Arnott's Tim Tam: Original

Product name: Arnott’s Tim Tam: Original
Purchase details: £4.00 for a 200g packet (monstersweets.co.uk)
Calories: 95 per 18.3g biscuit
Country of origin: Australia

I’m a big Ant and Dec fan and it was through one of their interviews, several years ago, that I first heard about Arnott’s Tim Tam. Dec (my favourite!) absolutely raved about them so I knew I had to try them one day. Thankfully, I was able to obtain a packet of the Original variety from the wonderful Monster Sweets, although this was a while ago now – I’ve waited quite a long time to open it!

Described as ‘the most irresistible chocolate biscuit’, the product was essentially Australia’s answer to the McVitie’s Penguin, but watch Ant and Dec’s chocolate challenge here to find out more!

The biscuits came in a lovely chocolatey brown packet but I did think it was a shame that they weren’t individually wrapped, meaning they had to be stored carefully in an airtight container. However, this did mean I could class them as ‘biscuits’ rather than ‘chocolate bars’ – I’m very specific about these things!

Each piece consisted of a purple-grey chocolate creme sandwiched between two chocolate biscuits which, in turn, were coated with chocolate. Cutting through a biscuit really emphasised these layers as the contrast between hard, soft and hard again was really obvious. In total, the biscuits contained 38% milk chocolate, and this produced a slightly milky, sweet scent.

I was less impressed by the taste, unfortunately. It was certainly chocolatey, with a milky aspect, but I just didn’t find the flavour was as good as British chocolate, but maybe that’s because I’m more used to British. I also felt the coating felt a bit synthetic and almost rubbery, which was a shame, but I did like the biscuits’ centres, so that was a positive. The texture was also good, with a similar chew to the aforementioned Penguin, despite the flavour being completely different!

Now, if you didn’t watch the Ant and Dec video I mentioned at the start of this review, you might want to have a little look before you read any further, because I just had to try the ‘Tim Tam slam’. I’m not going to beat around the bush...it was pretty incredible. The whole biscuit became so soft that it was almost like cake, and the flavour became much better too, even throwing in a creamy aftertaste.

The ‘slam’ definitely redeemed these biscuits for me but, on the whole, I wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about (for the record, I had heard people other than the Geordie duo recommend them!). However, I still found Arnott’s Tim Tam: Original to be an interesting product, and I’d definitely like to give the white chocolate version a go. As for the rest of the packet, I’ll be slamming all the way!

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

Nakd Rhubarb & Custard

Product name: Nakd Rhubarb & Custard
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 35g bar or four for three, cheapest product free (tesco.com)
Calories: 128 per bar
Country of origin: Britain

I was really intrigued by this variety of Nakd as I loved rhubarb crumbles with custard when I was a kid, but also knew that I don’t like rhubarb to be too tart, and that part of the joy of custard is the texture. I wasn’t sure what angle this bar would take but, hey, I knew I at least liked its purple and yellow wrapper!

This Natural Balance Foods bar was along the same lines as the Strawberry Crunch in terms of features but the variety contained the fewest number of ingredients out of the ones I’ve reviewed so far – it simply consisted of dates (55%), cashews (25%), raisins (19%), and a ‘hint of natural flavours’ which is presumably where the rhubarb and custard taste was going to come from!

The natural, fruity stick still wasn’t the most attractive in the world, but it had more of a dark pink appearance than the other ones I’ve tried. Its overall style was the same but I did like to see that the cashew nuts inside were pretty large. Its scent was slightly unusual but seemed to be a combination between raisins and jelly.

On trying this Nakd Rhubarb & Custard, my first thought was that it tasted a bit like purple Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles – my favourite type! However, I could also taste the nuts, and there was a mellow vanilla flavour that was a bit custard-like and built nicely into a more dominant feature. Thankfully, there was no tartness, but a nice, sweet fruity flavour at an attempt at rhubarb. I was actually quite surprised that the product was dairy-free and that there was no added sugar since there was a bit of a creamy flavour mixed in with the delicious sweetness too.

This soft bar with added crunch was definitely my favourite from the range so far and one I’d definitely want to buy again. Yummy!

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7/10

Kingdom Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter Centre

Product name: Kingdom Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter Centre
Calories: 168 per 30g serving (560 per 100g bar)
Country of origin: England

You may remember that I was recently lucky enough to win a few bars of Kingdom chocolate from their Facebook page. It was this Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter Centre variety that I’ve wanted to try for ages and, over a month since my last Kingdom review, I was mightily impressed with myself for having resisted it for so long! However, the time has now come for me to review this little beauty.

