Cadbury Dairy Milk: Freddo (strawberry)

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Freddo (strawberry)
Purchase details: £0.70 for a 20g bar (monstersweets.co.uk)
Calories: Unsure – estimate 96 per bar
Country of origin: Australia 

I think this is the most difficult review I’ve written so far. Having never tried an Australian Cadbury product before, I was really looking forward to sampling the strawberry Freddo, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting!

The ‘milk chocolate with strawberry flavoured centre’ was 2g heavier than the British popping candy version that I’ve recently reviewed but, for some reason, it felt a lot smaller. It came in a fun wrapper that contained a picture of the cartoon frog surfing on a Cadbury purple wave – very fitting for an Australian product! The strawberry element was represented by the packaging’s red tips and, since no nutritional information was available, I relied on MyFitnessPal to provide me with the number of calories.

The frog-shaped chocolate had the same outer appearance as the popping candy variety but without the marks – it looked a lot more attractive as a result! Inside, the filling was quite a deep shade of pink and, any associations with blood aside (having decapitated a chocolate animal), I thought this was appealing. It appeared to have a jelly-like texture and was almost like a solidified Calpol.

The Freddo had quite a standard strawberry fondant chocolate smell which was slightly sickly but pleasant nevertheless.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the eating experience lived up to the bar’s initial impressions. The flavour was – put simply – odd. There was no familiar Dairy Milk creaminess and, if I’m honest, the overall product didn’t seem to taste of much at all. However, there was quite a nice (yet mild) fruity aftertaste.

I was also disappointed that the texture was only slightly better. There was a pretty decent contrast between the soft centre and the chunkier chocolate but, instead of the gooey texture I’d been expecting, it was more of a stringy paste. I think, in itself, this would have been ok, but it probably would have been better if this layer had been thicker so it dominated the chocolate rather than other way around.

I wanted so much to enjoy this bar, and I genuinely thought I would, but it wasn’t to be. What I don’t know is whether or not the difference in flavour was down to Cadbury Australia using a different Dairy Milk recipe or if it was simply the strawberry filling that affected the taste. I would certainly be willing to try more Australian Cadbury products, though, just to make sure!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 5.5/10
Texture: 6/10
Overall score: 6.63/10