Gone Chocco

I haven’t seen any ads or general ‘hoo hah’ for this block and didn’t even see it stocked in Coles or Woolies; instead I found it in my trusty corner store.

Having ‘berry fruit’ in it, I decided to make myself  cup of girlie raspberry and vanilla herbal tea and try this block out in front of the box.

I have vague memories that aren’t successfully repressed of their ‘Desserts’ range featuring a Berry Shortcake flavour that was similar to pressed excrement but somehow my hopes for this new one were still high.

The block is 190 grams, which tends to be Cadbury’s way of avoiding passing on a price increase by reducing the size instead, so I’ll assume that using real ingredients for their ‘berry fruit’ such as cranberry, natural strawberry flavour and elderberry juice concentrate doesn’t come cheap.

The little bubbly bits on the back are the vanilla shortcake crumbs.  Unfortunately the wee sods contain ‘vegetable oil’ so you can draw your own conclusion as to whether it is palm oil or has palm oil as part of the mix.

The block is 82% Dairy Milk chocolate (containing 26% cocoa solids), 9% berry fruit and 9% vanilla shortcake so either we can forgive Cadbury for using palm oil or berate them for being so stingy and unenvironmental for still having to include it in such a small ingredient.

I forgot to take a photo of the front of the block but it consists of the flatter and bigger squares that are also in the Black Forest and Rocky Road blocks to accommodate chunkier fillings.

And, dammit, it tastes delicious. Like a snack for when you’re hungry and have eaten enough fruit or yoghurt for the day and really want to stuff your face in front of 3 episodes of ‘30 Rock’ back-to-back. The berry is a slightly more natural and chewy jelly consistency and the vanilla shortcake (or what to me seems like a nice crunchy butter biscuit) pairs up pretty decently with the dairy milk chocolate.

Love Chunks had a row (three squares out of eighteen), said it was enough for him and left the room to work on the computer.

I confess – I ate the rest, finishing off the entire block. Naughty, Choc Goddess, naughty!

In addition to the groovy and unique Daintree truffles, Wild Chocolate also make ‘bark’ or what really are more generously sized blocks in a bright package.

When Sapphire saw it she said, “Oh Mum, that’s your ideal handbag, isn’t it?” Yes, indeedy dear child, it is.

The ‘four bark box’ contains Lemon myrtle, Quandong, Wild lime and Honey Macadamia. I couldn’t decide which one to try first, so decided to try all four at once. For the good of the blog, you understand…….

First up – the honey roasted macadamia nut block. No cocoa percentages were listed, so I’ll hazard a guess that this sits in the high twenties/early thirties - serious, but still milk which always goes well when paired with the buttery macadamia nut. Add a bit of ‘honey’ toffee-crunchy stuff and it’s a winner.

The milk has an added ‘tang’ to it that reminds me a bit of yoghurt. No, it’s not ‘off’ but has a zinginess that matches the crunchy whole nuts, nut pieces (inside the block) and honey shards particularly well.

A second block was in the ‘two bark box’ and was shared the next day with my friend Sigrid, over for a flying visit from Canberra. It disappeared before our cups of tea did and she left with the wrapper, keen to find some more on her way home.

The Dark Chocolate and Lemon Myrtle block contains lemon myrtle oil and what they intriguingly call ‘yellow chocolate chunks’ which we can only assume is white chocolate coloured to remind us of the yellow myrtle flavour. Whatever works, I guess.

The chocolate tastes as though it has around 50% cocoa solids and is therefore very sweet – but not bitter – and dominates the taste buds before the lemon myrtle flavours emerge. There’ll be some fans who’ll want the chocolate to edge up to 70% and those – myself included – who want the lemon myrtle to be a bit more dominant. Only a minor quibble though. 

Third to taste is the Milk Chocolate and Glaced Quandong block.

