Australia
For my birthday my boyfriend took me out to Max Brenner’s for dinner. If you’re any sort of chocolate lover, you may have heard of him before. He’s an Australian chocolatier with the tag line “Chocolate By the Bald Man” and has opened up chocolate themed restaurants all over the world. I haven’t been able to get to one for some time, due to funds or lack of friends. So, the sweetheart that my boyfriend is, finally decided it was time that I went.
I hope to do a review on the full place sometime, but let me just state here that the food was awesome. Dinner was well portioned and extremely delicious, so much so that neither of us had the stomach space for any of his infamous chocolate desserts! So sad! However, to make up for it, we decided to take home some of his chocolate bonbons. We selected a few flavors from behind the big chocolate counters and left with some sweets to try later on.
Each of the bonbons are little squares, about an inch on each side, and about 1/2 inch tall. They have lovely designs on the tops of each so they’re easily told apart from one another.
Lemon Oil: The texture is super delicate and smooth. The ganache is terribly creamy and silky. The dark chocolate is rich with nice flavors of cherry and coffee, and the lemon oil gives it a nice citrus twist which plays on the nice acidic notes of the dark chocolate. Really lovely.
Cherry Cordial: This bonbon is really delicate and smooth. This is more smokey than the others, with the slightly bitter and fruit notes of a nice cordial. It’s not as cherry as I was expecting, but then again, this is flavored with cherry cordial, not just cherries so my expectation was skewed. Still delicious.
Wildflower Honey: The texture is more firm than the Lemon Oil one, but the ganache is still impeccably smooth. The flavor is of a milder, more milky dark chocolate with an added sweetness to it. You don’t taste the honey until the aftertaste, as the chocolate flavor washes away and you taste the flowery, earthy flavor of the honey.
Whiskey Ganache: This bonbon is firmer texture than the others. The chocolate is sweet and is immediately cut by the flavor of the whiskey. It’s got that nice alcoholic flavor without any of the burn.
Overall I was really impressed by these bonbons. They were flavorful and exciting, two things that I rarely find in a bonbon together. Now I just gotta get back to Max Brenner for more of these, and maybe some dessert this time.
Rating: Will Eat Again
Links Max Brenner Website
Cadbury Picnic is a bar hailing from the Land Down Under. I’ve heard about it, but it wasn’t until an Australian friend sent me a candy care package that I finally encountered one. The specific one I got is actually a limited edition Picnic bar of the “Honey Almond Nougat” variety. “New!” and “A unique combination of almonds & crunchy pieces of honey almond nougat caramel & wafer covered in delicious Cadbury milk chocolate” are the descriptions on the wrapper. I’d by lying if I said it didn’t sound appealing and terribly tasty.
The regular Cadbury picnic bars have a wafer center, creamy caramel, and rice crisps all covered in chocolate. So this new variety adds more textural and flavor elements by replacing the rice crisps with the almonds and nougat. I still think that this will give me a pretty good indication of what the original bar is. It’s kinda funny how the Picnic sounds like the offspring of a Kitkat, a Nestle’s Crunch and a Milky Way.
I’m relieved to say that according to the ingredients list, this Picnic bar is using real chocolate! Yay! It’s gotten to the point where that’s always the first things I look for in candy bars. Yes, I’m a stickler for quality.
The bar itself looks like a very large, lumpy 100 Grand or a smaller, chocolate covered PayDay. Take your pick. It smells very strongly of sweet honey and almonds. It’s hard for my to explain but something in it also smells really “carb-y” and it’s hard to lay my finger on it. I don’t know what else it could be other than the nougat.
My first bite was extremely crispy. The center is the wafer and very similar in structure to a Kitkat. Wrapped around the wafer is the caramel, so already we have a crispy/chewy texture working here. The nougat and almonds add a slight crunch and it’s very addicting to chew and munch.
As for the flavor? It took me a moment to concentrate on it to be honest, I was already too busy trying to dislodge the pieces of nougat and caramel on my teeth. It’s got a lot going on: I get nice milky caramel notes, some light blandness from the wafers, then there’s a big salty hit from the almonds and finally a honey sweetness of the nougat. I don’t hardly taste any of the chocolate, as it cowers behind the big three of the caramel, nougat and almonds. I do like how the honey stands out, it proves a nice sweetness, especially blended with the caramel, and the saltiness provides a wonderful contrast. I just wish I wasn’t going to be picking bits of this out of my teeth for the next couple of hours. Ah, sacrifices, right?
Rating: Will Eat Again
Links:
Cadbury Picnic Webpage
One of the candies I hear people go absolutely ga-ga over is honeycomb (also called “sponge” or “foam”) candy. It’s really a simple confection, and according to this recipe it’s basically sugar and corn syrup boiled together and then foamed up from vinegar and baking soda as it cools. It sounds like one of those science class labs from middle school, pretty neat! It can be harder to find depending on where you live, and if you want in in bar form like Cadbury’s Crunchie here, you have to look for it overseas if you live in the United States like I do.
