Review: Toblerone Milk (Kraft)

Christmas and New Year is a very busy season both professionally and at home. And while I eat a lot of chocolate I do not have much time on my hands for writing reviews and I expect this one to be the last this year. Next year will hopefully feature many more chocolate reviews.

This original or “plain” Toblerone Milk is described as “Swiss milk chocolate with honey and almond nougat (10%)”. Cocoa contents is given as min. 28% with 3% honey and 1, 8% almonds.

Aesthetically the triangular shaped box, with embossed letters, looks OK, though it is nothing spectacular. Also, the box appearance does not give a good idea of what kind of chocolate this is, but here Toblerone can probably rely on an established tradition which customers are easily able to identify. The chocolate itself looks OK and when one snaps of a triangular piece bits of almonds are visible. Appearance: 7 out of 10.

Snapping of a triangular piece one is met with a nice aroma of milk chocolate and nuts. Butter/dairy is, unfortunately, quite dominant leaving too little room for the chocolate to really shine. Aroma: 7 out of 10.

The chocolate has a texture which is somewhat in between: when breaking of a piece the snap is fair for a milk chocolate, but in the mouth the chocolate is neither hard (as a dark chocolate) nor as soft as a traditional milk chocolate. There is some crispness from almond pieces, which unfortunately are so finely ground that they do provide too little in terms of crunchy contrast. The visible almond bits and the crunch make me think that we are talking about “French nougat”, which is made with sugar, egg white and almonds which is hard and brittle and not the soft melting nougat made with hazelnuts. I think this should have been stated more clearly especially for the Danish market where nougat is usually thought to be of the later variety unless qualified. At any rate I think the nougat is too finely chopped to add substantial contrast. Also it is very sticky.

Texture: 6, 5 out of 10.

The flavour is of sweet dairy chocolate of mediocre quality and very buttery. One can taste the almonds, but there is too little contrast and complexity for this one to be too interesting. It may nevertheless hit the spot for those looking for a quick chocolate fix. Flavour: 6, 5 out of 10.

Average: 6, 75 out of 10.

Review: Organic Milk Chocolate (Irma)

This organic and Fairtrade certified milk chocolate bar is produced by Ludwig Weinrich, known for producing the VIVANI series. It has 38% minimum cocoa contents and which is in the high end for a milk chocolate, though by no means among the highest available. Here, however, it comes as an offering in Irma’s private label organic line.

Being male I’m not too fond of the pink notes on the wrapper, and also I’m not sure how this fulfils the wrapper’s function as a guide to what tyoe of chocolate you are getting with this offering. The chocolate itself looks, however looks gorgeous with a shiny light brown colour. Appearance: 8 out of 10.

There is a sweet scent of cocoa with notes of caramel, though I feel the aroma could be more powerful. Aroma: 7, 5 out of 10.

This bar has an excellent snap to it both when breaking and when biting into it, considering that this is a milk chocolate. The melt good too if a little slow on the slow side (maybe due to high cocoa contents?). Texture: 8 out of 10.

The flavour is not too sweet, which is good. One can easily taste that this is a high cocoa content bar Still there is very little very little in terms of complexity – it is not enough simply to have a high cocoa content. It is not that the chocolate is bad tasting or bland – it could simply need a little more character. So if you look for milk chocolate with a relatively high cocoa content and with it more “dark” qualities you will probably like this one. Flavour: 7, 5 out of 10.

Average 7, 75 out of 10

Marabou Premium 70% Cocoa

Producing a 70% bar of good quality is no easy task. Thus if a company is capable of producing a good dark chocolate with high cocoa content, it is usually a good indication that offerings with less cocoa, are also of a high standard. However, since high cocoa content offerings tend to have a less broad appeal, many consumers will judge a range from the lower cocoa content end. On the other hand the Premium range from Marabou seems to be produced with dark 70% chocolate as base and cornerstone. Therefore the 70% bar might be seen as a benchmark for the range’s overall quality.

The Marabou Premium range appears to be branded as a more elegant alternative to other bars carrying the Marabou label. This offering has a minimum 70% cocoa content, but, “unfortunately” also butterfat, according to the declaration. As I have stated previously I consider it misleading to label it a “full bodied dark chocolate”, as this offering does, when it contains a dairy product. Also, the declaration states that fat reduced cocoa is used and I hope that one of my readers can help me figure out why a chocolate bar needs to have fat reduced cocoa in it. If you are in the know – or would like to venture a guess - please leave a comment.

Box looks nice and is in keeping with the boxes in this range. The chocolate itself has a nice dark brown colour, though it appears to me it should be shinier. I also think that the box does not accurately convey that this is not a dark chocolate, per se, since it contains butter fat. With this in mind I have to score it low. Appearance: 5 out of 10.

