Koruna Pralines

so i went to prague and bought belgian chocolates. alas. i guess at least there was something that was sort of local-ish (the becherovka truffel).

i miss the cheapness of the czech republic. really. all this for about... oh, i think it was 7 usd:


the bestseller:


almond truffle: cream with chocolate in milk chocolate and almonds. apparently, the best-selling truffle by koruna pralines. and it was amazing. as you can see, there are a whole host of fabulous almond sliver stuck to the milk chocolate outside, and the inside is filled with this heavenly, heavenly chocolate whipped cream, which tastes pretty much like a chocolate cloud. frothy, light, balanced by buttery almonds. deeelish.

so good that my mouth almost orgasmed.

yeah.


honestly, i bought this mostly for the shape. mushroom: nougat content. the outside was a mix of white and milk chocolate - a thin shell of it, and the inside was some nut nougat (like milk/cream with nut flavouring) and that was pretty good, if not outstanding.


walnut cream: pecan cream in dark chocolate. honestly, not entirely sure what the walnut is doing there - b/c there isn't any. but the cream does have a very distinct pecan flavour (a tad oversweet in my opinion), but the dark chocolate outside is pretty damn sexy. it's got that bitter aftertaste, but it's sooo smooooth. again, i think the entire thing could be improved if the pecan cream were just a trifle less sugary.


Baileys: "The original Irish cream in hot chocolate". i think, when the translation reads "hot", it actually means dark. anyhow. is there anyway this could taste bad? elaine has already pretty much established that baileys tastes good with just about anything. and now we're adding (well-made) dark chocolate to the equation?

sweet jesus my tastebuds have died and gone to heaven.


Champagne truffel: "Cream flavored with champagne in white chocolate". not bad - could barely, barely taste the champagne, but like i said, not bad. but i have something to compare this to in a future post, so just you hold on. white chocolate and champagne are preferable combination to champagne and regular chocolate.

so yeah, i don't know about giving people both (either milk/dark chocolate + champagne) as gifts now.


apologies, i don't remember wtf the above is. it was good and chocolate-y.


Cointreau praline: "Duplicate content - with the cream liqueur". yeah, that's probably not a very good translation. cointreau though - i prefer this to the grand marnier liquor filled i'ved tried in the past (this doesn't burn as much). i know, not the same thing, but still. not outstanding though.


Krokant bitter nougat: "Nougat filling with pieces of nuts nadrcenými in bitter chocolate". now i remember why it's taken so long for me to update. because i keep on getting about this far everytime and i'm like, do i even really remember what this shit tasted like? no. which means it wasn't exceptional enough for me to take note of. eff this.


Rum truffels: "With rum cream filling coated in bitter chocolate". eh, not a huge fan of rum, but again, x liquor + x well-made dark chocolate just tends to work out pretty well.


becherovka truffels: becherovka in bitter chocolate. um, wow. for those of you who don't know, becherovka is a uniquely czech liquor. the first restaurant where we had dinner served me and my friend a free shot of becherovka, and i must say, that's probably one of the tastiest shots i've ever had (not that i'm drawing on an abundance of experience, but that's not the point). becherovka kind of has that nice jagermiester bite to it, but it's also very slightly sweet. i tried it again at a more traditional czech pub/brewery/restaurant called u fleku, and it was much stronger, but still quite good. becherovka truffels taste effing divine. combined with the bitterness of dark chocolate, the becherovka cream filling tasted like a cloud of the liquor, which balanced the bitter dark really well.

if i could, i would go back and buy another box of these for myself. and maybe a nice-sized bottle of becherovka too.

The Chocolate House: Cappuccino Bar

I just remembered I had this bar whilst cleaning my desk drawers and I figured I should treat myself to real chocolate (Orange-flavored Kit Kat bars don't count. More about this at a much later date.) I bought this little number at the farmers' market in Brecon, Wales. What a lovely farmers' market that was -- so many pretty and unique desserts, and of course, the ciders! But I digress...

This little bar has restored my faith in excellent chocolate and also proves that homemade chocolate will always have a more natural taste to them than, well, mass-produced chocolate.

I feel like this bar has a personality that mass-produced chocolate simply do not. For one thing, I bought her (I've totally decided it's a she) from a farmers' market, which in itself is quite telling of how we spent most of our weekend in south Wales -- eating. And for a good reason -- the Welsh do place importance on food and at least try to have some semblance of a cuisine (unlike the English).

