Cadbury Fingers: Fabulous (honeycomb)

Product name: Cadbury Fingers: Fabulous (honeycomb)
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 110g box (Tesco)
Calories: 35 per finger
Country of origin: UK

Despite not being new, I’ve never bought Cadbury Fingers: Fabulous (honeycomb) before, although I vaguely recall trying one a while ago – not that I could remember what they were like!

These biscuits featured the usual Fabulous branding but had an amber carpet with a honeycomb design to symbolise the flavour. The box contained an average of 16 biscuits (with a serving intended to be two) and mine ended up being particularly good value since Tesco had kindly sent me a Clubcard voucher for £0.50 off!

I’d assumed that the Fingers, made by Burton’s Biscuit Co., would have featured a honeycomb cream layer like with the Fox's Velvety: Caramel & honeycomb cream but it turned out that the pale layer beneath the ‘velvety smooth’ milk chocolate (41%) was still white chocolate (31%). Instead, the flavour came from ‘honeycomb flavour biscuit’ which looked a bit more amber in colour to normal. However, I did also think the white chocolate looked a bit less white and a bit more yellow, but that was probably wishful thinking!

 

The very crispy Fingers had a sweetened scent which, whilst very nice, wasn’t strong. To melt, the outer experience was unchanged from the other varieties, but I was surprised to find that the inside tasted like a Crunchie that had been mixed with a bit of biscuit! I didn’t find this honeycomb aspect to be quite as noticeable when chewing but the overall feel was more sugary and the biscuits definitely did taste different to the standard Fingers: Fabulous.

I may not have purchased these before but I most certainly will again!

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

Lindt Creation: Fraîcheur acidulée (citron frappe)

Product name: Lindt Creation: Fraîcheur acidulée (citron frappe)
Purchase details: £0.99 for a 150g bar (99p Stores)
Calories: 394 per half bar
Country of origin: France

Traditionally, lemon isn’t my favourite flavour, but this Lindt Creation: Fraîcheur acidulée (citron frappe) caught my eye as something different and, since I trust the Lindt brand, I thought it would be worth giving a go.

The packaging of this Lindt & Sprüngli bar was in French so I couldn’t read most of it but there was a helpful English translation that told me it was ‘fine milk chocolate with ganache and concentrated lemon filling’ which included concentrated lemon juice (2%).

On getting the bar home, I had a quick look online for a couple of further translations and found that ‘Fraîcheur acidulée’ meant ‘tangy freshness’. This alarmed me slightly as I was hoping for something a bit more mellow, but I was still optimistic that I’d like what was described as a ‘new chocolate experience’. The wrapper also advised that this chocolate was best eaten fresh from the fridge. This went against all my instincts about not chilling the brown stuff so I decided to compromise and eat half at room temperature and half cold.

This bar had the same outer appearance as Lindt’s other Creation bars (such as the Coconut) but its very pale inside almost looked like Kendal mint cake. There was almost a hint of orange in the aroma but I could also smell a subtle lemon flavour – for me, its weakness was a good thing!

Starting with the room temperature half, I initially tried a couple of specks of the chocolate that had broken off and it definitely had a citrus element but, again, this was a bit like orange chocolate. On tasting it properly, though, I could tell that it was the usual Lindt milk chocolate, but a tang of lemon did remain on its surface when it was peeled away from the filling. This centre was a bit like fondant and very much had a lemon flavour but its strength was perfect and reminded me of what you get in a lemon meringue pie. It also balanced well with the creamy, sweet chocolate (although the lemon was the dominant flavour), and the quite thick, squidgy, gooey texture was very enjoyable. I can’t deny it was much nicer than I expected and a lot like a dessert. For some reason, it reminded me of Christmas, but I couldn’t quite work out why – I ended up concluding that I associated it with the kind of chocolates I find in gift boxes at that time of year! This was a lot nicer, though, and had enough of a tartness to the flavour that eating more than five squares at once would have been too much.

The chilled chocolate obviously didn’t melt easily (not helped by the large pieces meaning it had to be broken down a bit first!) but the lemon did seep out nicely when attempting this. The change in temperature made the lemon feel fresher, more concentrated and its acidity was a bit more ‘zippy’, but the main change was definitely the texture which had a much crunchier shell, and a slightly chewy centre.

Personal preference for unchilled chocolate meant that this was how I preferred to consume this bar of Lindt Creation but, either way, the variety was far nicer than I could have hoped and felt like such a treat.