Again, the chocolate has a ‘tangy yoghurt’ flavour to it and the quandong is fruity and chewy but I couldn’t really detect any distinct quandong flavour – they might as well have been apricots or sultanas for all I knew.

Last but not least, the White Chocolate and Glaced Wild Lime.

2010 is proving to be the year that I’m constantly surprised by how much I’m enjoying white chocolate* and this bar is no exception.

The chocolate tastes of fresh cream with a particularly light texture not normally associated with what a friend of mine calls ‘yak fat’ chocolate (ie white). The green bits drizzled in the block are flavoured with lime that enhances the actual wild fruits studded throughout the block. They taste of chewy,candied citrus pieces that have had a flirtation with currants; so you get my drift that it’s a very subtle flavour done extremely well.

Overall, I’m a bit surprised that it’s the white block and a milk block (macadamia) that are my top two flavours but all of them deserve a spot in the ‘handbag’.

* I used to think that only traitors and mental pgymies would consider the white stuff ‘chocolate’ but there’s some pretty good stuff available these days.

And finally onto the last four blocks of the eleven Ritter Sport flavours available in Australia.

From the top left (clockwise) we have Yoghurt, then Dark with whole hazelnuts (das Germans liebe their hazelnuts), Butter biscuit and Whole Almonds.

All of the milk chocolate contains 30% cocoa solids with a ‘Cadbury Dairy Milk’ feel about it, which isn’t a bad thing and I suspect that Ritter Sport is the Deutschland equivalent. As you can see, these too have survived export, storage and transit far better than my original three review blocks did.

My notes for these four flavours are about the briefest I’ve ever done.

Reasons were partly due to greed, lack of time before ‘Modern Family’ started and trying to slap away Love  Chunks’ hands in order to get my fair share.

Here’s what I wrote:

Yoghurt – Delicious !!  Sweetly creamy with an added tang.

Dark Whole hazelnuts – OK, nothing startling.

Whole Almonds – Also OK but they go well with the milk chocolate.

Butter Biscuit – Yum!  This is like a snack food rather than just chocolate, with a bit of praline to fill in the gaps between the biscuit and the chocolate.

In the cold light of day, the praline in the Butter Biscuit block is actually – according to the wrapper – ‘fine cocoa cream’ and when conducting a second tasting session with time to spare (ie on my own with a morning coffee the following day) finds that it reminds me of the filling inside a Tim Tam, so it’s a big tick for this one.

Ultimately, the Yoghurt and Butter Biscuits are winners for me because they offer something different. And scrumptious.

THESE are the kind of building blocks I like to play with!

I’m always out of date. For instance, I’ve just discovered ‘30 Rock’ when they’re up to Season Four, only watched ‘Six Feet Under’ last year on DVD at a friend’s insistence and, up until last week, had never set foot inside an ALDI store.

Time to change that because, even after two years in Melbourne, I only just found out that there’s an ALDI a stone’s throw from the Queen Vic Market. The day I went there was a fire drill in the adjoining building, with half the staff wondering if they should congregate at Mac’s pub (est 1853) next door.

It was a challenge for me not to gawp inside ALDI as I struggled to hold my purchases (note to self: always carry a green shopping bag) in my arms and try hard not to be too obviously amused at the sight of a burly bloke trying on a motorbike helmet for sale right alongside box after box of bargain tampons.

Part of my stash was the dodgily-named Choceur blocks. They’re made in Germany, but I guess ‘Deutsche Gemacht’ isn’t as catchy.

The Coffee and Cream looked pretty darn nice when undressed though. No posh ‘thock’ snapping sound, but it was glossy and had a rather nice cream and coffee aroma wafting out of the gold wrapping.

It contains 33% cocoa solids in the milk chocolate part and 28% in the white bits – yep, my technical descriptions are on fire today. The ‘flavour’ is in the milk chocolate which makes up three-fifths of the block and the white is just white (no additional flavour), comprising the other two thirds.

