something else that is not chocolate, and something that is

a few weeks ago, elaine and i decided to go hit up this place called moonlight on the curry mile, which we had thought looked like a very appealing sweet/ice cream place the few times we've ventured down to the curry mile for curry/kebab-age.

we both figured we ought to try something new and different, and as a result, decided to go for these things called, singularly, faluda/falooda:


does this shit look radioactive to you? because i personally found it visually intimidating. a bunch of pink worms? okay, fine i know it's vermicelli, but jeebus, couldn't you find a way to make it slightly more edible looking? it reminds me a small bowl of worms, which i find repulsive...

anyway. faluda is, according to wikipedia, "a popular beverage in the Indian subcontinent made primarily by mixing rose syrup with vermicelli and tapioca seeds along with either milk or water". except ours were mixed with some kind of ice cream.

imo, the concoction was mostly syrup, which made me feel extremely nauseated (overkill with the sugar). from what i could tell, the ice cream wasn't too bad. elaine seemed to find the vermicelli pretty decent, but if i remember correctly, she didn't feel so hot after deciding to consume the entire thing...

i, pussy that i am, was unable to deal with the oversweet/syrup-yness of the thing, and chucked it about 2/3 the way through.

oh yes, in another non-chocolate related snacking incident, elaine and i tried that thing called frozen yoghurt (yuppie/hipster food) with fruit in ireland. pretty good, if (ridiculously) overpriced.

i decided to get this in ireland, for old times's sake, because a) i hadn't seen this in the UK, and apparently, it isn't sold here, and b) like i said, for old times's sake. i think i may have moved on (mostly) from chocolate and onto another (unhealthier? debatable) endeavor - siroopwafelen and haribo tangfastics.


anyway, moro is nougat, cookie and caramel filling, and milk chocolate covering. apparently this is sold in england as star bar? eh, whatever. at least the packaging is different...

anyhow, after my long hiatus away from cadbury chocolates, my attempt to rekindle the flames of my chocolove didn't work out so well. the moro is, though not syrupy, a disturbing kind of sweet. enough to give you a sugar high, and then a nice fat sugar crash. if you tried to have two or more of these in one sitting, you ought to be concerned about contracting diabetes.

although you probably don't consume as much sugar as i do in a single week/day/sitting, so you probably have nothing to worry about.

i really can't postpone studying any longer, now can i?

damn.

Milka

I purchased 4 Milka bars from Sainsbury way back in the day and finally finished them a couple weeks ago. I've only seen Milka sold in Sainsbury around here, but I noticed almost every grocery/convenience store I shopped at in the rest of Europe carried Milka. From what I understand it originated in Germany and capitalizes on its use of milk from alpine cows. Alpine cows are purple apparently!

Alpine Milk Chocolate Cream
Creamy, as one may guess. Thus a very soft bar. No slightly bitter aftertaste as is sometimes the case with Cadbury milk chocs.

Hazelnut
Creamy like the Milk Chocolate Cream, but with chopped hazelnuts! Delicious taste and perfect texture/composition throughout. I think this bar stuck a perfect landing in the nut+chocolate competition. Cadbury was a bit too ambitious with solid nuts in their Fruit and Nut, in retrospect.

Dark Chocolate
I know I bought 4 bars of Milka, but I'm only about 50% sure that Dark Chocolate was one of them. Thus, my appraisal of this bar will be full of maybes. If I can't remember the name, it maybe wasn't memorable. But I remember this bar being bitter maybe, but not bitter enough to be legit dark chocolate.

Happy Cows
Happy Cows is a milk chocolate bar with white chocolate spots. Being a fan of both types, I thought I was in for a delightful treat. However, this didn't live up to my expectations. I didn't taste the white chocolate, and the whole bar had a slightly bitter aftertaste. It was ok, but definitely not great. Liked the concept and name, though.

coup

right, so recently (circa denmark), i discovered two things that may quite possibly have supplanted my affections for chocolate:

2. haribo's tangfastics: these are fangtastic because, unlike sour patch kids (i have a weakness for sour candy), these do not leave the roof of your mouth in the same condition of a self-flagellating priest's back. they're lovely, soft, deliciously sour, and actually have distinctive flavours. since denmark, where i first picked up a pack of these from the airport, i have finished 4 packs total.

1. dutch siroopwafelen: also something i met in denmark (recommended to me by a friend), bought at tiger and then at fotex. found a rip-off-ish version at lidl. then, luckily, i had two layovers in amsterdam (one on the way to turkey and one on the way back), during which i bought three more packs of delicious, delicious siroopwafelen. if you haven't ever had one before, i simultaneously pity you and hope you never encounter one... more for me!

Denmark

this first one is the only truly danish chocolate in this post. it was fabulously creamy/milky, and lot of hazelnuts.


toffifee, not danish (german). elaine commented on the stickiness - the outer semi-sphere is a coating of caramel, and then there's a topping of milk chocolate button on top of nougat and a whole hazelnut.



i wasn't super enthusiastic about it at first - i'm not the hugest fan of caramel, but the hazelnut/nougat filling really pulled it together.


so i ended up finishing about 42-44 of them by myself.

Sweden: Dajm

yes, this is also available in the uk - my friend in copenhagen thinks these are delicious and insisted that i try half while we were in malmo, sweden. naturally, i could not refuse.

it's pretty much a bar of hard-toffee-like crunchy center covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

the milk chocolate is pretty standard (read: not great, not terrible, just average mass-manufactured milk chocolate) - it's the toffee-like crunchy thing on the inside that's interesting. from what i can tell, it's not actually toffee, but a thin layer of crunchified caramel. the caramel is pretty sweet, but it's also got a kind of dark, smoky flavour.

i like toffee (so this isn't something elaine would want to try - right? because the shit sticks to your teeth..), and i like chocolate (well, no kidding), so this is a decent combination of the two. one of those bars that i could stand to have once a week.

it is very, very sweet though, so i think maybe it would be better as a biweekly bar...