Additionally, when I was breaking off the first chunk of this bar, I noticed she required more force and finally cracked with a satisfying thwap. Clearly, she's meant to be taken seriously. After breaking super pliant Kit-Kats all week, I knew I was in for a treat.

I took a bite into a chunk. The coffee flavor just took over. Wow, what a strong presence. This is not a wimpy bar with just a whiff of coffee. Far from it, the coffee dominates the chocolate. Also, this bar was not particularly sweet, which is nice because added sugar is a killjoy. Since it wasn't so sweet, I wondered if it was dark chocolate, but research on The Chocolate House's website shows that it is just milk chocolate. Wow, I have realized your potential, milk chocolate.

This is a bar that I'll keep stashed away and consume only when I can fully appreciate it. She's not a whore like those Cadbury bars, consumed without much thought. She's so classy and deserves to be treated as such.

Cadbury Picnic

I bought a 4 pack of these for £1 when I was in Sheffield earlier this month. They look like turds, especially so since I got the full size bars (texture AND size resembled a turd!). However, they make up for their appearance in their taste.

It's got a bit of everything that might be good for you: peanuts, raisins, and cereal. Thus, eating a Picnic is like eating a Quaker Chewy bar, except covered in milk chocolate (and OK, there's some caramel inside to reaffirm its classification as candy and not health bar). Due to the caramel, the bar is quite chewy and moist, and not as crunchy as a granola bar. The raisins are well integrated in the bar -- I can taste them and their squishiness exploding in my mouth, but when I look at the cross section of the bar, I can't find them! Then again, it is quite a mess of cereal+caramel+peanut+raisin deliciousness.

Since it's got real carbohydrates, this bar is quite substantial and can fill you up while giving you a sugar crash. Also, it's quite easy to fool yourself that you're eating healthy because of the cereal+peanut+raisins. Mmm... healthy chocolate... mmm I've been deceived...mmm I think I'll doze off right now...

Nut Nougat by Primadonna

i know what this looks like.

and i am sorry to confess that - yes - my elitist, chocolate-loving-self did succumb to the call of the much-cheaper-by-the-gram faux nutella manufactured by primadonna (who, incidentally, makes a lot of other chocolate products) and sold at lidl right next to the much pricier and smaller jars of nutella.

ingredients: nutella, while predominantly composed of sugar, also contains a whopping 13% hazelnut, no small feat for such a tiny 400g overpriced jar of deliciousness. nut nougat, a whopping 750g (i figured i would run out of this much less quickly than nutella), is a mere 2% hazelnut.

you might wonder whether or not that 11% makes a difference, and i can assure you, yes, it does. nutella tastes like hazelnut and chocolate heaven, while nut nougat, though not without its redeeming (read: sweet and chocolate-y) characteristics, tastes like glorified chocolate icing.

don't get me wrong - i love chocolate icing - but in terms of a nutella substitute, there's maybe only the faintest whiff of hazelnut. that 11% gives nutella a lot more leverage on my tongue than this nut nougat business. so if you're looking for a cheaper alternative to nutella and frankly, my dear, don't give a damn about how hazelnutty something is, then go for this (and if you're even more of a cheapskate, go find the asda brand. that probably has an even more miniscule %age of hazelnut).

i don't know how long it's going to be before i finish this beastly thing (i've been going through about one 400g jar of nutella per month), but as soon as i do, it's back to ferrero's nutella.

until then, i'll make-do with buenos.

Consolidation of Chocolate (Wales)

First up, Topic. I'm not even sure which parent company makes this (o - apparently it's mars), but essentially, it's whole hazelnuts (yum!), nougat, and caramel wrapped in milk chocolate. it's quite sweet, but not altogether unseemly.


i don't honestly remember what the drifter (nestle) tastes like - which probably means that a) i should have written this post as i ate it, and/or b) this isn't a terribly memorable chocolate bar. apparently there was some kind of a debacle (past-tense, thank god) about the use of transfats in the drifters. but here - crisp wafer, chewy caramel, milk chocolate cover. kind of like twix, since the wafer was especially thin/crispy. unremarkable, but not detestable:


i have a weakness for peanut butter and hazelnuts, so it seems. chocolate and peanut butter is a heavenly combination, but this particular version of kit kat is best (as i discovered) when you let it melt a little. unmelted, it's a rather unwieldy thing...:

this was quite delightful. caramel cream, chocolate cream, milk chocolate, and "crispy rippled wafer". what doesn't work so well for chocolate (in my opinion, anyway) works pretty well for wafers - the wafer in this thing was thin, and was done up sort of like the wispa or whatever other cadbury thing that involved stale-tasting chocolate-y ribbons. the ribbons seem to accentuate the crispy-ness of the sugary wafer. it's quite sweet, but not excessively large, so i thought it was rather nice.



