Here we go with another choccy challenge. This time the contenders are both Swedish and both milk chocolate. The only difference is their pedigree and price.
In the blue corner, the established contender – Marabou Milk Chocolate.
Weighing in at 250g and costing £2.10
I remember my first Marabou purchase being one of those tubes of milk chocolate discs which always looked as though they were going to last forever, but somehow never managed to stay in my pocket for more than half an hour or so.
In the red corner, the newcomer – Ikea Milk Chocolate.
Weighing in at 100g and costing 40p (!!)
Yes, I was in Ikea, returning an unsuitable light fitting, and I happened to notice that their shop was selling their own branded chocolate (yes, it’s in a flat pack, thank you Dom). Naturally, I saw an opportunity for another one of my face-offs. Would the cheaper newcomer manage to outdo the established brand? Indeed, is it possible that the two bars are made of the same stuff? (We all know that some companies make one product for a number of labels, after all). A glance at the ingredients shows that both bars contain the same amount of cocoa (30%) and roughly the same ingredients, so it looked like a good match was in the offing.
My purchase was fairly well-timed as it goes. I had the pleasure of a birthday sleepover, and consequently four of my son’s friends joined us for an evening of Playstation, pizza and piggery. The perfect chance to do some serious testing. Eight of us sat down together to taste the two bars side by side, one group of four trying the Marabou bar first while the others were offered the (somewhat smaller) squares of Ikea chocolate. Naturally, once the first square had been eaten we ‘changed ends’ for the second taste.
And the verdict?
Unanimous – the Ikea chocolate had about as much taste as one of their cardboard boxes. The chocolate is plasticky, lacking in either cocoa or milk flavours, and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. The Marabou bar, on the other hand, was creamy, smooth, and well, it tasted like chocolate. No contest.
So while Ikea may have sold the UK most of its bedroom and kitchen furniture (apparently something like 1 in 5 British children are conceived in Ikea beds, so I read) they definitely have a great deal to learn about making decent quality confectionery. This is one to avoid, folks. Awful, low quality, tasteless nastiness. It might be less than half the price of the Marabou bar, but you’d be hard pressed to eat a whole one.
This is the latest offering from the Cadbury Dairy Milk superbrand. We’ve already looked at Dairy Milk, Dairy Milk with Mint / Orange Chips, Dairy Milk with Caramel and Dairy Milk with Creme Egg. Whew. That’s a lot of Dairy Milk, and we’ve hardly scratched the surface yet.
I’m still not convinced by the whole Dairy Milk superbrand idea. I think it limits what Cadbury can do when introducing new products. I know they still have several ‘non Dairy Milk’ brands, but they seem to be intent on bringing as many products as possible under the banner.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Dairy Milk Double Choc follows exactly the same format as Dairy Milk with Creme Egg or Dairy Milk with Caramel. That is, it’s a simple bar of Dairy Milk, divided into chunks, each with a soft gooey centre.
In this case, the soft gooey centre in question is a kind of chocolate flavoured fondant. It’s very soft – almost liquid – and goes everywhere if you happen to casually break a chunk in half. (I won’t be doing that again!)
As you can see, it looks quite tempting, but the problem is that the soft centre tastes too similar to the chocolate shell. I was hoping for a “double chocolate hit” from this, but all I really got was something with the taste and texture of a very soft piece of Dairy Milk.
Cadbury really should have gone with a dark chocolate filling for this. Or maybe even a thicker, chewy centre. Something to differentiate it more from the chocolate. It’s still quite nice, but it could have been so, so much better.
Would I buy this again? Probably, but I can’t see it being a regular purchase. Give me a Dairy Milk with Creme Egg over this any day.
This is my second ever Stainer bar, and I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Andrea Stainer’s chocolatiers have supernatural powers.
This was another purchase from the Etruscan Chocohotel’s Chocostore, and it caught my eye mainly due to the unusual (some may say bizarre) combination of flavours it purported to offer. I mean, the only other chocolate I know of with honey in it is the venerable Toblerone, but ginseng?
My experience of ginseng is that in tea form it bears more than a passing resemblance to niffy feet; certainly NOT something I’d consider blending with good quality chocolate!
This bar boasts 57% cocoa content (no word on the amount of ginseng or honey involved), making it a borderline dark chocolate in my book (perhaps we need to agree a cocoa-content scale to facilitate definition?). As you can see, once again it is beautifully packaged, with a cryptic Number 6 above the title/contents heading.
Unlike many ‘posh’ chocs, Stainer chocolate seems to avoid any carving, stamping or branding of the bar itself, offering the consumer a simple sellophane wrapping and squares of chocolate with a slightly cambered top surface.
The smell of this bar is delightful. There is an immediate hit of honey, followed by that luscious cocoa aroma one finds in the best quality bars. When eaten, the honey flavour gets first go at your tastebuds, flooding your mouth with it’s subtle sweetness, closely followed by the chocolate melting into the mix. The ginseng sits as a kind of subtext to the two main flavours – very subtle but still definitely ‘there’, and the chocolate is as smooth and creamy as you would expect it to be.
It’s an idiosynchratic blending of disparate flavours (excuse me, I seem to have a dictionary in my throat) that works incredibly well and makes me wish I’d sampled Stainer chocolate before leaving Perugia. Had I done so, I would almost certainly have bought more of their products, just to see if they can consistently produce such wonderfully different flavour combinations.
If anyone from Stainer happens to read this, I would be more than happy to work my way through your entire range, and it will be a sad day when I eat the last square of the last bar. I may have to open a Stainer franchise!
A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Terry’s Caramel Bite and was pleasantly surprised just how tasty it was. Well I was just as surprised to see another offering from Terry’s in my local shop so thought I’d give it a go.
Terry’s 3D is quite simple and consists of biscuit and a creamy white filling, all coated in milk chocolate.
I’m not entirely sure where the name comes from, but I imagine it’s partly from the shape of the bar and partly because of the 3 constituent parts (biscuilt, chocolate, filling).
The bar is quite thick, and looks well made. It almost looks like a gold ingot, divded into 4 pieces, each with the number ‘3’ embossed on the top.
The taste is pretty good too. The biscuit has a satisfying crunch, the creamy filling is quite nice – although it doesn’t really taste of much – and the chocolate tastes good. It’s really quite a tasty snack. It would probably make a great alternative to something like Twix – particularly given the current uncertainty over what’s actually in Mars products.
Terry’s/Kraft are obviously on a roll with these new products, but strangely I can’t find an official web site anywhere, so I’ve no idea what else is out there. But if there are any more, I’ll be sure to review them. I like what I’ve tasted so far.