There’s no scary ingredients, but no real coffee either, just the vague sounding ‘flavour.’

Despite this, it tasted delicious. Melts in the mouth instantly, gives a nice coffee hit (thanks to ‘flavour’) and goes down perfectly with a hot cup of tea.

Yes, it’s saliva-suckingly sweet but you expect that with a white and milk combo that lists ’sugar’ as the first ingredient followed by cocoa butter and cream powder.

I’d highly recommend this for a cheap thrill - not a dinner party ‘bring along’ or gift, but most appropriately enjoyed in the privacy of your own home.

Onto the Peanut & Flakes. This one has a completely different configuration when ‘nude’, presumably to accommodate the more nobbly bits inside:

Sweet old Uncle Abraham on an untested Unicycle…….. this was utterly more-ish, delish, scrummy and crunchy-sweet-crunchy! Described as 75% milk chocolate (containing a very unshabby 32% cocoa solids), 20% peanuts (the second ingredient behind sugar) and 5% cornflakes (which Choceur assure us contain ‘95% corn minimum’), these all roll in together to create a chocolate that eats like a really satisfying snack bar. The nuts or flakes taste as though they’re sugar or toffee-coated or else they’re just super crunchy and hum along nicely to the sweet chocolate.

There’s seven ‘rows’ in this 200 gram block and I’d eaten three before even putting my lense cap back on. I’m going back to ALDI for a few more of these bad boys – this time with my own shopping bag!

The Curious Chocolatier, in addition to making their decadent salted caramel truffles, also have a six-pack of chocolate blocks to try. So of course, I did……

The lovely ladies featured on each block are retro-gorgeous, aren’t they? Today I’m reviewing three – Caramel milk chocolate with pecan, Orange dark chocolate with roasted almonds and dark chocolate, apricot and rosemary. It’s a tough gig, I know and I can’t help if I’m smiling as I type this – I’m livin’ the dream, baby!

I was at my friend Amy’s place for a cuppa and decided to bring along the top lady, far right – Caramel Milk Chocolate with Pecan.

Whole pecans are gently dropped into the block of 31% cocoa solids milk chocolate and we were keen to get into it. Amy is from Georgia, USA, home of pecans and a local delicacy known as ‘Turtles’ because of their shape – clusters of pecans and gooey caramel covered in milk chocolate. Expectations for this block were high.

Unfortunately there was no ‘caramel’ in this chocolate – not even on the nuts, so presumably it refers to the ‘caramelised sugar’ in the ingredients? If so, it wasn’t discernible to our uneducated palates and we both agreed that this block would be better described as ‘Milk Chocolate with Pecans’ to avoid any disappointments. That said, we polished the block off before our cups of tea went cold….

A couple of days later I was at my friend Helen’s house for a bowl of her incredible silky artichoke and potato soup. Dessert was these two ladies: Orange dark chocolate & roasted almonds and Dark chocolate, apricot and rosemary.

This time I had the sense to photograph the top of the blocks before flipping them over:

…. and it’s clear which one has almonds in it and which one contains apricot pieces:

We both agreed that the dark chocolate (53% cocoa solids, presumably Callebaut) orange and almonds was ‘nice’.  It’s a perfectly acceptable rendition of two classic flavours but nothing unusual, outstanding or offensive. Just ‘nice’.

In contrast, the dark chocolate, apricot and rosemary was a revelation – “Oh my Godfffmph,” Helen mumbled, her mouth full – “This is amazingffffmph.”  The apricot isn’t your usual sun-dried and chewy number, but a freeze dried, paler version that is crisper in texture. The rosemary isn’t overly dominant but just right, permeating the bittersweetness of the chocolate and the tanginess of the apricots.  The overall effect is a savoury, sweet, satisfying and intriguing little dance on the tongue. 

Who’d have thought of such a flavour pairing in chocolate? But I’m glad that someone did……….

