Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows

I was out on a mini road trip with a dear friend this morning when we stopped at the servo. Since I don't drive, a servo is not usually a place I visit (especially since there are no 7/11s here in WA!). I took the opportunity to go have a poke around as the petrol and convenience (P&C) market is often the first place where new products are launched. And luck was on my side today!

Opposite the frozen drinks we were look at was a stand of a brand new addition to the Cadbury Marvellous Creations range that Cadbury launched last year with great fanfare. Surprisingly I hadn't heard any whispers of a new flavour, so that just made the find all that more exciting.

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows in the 50g block is the newest edition to the range. In keeping with the MC vibrant packaging, the matte foil wrapper has purple and cream stripes in the background, and is decorated with chunks of coloured confectionery. To help identify it as a new product, it also has a bright yellow 'New!' on the left side, and a lime green border around the centre panel. The green is different enough to the teal of the Peanut Toffee Cookie Marvellous Creations product that you would be able to pick it out instantly.

So let's talk about what we've got inside. Clinkers are a Pascall product, which is a brand owned by Cadbury, and they are normally large oval-shaped chalky pieces covered in thick milk chocolate. They come in three colours/flavours: yellow, green and pink, and are very sweet and rich. In the block, where there is far more chocolate than Clinker, they don't seem to have any flavour at all, but seem to be mostly included for texture purposes. They're light and crunchy and crumble well, and there are a lot of them in the bar as well (although according to the ingredients list, they only account for 2.6% of the bar). The pieces are disappointingly smaller than they appear on the wrapper though. I forgot to take a picture of the underside of the bar, but the textured bottom is most due to the Clinker pieces.

Then we have the raspberry chips. I would predict that these are the same as the chips used in the Cadbury Black Forest block. It's important to note that although they look similar to popping candy in the pictures, they are not. The pieces are small and varied in size, but are translucent, hard like a boiled lolly, bright red and have a strong raspberry-cordial flavour. Like the Clinkers, there are many of these spread evenly throughout the glossy Dairy Milk chocolate.

The final piece in this Marvellous Creations bar is the marshmallows. Pink or white, sticky and in chunks about the size of a pea, the marshmallows taste genuine, but the texture is slightly off; it feels like they have been compressed slightly (quite possible, to fit enough in the bar but still keep to the weight).

Together, the three ingredients and the Dairy Milk chocolate combine to give the bar a bit of a rocky road taste - albeit a rather modernised one. The raspberry and marshmallows combine to give a a taste that is reminiscent of making rocky road. The Clinkers stand in the background to provide a wonderful chalky crunch alongside the raspberry pieces, and the thick melt of the chocolate binds it all together very nicely. All the products are spread nicely throughout the bar too. The whole mouthful is rather cloying and sweet, so keep some water at hand for afterwards.

A word of advice: when snapping the bar into pieces, watch out for flying chocolate crumbs and raspberry chips. The marshmallow pieces holds everything together really well.

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows contains 26%  cocoa solids and 28% milk solids. It contains milk, wheat and soy, and may contain traces of egg, peanuts and tree nuts.

Edit 29/04/13: This new flavour will also be available in the larger 290g block as well, and it's not far away! See the empty shelf space I discovered at Woolworths.

Gossip: Cadbury 10% More Blocks

According to Cadbury's Facebook page, their large chocolate blocks are being upgraded 10% in size. The 200gm blocks will increase to 220gm (up from 200gm); other sizes will go up as well. Yet it was only four years ago that Cadbury made the change from 250gm blocks down to 200gm, so you can make the decision whether this is a nice change! There's no word if the sizing change is permanent or just a promotion.

In addition, the blocks will have new packaging (a plastic/foil wrapper instead of cardboard and foil), and the pieces in the block will also have a different shape (as shown below). It will take some sampling to see if the new shape is used consistently over the different varieties, or if Cadbury will continue to do as they have done in the past and use different shapes for different varieties.

For nut lovers, you will be pleased to note that along with these other changes, Cadbury will be using whole nuts instead of nut pieces in their blocks that contain nuts.

Sources:
http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews/cadbury-ups-chocolate-size-or-does-it
http://www.facebook.com/CadburyDairyMilkAustralia
http://www.woolworthsonline.com.au

Lindt Lindor Caramel Block

Another of Lindt's phenomenally popular products is the Lindor range. Available in both balls and blocks of pieces, each little piece has an incredibly smooth flavoured centre just melts into molten delight in your mouth. The balls come in a wide range of flavours, while the 100g blocks are constrained to three flavours: milk, white and dark chocolate. Until now. Lindt has just released a brand new caramel block to join the ranks.

Housed in a lovely yellow-amber coloured box, the caramel block is made from 'Swiss milk chocolate with caramel with a smooth melting filling'. I found this a little ambiguous - was there a caramel centre? Was the chocolate just caramel flavoured, or was there something else going on? Time to investigate!