The aroma is one dimensional, “dry” and smells of tobacco which is not very pleasant. Aroma: 7 out of 10.

The chocolate has a nice snap and good melt which is not to dry. The only drawback is that it breaks down a little too fragmentary. Texture: 7, 5 out of 10.

The flavour itself is rather bland and with no complexity, nuances or fruit. It is not too sweet and has a little bitter tobacco finish. Taste 6, 5 out of 10.

Average: 6, 5 out of 10.

Mythic wild chocolate

I apologize. I do not have a review for you today. I hope to make it up to you, though. The article below has got to be one of the best reads on the topic of wild chocolate. It is very informative, superbly written and gives a most fascinating inside view of the world of wild chocolates. You will not be disappointed!

Story of mythic wild chocolate

Review: Ritter Sport Dark with Whole Hazelnuts

According to Ritter Sport, over at Jim’s Chocolate Mission, this offering is the runner up on the worldwide best selling Ritter list. As I have reviewed both number one and three on that list, I thought it only fair to review this one as well. To be up front I am a little surprised that this one was able to conquer second place as I found it somewhat disappointing. While I did not think the world of either the white and milk varieties, at least I can understand why they have such a broad appeal.

Ritter Sport dark Whole Hazelnuts has a whopping 23% of whole roasted hazelnuts and a minimum of 50% cocoa solids. The declaraton to this bar reveals that it contains butter fat and shellac. In my book, as I have stated before, I think it a misnomer to label a chocolate “dark” if it has any dairy product in it (even if this is allowed by EU and/or national regulations), though perhaps I should be more lenient with this one since it is a “filled” chocolate (the Ritter hallmark). In addition this bar is glazed with shellac, a substance from insects, presumably to give the bar extra shine. I will leave it to you to judge whether this is acceptable or not, but to me dark chocolate should only have five basic ingredients plus those for the filling. I am not sure why shellac is necessary here - and I invite anyone to leave a comment on this subject.

As with the wrapper of the other two of the top three, I am not to fond of the “Photo” wrapper, though I consider this one, with its dark colour, the most elegant of the three wrappers. The chocolate has a nice dark brown colour and a nice shine. Also, the bar looks nice in cross section with whole nuts protruding. Still, I think the wrapper is a bit misleading, in that it is not dark chocolate and hence fails to accurately convey what this bar is about. For this reason I will have to assign it a low score presentation wise. Appearance: 6 out of 10.

That this is in fact less than a full bodied dark chocolate is also confirmed by the aroma of the bar which is sweet smelling of dairy chocolate. There are good aromas of roasted hazelnuts that might be more pronounced though. Overall I think the aroma is so dairy that it detracts from the aroma profile of a dark chocolate. Aroma: 7 out of 10.

The hazelnuts bring a good crunch to the bar, but ut us for some reason that the nuts and chocolate, in terms of mout feek, do not play well together, being to “fragmented” in the mouth. The chocolate has a slow melt which lasts until the hazelnuts are munched. It sticks a little to the mouth. Texture: 7 out of 10.

The hazelnuts do provide a nice taste but I think they could and should have more flavour and character than they have here. Instead, the chocolate steals the show and unfortunately I did not find the chocolate to be of a very good quality, making the nuts unable to put up a fight. It has a rather strange taste, as if it is not “real” chocolate and a bitter and unpleasant aftertaste with no fruit or complexity at all. There are slight hints of vanilla. On the positive side the bar is not too sweet, probably due to the generous amount of hazelnuts. Flavour: 6 out of 10.

Average score: 6, 5 out of 10.

Review: Änglamark Organic Dark Chocolate 70%

This review is perhaps one of the nerdier ones I’ve done, though admittedly with a somewhat surprising result. It was made possible as I found the identical chocolate in two different formats. One being a thin tablet á la Lindt’s Excellence series and one in a relatively thick and compact format. So I thought it interesting to do a heads up test of these bars. Änglamark is the organic private label of COOP one Scandinavia’ largest super market chains, and is produced by S. P. A. Leccio in Italy. Since this manufacturer delivers to big supermarket chains it should be available in several countries under various labels, This 70% Dark Chocolate bar is Organic and Fairtrade certified. Both bars weigh a 100g and contain the same five ingredients namely, cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin (E 322) and vanilla extract.

A priori I did expect most marked differences, if any, in the texture department, but did not think that the difference in format should affect the flavour. I was in for a small surprise.

While these are supposedly identical chocolates there are differences in terms of presentation and appearance. I, for one, like the more compact box and prefer the look of the smaller and thicker pieces as I do not find the cocoa bean engraving to be very handsome. These cosmetic issues aside I like the colour and surface of the flat bar a lot better as I think the smoother surface is more attractive even if there is no great difference, if any, in the nuance of the colour itself. I would score this as a tie. Both bars have a nice dark colour shine to them. Appearance: 8 out of 10.

