Nestlé Lion: White

Product name: Nestlé Lion: White
Purchase details: £0.29 for a 42g bar (Home Bargains)
Calories: 200 per bar
Country of origin: Poland

I’ve not had a Nestlé Lion: White for a while but it is a bar I love. Featuring the usual Lion branding, the creamy wrapper looked appetising, and it stated that that the ‘caramel filled wafer (35.7%)’ was now ‘more crunchy’.

Interestingly and, perhaps worryingly, the coating that made up 39.5% of the product wasn’t white chocolate but a ‘white glaze’. Remembering that the Peanut version was covered in a ‘cocoa icing’ rather than chocolate, but still tasted ok, I decided not to be put off by this.

The bar was a really, really pale white colour – closer to snow than ordinary white chocolate! Some brown from the filling was visible through this but I wouldn’t have described it as a thin coating. Inside, the bar had the same brilliant appearance as the Peanut, although the cereal didn’t look as prominent against the white backdrop as it had done against the darker one.

I really liked the deep, sweet milky scent that came from the bar. It didn’t smell like white chocolate but it reminded me of vanilla candles instead – I could have sniffed it all day long!

Once again, the bar was very crispy, but it was hard to differentiate between the wafer and the cereal. There was no added crunch here, due to the absence of peanuts, but the caramel remained chewy and provided a delicious juicy flavour. The different elements of the bar combined to provide a thick texture in every mouthful and I enjoyed the extremely sweet flavour from the glaze. I don’t know if it was the white chocolate and wafer combination that reminded me of the Nestlé Princessa: Kokosowa, but I could have sworn there was a coconut flavour in there too! There was no mention of this on the ingredients list though...

As much as I enjoyed this tasty Lion: White, I think I would have preferred it if it had been coated in proper white chocolate. However, it was still a very good product, even with the fakery!

Appearance: 9/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 8/10

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

Cadbury Fingers (white chocolate)

Product name: Cadbury Fingers (white chocolate)
Purchase details: £0.99 for a 125g box (Tesco)
Calories: 100 per four finger serving (25 per finger)
Country of origin: UK

One of the things I love about loyalty cards is the way they send you discount coupons based on previous purchases. In this case, Tesco kindly sent me a Clubcard voucher for £0.50 off Cadbury Fingers, and I was delighted to get this generous serving of ‘crisp biscuits covered with Cadbury white chocolate’ for £0.49, as a result.

I remember the day I fell in love with these biscuits. There were loads of them on a buffet table and I just couldn’t stop myself going back for more and more – they were so delicious! At the time, they were sold under the Dream brand. I’m not sure when this changed but I did notice that the inner cellophane still had the word ‘Dream’ printed on it. Despite the emergence of, technically, more ‘interesting’ Fingers varieties in recent years (such as Fabulous (praline)), this simpler version has remained my firm favourite.

I loved the dominoes effect used for the personified illustration of the biscuits, on the purple box, and the real things looked good too. Beneath the white chocolate coating (42%), the biscuits themselves were two-tone, with a slightly golden edge standing out against their paler centres.

Made by Burton’s Biscuit Co., Cadbury described how, ‘with every bite, you’ll experience a delightful combination of creamy Cadbury white chocolate and crunchy biscuit centre’. To be honest, there’s not much I can add to that! The chocolate had a lovely, deep vanilla scent, tasted really creamy (as promised), and had hints of vanilla too. I found it particularly impressive that its flavour remained just as strong when chewing as it did when allowing the slightly grainy melt to unfold. 

In comparison, the biscuit was quite plain and tasted like a cross between rich tea and shortbread. However, it absorbed the chocolate’s sweetness nicely, and it certainly did add the intended crunch.

I may have grown up but these Cadbury Fingers (white chocolate) were as enjoyable as I remembered. If calories didn’t exist, I’d quite happily sit and eat box after box!

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

Ritter Sport White + Crisp

Product name: Ritter Sport White + Crisp
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 100g bar (99p Stores)
Calories: 536 per bar
Country of origin: Germany

I don’t know what’s up with my memory but this bar of Ritter Sport White + Crisp, like the White Whole Hazelnuts, was a variety I thought I’d tried before. As a result, I didn’t pick it up at the same time as the Espresso, so I had to make a special return trip to buy the bargain once I’d realised my mistake!

From the name, it would be easy to assume that this bar would be like an interesting white chocolate and higher quality version of the Nestlé Crunch and, in many ways, it was. However as well as containing 6% ‘crispy rice’, another 6% of the bar was ‘crunchy roasted cornflakes’. As usual, I was able to find the nutritional information on the Ritter Sport website.

The cream wrapper was similar to the White Whole Hazelnuts but lacked the cool effect of making the packaging look like the chocolate itself. The bar’s appearance wasn’t far off the Weisse Cocos, either, although there was an abundance of orange cornflakes in addition to the rice cereal. I particularly loved the strange sensation of breaking up the 16 squares since they had a solid snap, with a real crisp right in the middle, and this allowed pieces of cornflake to poke out at random.

The white chocolate had a rich and milky scent which was a little sickly but, in terms of taste, it was nothing short of beautiful and strong. It was so crammed full of bits that it had a really hard texture which, at times, made it feel like it contained more cereal than chocolate! I really did love the crispiness of it all, though, and it reminded me of a non-gooey version of the Chocolate crispy bites I made last year.

As usual, I tried sucking on some of the squares too, with limited success. The top of the chocolate melted nicely as this contained less cereal but the base was a bit painful so I found I had to keep shifting its position! I tended to give up after a while and chew on the remainder but this was totally worth it as the chocolatey cereal was still very enjoyable.

 

I never expect to not enjoy a Ritter Sport product but I couldn’t work out what it was about this apparently simple concept that made it so very special. Then it hit me...it reminded me of one of my long-term favourites – the Nestlé Kit Kat: Chunky (white choc).

Love, love, love, love, LOVE!

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