The Lindt Lindor blocks aren't a block as such, but rather 18 individual pieces on a cardboard tray. The top of each piece is emblazoned with the Lindt dragon and crest logo (I think this is new; the last time I bought one of these blocks they used the word 'Lindt' instead). As expected, the chocolate is a light milky brown, slightly glossy and each piece is perfect with very little damage. (Mine are the weeniest bit heat affected, but we all know that doesn't affect the chocolate at all!) The block smells divine - very warm and rich with toasted notes of toffee and burnt sugar.

I wasn't too far off with my guesses: the caramel is mixed in with the chocolate, in both the exterior and interior. Surprisingly it's not an overly sweet combination, but it does have lots of depth and it invites you to sit and taste and concentrate on the flavour mix. I bet this would be delicious with a hot chocolate on a cool evening.
 

Definitely don't eat the whole block - a serving is just 25g (four pieces) and eating the whole block will cost kilojoule counters 2600kj. The milk chocolate in this block contains 31% cocoa solids, and 20% of milk solids. It may contain traces of hazelnuts and almonds.

M&M's Crispy Mint

The Crispy-Mint seasonal M&M's flavour is one we've seen before - it was first released in 2006 in Australia, also as part of the seasonal rotation. I for one am glad they are back as I've missed them!

If you're unfamiliar with this flavour combination, the Crispy-Mint M&M's have a crispy green centre (made from rice, I believe), which is surrounded by a layer of plain milk chocolate, and that is then surrounded by a mint-flavoured candy shell. Unlike the original plain milk chocolate M&M's, these ones have candy shells coloured to fit the theme- two shades of green and white. More interestingly, the M&M's are not uniform in size. Have a look at the comparison photos before and you'll see. The smallest size is similar to the plain Crispy M&M's (in the blue bag), while the largest of the ones I found in my pack rivaled the Peanut M&M's, so there's quite a difference in size there.

The M&M's still feel relatively light, however, but the bright green bag feels quite substantial given that it only contains 160g. Inside, the M&M's are not strong in their mint-chocolate scent, but enough is there to make sure you know you're eating a mint-flavoured product.

Biting into one, I found the mint flavour got somewhat stronger, complete with a faint cooling sensation on my tongue from the shell (there's no peppermint oil or similar in the ingredients list, so maybe I'm just imagining it). There's a lovely combination of textures - the crunch of the shell and the rice centre, plus the smooth  layer of chocolate to balance it out. It's a little like eating chocolate and pretzels and chocolate, without the salt! (If you haven't tried it and like a bit of sweet/salty mix, I highly recommend Pretzel M&M's - unfortunately only sold here as imported stock, but still worth a shot!)

The mint flavour doesn't hang around long, and neither do I find the centre getting stuck in my teeth either. But I wouldn't go and eat an apple or drink juice after eating these, as you might get a bit of the toothpaste effect! I will, however, continue to pick these up as they are perfect for snacking in front of the TV (or computer), and aren't nearly as sweet as some other M&M's flavours.

M&M's Crispy-Mint contain milk, soy, barley, wheat and peanut, and may contain traces of treenut.

Lindt Creation Velvety Vanilla Almond

It is so not chocolate weather here in Perth, but Lindt has just released a brand new range of 100g blocks called Lindt Creation. Created by Lindt's master chocoletiers, the range includes three flavours: velvety vanilla almond (milk chocolate), sumptuous orange (dark orange) and divine hazelnut (milk).

I've picked up the velvety vanilla almond flavour for review, and the box-type package describes as: 'deliciously crisp almond pieces in a vanilla flavoured truffle with a caramel layer, coated in dreamy milk chocolate.' Everyone knows that Lindt milk chocolate is most definitely dreamy, but how about the rest of it?

The block is just shy of 16cm long, 7.5cm wide and each gently domed piece is 0.8cm high at the centre. There are ten squares (they're really rectangles) in the block, and each piece is large enough to satisfy the largest mouth, but will sit comfortably on the tongue. Each piece also includes the pretty Lindy logo carved in the top.

As with all Lindt milk chocolate, the first note that hits is the creamy milk scents in the chocolate. It's warm and it's inviting. Just behind it comes the warm and somewhat spicy scent of vanilla to round out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Inside each bite there is a layer of vanilla flavoured truffle, which takes up a significant proportion of the piece, and then a layer of caramel across the top. The almond pieces studded through the truffle are not large, per se, but they are visible and will definitely make their presence known when you bite in. Unfortunately, all of the pieces on my block seemed to be filled at a slant - the truffle was sloped up against one side. I don't know if this is standard or if my block is just weird.

