Swiss Peak Milch

Product name: Swiss Peak Milch
Purchase details: £0.39 for a 100g bar (Home Bargains)
Calories: 531 per bar
Country of origin: Switzerland

Always one for a bargain, I couldn’t help picking up this Swiss Peak Milch – a bar of ‘milk chocolate with honey-almond-nougat’ which was obviously based on Toblerone. I’d tried Marks and Spencer’s version before but this ‘Swiss premium quality’ brand was new to me.

The wrapper featured nice images of some of the key ingredients: the chocolate itself (containing a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and 14% milk solids), honey (2.5%) and almonds (1.4%) and the bar inside continued Toblerone's triangular theme. However, these pieces were diagonal in shape, and also thinner, so I presumed they wouldn’t be as satisfyingly chunky to chew.

In terms of aroma, the product just smelt like sweet chocolate, although this was no bad thing! It had a good, milky chocolate flavour, with hints of honey and almond coming through here and there. The chocolate was definitely the main taste but I did like the darker sugar element the honey provided.

Despite appearances, the triangles did still manage to provide a chunky texture, and the presence of crunchy nut pieces and chewy nougat (8%) was also noticeable. On the downside, the bar’s shape did make it difficult to break off each piece so I ended up having to bite it, and I also found the chocolate’s melting point to be a little higher than normal so it felt like it separated out in the mouth rather than melding together.

At £0.39, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that this product wasn’t of the same quality as Toblerone of Switzerland. However, it was still pretty tasty in its own right!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Vrettos Snappy (honey)

Product name: Vrettos Snappy (honey)
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 50g pastry (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 165 per pastry
Country of origin: Greece

For years, I had a childhood memory of eating some unknown but delicious pastry product at a buffet. Having never come across it again, I began to wonder if I’d made it up, until my friend brought her Mum’s homemade baklava into school to celebrate Eid. Despite that now being years ago, I’ve not had it since, so I couldn’t resist trying this shop-bought version. As it happens, the wrapper of the Vrettos Snappy (honey) didn’t include the word ‘baklava’, but Tesco's website confirmed that that’s what it was.

The ‘crispy snack with honey’ came in an orange wrapper that had a honeycomb design and showed an image of the pastry product sitting in a pool of honey. I had been worried that the long shelf-life would have caused the baklava to dry out but the treat was actually served in a little tray in an attempt to keep it moist from the runny ‘flower honey’ (4%) that was visible on the inside of the wrapper. It would have been rude not to have sampled this and I thoroughly enjoyed its deliciously sweet yet floral flavour.

The roll looked nice enough from the outside – the pastry made up 27% of the product and provided a crispy shell to cut through before the tougher filling which accounted for 10%. This centre looked a bit off-putting, in comparison. The translation wasn’t great but I could see it at least contained almond, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon so, arguably, that’s where the main flavours were. For some reason, though, the combination looked a bit like meat!

One of my main memories from previously trying baklava was its sweetness and this version contained 19% Greek sugar in addition to 20% glucose. With the honey, it was sticky to the touch, and all these sweet aspects provided a lovely juiciness in the midst of quite a chewy product.

I found this Snappy to be quite festive. Its scent was like a mild marzipan with a hint of the inner spices and, in the taste, I could really taste the nutmeg and cinnamon. The pastry was quite buttery and I liked the novelty of the crunchy nuts here and there too.

Whilst the product was full of flavour, I did find it a little dry in places on the outside. It wasn’t awful but the texture just wasn’t quite right. There was quite a lot of honey on the base which provided a fantastically sweet flavour and moisture and I would have loved this to have encapsulated the whole roll.

Overall, this was a really enjoyable treat which I’m glad I found. I was actually impressed that it didn’t contain more calories than it did as, what with all the sugar and greasiness from the honey, it didn’t feel particularly healthy!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Dubble (milk chocolate)

Product name: Dubble (milk chocolate)
Purchase details: £0.65 for a 33g bar (Oxfam)
Calories: 175 per bar
Country of origin: Germany

I remember being pretty excited when Dubble bars were released back in the year 2000. They came in purple wrappers at the time and, for a couple of years, I had at least one every month. It’s now been a long time since my last one but, since I’d never got around to unsubscribing from their mailing list, I was saddened to receive an e-mail a few weeks ago to say that production was stopping at the end of May 2014. I hoped I’d be able to take a trip down memory lane before it was too late and, thankfully, I did find them still on sale in Oxfam in the last two weeks.

