Nestle Wonka Triple Chocolate Whipple

Triple Chocolate Whipple. Has a wonderfully Wonka-esque name, doesn't it? Nestle's Wonka chocolate range, released earlier this year, includes this scrumdiddlyumptious 170g block. I reviewed the Caramel Hat Trick variety last month.

Dressed in a smart maroon-coloured cardboard packaging, and with yellow and white text, Triple Chocolate Whipple is a milk chocolate block that contains, as the name suggests, three types of chocolate filling: choc fudge, choc sauce and choc cookie. The moulding of the block is based on the pipes of the Wonka chocolate factory, and also include a round circle with the trademark Wonka W. The unique shape of the moulding means that there is probably a little bit less of the filling than if the pieces were moulded in a standard pillow shape.

The back of the pack describes the block as one side containing smooth fudge, the other flowing sauce, and the centre 'they take turns flowing over crunchy cookie'. Confusing, right? And of course once you've taken the block out of the pack, passed it around and broken up the pieces, it becomes a bit of a lucky dip to find out what the centre of your piece is. But I think that the parts where the pipes intersect with the centre piece is where they join with whatever is in the pipe. So some round pieces are cookie plus fudge, and some are cookie plus sauce. Which of course makes it difficult to review as there's actually four flavours in the block... By the time I realised this little fact I didn't have enough pieces to review, so you'll just have to make up your own minds on the combined pieces.

The milk chocolate outer is quite sweet and milky. It doesn't contain a lot of cocoa or milk solids, at a minimum of 22% and 25% respectively. Vegetable fat is unfortunately the fourth ingredient in the chocolate's list. I can already tell that this is going to be a sugar fest.

The centre pieces hold the cookie centre, and to be honest, aside from the sweetness of the milk chocolate, I didn't get a real taste for the centre. I did discover little chocolate biscuit pieces floating around in there which added a nice texture every now and then.

One of the pipe pieces contains choc fudge. It's a slightly darker colour than the surrounding milk chocolate, and has a rich flavour to it. It's rather sweet and well, fudgey. It's very nice, but too many make my teeth hurt. The final piece is the choc sauce. Similar to the choc sauce in the Kit Kat Chunky 3 bars, the sauce in this Wonka block, by itself, is thin, but a little syrupy and very strong in chocolate flavour. It's a lot like chocolate topping for ice cream. In conjunction with the milk chocolate outer, the piece is very sweet, and sticks to the teeth a little.

I really enjoyed this block, but you will have to be a huge chocolate lover and a sweet tooth to enjoy the variances in texture.

Score: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Nestle Wonka Triple Chocolate Whipple is made in Australia. It contains milk, wheat and soy, and is made on equipment that processes products containing peanuts and tree nuts.

Haribo The Smurfs

Unlike in the rest of the world, Haribo is not a brand that is massively popular in Australia. Its products have only been available in major supermarkets for the past couple of years, and I've found if you mention the brand to someone, I tend to get a bit of a confused look in return. But internationally Haribo is well-known for their range of gummis (especially Gold Bears). I personally am a fan of their Berries. In partnership with the recent The Smurfs movie, Haribo have released a themed bag of gummis.

 The bag features the classic Smurfs cartoon characters on the front, including Papa Smurf (red) and Smurfette (blonde hair) as well as different 'regular' Smurfs. The bag itself is bright blue, a colour synonymous with The Smurfs range, and also a colour that stands out from the rest of Haribo's range, and the window at the front reveals the Smurf gummis inside. The back of the pack is very plain, with an ingredients list in small print and a nutritional information panel. The pack says the contents are 'fruit flavour gums'.

Inside we have a collection of Smurf-shaped gummis in three different colour schemes: yellow and blue, red and blue, and clear and blue. Although there are different moulds in use, each gummi is around the same height of 3cm, around 1.5cm wide at the head, and around 1cm thick. The gummi is bouncy to the touch, a good mixture of soft and firm. I think these are softer than the Gold Bears, and they break easily when bitten.

The lower half of each gummi is blue, which is a berry flavour of some description. It's relatively mild, but has a nice jammy note to it. It could be that blue raspberry flavour that lolly makers love so much. The clear heads of the regular smurfs is hard to pinpoint. It could be a very weak lemonade, or perhaps even pineapple. No matter what it is, it goes well with the berry body, producing a gummi that is tasty. The regular Smurfs have several different moulds; I only managed to photograph two as the others were a bit mutated and squashed.

Papa Smurf's head is also difficult to identify. Maybe it's because I ate too many regular Smurfs beforehand, but I don't get any flavours beyond a basic red cordial taste. It improves with the addition of the red body, however. He only has the one mould.

Smurfette's head is most definitely lemon; it's quite bold compared to the other flavours in the pack. I didn't think it would go too well with the berry, but they compliment each other well enough. She too only has one mould.

As the flavours are pleasant and mild, I enjoyed this quite well. Mixing the flavours works well for all three, as well as eating them singularly.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars.

Haribo The Smurfs are made from glucose syrup (from wheat).

Gossip: Cadbury Twirl Caramel, Cadbury Dairy Milk Raspberry and Lemonade Block and Tic Tac Grape

Keen-eyed reader Chris has alerted me to some new arrivals on the market, two of which are from Cadbury. (With so many new releases, I wonder when Cadbury will run out of ideas!)

Cadbury Twirl will be released in the limited edition flavour of caramel - check out that cool stripy package!