Salzburg, or: sweet mother of god, half of my soul to beelzebub for another square of this PLZ

i know, not chocolate, but a chocolate boutique, wherein loads and loads of amazing chocolates lie in wait for my greedy appetite (+ tight purse strings). why is this picture worthy?

samples. like, all over the store. the most fabulous samples of some pretty fancy chocolates. i visited it two days in a row, the first day because i needed to really think it over and set some kind of a budget for myself, the second day to purchase.

i wasn't able to take pictures of the stuff i sampled, but i can give you a short rundown. they had a lot of dark choc samples (all rich, all amazing, dark and sexy - none of that somewhat nasty weird tang of an aftertaste you can get from crappy dark chocolate), and some bizarre ones - dark chocolate + lavender (which was amazing; there were bits of lavender in the dark chocolate and i think lavender oil. i don't know if i would necessarily call it tasty, but just amazingly inventive. it's so cool to taste lavender and really good dark chocolate in your mouth... it's like eating a non-disgusting, non-alcoholic form of perfume. a really intriguing combination for your tastebuds. i came back the next day and stole a couple more samples of this one.), dark chocolate + chili (didn't like it as much as the lavender and dark chocolate, but this, though a more oft tried combination, did a good job with balance. the chili heat kind of crept in at the end of the savoring and lingered, a small pleasant fire), and dark chocolate (not very dark, like 60%) + pear (also a pretty good, though the pear flavoured-sugar on top was a bit too sweet).

here are the things i actually did take pictures of/consume larger quantities of - i don't know if it was intentional (probably not) - but i happened to purchase two rose-flavoured things. probably because they both looked so pretty:



you have to admit, the sugared rose petal in the center is pretty impressive looking. this was a really nice combination of not-too-dark-chocolate (53%) and rose oil. really fragrant, the chocolate wasn't overly sweet, and was well balanced by the sugary, but not overwhelmingly so, rose petal. i really liked tasting the rose-ness in the chocolate - again, i don't know that the rose necessarily enhances the flavour of the chocolate, but it's like eating dark chocolate and inhaling subtle but lovely-smelling rose fragrance simultaneously. the experience is highly enjoyable.

but oh wait, wait wait wait wait....

probably the divine virgin of all finds - and white chocolate, not dark! insane! - this slab of white chocolate-champagne-rose (the package reads champagner-rose gefullt; gefullt means filling - i'm not entirely sure what kind - it wasn't as sugary as fondant or extremely extremely creamy either... but anyway) - here she is, clothed:


slip:


naked and half ravished:


sorry about the awkward homoerotic metaphor. i normally am not a fan of white chocolate, but this combination (shipped in from a chocolatier based in vienna) of champagne and rose oil and rose petals was absolutely sublime. i think what i said before about the rose oil and rose petals adding not so much to the flavour of the chocolate, but the experience of inhaling roses while you eat the chocolate, still holds true.

but this time champagne got involved. and that you can actually taste. the hint of carbonated fizziness and (very very slight, almost undetectable, but necessary) bitterness of the alcohol balanced out the very pure, unadultered sweetness of the white chocolate filling (interesting, it's a light sweetness, like that of nice bottled water or of fresh air, as opposed to the heavier, richer, more intense flavour of dark chocolate - reminds me of the tea/country vs. coffee/city dichotomy that might only exist in my mind).

this is what effervescence should (always) taste like: white chocolate and champagne, with the smell of a cloud of roses.

Cadbury Double Decker and Cadbury Tasters

Mmmm... paying visits to the vending machines between classes...

Cadbury Double Decker:
Incredibly chewy nougatine upper deck and a crispy cereal lower deck. Very filling. I wasn't a fan of the chewy upper deck -- twas waaay too chewy, with an Airheads-esque consistency. Biting off a piece produced a sensation very similar to a rubber band snapping in your mouth -- mildly frightening. Also, the whole bar was borderline too sweet.

Cadbury Tasters:

They look like Whoppers, but they're really just Cadbury milk chocolate in spherical form. Indeed, each ball is only meant to give you a taste of the brand. The balls were quite hard though and not recommended for the weak of teeth.

Austria, marzipan-licious (or not)

purchased in vienna: mozartkugeln.

chocolate + marzipan.




something i quickly discovered while in austria: i cannot has marzipan. i don't know what it is about the texture - its weird congealed quality that isn't really smooth and has a bizarre, sugary/almondy taste. yes, wrapped in chocolate. but i dunno. this isn't apparently even the "original mozartkugel", so maybe that's why i wasn't so impressed. although, to be fair, it was the best that i tried that had marzipan - but i think that's mostly due to the fact that it was so small, comparatively.

poor mozart.

they've commercialized the bejeezus out of his balls.


this was a gigantic truffle thing with a really fluffy chocolate inside. not so much tasty as it was ridiculously sweet.


chocolate with this weird cherry in the center. it was alright - i think they must have pickled the poor cherry to bits, because it definitely had a ridiculous amount of alcohol in it (waaay too much - i remember actually choking because it was so unexpectedly strong). and this, the day of my daughter's wedding!

needless to say, though a lot of things about vienna were disappointing, none more so than my self discovery project.

oh, wait, here's more marzipan that i have nothing substantial or useful or really even interesting to say, other than that i consumed it (admittedly, all these sans mozartkugel on the same day...):


again with the marzipan. DAMNIT!

well, i guess there's one important lesson that i learned from Austria: i do not like marzipan at all. i think my distaste for that particular variety of sweet is strong enough so that i have no right to share my opinion about any of the chocolate i consumed that contained marzipan.