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

Snickers Bar: More choc

Product name: Snickers Bar: More choc
Purchase details: £1.00 for a multipack of four bars (Poundworld)
Calories: 240 for a 48g bar

  

I wasn’t intending to bother with this limited edition Snickers Bar from Mars, but the lure of the blue wrapper eventually won me over, and the ‘chocolatey nougat and chocolatey caramel’ did sound nice, even though I knew I’d probably find it too similar to the standard bars.

The image on the packaging looked really good but I somehow didn’t expect the reality of the caramel (27%) and nougat (15%) to look so much darker than the original. Unlike with the miniature Snickers found in Celebrations, the peanuts (23%) weren’t chopped, suggesting its texture would be on the chunky rather than bitty spectrum. Unfortunately for me, though, this wasn’t the case and I found the texture too gritty for my liking – the same issue I have with full-sized Snickers Bars.

The Bar had a salty peanut scent, as well as a strong peanut flavour, with an occasional toasted aspect still coming through as it had done with the Celebrations. I can’t say this UK and Ireland offering sounded quite as exciting as America’s Rockin' nut road, but the additional chocolate did seem to make a bit of a difference. The outer milk chocolate coating (containing a minimum of 14% milk solids) contributed to 35% of the product, so it was already pretty chocolatey, but I think this More choc variety was a bit less sweet and had a slightly stronger chocolate flavour than a standard Snickers – it certainly seemed to burn the throat more! What I’m not convinced about, though, is that I would have been able to identify what the difference was if I didn’t already know.

Whilst I did enjoy the flavour, I did miss the squidginess of the Rockin' nut road – the More choc was more chewy and quite stiff in places. As a result, it was the texture that stopped me liking this more than I did, but then that was an outcome that I’d expected due to my existing opinion of the Snickers Bar.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks

Product name: CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 70g box or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 21 per 4.5g biscuit
Country of origin: Europe

When I spotted these CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks, I knew immediately that they were Mikado-inspired, and I just had try them. The three different colours of biscuit sticks, combined with the splash of milk, caught my eye in-store, and it was the ‘breadstick with strawberry flavoured coating’ that I particularly wanted to sample.

These ‘crispy biscuit snacks, smothered in a variety of delicious coatings’ were nearly twice as many calories as Lu Glico: Mikado (milk chocolate), but each one also weighed almost twice as much. To be perfectly honest, I was a bit dubious about whether each piece would feel substantial enough to warrant the extra calories, but they were most definitely longer and thicker.

As well as the strawberry variety, the sticks came coated in ‘chocolate flavour’ and ‘white chocolate’. Strangely, the ratio of biscuit to coating differed with each one – the milk chocolate contained 43% breadstick, the white chocolate had 46%, and the strawberry had even more: 48%. Unfortunately, all three varieties also contained an awful lot of vegetable fat, but this varied too – 36% for standard chocolate, 40.5% for white chocolate, and a smaller 35% for strawberry.

Before opening, it hadn’t occurred to me that the flavour combination would result in a Neapolitan-style appearance, but the pink one still looked the most exciting to me! It was also the only type which had any kind of individual scent, reminding me of pink wafer biscuits. When all the flavours combined, though, they had the general, sweet scent of the inside of a biscuit tin...I guess that was to be expected.

The chocolate flavoured biscuit contained 19% skimmed milk powder and also contained cocoa powder to provide the chocolatey taste. I was actually able to try this variety immediately after a milk chocolate Mikado and, I must say, it tasted very different. It had a very sweet and fake chocolate taste and there was no doubting that it was the lower quality product. It did have a thick and crispy texture but the use of the term ‘breadstick’ suddenly became clear as it certainly had a different feel to other biscuit sticks – there was a slight chew at the end of each mouthful which was a bit unusual for this style of product. In fact, they reminded me of matzo crackers.

As a big fan of white chocolate, I’d been really pleased that this variety was also included in the pack. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a white chocolate Mikado to compare it to, this time, but I didn’t need this to know that, once again, the Bitez were an inferior product. I couldn’t get a sense of white chocolate from the flavour at all. Instead, it was just really sweet with a stale biscuit kind of taste, although the crispy/chewy texture remained – at least they weren’t soft!

Thankfully, the biscuits that contained both natural strawberry powder and flavourings, saved the day. These ones actually did have a white chocolate element to them but, most of all, they had a strong strawberry milkshake flavour. They were really nice (more creamy than sweet) and I would happily buy a box that only contained this variety in future. (I did see Poundworld were selling boxes of the chocolate flavoured sticks on their own but that was all!)

The box that these CFR Bitez: Assorted came in claimed that the product was ‘truly delicious!’. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this to be the case. The two chocolate varieties tasted cheap (which they were, to be fair!) and not-so-cheerful. On the plus side, the smooth coatings and crispy biscuits were texturally consistent throughout the flavour offerings, and the strawberry version did shine through as a product I’d want to eat again.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

Terry's Chocolate Orange (milk bars)

Product name: Terry’s Chocolate Orange (milk bars)
Purchase details: £1.00 for a multipack of four bars (Poundworld)
Calories: 210 per 40g bar
Country of origin: UK

This is going to seem like a really lazy review but there’s not much to say about these Terry’s Chocolate Orange bars that I didn’t say in my post about the original Chocolate Orange Milk – this was essentially the same Mondelez product but in an easier serving style!

I was instantly hit with the usual, amazing smell when I opened the wrapper but I was a bit disappointed by the size of the bar. Despite containing six pieces of chunky chocolate, it was short and narrow, although it did have a unique appearance as a result of the way the segment-shaped pieces had been joined together. The overall attention to detail was the same but I would have preferred the bottom piece to have matched rather than just being plain with the Terry’s logo.

I loved the fantastic, familiar flavour, and the texture was pretty much the same too. However, the narrower wedges did make the depth of each one feel thicker, causing the melt to feel a bit different – slower, I guess. I also had to eat them in reverse (rind and then centre) due to the layout...but I managed!

This bar format of Terry’s Chocolate Orange didn’t quite produce the same excitement within me as the whole orange does but it was definitely a handy way to get one of my favourite confectionery brands on a non-special occasion!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 9/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 8.13/10