I described the brand’s characteristics in my review of the Dark Chocolate Lemon & Lime Centre bar and these were unchanged here. Once again, the wrapper used an unusual colour combination, and I just loved the use of amber and purple in this case. The slab itself had broken in transit but it was clear that its design was also the same.

The bar used the same chocolate as the Milk Chocolate & Cappuccino Coffee Centre for 90% of the product, containing a minimum of 34% cocoa solids and 27% milk solids. As for the other 10% of the bar, this was simply ‘peanut paste’.

Part of me had really wanted this bar to have a pure, squidgy peanut butter centre but the reality was a filling that was a very similar colour to the Cappuccino one – it had a few added speckles but it certainly wasn’t the orangey shade of peanut butter I’d expected.

In terms of scent, the main smell was the milk chocolate but, even so, this was pretty weak. At a push, I’d say there was a slight hint of nuts, but this certainly wasn’t a strong peanut butter aroma. The flavour, though, was beautiful, and it was absolutely not a problem that the filling hadn’t been taken from a jar. The milk chocolate was good quality and, when melting, the peanut butter flavour came through subtly, at first, but got stronger as the centre was reached. This softened filling provided salty kicks here and there, which were very welcome, and also had a slightly grainy texture.

The chewing texture of the bar was the same as the Milk Chocolate & Cappuccino Coffee Centre and I found it split the two elements in two a little more, with the peanut butter flavour coming through a bit later. I probably would have preferred a slightly thinner chocolate shell but there was absolutely no shortage of the nutty filling and I enjoyed every mouthful.

I definitely saved the best until last with my Kingdom reviews and this Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter Centre definitely deserved a big thumbs up from me...why don’t all chocolates have peanut butter centres?! 

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Cadbury Wispa: Biscuits

Product name: Cadbury Wispa: Biscuits
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 124g packet of biscuits (Asda)
Calories: 78 per 15.5g biscuit
Country of origin: UK

I bought these new Cadbury Wispa: Biscuits a little while ago when they were first released since I’d really enjoyed the Creme Egg version, and I’m obviously a fan of the Wispa bar too.

The ‘delicious biscuits filled and coated with velvety Wispa chocolate’ were branded in the usual way and there was a nice image of the deep, bubbly filling on the packet’s wrapper. Unfortunately, there were only eight in the pack, although this was still more than the Creme Egg ones!

Mondelez’s ‘scrummy biscuits’ had been made by Burton’s Biscuit Co. and had a wrinkly surface, rather than a smooth one, with slightly jagged bases too. On the inside, they looked very much like the packaging had promised, with a deep chocolate filling sitting atop a pale biscuit. There was a strong chocolatey scent, too, that was just like that of an actual Wispa.

On trying the biscuits, I couldn’t believe that they ‘only’ contained 58% milk chocolate – they were fantastically chocolatey! The flavour was recognisably Cadbury, as well, but I did find the Wispa’s texture was disguised by the crunchy biscuit (this was an observation rather than a bad thing!). However, I did particularly like the added density at the centre of each biscuit.

As tasty as this product was, there’s no avoiding the fact that they were essentially very chocolatey biscuits. To make things a little more interesting, I wonder what a Wispa: Gold version would be like (apart from messy!)?

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.63/10

Cadbury Dairy Milk: Freddo (caramel)

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Freddo (caramel)
Purchase details: £1.00 for a multipack of five bars (Poundworld)
Calories: 94 per 19.5g bar
Country of origin: UK

This review of Cadbury Dairy Milk: Freddo (caramel) from Mondelez will only be short since it was essentially an amalgamation of the standard Freddo and the Dairy Milk: Caramel.

Slightly sneakily, there were only five of these ‘milk chocolate with soft caramel (30%)’ bars in the pack, although I did quite like how the featured sport the frog was participating in on this wrapper was canoeing...in a river of caramel – yummy!

The bar was the usual Freddo shape but its thin design meant that the caramel filling wasn’t particularly thick or visible. However, this did mean that the Dairy Milk scent was as strong as if the caramel wasn’t there...every cloud!

As I’d expected, the bar tasted identical to the Dairy Milk: Caramel – the smooth caramel simply felt thin against the two comparatively thick chocolate layers. Furthermore, whilst allowing the product to melt on the tongue did make the caramel feel a little elastic, the different ratios meant that biting the bar didn’t provide the slightly chewy aspect I’d previously experienced.

All in all, another winning formula from Cadbury.

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