I was not able to detect any great difference in aroma. Both smell of dark full bodied chocolate with only a hint of sweetness. Also, there is only a slight hint of fruit and no acidity. There is a little rubber which is not entirely pleasant. Aroma: 7 out of 10.

Both bars have good powerful snap. I think the thinner bar has a better snap when breaking of a piece by hand as the break is quite clean whereas the thicker bar has a somewhat harder snap to it. The thicker bar is tougher and one has to chew a bit more for it too melt, making the melt of the thinner bar slightly superior, though both have good melt. I find that both melt and snap in mouth feel was better in the thinner bar, so I think that texture wise the chocolate gains by being dosed in thinner portions. I would rate the flat bar’s texture as 8, 5 and score the thick as 8.

And now to what its all about: flavour. The compact bar had initially a nice sweet and not too bitter taste, followed by a little fruit though it lacks acidity. The finish is a little bitter.

I am most surprised to report that I found the compact bar to be significantly better tasting than the thin bar. While they did mostly have the same profile (sweet beginning, fruit in the middle and bitter aftertaste) the difference was easily discernable. Notably the sweetness of the beginning and the fruit in the middle was much more pronounced with the compact bar. The thin bar lacked much of the complexity of the compact bar and was somewhat bland in comparison. I would probably rate the thick bar as 8 and the thin bar as or 7, 5. If this is indeed the identical chocolate I cannot explain the difference in flavour, but would have to venture the guess that it has to do with the thin bar releasing the flavours too quickly leaving less time for the palate to “play” with the flavours. Perhaps this is an even bigger problem for the thin bar as the very slight fruit and complexity present in the chocolate dissolves too quickly due to its thinner texture.

These bars OK but definitely have room for improvement and overall would probably lie in the 7, 5 – 8 out of 10 range.

Review: Marabou Dark Chocolate

Before digging into the first review of the week, here is a sneak peak of what to expect this week. Thursday will feature a test of an organic dark chocolate in two different formats namely a thick vs. a thin, not only to review the chocolate itself, but to examine how difference in shape might influence the chocolate experience. That should be pretty interesting, so be sure to check in Thursday for that review. Sunday will probably be devoted to a review of the Ritter Sport Dark Whole Hazelnuts, to complete my coverage of the top three worldwide Ritter flavours according to Jims's Chocolate Mission. The list, by the way, is topped by the Milk Whole Hazelnuts which I reviewed here and third place finisher White Whole Hazelnuts which I reviewed here.

But on to today’s the review…

This Marabou “Dark” chocolate contains, according to the declaration, 44% chocolate and skimmed milk powder, but only the English description on the back describes it as a “Milk chocolate”, whereas the Scandinavian languages all state that this is a dark chocolate. The front of the wrapper states that it is a dark chocolate in Swedish and the images convey the message that this is a dark chocolate. I consider it somewhat misleading to give the impression that a chocolate containing skimmed milk powder and a 44% minimum cocoa is a dark chocolate (even if it adheres to national and/or European regulations).

Perhaps the intended target group is children or grown ups (or both) who prefer a dark chocolate experience that is not too dark. However, I would consider it preferable, to grab a good quality high cocoa content milk chocolate instead of having dark chocolate simply because it is dark (you are able to get good milk chocolate with cocoa percentages in the 40s these days). Alternatively, it is possible to get decent dark chocolate which is not too full bodied with cocoa percentages in the mid 50s that children are quite happy to munch into. Thus, if Marabou with this bar, is catering to one or both of the above mentioned target groups, they might consider doing things a little differently

The chocolate itself looks decent even if it could be a bit shinier. The wrapper looks OK but as before I do not think it accurately conveys what type of product this is. Both the depiction of dark chocolate and the words “Mörk choklad” (Dark chocolate) mislead. Thus, the wrapper does not fulfil its basic function of giving a good idea of the product. Hence, the low score: Appearance: 5 out of 10.

The aroma is uncomplex, but dark with notes of rubber and tobacco. It is surprisingly “dark” in its aroma and not sweet, for a 44% minimum cocoa offering. However, the rubber and tobacco are very unpleasant: Aroma: 6, 5 out of 10.

The chocolate has good snap, both when breaking off a piece and when actually biting into it. However, the chocolate has a somewhat crumbly in the mouth feel when melting, which detracts from the overall texture. Texture: 7 out of 10.

This is as might be expected for 44% chocolate very sweet, though to my mind it is way too sweet for a dark chocolate. It has an artificial tasting bitter aftertaste and no complexity of flavour. Flavour: 6 out of 10.

Average: 6, 125