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!

 

Who doesn’t like receiving a present in the mail, especially when it reveals a parcel as pretty as this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside, I found two boxes of Waterthins Chocolate Selection biscuits. The box on the left are ‘Creme Delights’ and what looks like caramel oozing out is actually ‘cocoa nut creme’. The box on the right are Wafer Straws.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were opened just in time for Mrs Krups to make my morning coffee and they had a delicious burnt-sugar- toffee smell that wafted up as I was leaning in to take a photograph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Firstly, the Creme Delight. It has a pretty generously-thick disc of milk chocolate on the top (with a not-so-shabby 32% cocoa solids), covering their version of the creamy Tim Tam filling (also on par) and a fine-crumb base (hence the powdery stuff on the top of the chocolate) that is one of the best factory-made biccies I’ve eaten in a long time. Om nom nom, two biscuits down……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onto the Wafer Straws. I’ll be honest right out and say that wafer has never really rocked my world. If I had to take ‘em or leave ‘em, I tend to walk off and not look back. As for these fellas, they were pretty wide to be a straw until I took a bite and realised that they were hollow – a couple of minutes earlier I could have tried slurping my coffee through one! The wafer in this is delightfully crisp and somehow holds up against the thickness of the chocolate and there’s a hint of hazelnut flavour lurking in the background as well. These are many many notches above your standard crap-wafer-and-thin-chocolate-gunk that’s normally available. Om nom nom, three more down…..

Okay, so I’ve established that I *love* the way they taste and have since seen them on the top shelf in the chocolate biscuit aisle at Woolworths (Tim Tams are at eye-level, so Waterthins are kind of hidden), so what’s the catch?  A couple, actually. Some of the ingredients don’t make for happy reading – there’s no hazelnut, it’s peanut paste; vegetable fat is in both biscuits and they’re made in Poland.

This is where, as a chocolate reviewer who wakes up every single morning with the first thought, “I want chocolate” before her face has even unfolded or her bladder emptied, I find myself in a dilemma. Utterly delicious and addictive vs vege fat and Poland.

Thoughts anyone?

…and while you’re thinking, click on the link below, complete a survey and be in the running to win a years’ supply of Belgian chocolate.