Cadbury Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy!

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy!
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 120g bar (tesco.com)
Calories: 85 per three chunk serving (678 per bar)
Country of origin: UK

Mondelez really are rolling out the new Cadbury products aren’t they?! I must say I was really surprised when I first found out about this Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy! bar since the Chips Ahoy! cookie brand isn’t one generally sold here in the UK. Personally, I’ve only tried two of their varieties from import stores in the past (the Big & chewy original and Big & chewy chocolate), and they weren’t even the standard kind!

In keeping with the brand name, the purple wrapper contained a fun image of a pirate cookie, and my initial thought was that this product would be similar to the Golden biscuit crunch bar. However, the description of ‘milk chocolate with a biscuit flavour filling (38%) and chocolate chip biscuit pieces (12%)’ showed that it was actually a very different concept.

The bar’s appearance was very similar to the Snowy delight – it was divided into 24 chunks and had a pale filling. This time, though, the creme was a beige colour and it also had dark biscuit pieces within.

I’m so used to Dairy Milk smelling like Dairy Milk that I was stunned to find this slab actually had a strong and buttery chocolate chip cookie scent...and that was before I’d even broken it apart! The Dairy Milk’s flavour did remain prominent, though, and it was a very chocolatey bar all-round. However, the smooth, soft and creamy centre did have a part to play too. It didn’t taste as much of biscuit as I’d expected, based on the smell, but it did have a slightly syrupy flavour which was lovely. The flavour was also very sweet but I had no problem polishing off the whole bar (having saved my calories, of course!).

I’m not always a fan of added crunch in chocolate but, here, the biscuit pieces worked wonderfully. There wasn’t too much but there was plenty to fit with the theme and provide an authentic experience. The texture of the biscuit itself was spot on – exactly what chocolate chip cookies feel like to chew – and, the more biscuit a piece of the bar had, the more I enjoyed it. The only problem I found with the filling was that the combination of soft and bitty meant it was hard to get a clean break when snapping each piece off.

I didn’t, for one moment, expect this Dairy Milk bar to be bad, but I ended up enjoying it even more than I thought I would. My lack of knowledge about the American cookie brand means I couldn’t judge whether or not it lived up to the Chips Ahoy! name, but the crunchy pieces certainly met my expectations, as a Brit, of what cookies should be like!

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

Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy original

Product name: Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy original
Purchase details: £1.99 for a pack of two cookies (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 150 per cookie (300 per pack)
Country of origin: Canada

When I bought my packet of Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy chocolate, I hadn’t seen this original variety, but I couldn’t resist giving them a try too when I spotted them in A Quarter of Sweets soon after my last review. One of the reasons I’d been slightly disappointed the first time around was that the chocolate flavour was far stronger than the peanut butter one so I really hoped that the latter would be more apparent in this product.

Looking at the packaging, I’m not surprised this variety originally passed me by – it was identical to the chocolate version, just with a different coloured cookie as the product image. To be fair, the actual concept was also exactly the same, with the only difference being the use of a plain biscuit rather than a chocolate one.

These cookies appeared to contain more chocolate chips than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and I found they looked more appealing than the chocolate ones due to the lighter colour scheme. They gave off a slight peanut butter smell but the main aroma was something a bit darker – almost like syrup but not as nice.

The cookies felt soft to the touch and they broke very gently and, on sampling them, the soft texture continued, although they also had a slight chew to them. They were moist and, once again, the Peanut Butter Cups provided a slight crunch.

The general taste experience this product provided was a sweet one and the biscuits seemed to have a knack of hitting tastebuds all over the tongue. Unfortunately, though, I still found that the peanut butter flavour wasn’t overly strong, although it did provide a salty kick at the end of each mouthful. Whilst chocolate was still a feature in these original cookies, they didn’t provide a very chocolatey flavour. However, in this instance, I found this to be preferable.

I can’t say that these Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy original cookies were a massive improvement on their chocolate equivalent, but they would be my preferred choice in future. I still think they could do with a chewier texture, and stronger peanut butter flavour, though! 

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

Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy chocolate

Product name: Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy chocolate
Purchase details: £1.99 for a pack of two cookies (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 150 per cookie (300 per pack)
Country of origin: Canada 

I was very excited when I discovered on Facebook that A Quarter of Sweets had received a delivery of cookies that contained Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Even the fact that each cookie practically cost £1.00 (stoopid imported prices) didn’t deter me from buying a packet!

When I got my hands on these Nabisco Chips Ahoy!: Big & chewy chocolate, I was pleased that the wrapper’s photograph suggested the cookies were ‘proper’ ones – I do love home-baked chewy biscuits and this is the experience I hoped for. The Peanut Butter Cups were an added bonus!

Each cookie was dark in colour and flecked with ‘peanut butter flavoured chips’, as well as a couple of miniature Cups. Slightly disappointingly, they had an odd smell about them which I found to be similar to the Oreo baked goods I’ve bought from American stores in the past.

The cookies themselves were soft to cut through and I found their texture to be more like cake than cookies, although they did have a slight crust on top. To be fair, they were slightly chewy, but this wasn’t quite in the same way I’d hoped for based on my experiences of other cookies, like the ones from Subway, for example. The chips and Cups were a bit more fun to chew on, though, and they also provided flavourful bursts of peanut butter. The Peanut Butter Cups were, obviously, the standard Reese’s kind, but the fact they had been baked meant they had slightly crispy chocolatey shells.

The overwhelming experience these cookies provided was a really chocolatey one since this flavour was far more powerful than the peanut butter. Interestingly, the peanut butter chips had the same texture as chocolate ones so, with the strong chocolate tastes, it was easy to forget that these were actually peanut butter flavoured.

I did feel a little let down by these Big & chewy chocolate cookies since, texturally, they weren’t as I expected. Whilst I think I may have had unrealistic hopes that these would taste more homemade, I think they would have been nicer if they’d been a little less soft and a little more chewy. Furthermore, it would have been great if they’d had a stronger and more consistent peanut butter flavour. Despite these areas for improvement, though, I did think this was a nice product. 

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