Now packaged in a brown wrapper with ‘raining’ rice cereal, the Dubble was always more about the ethics than the product. Made by Divine Chocolate, it was Fairtrade (using Ghanaian cocoa), and £0.02 from every bar went to Comic Relief. I always did enjoy the ‘chunky milk chocolate with a crispy rice crunch’, though, so the fact it was ‘Dubbly good!’ due to endorsing ‘fair play for cocoa growers’ was a bonus.

The bar was quite slim and was split into two pretty plain segments – they were simply decorated with the two ‘B’s that formed the logo and, I don’t know why, but their positioning somehow reminded me of comedy and tragedy masks! Whilst the upper layer of the bar appeared to consist entirely of the chocolate that contained a minimum of 27% cocoa solids and 21% milk solids, the base had a sprinkling of ‘honey rice crisps’ (6%). I’d never picked up on this honey element before so I was interested to see what effect it had.

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else but I’d describe the chocolate scent that the bar emitted as ‘high-pitched’. The aroma was also reflected in the taste which had a good balance of sweetness, cocoa and milk. It turned out the honey’s flavour wasn’t noticeable but it possibly did contribute to the nice level of sweetness within the decent chocolate flavour.

The angular shape and rough base of the bar made it uncomfortable to suck on but I found the chocolate didn’t really melt anyway. However, it did have a nice chew to it, and I enjoyed the sensation of biting through the pure chocolate before reaching the slightly crispy rice. I say ‘slightly crispy’ because I actually found the cereal’s texture to be quite chewy and I kept thinking it was popping candy without the crackling aftermath! I figured this texture was down to a stickiness added by the honey.

I couldn’t end this review without mentioning the Nestlé Crunch bar since, in terms of the physical product, they were very similar on paper. For ethical reasons, I so much wanted to prefer the Dubble but, for some reason, with this bar I found the rice somehow detracted from what was otherwise a delicious bar of chocolate. I guess it would have been unwise to form too strong an attachment at this stage anyway.

Farewell, Dubble, it was a good 14 years.

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

Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey

Product name: Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 200g packet or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 51 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK

I must confess that I only bought these Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey cookies to make use of the multibuy offer when I was buying some other biscuits! Initially, I didn’t think they looked that exciting, but on noticing the magical word ‘new’ in the corner of the golden wrapper, I realised I couldn’t remember having had any cookies with honey in them before.

The packaging contained inviting images of oats and honey which, unusually, looked more enticing than the photos of the biscuits themselves which looked like standard chocolate chip cookies. However, the treat was described as being ‘choc full of yumminess’ and contained 6% oatmeal and 3% honey, in addition to the 16% chocolate chips.

The cookies were made by Burton’s Foods and contained no artificial flavours or colours, no GM ingredients and no hydrogenated fats and oils. They were quite dark in appearance, inside and out, compared to other cookies, particularly when considering another Maryland offering – Strawberry & White Choc.

I quickly realised that the scent was a cross between that of a standard cookie and flapjack. The latter seemed to be caused by the honey and oats and I was kicking myself for not having thought of the connection earlier!

Despite the quantity of chocolate chips varying in each biscuit, their taste was pretty strong in every bite and it was far and away the main flavour element. There was also a baked aspect to the taste which wasn’t usual for this type of cookie. However, neither the oats nor honey seemed particularly noticeable in themselves as additional flavours, at first. I did then find, though, that the honey released a delicate and almost floral sweetness which created a nice contrast with the comparatively bitter chocolate. I found that dipping the biscuits in tea also released more of the honey’s juices, although I preferred to eat them au natural.

These really crunchy cookies didn’t provide an obviously ground-breaking experience but they were different enough for me to choose them over standard chocolate chip cookies in future. Apart from anything else, the flapjack-like element meant they tasted a little more homemade than most mass-produced biscuits.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10