Ritter Sport Napolitaner Waffel

Product name: Ritter Sport Napolitaner Waffel
Purchase details: monstersweets.co.uk
Calories: 137 per four square serving (548 per bar)
Country of origin: Germany

You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a bit excited, but I love Ritter Sport, I do! Monster Sweets kindly sent me this Napolitaner Waffel bar for free as part of their post-purchase review scheme, but a 100g bar would normally cost £1.75.

Translating as ‘Neapolitan Wafer’, I have to confess that this bar was a few days past its ‘best before’ date by the time I got round to eating it. However, I genuinely do not believe that this affected its quality in any way.

At first glance, this product seemed like a basic concept of wafer-filled chocolate. However, the Ritter Sport website made it seem luxurious and claimed that it was seductive! Due to the wrapper’s blurb not being written in English, I did have to rely on the descriptions provided on the website, and so I discovered that the bar was made with Ritter Sport’s ‘classic milk chocolate’ and contained a ‘deliciously creamy’ praline and Neapolitan wafers which were made by Loacker – the best in Italy, apparently. The wafers themselves consisted of two ‘luscious hazelnut cream’ layers sandwiched between three wafers that had a ‘delicate nut flavour’. 

I was confused by the ingredients listed on the website since it stated that the bar contained 15% hazelnut paste, yet all I could see on the wrapper was 10% ‘haselnusscreme’ and 35% ‘edel-nugat’. I’m still not sure exactly what that’s about so, if anyone can enlighten me, please do so!

Anyway, the chocolate came in a dark orange wrapper that contained pictures of wafers and the finished chocolate product. Inside, the bar was divided into 16 really deep, glossy squares, each containing the Ritter Sport logo.

The cocoa aroma that leaked from the chocolate was lovely and strong and was still noticeable when the chocolate was nearby quite a while after it had been opened. It smelt really good and also had a very slight hint of nut mixed in.

The chocolate felt slightly melty between my fingers as I broke it apart, and doing so revealed the inner wafer. Needless to say, I was delighted when I cut a square in half again and discovered a thick praline layer on top of the wafer. This was only a slightly different shade to the chocolate itself, contained some darker flecks, and looked very smooth – very exciting! On the whole, the bar’s appearance was similar to the Erdberer Vanille-Waffel bar, except the hazelnut layers between the wafers were additional, and there was obviously no pink involved.

Me being me, I tried each layer on its own, as well as together, starting with the chocolate. This was great quality and tasted really good – smooth and creamy. It wasn’t too hard either.

The praline was, quite frankly, fantastic. It was very hazelnutty and, again, was smooth and creamy. I also loved the way it felt like a truffle when melting.

The wafers were really light in both weight and flavour but they did provide a very crispy texture.

All combined? Wow! When melting, the chocolate flowed neatly into the praline in a way that I can only describe as ‘superb’. The wafer then softened and disintegrated. When chewing, the wafers were quite fluffy and didn’t add much flavour, but their presence played an important part since they prevented the strong praline taste being too much. I couldn’t believe just how much flavour was on offer from this bar, and the proportions were fantastic meaning that, despite the quantity of wafer, the product wasn’t dry at all.

Since this Napolitaner Waffel bar was made by Ritter Sport, I didn’t expect it to be bad, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be this good either! It was far more interesting than the wrapper had me believe and so I’ve been reminded not to judge a book by its cover. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 8.25/10