Nestlé Aero: Bubbly white

Product name: Nestlé Aero: Bubbly white
Purchase details: Two 41g bars for £1.00 (Martin’s)
Calories: 221 per bar

I have big confession to make but, at the risk of all other food bloggers turning against me, I have to stick to my honesty policy...I was one of the people who voted for Nestlé to release a white chocolate version of the Aero bar when there was a Facebook campaign a few months ago. I’m really sorry, guys – I just love white chocolate so much so, for me, the idea didn’t seem ‘boring’ at all!

As it happened, I nearly missed out altogether on trying this limited edition White bubbly that was produced for the UK and Ireland. I searched high and low and, in the end, my Dad came to the rescue when he found it in Martin’s. Since he took advantage of the multibuy offer, I don’t know how much a single bar would have cost, and he couldn’t remember!

The ‘smooth milk chocolate filled with vanilla flavoured bubbles’ featured cream-coloured bubbles on the wrapper but I was a little confused by the description – it didn’t particularly sound like white chocolate. I am a vanilla fan too, though, so I hoped it would still be delicious.

The bar was part of Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan and contained chocolate as the main ingredient – presumably as the centre was largely air! The chocolate contained a minimum of 14% milk solids and produced the same aroma as a standard Aero which, I think, is quite an unusual chocolatey scent.

The shape of the bar was identical to the orange version but the filling was pale rather than orange in colour. Due to the general concept being unchanged, the bar also had the same enjoyable texture where the centre almost collapsed and became chewy under pressure.

Unfortunately, I did feel let down by the taste. The milk chocolate coating had the usual, slightly bitter cocoa taste that Aeros have, but the centre just tasted a bit weird. The first thing I thought of when I took a bite was that it reminded me of margarine – not really the kind of comparison I was hoping to make! However, it did improve greatly as I went on, with this unusual flavour being overpowered by the chocolate itself, although it was still much less chocolatey than a normal Aero. Guttingly (yeah, that’s a word!), it just didn’t taste like white chocolate or vanilla. However, it did taste better when allowing the thick melt to take control, and I actually preferred the mellowed chocolate flavour on offer here to a plain Aero.

I can’t pretend this bar didn’t disappoint me. It was fine but that’s pretty much all it was. Fair play to Nestlé, though, for letting the customer choose the variety. Maybe next time they should go down the ‘choose a Chunky champion’ route that Kit Kat used, allowing people to try before they vote. If this had been real and solid white chocolate, my views would probably be different, but if I’d know this would be the execution before I voted, I probably would have opted for the cappuccino or strawberry versions instead!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.25/10