I could manage any more. They’re just too sweet.
Being a web developer, I’ve played around with Google Maps a bit in the past, so I was overjoyed to discover Chocomap, which displays chocolate shops around the world on a map!
The drop down menu for selecting your city isn’t the most intuitive way to navigate, but I’ve already discovered a few choc shops in London I didn’t know about. And the rest of the site is definitely worth a look too.
Recently, LindtLover asked us to review Galaxy Ripple, so we decided to scour the shops looking for one. Actually, it wasn’t that difficult – my local newsagent had them, but I’d somehow managed to overlook them until now.
Galaxy Ripple is Masterfood’s answer to Cadbury’s Flake or, more accurately, Twirl. It consists of folded or ‘rippled’ Galaxy milk chocolate with an outer coating of… more chocolate. The result is a pure chocolate bar with lots of air, that crumbles in your mouth.
The main difference between Galaxy Ripple and Twirl is the chocolate itself. Twirl uses the fairly average Dairy Milk chocolate, but this is made with Galaxy, which is a much creamier milk chocolate.
Now I have mixed feelings about Galaxy. I love it, but only in small doses. It’s a little too creamy to eat in a large bar and starts to get a little sickly if you eat too much. Dairy Milk however, I can pretty eat all day without noticing.
But this bar is just the right size to get the best Galaxy experience, and the ripples really do add to that. The thin layers of chocolate and the gaps in between somehow make it even more delicous.
The one thing I would say about this bar is that it doesn’t crumble quite like a Flake does. Presumably because the creamier chocolate is that little bit softer. I’m sure putting this in the fridge for a while would help here.
If you’re a fan of Galaxy or Flake, then you’ll definitly like this. I’ve added it to my ever-growing “buy this again” list.
I’m fortunate enough to have a job that involves a fair amount of travel, and this allows me to spend time browsing shops for new and unusual chocolate to tell the world (or at least that part of the world that reads Chocablog) about.
Flying home from a trip is usually a good time for me to hunt for chocolate, and it was at Eindhoven Airport that I came across Australian Homemade. My first thought was that it was somewhat bizarre to be discovering Aussie chocolate in a Dutch airport sandwich shop, but the truth was to prove even more bizarre…
Y’see folks, Australian Homemade is actually a product of a Dutch company called the Real Chocolate Company, using Belgian chocolate to create their products. Those wacky Dutch, eh?
The packaging promises fine quality chocolate made using only the purest natural ingredients, a minimum of 32.3% cocoa, and 8% honey powder. Since I enjoyed my Stainer’s Honey and Ginseng bar so much, I thought it would be well worth trying another honey bar, albeit a milk chocolate one this time.
This bar is divided horizontally into five quite large chunks which at first glance seem rather intimidating, in a ‘not-sure-I-can-manage-all-that-at-once’ kind of way. Indeed, I shared my first chunk with a friend so as to avoid any potential cocoa overload.
I checked out the company website and it would appear that they’re about to launch their products globally. The UK section of the site is incomplete, but the American section has quite a bit of information (in English!) and it would appear that we’re about to have a new chain of coffee, chocolate and cake shops in our High Streets.
Whether or not there’s room for more is anyone’s guess, but if the cakes are as tasty as the chocolate I sampled, then they may be in with a good chance. The Snapper bar appears to come in a variety of flavours (honey not being mentioned) and there are Love Bars, Dreamers and more promised. One to watch for methinks.
