Hark! Baileys Original Irish Cream Truffle Bar

So,

I was watching my mom go through the pantry a couple days ago to fetch some tea when.. WHEN...

I SAW MY BELOVED, BUT FORGOTTEN, BAILEYS ORIGINAL IRISH CREAM TRUFFLE BAR STASHED IN THE BACK!

"Mom! Don't close the pantry door just yet!"

I salvaged my precious and looked at her (my chocs tend to be "she"s), a little sad that I had forgotten about her all these months. I checked her expiration date: October 2009. Regardless, I decided to try her. Maybe she got better with age, since she is filled with real Baileys (erm... Baileys is not wine but let's pretend it also gets better with age).

Took a bite of the darling. Surprisingly tasted similar to those NASTY IRISH CREME HERSHEY KISSES I had bought from Target last week, except not as ... chemical-y. At least this was enjoyable to a degree. From what I understand, based on the depiction on the classy packaging (cardboard box oh la la!), the inside is supposed to be a little gooey, but the moisture has since disappeared. Now the consistency of the inside is roughly the same as that of the outside -- moderately soft chocolate. Disappointing, but entirely my fault.

I did enjoy the 1% alcohol content and was amused that this choc is "not recommended for children." Heh... you know it's good.

Oh and while I'm talking about chocolates in England that I brought back to the US because I couldn't finish them, I also tried Fox's Echo bars. Very good. I loved the solid biscuit base and minty flavor -- then again, I like mint chocolates that taste like toothpaste sometimes :-/

Cadbury Apricot Crumble Crunch

Last Cadbury and chocolate I consume in England!

Okay, this was a bit of a throwback to the Fruit & Nut except instead of nut, there are crushed granola clusters and instead of raisins there are chopped pieces of dried apricot. Not a whole lot of chocolate, thus it isn't as stiff of a bar. Taste-wise, not too sweet. Kinda fancied it a bit, I must admit. I'd rank this pretty high in the Cadbury competition. But I would've liked more chocolate content.

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...