this was purchased at the market in brecon, where elaine/jessica/ and i spent an inordinate and disproportionate amount of time consuming sweets (see elaine's somewhere photos of before and after dessert carnage. it's intense and disturbing, but you should all be used that degree of indulgence/excess by now).

this chocolate is made by chocolate house, which is a welsh chocolate house. i'm not entirely certain what it's called, but it seems to be a bar form of this dark cherry and kirsch (fruit/cherry brandy) in dark chocolate. i really, really enjoyed the bar. it was a perfect combination of dark chocolate and creamy fondant/cherry flavour - and of course, the slight bite of the trace alcohol didn't hurt either. i think i see a trend...:


also, i tried asda's version of nutella.

not even remotely legit.

it was mostly just sugary - the cocoa taste was there, but faint, and it was missing the most important aspect of nutella - the hazelnuts. so it was just ella, in effect.

and not to be misogynist or anything, but that really just sounds like pussy to me (thank you, lil wayne).

Nestlé Blue Riband and Cadbury Giant Buttons (also In Which Elaine Makes British Friends)

I made a couple British friends in my maths classes this past week and today they shared some chocolate with me. Superbly nice of them!

Nestlé Blue Riband: This is actually not a chocolate candy but since we've reviewed Kinder Buenos, this is totally fair game. It's in the same class as the Bueno -- light biscuit cookie-like thing covered in chocolate (actually, very similar to Kit Kats). The Blue Riband is essentially a milk chocolate-covered wafer cookie. This is a decent lower-cost and lower-calorie substitute for the Kinder Bueno: the chocolate covering is not superthick that it steals the show from the delicate wafer (like in the American Kit Kats, which are different from the British ones. More on this in coming weeks) nor is the chocolate creme within the wafer super sweet (not as sweet as Nutella, which is a good thing sometimes). Overall, quite pleased with the Blue Riband. I may buy some for myself in the future.

Cadbury Giant Buttons: Cadbury milk chocolate strikes again! These are effectively chocolate nonpareils, without the sprinkles, and with milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate. The buttons are fairly thin (if I had to hazard a guess, probably 2 mm), about the size of a 10p coin, and harder than the milk chocolate in the Cadbury Dairy Milk bars I've had so far. Thus, these Giant Buttons are fairly crunchy, and not for the weak of teeth. Taste-wise, it is the same Cadbury milk chocolate, though less creamy but the crunchiness might have something to do with it.

Cadbury Roses, pt. ii

the rest of the lot:

Brazilian Darkness: i was disappointed by this. i thought it was going to be super-exotic dark chocolate, but again with the great expectations thing - i know i shouldn't but i persist anyway, with my overly-romanticized notions of what chocolate should be (poor pip). there's barely any dark chocolate here. the candy is essentially like the rock solid caramel i previously reviewed, except covered with a pathetically thin sheen of dark chocolate, and there are tiny minced bits of hazelnut embedded in the caramel. wasn't feeling this at all.

Cadbury Dairy Milk: a nice, tried-andtrue classic. perhaps one of the least outright unsavoury chocolates in the box. what can i say? i love the added creaminess.

Caramel Velvet: not bad for crappy chocolate - i guess this is what i had in mind in terms of "caramel" (unlike the one i reviewed last time, this caramel was soft to the point of being almost liquid), and it was accompanied by a nice satisfactorily velvety chocolate filling. pretty sweet.

Hazel in Caramel: pretty straightforward: a hazelnut ensconced in caramel wrapped in a milk chocolate thing. too sweet, but i like hazelnuts.

Golden Barrel: the same kind of liquid-y caramel as in the caramel velvet in milk chocolate. extremely sweet, but i much prefer the consistency of the caramel.

Hazel Whirl: really, not as exciting as it sounds; there's nothing particularly whirly about it except for the little design on the chocolate. essentially, overly sweet milk chocolate with a lovely whole hazelnut in the middle. there were only, like, 3 of these in the entire box, which was incredibly disappointing (and there were 6 of the yucky fruit creme ones. thanks for trying to rip me off, cadbury. are whole nuts really that expensive to deal with?)

do i sound unsatisfied?

the speed with which i finished the 400g of chocolate my belies my answer - which is to say, cadbury, you can SHOVE IT.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Whole Nut, Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel, Cadbury Bournville

Whole Nut: Just like the Cadbury Fruit and Nut but without the fruit pieces, and with hazelnuts (sorry, not crushed into a creamy spread à la Nutella) instead of almonds. Not much new I can say about this, other than I still like the richness of Cadbury's milk chocolate. And it's quite crunchy, but not painfully so.

