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

Leibniz Pick Up!: Choco & milch

Product name: Leibniz Pick Up!: Choco & milch
Purchase details: £0.65 for a 28g biscuit (monstersweets.co.uk)
Calories: 145 per biscuit
Country of origin: Germany 

It’s time for the second of my Leibniz Pick Up! reviews and tonight it’s the turn of the Choco & milch variety.

This product was the same basic idea as the Black 'n white version but consisted of plain biscuit rather than chocolate and contained, according to Monster Sweets, a ‘delicious choco and milk cream filling’. The wrapper was very much on the same theme but contained a strip of baby blue, rather than black, and had an illustration of a square of chocolate and a glass of milk which, coincidentally, are two of my favourite things.

On opening the product, I was greeted by a smooth-looking, golden biscuit sandwich which had the product name imprinted on the top. Whilst the Pick Up!: Black 'n white had a white chocolate bar running down the centre, this one had milk chocolate. After initially being concerned that, somehow, the milk layer had been forgotten about, I was relieved to find that this was entirely cased within the chocolate and there was actually a lot of it.  

The main smell emanating from the biscuit was the chocolate which had a creamy and almost coconutty aroma. There were also hints of the biscuit itself within this.

The biscuit had a sweetened rich tea flavour and, whilst there was visually more of a milk filling than a chocolate one, the chocolate had quite a dark, strong flavour. Combined, the central bar was smooth, soft, creamy and very sweet. I did find it difficult, though, to pick up exactly which part of the flavour was coming from the chocolate and which bit was from the milk. However, it did seem that the extent of the sweetness was down to the milky core.

As for the texture, this was very similar to the Black 'n white, although the centre was softer due to the milk filling.

I thought this was another tasty biscuit from Bahlsen and I really enjoyed the combination of plain biscuits that allowed the main flavour to come from the centre. 

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