And the tickets to the Taste of Melbourne event have already gone, folks! I was regaled with tales of long-distance love, humorous quotations, chocoholicism and simply hoping that they were first in, best dressed.

There are eleven varieties of Ritter Sport available in Australia imported by Rosco Foods and today I thought I’d sink my choppers into the four blocks that feature hazelnuts.

I’ve pondered before how European chocolatiers (and purchasers, obviously) lurrrvve their hazelnuts, so it’s no surprise that Ritter feature them so heavily.

We’ve got Raisins & Hazelnuts, Praline, White Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts and Whole Hazelnuts. This’ll be a bit of a test for me because whilst I don’t mind hazelnuts, I don’t love them.

Here’s what I call my chocolate ‘porn’ shot, when their clothes are off.

For blocks that have travelled in a container ship, stored in a warehouse, posted to me and then taken out and admired a few times, they’ve stood up pretty well with a nice sheen, especially on the praline block.

The Raisins & Hazelnuts block is more-ish. Particularly so when it’s morning tea time and the stomach is rumbling. Containing 17% raisins and 7% hazelnut pieces, it’s fruity and crunchy which is just what you expect. And want.

The white chocolate block doesn’t have info on cocoa content (the milk blocks all contain 30%) but it does have a few rice crispies thrown in amongst the super sweet creaminess of the chocolate and the crunch of the nuts which adds another dimension. Again, like the whole ‘we love hazelnut’ thing, I’ll say again that white chocolate (esp when coating something or with another ingredient) isn’t the evil desecration I used to think it was.

Whole hazelnut block is, I’m guessing, one of Ritter Sport’s biggest sellers. It’s what the average European punter wants – milk chocolate and hazelnuts. Ritter Sport delivers; no surprises, no fancy bits, just an honest block and fair enough.

Finally, the praline. Praline in this instance is a smooth hazelnut paste filling that I found immensely sweet (and therefore only managed two squares compared to four of the other three types) but Sapphire adored it. “It’s creamy and goes well with the chocolate so that you can’t tell where the praline ends and the milk begins,” she said. Hmmm, I think she’s starting to give me a run for my money!

I’ve seen these sitting on the shelves at Target and some supermarkets, read that they were made in China and put them back on the shelf.

Perhaps a few other punters have done so as well, because they’ve since been heavily discounted. Even so, I could only bring myself to buy their tiny 50 gram box.

Reading the back shows that they’re made in China from Australian-grown macadamias coated in Belgian chocolate. 8th Sin therefore seems to be a brand owned by Suncoast Gold, based in Gympie, Qld. Despite this, there’s no mention of ‘8th Sin’ on their website so it either needs updating or they’re taking a ‘wait and see if these kick off’ approach first.

What they do tell us is that they’re “the leading flavoured macadamia nut supplier in Australia. We process, value add and supply the finest quality macadamia nuts throughout the world…….. Our head office and processing facility are in Gympie, a thriving gold mining town on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. The Gympie region is the centre of the original habitat of the native macadamia tree.

Macadamia nut shells, when combusted, yield an enormous amount of energy. In 2003, Suncoast Gold Macadamias, in co-operation with Ergon Energy, installed a state of the art power plant which uses previously discarded macadamia shells to generate enough ‘green electricity’ to power around 1,200 Queensland homes every year. This in turn reduces greenhouse gases by 9,500 tonnes annually, which is equivalent to taking more than 2,000 cars off the road every year.”

That’s pretty worthy, right?  And yet they’re happy to send their nuts overseas to a Chinese firm presumably to save money on coating their nuts in chocolate and popping them into pretty boxes….. Hmmm, will the real Suncoast Gold stand up?

Fifty grams gives you four rather nice looking chocolates – two mostly milk, one mostly dark and the other one mostly white.  They’ve survived the boat trip from China surprisingly well and it is reassuring to note that there are no scary ingredients listed on the back of the box.