Caramel: Sorry, this is just a glorified Milky Way bar sans everything inside leaving just the caramel, which means this was messy to eat since I was breaking them into chunks. The caramel is sweeter than that of a Milky Way bar, though I don't know if that's because it is a solid caramel filling (unlike in a Milky Way bar).

Bournville Classic Dark Chocolate: This is one variety of Cadbury's dark chocolate bar, named after their headquarters in Bournville, UK (I considered visiting Cadbury World, but unlike Hershey Park, it actually costs money to enter so booo). For dark chocolate, it's actually not very dark, claiming only a minimum of 39% chocolate. Additionally, the first ingredient listed is sugar. The taste clearly reflected this; I dare say the milk chocolate tasted more chocolate-y than this. Disappointing, if you're looking for legitimate dark chocolate.

Cadbury Roses, part i

Pretty pricey - seems like the equivalent of the Thorntons box, except this was slightly cheaper (3.55 pounds) and has a lot more variety (which is why i'm going to break this up into parts...):

Strawberry Dream (pink wrapper): so, pretty conventional, strawberries and chocolate. alright, hold on (i'm eating as i type)... it's really more like... strawberries in some wicked syrup-y sweet syrup form (blech) + milk chocolate. not awful because at least the filling tastes like strawberries, but jesus, you think it could be less disturbingly sweet. a resounding no you didn't. moving on.

Tangy Orange Creme (orange wrapper): again, nothing extraordinary or interesting in terms of flavours: this time, orange + chocolate. this was far less sweet than the strawberry filling and had a nice tanginess to it, but it still tasted a bit synthetic. in terms of chocolate/orange combos, i'd rank it last (so far) behind Thorntons and Hotel Chocolat's orange-chocolate crispy things.

Caramel (blue wrapper): i'm going to stop expecting extraordinary - this is cadbury after all... anyhow, thin layer of milk chocolate over a solid-as-a-rock chunk of caramel, though if you're patient and wait for it to melt in your mouth, the caramel is not too sweet and has that nice warm, buttery flavour.

Country Fudge (skinny golden wrapper): i'm not quite sure what country fudge is supposed to taste like. the fudge seems a tad dry, but i'm not particularly good at judging since my predilections in the realm of fudge run towards the hot, melted-on-top-of-ice-cream variety (oh sorry, i think i may just have drooled). i suppose the fudge at least brings an interesting texture to the mix: sort of like how i would expect dense bread to feel, except this dense bread is made entirely of sugar and a bit of cocoa. a tad too sugary for my tastebuds, but not awful.

Hotel Chocolat fancy shmancy "Orange Melanges", and no, I haven't not been eating chocolate for that long

Apologies. I haven't been updating when i've been eating - obviously; the hiatus between this post and my last was waaay too long, and you know i can't go for that long without chocolate. i actually had this set (pictured below) about a week ago and managed to eat it rather slowly, over the course of 2-3 days.

i know, i was impressed by my legen-... (wait for it)... -dary self-control.

yeah, no, i don't really have any. i've also polished off a 5 pack of kinder buenos since last week, if that improves my credibility. the only reason i haven't been scarfing down more chocolate is because:

a) i'm way too lazy to get my ass over to the grocery store, which will probably change tomorrow as i have no real food anymore, except for

b) the nutella i have sitting on my desk, which, now that i think about it, is both a source of chocolate and real food. sort of. sorry again. i digress, probably because i'm trying (and succeeding! no shock there) in avoiding typing up my shakespeare's the tempest/forbidden planet paper. without further ado:


They were called something obnoxiously/pretentiously fancy like "Orange Melanges" (when really, i have no idea what a melange is and would have been perfectly satisfied with a name like... "little orange pieces and crispy bits in chocolate". granted, melanges sounds a lot nicer).

About 1.47 or something like a pop, which is pretty pricey, as far as chocolates go - these were comparable to the little orange numbers in the Thornton's truffle box thing i tried a few weeks back. These were comparatively less sweet - still a very satisfying balance of chocolate and orange, but the chocolate was noticeably darker.

i suppose the darker-ness of the chocolate (meaning less sugar, more cocoa) is supposed to be more indicative of quality, but i sort of liked the milkyness of the Thornton's as well. i guess it's a matter of what my mouth craves at the moment - unthinkingly sweet milk chocolate or the more thoughtful/mysterious/interesting dark chocolate.

i need to buy myself some cheese.

