I’m old enough to remember when Wispa was first introduced. It was a technological and chocalogical marvel – Cadbury’s answer to Nestlé’s Aero, but it was much, much nicer.
Wispa was killed off four years ago as part of Cadbury’s move toward the Dairy Milk ‘superbrand’, but following a web campaign, Cadbury are bringing it back!
The bar is scheduled to be reintroduced for a limited period in October, and 23 million bars will be produced – but you can bet if demand is there, Wispa will be back for good.
[Thanks Terry]
Chocablog readers may not be too familiar with the Tchibo brand, and a glance at their UK website is unlikely to make one think of them as a purveyor of fine chocolate, offering as it does a bizarre assortment of household cleaning equipment, lingerie, office goods and bedlinen.
However, in Germany Tchibo coffee shops are quite common, and it was there that I came across their selection of chocolate bars. Of course, it would have been silly to buy just the one, so in the interests of research I bought all three.
As you can see, they come in ascending order of cocoa content, with the ‘middle’ bar having additional cocoa nib and coffee bean ‘crispy bits’ in the mix.
The packaging is of the box type, with the front opening to reveal a gold foil encased bar. Each of the bars continues the current trend for single region beans, giving each bar a distinctive flavour.
The milk chocolate bar comes from Venezuela, and at 42% is a very rich, creamy milk bar with a fuller chocolate taste than many ‘milk’ bars. It has a great creamy texture on the tongue and is perhaps one of the better milk bars I have sampled recently, no doubt due to the high cocoa content.
In the case of the ‘middle’ bar, I can’t help but think that when faced with the dilemma of what to call it, Tchibo decided that the addition of coffee and cocoa nibs would serve to differentiate it from the other two. This does not detract from the bar itself however. This is a great tasting bit of confectionery, and the coffee/cocoa combination works very well. The chocolate is just on the mild side of dark (or the bitter side of milk, if you prefer) and delivers a nice rounded chocolate flavour before you start crunching on the crispy bits.
The dark bar comes from Ecuador, and is therefore remarkably similar to bars produced by Lindt, LIDL and others. A rich, bittersweet chocolate hit which melts very quickly and floods the mouth with the dark flavours of 71% cocoa. (Perhaps they went that 1% extra just to play one-upmanship with the Belgians?)
As far as I know, these are the only three bars currently offered by Tchibo, and I have to say that, like LIDL, they have managed to come up with some very good products. Further proof that good quality chocs can be found in some fairly unlikely places.
This is another of Hotel Chocolat’s new range that they were kind enough to send us samples of. They also do a Summer Goody Bag which looks very similar.
These bags are quite obviously aimed at women. The bags themselves are designed to look like handbags – although you might get some slightly odd looks walking down the street carrying it.
The bag contains five kinds of chocs:
2 x Milk Chocolate Dippers
These, frankly, are a little bit odd. They’re simply a chocolate truffle on a 6 inch plastic cocktail stirer. The “chocolate” is softer than a milk chocolate, but firmer than your average truffle filling, so it sticks quite well to the plastic, and shouldn’t drop off in your drink.
They tasted fine, but weren’t anything special. I’m sure they’d be lovely dipped in hot chocolate on a cold winter’s evening – unfortunately I couldn’t wait until winter to try them, so I just ate them off the stick.
The quality of chocolate is fine, but I’m not entirely convinced there’s a need for chocolates on long plastic sticks.
100g slab of milk chocolate with cookie pieces
This is a really thick slab of milk chocolate with pieces of different kinds of cookies embedded in the top. The chocolate is delicious, smooth and creamy, but the cookie pieces are a bit of a let down. They lack any distinct flavour and seem like a bit of an afterthought.
I think I’d rather have just had a couple of really good quality, soft chocolate chip cookies instead.
As it is, I could replicate something just as good by crushing a packet of biscuits and sprinkling the crumbs over a bar of Galaxy. But I don’t think I’d want to, so I have to wonder why anyone came up with the idea of doing it here.
Chocolate Tasting Selection
Six chocolate truffles (2 each of ‘blueberry bomb in white chocolate’, ‘raspberry & peach ganache in milk chocolate’ and ‘smooth cream truffle in milk chocolate with white chocolate top’).
I don’t know if they vary the selection of chocolates, as they appear to be a selection from Hotel Chocolat’s Chocolate Tasting Club.