The macadamias are small (maybe sliced in half?) but taste super crunchy with what tastes like a tiny layer of toffee around them, and they in turn sit in a ganache filling underneath the chocolate layer. The chocolate – all three types – is rather nice and I’m guessing it’s Barry Callebaut’s Asian-made version that still cheekily calls itself ‘Belgian’ chocolate solely because it’s owned by a Belgian company.*

So, I’m in a bind. They’re clearly made OS to save money but use Australian grown macadamias that are sent overseas and  back here for us to buy.  That’s a lot of food miles……. whatever green house gases they’ve saved in Australia from combusting maca shells must surely be eaten up (and more) from factory processes and shipping from China? Actually I’m not in a bind at all – I won’t be buying these again because there are many local chocolatiers in Australia who’d quite happily coat these nuts and make it an entirely Australian product.

What do you think?  Three different nations (China, Belgium and Australia) involved in a cheap and rather nice-tasting treat for us to enjoy down under or a cynical rip off that costs us in jobs and environmental impacts instead?

* I’m more than happy to post a correction to this assumption if someone can provide me with more accurate information.

On a more light-hearted note my review on the new New Lindt Swiss Gold White with Almond included a comment on how LOLcats are taking over the world. This got the attention of the Online Education organisation, who told me that they have developed a pictorial history of LOLcats that’s worth a look (it’s bigger and more detailed than the picture on the left).

In addition to Newman’s Pleasure Society ‘Selections’ and ‘Fruit and Nut’ boxes, they have these two upright boxes, which don’t really match the earlier couple but look rather classy.

I’ve said it before though and I’ll say it again. *sigh* Newman’s packaging is all over the shop and they need a clearer line of packaging so that the average consumer recognises all of their products as belonging to the same brand. As you find below, not only their boxes differ in size and shape with each flavour but so does the wrapping…

Rant over. Time to try the chocolate, with the larger ‘Pleasures’ box up for tasting first.

Sorry, the rant – or mild whinge – isn’t really over yet. The box is lovely but this plastic bag full of what looks like cheap Christmas lollies isn’t. Clearly they’ve decided to spend the majority of their packaging budget on the box, so here’s hoping that the actual chocolates make up for how they look when the box is opened and cast aside.

When unwrapped they remind me of most of us humans in front of a bathroom mirror: when nude, we ain’t pretty.

Thankfully these taste a darn sight better than they look, but on closer inspection the shell is thick in some areas and thin in others, and the coconut flavoured one (top right in the photo below) is just blended with the chocolate and not a separate filling. Think of these as Newman’s version of ‘Cadbury Roses’ but with some slightly different flavours and you’re on the right track.

Now for the Liqueurs.  I know that like marzipan and ginger, liqueur chocolates are those that people either love or loathe so these aren’t likely to convert any loathers. Luckily, I adore liqueur-filled chocolates and even snatch up some of the dodgy Eastern-bloc $2 cherry liqueurs found in Cheap-as-Chips bargain shops from time to time.

The packaging here is different to the blue box – no big plastic bag enclosing them but just loose and in different wrappers.

When naked, they’re as battered and bruised as those from the blue ‘Pleasures’ box, with the dark coffee one already oozing.

The flavours include Limoncello, Butterscotch, Coffee, Blood Orange and Vanilla. ALL of them are delicious and I was surprised by the strength of the vanilla centre. Normally I can barely detect the flavour, but considering this was a ‘liqueur’ Mr Newman must have poured the whole bottle of essence into the mix so it’s potent – which gets a tick from me, but might not from those who like their essence on the undetectable side. The coffee is dark and strong (tick), limoncello has a disconcertingly fluorescent snot colour to it but has a lovely citrus punch (tick), the blood orange is suitably orangey/grand marniery (tick) and the butterscotch is a thin caramel that oozes everywhere and looks very pale but tastes divine (tick tick tick).