Thorntons Milk Chocolate Smothered Fudge, Raisins, & Toffi-Chocs

Been eatin' without reviewin'.

I had these a while back.

Yea, they were on sale at McColl's/BoozeBusters. It was my first Thorntons experience, so I had unnecessarily high expectations.

Like the package says, there were 3 types of chocolate-covered candy in there: fudge balls, raisins, and toffee balls.

I liked the fudge balls. This was the first time I ever had vanilla fudge. Quite smooth and soft I must say. I enjoyed these thoroughly. The vanilla flavor wasn't strong at all; I had to read the box to figure out that they were supposed to be vanilla. But I still enjoyed 'em.

The raisins were just like Raisinets. I loved them anyway, because I'm a raisin freak. However, nothing special here, move on.

The toffi-chocs... these are one of the things that Thorntons is famous for. I ABSOLUTELY LOATHED EATING THESE. Granted, I'm not a sticky candy fan to begin with, so I found these ESPECIALLY ANNOYING to eat. The most frustrating part was the chocolate-coveredness making the vanilla fudge balls and the toffi-choc balls indistinguishable until I bit into them, so I couldn't even pick them out! Argh. I only hated these because I don't like sticky candy (and these things were sticky as hell). If you like toffee, you'll probably be fine. But god. I don't like throwing away food, but I started throwing away some toffi-chocs near the end. I couldn't take it. Objectively speaking, they were alright, not overly sweet, but a softer consistency (like caramel) would've been preferable.

That's what the candies look like. I ate all of them before I could take a picture, so you'll just have to settle for the side of the box.

As for the Thorntons brand of milk chocolate, it's pretty good. It's not as milky as Cadbury's. But further Thorntons testing is needed for me to get a better sense of its taste.

Hotel Chocolat (also, Ivy Caves Prematurely)

i was in london over the weekend by myself, which was fine, except then, there was nobody at all to check my spending habits. to be fair, i didn't lug around my (second) jar of nutella, so perhaps this was inevitable.

hotel chocolat was having a sale (50%) of all their going-to-be-expired-soon chocolates. since i was in the shopping district of london (which is a pretty close walk from buckingham) and could not afford to even step into the other shops near that street, i elected to step into the place i have only read reviews about and dreamed of sampling. there were sooo many choices, i almost want to go back to buy some more, but i ended up purchasing three things, and thus far have consumed two of them.

the first was this:


...whisky soothers, which is, as the package says, "Gentle and mellow cream liqueur soft centre sealed within crisp chocolate". indeed. it sounded intriguing - i have had chocolate + liqueur before (it was one of those little chocolate bottle-shaped deals filled with grand marnier. i was not impressed with the ridiculous amount of liqueur present; the taste was too sharp, and there was too little chocolate), but i've never had whisky.

i thought this was particularly delicious, because it was creamy/smooth, and just had a hint of that alcoholic bite/kick around your throat/back of your tongue. bravo on this one, hotel chocolat.


the other one i tried just after i saw stonehenge: Honey & Pistachio: "Honey flavoured milk chocolate poured over premium pistachios". it sounded interesting, and since i was quite fond of the honeycomb and chocolate mix, i figured adding a few nuts with actual honey into the mix wouldn't hurt.

perhaps it's a matter of personal taste, perhaps it is truly an unsavoury combination - i don't know - but whatever it was, i do not think honey + milk chocolate + pistachios worked at all. the honey and the chocolate was certainly interesting (crunchies are more crunchy and less honey... this was a very prominent honey taste)... it didn't taste bad, but in bar form, became kind of oppressive. the honey made the milk chocolate sweeter and simultaneously gave it that almost minty honey taste... too much of it would kind of make you want to hurl.

and then the pistachios. i was trying to figure out how they would fit into all this, and i honestly don't think they did. there were certainly a lot of whole pistachios in there (my jaw was killing me from all the chewing), and they did contrast with the sweetness of the milk chocolate/honey - but it was weird.

pistachios have that bitterish aftertaste...

anyway, after i ate about half the bar, i wanted to please, please stop, so i did. even though i finished it later, the fact that i couldn't finish the bar in one sitting is, in my opinion, a bad sign. either this bar is one of those "approach with caution" cases, or it just plain sucks.

This would explain it

Really? - The Claim - Sugar in the Diet Can Lead to Acne

This would explain why I've been getting acne, something that is unusual for me. :( Damn Buenos, you will be the death (or facial blemishment) of me!