“Milk chocolate with golden honeycomb center” is how the package describes the Crunchie. Simple and direct, I like it! It’s a very long and thin bar; about 3/4 inch wide and 6 inches long. The chocolate coating is extremely smooth with no enrobing ripples at all. The aroma is very sweet and milky; I’m reminded of how a Milky Way smells. The cross section of the bar is beautiful with its thin chocolate coating revealing the golden honeycomb center that’s dark brown and almost burned in appearance. The honeycomb dissolves away similarly to malt in malt balls when you suck on it. If you’re a chewer like I am, the texture is very light and crunchy shatters cleanly and doesn’t crumble. It’s really nice.
The first bite was very sharp as the honeycomb cleaved with a clean break instantly. The flavor is extremely sweet with a mixture of the milky flavors of the chocolate with the honey notes of the center. I also get a “burnt sugar” flavors from the honeycomb that give this bar an extra bit of depth. I find that I enjoy that aspect of the flavor most. The different sweetness meld together into something that’s thankfully not very overpowering, like one would assume.
To top things off, Crunchie has this awesome train robbery commercial ad campaign. I approve!
Rating: Will Eat Again
Links:
Cadbury Crunchy Webpage
The the idea of the Cabury Filled Dessert Bar excited me from the beginning. It’s as if a box of assorted chocolate bonbons were smooshed together and made into a conveniently filled chocolate bar. Genius! Why wasn’t something like this made sooner? Really!
Cadbury was clever about labeling the flavors in the bar. On the back of the wrapper there’s a key to all the different flavors, so there’s no surprises to what you’re getting when you break off a section. They were very creative with the shapes too; using pineapples, hearts, triangles, etc. to decorate the bar. I wish I took a picture of it before I ate it. Sometimes I’m too excited to do that though, and this was one of those times. I promise to be better about it in the future.
My first taste was underwhelming because the chocolate doesn’t taste up to the normal Cadbury standard. It’s very sweet, but I am missing the cocoa and the dairy flavors that are usually so consistent with their chocolate. Deciding to not let that taint the rest of my experience, I pressed on…
Orange: was so untociceable, really, I can’t remember tasting much!
Coconut Ice: I didn’t taste coconut per se, but there was a coconut essence to it. It was as if someone whispered “coconut” to me from across the room and I thought I heard something…maybe” kind of a way.
Turkish Delight: This one was awful. It tasted like I was eating a bar of soap.
Pineapple: thebest of the bunch, yet that doesn’t say much, the brightly yellow colored goo on the inside didn’t taste of pineapple. It did have the zestiness after it that you expect with pineapple, but the flavor was more “mystery articicial fruit” than pineapple. It was tasty at least, which is more than what the others can say for themselves.
Strawberry: Extremely bright pink in color. The flavor actually has a fruity essence to it, but it doesn’t really taste of strawberry. It just tastes “pink” which for me is a generic berry flavor that’s hard to lay your finger on.
Caramel: Sadly, there’s not much caramel flavor to be found. Actually, it’s totally missing. Oh, Caramello, you’d be so ashamed!
This was such a disappointment. Granted, I had really hyped it up in my mind, but considering how Cadbury usually is pretty solid in terms of good chocolate delivery. I can’t help but feel this bar leaves a lot to be desired still. I’m see this as a starting point for some good improvement!
Rating: Not Worth It
Links:
Cadbury Dair Milk Snack Webpage
Musk? Musk? What exactly is musk? And why is it a Lifesavers flavor? When I think about the word “musk” things like old houses, grandmas, skunks and deodorant come to mind. Not something edible, and certainly not something tasty. So what does such a candy exist? Is it some sort of cruel joke?
Obviously, I have many questions in regard to these odd Lifesavers from Australia. That was reason enough for me to buy them. I had to taste what “musk” was for myself. Surely, there must be something redeeming about it, otherwise, why bother producing it? Granted, candies like circus peanuts, spice drops, NECCO wafers and spearmint leaves still exist yet no one really seems to eat them. Musk Lifesavers seem to fall outside that mysterious circle, since not only did Wrigley’s manufacture them, but some company imported them as well. I’m now curious to see what the demand for musk is here in the United States.
Opening the roll and taking out my first ring, I notice right away that these are compressed dextrose and not hard candy like traditional Lifesavers are. Interesting. They are pale pink in color, speckles with darker pink spots which is oddly pretty to look at. They smell floral, but that’s all I can get before needing to taste one.
Oh, and how do they taste? The flavor is like how the hand soap from country bed & breakfasts smell. I detect lavender, rose and a sweetness that’s similar to bubblegum. It’s odd at first, but by the time I got to my third one, I started to find them somewhat addicting.
To make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I shared a few with friends who were willing enough to try them. Those who did were pleasantly surprised, and admitted to finding them strange, yet tasty.
The best way to describe it is they must be like black licorice: sort of an acquired taste that you either love of you hate.
Rating: Will Eat Again
