I seem to be buying a lot of caramel filled bars lately. It’s not deliberate, although I’m starting to think there’s something about seeing the word “caramel” that triggers a subliminal “Buy me now!” response in my messed up mind.
Green & Black’s Caramel bar is in a class above most of its competitors though.
Opening the thick paper wrapper reveals a second gold foil wrapper inside, which only serves to increase the expectancy of the chocolate inside.
When you do finally get down to the chocolate, you’re not disappointed either. It’s obvious a lot of attention has gone into the look of the bar – from the design of the chunks right down the piece of card the chocolate sits on to stop it breaking before you get it home.
But the really interesting thing about this bar is the taste. It contains both sea salt and alcohol, and you can taste both. The wrapper claims the sea salt helps cut through the sweetness of the caramel, and I would have to agree. Some caramel bars just taste sickly sweet, but this has real depth.
This is still a very sweet chocolate bar, but unlike certain others I could mention it works because so much thought has gone into it. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but if you’re a caramel fan, give this a whirl.
This commercial may be nearly 40 years old, but it still make me hungry…
Oh.. and the “How Many Sexual Innuendos Can You Spot?” game is fun too.
What is Cadbury Highlights?
“Smooth milk chocolate with no added sugar”
Yes, you read that right. This is chocolate with no added sugar…
“Excessive consumption may produce laxative effect”
Er….Ok. So what does it contain?
A quick glance at the ingredients on the wrapper reveals the number one ingredient is “Sweetner (Maltitol)”. A quick search of Wikipedia reveals:
“Maltitol is a sugar alcohol (a polyol) used as a sugar substitute. It has 90% of the sweetness of sucrose (table sugar) and nearly identical properties, except for browning. It is used to replace table sugar because it has less calories, does not promote tooth decay and has a somewhat smaller effect on blood glucose. Unfortunately, maltitol is well known to cause gastric distress, particularly if consumed in great quantities.”
Gastric distress? Eeep!
Luckily I only have a small bar of this to try out… and I’m willing to take a risk for Chocablog!
Opening the wrapper reveals a bar looks just like a standard Dairy Milk bar. Divided into six chunks, the colour is the same. It smells the same.
But the taste is definitely different. The flavour is similar to the kind of cheap chocolate you get in no-brand easter eggs. Artificial. Slightly plasticy. Chocolate-but-not-quite-chocolate.
It’s not an offensive taste, but it’s certainly not as nice as Dairy Milk. I happily ate the whole thing, but I don’t think I would have wanted a bigger bar. The whole “gastric distress” thing put me off a bit anyway.
So. If you’re on some kind of low sugar diet, give this a try. If you’re just trying to lose weight, I recommend buying something a little more luxurious… and eating it more slowly.
My first thoughts when I spotted these were along the lines of – “Surely some mistake?” and “Are they that desperate to increase their profits?”
I was in Edinburgh – in Woolies of all places – when these intriguing little chocolate straws waved to me from the shelf. I thought they’d make an interesting gift for my wife (who is also partial to the odd bit of chocolate now and then) so I grabbed a tube. The next week or so was an exercise in self control. There they were, every time I opened my case, teasing me.
So what do you get? Obviously, an interesting package. Definitely going for the upmarket look. However, a quick read of he label and alarm bells start ringing.
Ingredients – Plain Chocolate.
No indication of cocoa content? Hmmm. As any self-respecting piggy, sorry, chocolate lover knows, cocoa content in particularly important, especially if you’re dealing with the ‘good stuff’.
When the packet was opened (a twist of the base and the upper part slides off) the straws present themselves in a neat ‘fan’. Very attractive. Somebody has obviously thought this through. Imagine mine hostess delivering them to the centre of the table after dinner. very sophisticated.
Now comes the crucial part – how do they taste? Well, to be perfectly honest, they’re very average. The chocolate feels as though it’s cheap. It has that grainy texture one often finds with low-cocoa plain chocolate, and the filling is overly sweet (for my palate at least).
Far from being the sophisticated, well made, rich tasting treats I’d expected, they came across as being more like kid sweets – overly sugared, made from cheap ingredients and ultimately disappointing.
If you like the sickly sweetness of the Cadbury’s Creme Egg then these might well be your idea of a good thing, but I’m afraid they left me cold. Definitely not posh chocs!