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

Nestlé Le Chocolat: στρατσιατέλα

Product name: Nestlé Le Chocolat: στρατσιατέλα
Purchase details: £0.59 for a 90g bar (99p Stores)
Calories: 124 per 22.5g serving (498 per bar)

Every now and then I pick up an interesting-looking product and then wonder how on Earth I’m going to review it when its name uses characters which are foreign to me. Thankfully, the wonderful world of the internet has meant I’ve been able to properly name this Nestlé Le Chocolat: στρατσιατέλα, but how you pronounce that last word, I have absolutely no clue!

It was the shiny silver wrapper that caught my attention, adorned with images of what appeared to be cookies and cream chocolate and ice cream, so I took a guess that this bar would be along the same lines as Lindt Lindor: Stracciatella. Although the entire wrapper was in Greek, there a small English translation on an added label, and this told me it was ‘white chocolate with dark chocolate chips and crispies’. With it being white chocolate, I was happy to give it a go anyway, but I did later translate the Greek Nestlé website  which turned ‘στρατσιατέλα’ into ‘stratsiatela’ which Google seemed to think was the same thing as ‘stracciatella’ – boom!

I felt the bar was very good-looking with visibly wide spread dark chocolate chips (7%), as well as the rice ‘crisp pieces’ (2%) that could be seen through the base. Strangely, the dark chocolate seemed to have its own filling that almost looked like biscuit, but I couldn’t work this out. The white chocolate itself was divided into 28 small, slightly curved pieces that each featured a little decoration, and I later found their size to be just right with the level of flavour on offer.

Although there was an absence of a drifting scent, the bar did have a white chocolate smell up-close. It also had a good snap to it, although I found the texture to be quite unusual. The white chocolate seemed to separate out when chewing, but this was also broken up with splinters of dark chocolate, as well as the crispy pieces. Alternatively, the white chocolate did melt, but this was slow and not very smooth. Although the pieces left behind were a little bit uncomfortable, I didn’t find the bar to be too bitty, so this was a plus for me.

I found the melting flavour to be more like a milky vanilla ice cream rather than white chocolate and this was pretty nice. However, despite containing a minimum of 50% cocoa solids, the dark chocolate only seemed to add texture rather than flavour.

When chewing, the flavour was a bit more like white chocolate, although this still wasn’t majorly the case. Fairly early on, there was a familiar burn at the back of the throat and a hint that the bar was going to become too sickly to eat a lot of, but it actually turned out to be perfectly manageable. It was by no means amazing but it certainly wasn’t bad.

This Nestlé Le Chocolat: στρατσιατέλα was a nice little find but I’m not about to swap my favourite white chocolates for this one!

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

Nestlé Quality Street: My orange bar

Product name: Nestlé Quality Street: My orange bar
Purchase details: £0.60 for a 35g bar or three for £1.20 (Tesco)
Calories: 98 per half bar (196 per bar)
Country of origin: UK

 

Having enjoyed the Nestlé Quality Street green and purple bars, I really wanted to try the new My orange bar which was the same idea but made use of the brand’s Orange chocolate crunch sweet – one I like but tend to forget exists!

Presented in an on-theme purple and orange glossy, festive wrapper that included an image of the bar, the ‘milk chocolate with an orange flavoured filling and orange flavoured crunch pieces (9%)’ was split into four hexagonal segments with engraved bows for decoration. The filling looked quite grey in comparison to the chocolate (containing a minimum of 14% milk solids), but the crunchy pieces added something a bit different, with a glassy kind of appearance. Cutting a piece in two also allowed the chocolate shell to lift off and I quite liked being able to see the two layers in more detail.

As I’d hoped, the bar had a nice, tangy chocolate orange scent, and it also tasted of sweet orange chocolate – it was lovely. The orange aspect was definitely from the centre which meant the taste was more sugary and cocoa-focused than the Terry's Chocolate Orange (milk bars), and this was particularly noticeable when allowing a piece to melt. When doing this, the texture of the filling felt very grainy, but I did like crispy bits which felt a bit like a shattered lollipop and added more of a tang to the flavour.

When chewing the bar, the centre felt a bit more like a truffle, but I was surprised at just how many crispy pieces there were within it. I’d say the balance was spot on, actually, because they made a pleasant difference but there weren’t so many that they became a nuisance. The orange flavour was also a lot stronger throughout, when chewing, but there was still a milky element from the chocolate too. As much as I enjoyed both methods of consumption, I did find that this more traditional option had me salivating for the next piece before I’d even finished the one I was on!

I think I’ll be paying more attention to the Orange chocolate crunch sweets in future as I really enjoyed this bar. I just wish it had been bigger – I would have thought it would be impossible to stick to the recommended two-piece portion!

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