The cream truffle was delicious, but the fruity ones were just plain weird. Intense, citrus-fruit flavours with very creamy chocolate seems like it should work, but the flavours are just so far apart, you can almost taste them curdling in your mouth. I’m sure there will be people who love them, but they were a bit much for me.
Chocolate Flakes for Hot Chocolate
This is a bit interesting. A bag of finely grated dark (70%) chocolate – nothing more, nothing less. The idea is that you melt the flakes in hot milk to make a real hot chocolate drink.
As it was a bit hot for hot drinks when I tried this, I decided to go for a cold milkshake version instead. Of course, you have to melt the flakes in some hot milk first, then add cool milk and chill the whole thing, so the process is a bit convoluted, but the result was a deliciously refreshing chocolate milk drink that wasn’t too sweet.
A drink that tasted both of chocolate and of milk – which is more than I can say for any shop-bought chocolate milk drinks I’ve had.
180g of Caramel Drops
I’ve saved the best til last here.
Everyone knows there’s something about the shape of milk chocolate buttons that just makes them taste better. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for it.
These are simply chocolate buttons, but they’re made with the same caramelised milk chocolate as the Wham Bam Slab I reviewed last week.
The result is simply delicious – and one of the most moreish bags of chocolate I’ve ever eaten. The carmelised chocolate is slightly softer than normal milk chocolate, meaning it melts away in your mouth even quicker, and the flavour is delicious. I can’t quite describe it in words, so I guesss you’ll just have to take my word for it… or buy some of your own!
The Verdict
This is certainly an interesting and eclectic collection of chocolates, and I’m sure there’ll be something here that everyone will love. But I’m also sure there’ll be at least one thing that everyone doesn’t like.
As a gift, you can’t really go wrong with Hotel Chocolat. Everything is extremely high quality and the packaging is faultless. But if you know the kind of chocolate the recipient prefers, you might do better off spending your money on something else from their extensive range.
As it is, I loved parts of this good bag, but other parts just left me thinking “Huh?” and wondering how they came up with the idea.
Still, at least I have a rather fetching handbag now.
Regular chocoholics will all have experienced that painful surge of disappointment when you finally find a high-end chocolate bar or block that’s been marked down to a more affordable level, rush home and excitedly tear open the wrapping only to discover that it has clearly melted and re-set a couple of times in transit, leaving it with an appetite-affecting white discolouration.
However, as true chocolate fans know, if the bar in question is still well within its ‘best before’ date, it is still likely to taste good: sure, it’s not something you want to serve on a platter surrounded by strawberries to your friends after dinner, but don’t throw it out. Just wait until you’re by yourself and bite it with your eyes shut!
And so it was with….. Heaven. Originally, ‘Heaven’ here in Australia meant good quality ice-creams smothered in thick chocolate (like their competitors, ‘Magnum’, or news that Paul Hogan has moved to the US permanently) but near frozen chocolate is actually fairly difficult to appreciate. That is, unless it is compared with the so-thin-it’s-nearly-translucent chocolate/vegetable shortening sump oil equivalent that ‘money saving’ desserts are quickly dipped in.
In Heaven’s case, their makers decided that the chocolate was too good to be left languishing in the deli freezer and was in fact nice enough to hold its own amongst the chocolates for sale. They’ve released some 140g blocks that are rather pricey compared to Nestlé’s other fabulous range of milk chocolate and club dark and mild dark varieties (see my previous article on the delectable favourite, ‘cappuccino’), so I’m assuming that they are setting their cap at the Lindt lovin’ end of the market. Why the bar is 140g is a mystery – my non-existent mathematical skills don’t think it’s a direct equivalent of ounces. Most posh or free trade Aussie chocs are 100g, with the faithful stand-bys thudding down at 250g.
Well damn Nestlé’s eyes, but their gamble has paid off – Heaven chocolate, whilst being rather conceited in its brand-name, really is delicious. Note, it is milk chocolate but done extremely well – very creamy, sweet and finely textured stuff that can be sucked for the few seconds you can stand it before caving in and chewing it to release an even softer and warmer flavour.
I steadfastly refuse to look on the back of the wrapper to have this almost-religious experience ruined by discovering the fat, sugar, carb or unfortunate ingredient content: just let me remain ignorant and enjoy this far-too-small bar at a mere 40g. I hope they’re on sale again soon – I’ll buy them all, white or not.
Update from Dom:
We have ‘Heaven‘ here in the UK too…