There is also a limited edition on the 200g Cadbury Dairy Milk block range, this time with a Raspberry and Lemonade filling. I'm particularly interested in reviewing this block, as both are new flavours for the Cadbury blocks.

Finally, Tic Tac are joining the new release band wagon with a new seasonal release. Earlier year we saw Green Apple, and now we've received Grape - and if you look closely at the package, it actually contains both green apple and grape Tic Tacs. Let me know if you've tried any of these!

Thanks to Chris for the photos of the Cadbury new releases.

Cadbury Bubbly Strawberry

With little fanfare and even less excitement, Cdbury recently sneaked onto the shelves an updated Dairy Milk logo on the foil packets of their Bubbly 155g blocks. For a brand with such history in Australia and worldwide, it's rare to see major changes occur. I imagine the change will gradually be rolled out oer the coming months onto other Cadbury products.

 The Bubbly range itself was introduced way back in 2009 in two initial flavours: Milk Chocolate, and Mint (both blatant copies of Nestle Aero). Dark chocolate was introduced in 2011, and White Bubbly somewhere in that time frame too. The Cadbury variety tends to have more of the outer chocolate layer and less bubbles in comparison to Aero, and for many years was released in a bland rectangular mould. Along with the new packaging comes a new block shape, obviously inspired by the name (and also Aero's similar mould change). What's more exciting is the new flavour to the range: strawberry.

Described as being 'Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly chocolate wilth strawberry flavoured bubbles', the block is a pretty sight to behold. Although the new mould makes it somewhat difficult to break off pieces into equal servings for sharing, the bubbles (the largest measuring about 2.5cm in diameter and 1.5cm high) have a beautiful gloss finish. The packaging doesn't do a brilliant job of protecting the edges of the block, however; I had lots of crumbly bits from the thinner edges. When I opened the pack, I was greeted with a very strong and sweet milkshake scent, with lots of creamy milk chocolate in there as well.

Snapping open the block shows a soft baby-pick aerated centre. The ingredients list doesn't specifically state that the centre is white chocolate, but such a short list indicates that it probably is. Unfortunately neither the colours nor flavours are natural, and that's pretty obvious from the scent. With the thin chocolate cover broken, the smell of the strawberry flavour is very strong, enough that I would recommend storing this block in an airtight container or bag, as the smell will probably go everywhere!

As the scent suggested, the taste of Bubbly Strawberry is a lot like strawberry Nesquik. I was surprised by how overpowering the flavour is; there may as well have been no Dairy Milk in this block at all for what I can taste of it. It's not a very unique or multidimensional flavour by any means; its just milky strawberry and lots of it. I didn't get a lot of flavour from the chocolate, curiously. The block on the sweet side as well, and the flavour tends to hang around a little bit after you've finished your piece, so you feel satisfied for a bit longer. The texture is lovely, with the little aerated bubbles making for a nice chew.

I have a strong feeling that this flavour will be very popular with kids, but not so much with the adults.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Cadbury Bubbly Strawberry is made in Australia. It contains cocoa solids of 26%, and milk solids of 28%. It contains milk and soy, and may contain traces of wheat, egg, peanuts and tree nuts.

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Senz Milk Chocolate Pearls

Senz is a brand I'm pretty unfamiliar with. Made in China and imported by Big W, the brand is on the cheaper side of things, although they do have very nicely designed packaging. I actually found very little information on the brand. They have an inactive Facebook page, but no main website, and the few sites I found on Google were mostly other reviews. The range carried in Big W is mostly boxed chocolates and truffles of different, and pouches of individually-wrapped pieces. I seem to recall the word 'Belgian' on the other packaging, so perhaps this is Belgian chocolate?

I debated about even bothering to review something from the brand, but then I spotted this adorable little tin, and was fascinated by it and its contents. Although the Pearls themselves aren't anything special (a crunchy centre covered in milk chocolate), it was the delivery method that caught my attention. A tin? How clever! The tin itself is the same design as that used for Eclipse Mints, although about 1cm taller and a few millimetres wider.

The packaging is suspiciously devoid of an ingredients list. The back of the pack contains allergen advice and country of origin, while the side contains typical blather about how awesome the brand's products are. Nothing special.

When I opened the tin, I was surprised to discover just how small the little balls are. They are all fairly uniform in size, measuring 1cm in diameter, but they seem a lot smaller! The Pearls have a nice semi-gloss coating, and are all in perfect condition. The balls have a mild milky shortbread scent, with some sweet chocolate-inspired notes in there too. Unfortunately the chocolate is not interesting, or even good - it's bland, with very little in the way of cocoa flavours or any depth, and tastes a lot like cheap Easter chocolate. It is very much like a watered-down hot chocolate. It tries and fails, miserably.

(That's a Crispy M&M in that comparison picture.)

I'm not sure what kind of centre these have - if they are just a biscuity-type centre, like M&M's Crispy, or if they are malted, like Maltesers, as the package gives no information whatsoever.I tried some of the centres by themselves, and I think the centres might be made from rice, as they taste rather similar to rice cereal. When paired with the chocolate, the result is bland and flavourless. There's no sweetness to catch your attention, either. If there ever was a product that represented empty kilojoules, this would be it.

While eating these, I very much got a sense of, 'Why would you bother?' I paid $2 for the nifty tin, and ended up throwing out its contents. Senz gets a point for creativity, but that's not enough to save this product from a poor score.

Score: 1 out of 5 stars.

Senz Milk Chocolate Pearls  contain gluten, milk and soy beans. Peanuts, tree nuts and sesame seeds may be present. Made in China.