Marabou with Hazelnuts

Chocolate and (hazel)nuts is an excellent combination and has in fact proven itself as one of the best selling items. The top 3 best selling Ritter Sport flavours, for example, are all whole roasted hazelnuts with milk, dark and white chocolate. And in fact this is a combination that is relatively well executed by the mass producers. This offering from Marabou is described as a "Milk chocolate with chopped hazelnuts”, with cocoa solids of min. 30% and 17% hazelnuts.

The wrapper looks OK, not too fancy if a little bombastic. It does give an excellent idea of the type of proposition. The chocolate itself has a nice and light brown colour and good shine. In cross section it looks nice with the nuts. However, some nuts protrude the top of the bar which is not really attractive. Appearance: 6, 5 out of 10.

The bar smells very nice indeed, of dairy and chocolate and toasted nuts. Aroma: 8 out of 10.

There is good crunch from the nuts that have been chopped in a nice and rough manner. The drawback of this bar is the waxy texture of the chocolate. Apart from not being so nice in and off itself it also makes the melt too slow and while a slow melt might not be a bad thing the waxy texture ruins it. Also, the waxy texture makes it stick too much the mouth and thus not making for a very good mouth feel. Texture: 6 out of 10.

A mild and sweet milky taste with nice flavour from the toasted hazelnuts. However, the milk chocolate has an off aftertaste which ruins what otherwise might be a taste that would probably appeal to many. Flavour: 7 out of 10.

Still I think this is a bar that could have a wide appeal and if the aftertaste and waxy structure could be improved it might compete with, say Ritter Sport with nuts. However, I think Marabou, which comes in 200g slab, caters to a different audience than the 100g Ritter Sport, though now Marabou has chosen to produce 100g bars and perhaps this will cater to the "munch immediately" market and thus compete with Ritter Sport, at least in Scandinavia. Still, I feel that the Ritter Sport whole nuts with Milk chocolate, I reviewed here, is preferable to this Marabou offering.

Average: 6, 875 out of 10

See also Cocoa Heavens review here.