Yes, they all taste good. Delicious, even. And the wallpaper-inspired boxes are gorgeous. Inside it’s another story – a bit of a dogs’ breakfast in terms of presentation but, as my mother would say, “they only end up getting chewed up and churned inside your gut anyway.”  Then again, she was referring to her infamous ’stew’ that she’d serve up to us in the 1970s!

Newman’s are owned by Ernest Hillier, a family-owned and run Aussie company that’s been around for almost 96 years (yes, they’re older than Haigh’s).

They’re hoping that these boxes might work as Fathers’ Day gifts, but I decided to take them with me to the footy and share them with both my Mum and my Dad (visiting for the weekend from South Oz) there.

To make space for them in my backpack, I had to take them out of their boxes. The smaller box on the right is a selection of milk and dark chocolate coated peanuts and sultanas and has this rather cute quote on the back:

‘Not everyone likes surprises. However, as the surprisee, one should always take into account the feelings and time and effort of the surprisor. In this case, something like ‘Oh, it’s you Mr Sultana, how lovely, I was expecting Mr Peanut’ should do nicely.

Well, to add to the surprise factor, I tipped them into a tupperware container with the six selections from the bigger box, appropriately called ‘Chocolate Selection’, containing milk chocolate peanuts, ginger bites, fruit and nut, espresso bites (coated coffee beans), snow berries (raspberry jellies) and milk almonds.

This box also had some thoughts, this time on Monogamy:

‘If variety truly is the spice of life it simply makes no sense to limit oneself to a single love. Satisfy your inner chocolate polygamist with this naughty box of Pleasure Society indulgences. May we suggest at least a Menage a Trois. Even better, chocolate orgy, anyone?’

Hooley dooley - should I really be giving this to my father?

Absolutely, as it turned out. The tupperware container was passed around for my folks, Love Chunks and Sapphire to grab a handful and munch as the footy played out before us. In a rare gesture of magnanimity, I even offered them to the opposition supporters on my right. “Phwoar, these are lovely,” the bloke said.

It was a wise move. The Crows lost (again) but the recipients of the chocolates didn’t jeer when we left. As for my Dad, he loved them all and I might get him another box for Fathers’ Day. Just as long and he doesn’t have his glasses on when he turns to the back of the box to open it……

Regular readers may remember that I recently reviewed three Ritter Sport blocks and was distinctly underwhelmed. All of them had been heat affected which severely affected their taste.

Well word got out to the Australian importers of Ritter Sport, who were mortified at the state of the blocks I’d reviewed and have since contacted the shop I’d bought them from to get them to store the chocolate more effectively.

“The stock was obviously extremely heat affected and therefore I feel the review was not a true indication of what the bars are actually like. We do not want anyone in Australia buying our product in such a state and it is our responsibility to do what we can to prevent this. After all, chocolate should make you feel good, not disappointed!” Well said, Marianne.

And so, drum roll please…….. Ritter Three Block Review Redone!

I’m happy to say that these three bars – Alpine Milk, Dark Chocolate 50% and Marzipan were unrecognisable to the three misfits I’d tried a couple of weeks earlier.

The marzipan was nicer and slightly stronger (but not bitter) and the chocolate (the same 50% as the plain block) tasted a fair bit richer and more pleasant. It’s not posh chocolate by any means and has a slightly grainy mix (sugar and cocoa not conched as long as some of the more prestigious brands) so three rows of the plain dark were also left for me. As the sole marzipan-lover of the household, the entire block was mine and it worked well with the dark chocolate and I found that I preferred the chocolate as a ‘cover’ for another flavour rather than by itself.

It was the Alpine milk, at 30% cocoa solids, that really won me – and my family over. “Mmmm, this is better than Dairy Milk,” said the eleven year old and the forty two year old reached for another couple of squares and agreed, “Yeah it’s pretty nice.” 

As you can see, they look much better as well and Marianne was kind enough to send me the other flavours that we Aussies can find here, so stay tuned for more reviews.