As expected, the caramel was the first to burst out and make its presence known when I bite into a piece. It was quickly followed by the strong vanilla flavour though, and together I found they made an interesting combination that reminded me a lot of creme brulee. The chocolate definitely takes a back seat to the sweet and tasty centre, but that's A-OK with me! I found that the almond pieces did not make a huge infringement on the taste; they added texture interest to the chew but not a whole lot of flavour (in fact I couldn't taste them at all), and I don't think the block is any worse off because of it. Texturewise, the chew did feel the slightest bit gluggy and the truffle a touch stick-to-your-teeth-y, but I was happy to work through it for the delicious flavour.

This is most definitely 'absurdly good'!

The milk chocolate contains a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and minimum 20% milk solids. The block may also contain traces of hazelnuts.

Spotted in the Wild: M&M's Crispy Mint

Mint lovers rejoice: the newest seasonal M&M's release is out and about! Keep your eyes peeled for the Crispy Mint variety, in bold emerald green packaging.

This one was spotted at an IGA in WA.

If you spot a new release, please email your photos to the blog at this address here.

Cadbury Boost Max Choc

Cadbury has been busy. Among their latest releases is the next seasonal release for Boost: Max Choc. (The last Boost seasonal product was Max Caramel, which you can still find on some product shelves at the time of this review.)

With distinctive silver packaging, the Boost Max Choc immediately stands out both from the other Boost products, and most other products on the shelves. Although I don't know what silver has to do with chocolate, it is a unique choice, and I can't really think of any current confectionery products that use silver as the main colour. The bar itself is described on the packaging as  "chewy choc caramel, surrounding smooth choc flavoured centre and crispy choc biscuit all covered in cadbury milk chocolate". Now that's a lot of chocolate-flavoured items!

It weighs in at a hefty 58g, which is on the large side for a medium-sized bar, but the weight and physical size is the same as the original Boost bar. It's quite a solid bar, and the Cadbury chocolate coating is around 1.5mm, so quite thick compared to many other chocolate-enrobed products these days. The chocolate on mine formed a solid seal, with no voids or holes into the interior.

The 'choc caramel' was interesting. Mine was soft (although it was in the mid-30s degrees (centrigrade) when I reviewed) and the softness allowed me to sample a little bit by itself. I found strong cocoa notes, but that was quickly tempered out by the rest of the bar. The choc cream centre was very soft, sweet and was almost like icing. I did find that it was very smooth with no grit. That smoothness helped the crunch of the little biscuit balls in the centre stand out quite a lot.

Unlike an original Boost bar, this one doesn't seem to contain the wafer-like tube that separates the caramel from the centre cream. I find that tube adds a nice element of crunch, so I missed that in this bar. Overall I found this bar extremely sweet - so sweet I couldn't eat more than half - and I found that the sheer amount of sugar overwhelmed my taste buds to the point that I had trouble recognising the chocolate flavour until I had been chewing for a while. Only then did the warm notes of the choc caramel come through and make things a little tastier. As much as I enjoyed the choc caramel, it didn't redeem the bar.

This bar contains wheat, milk, barley and soy. It may also cintain traces of peanuts and tree nuts.

Kit Kat Chunky 3 Choc Mint

This new arrival made it by the skin of its, er, wrapper. My last day for me at the local convenience store was a Friday a couple of weeks ago, and it was made extra special by discovering a new release had sneaked in to our Accredited order this week. As I haven't seen my Nestle rep for a little while, I had no idea a new KitKat Chunky 3 was on the horizon - but here it is!

In the past I've reviewed the Chunky 3 Cookies & Dream (and it got a positive review from me), and the Chunky 3 Chocolate is a bar I pick up sometimes as well, so I have high hopes for the Choc Mint. Like the other releases, it contains three different textures, shown on the wrapped with a cross-section illustration.

The 'smooth' mint fudge is green, while the centre section contains the 'crunchy' biscuit pieces in white mint fudge, and the final piece contains 'gooey' choc-mint sauce. The entire bar is covered in milk chocolate, and of course there is a strip of the classic KitKat wafer along the bottom of the bar as well.

The 65g bar is very well moulded, with sharply-defined edges and the Kit Kat logo across the centre of each piece. There's a faint semi-gloss to the milk chocolate coating, but what is most outstanding is the strong mint scent. Even though the chocolate is unflavoured (I think), the smell is evident as soon as I opened the wrapper. It's a scent reminiscent of Nestle's Mint Crisp (another favourite of mine): sweet and chocolately, but not altogether true to a real peppermint scent. It does, however, want to make me chow down on the bar right away!

The first section I bit into contained the green mint fudge. Thankfully not as bright green as on the wrapper, the fudge is quite firm (a little firmer than the chocolate), and when eaten by itself, very mild in taste. When eaten with the wafer and chocolate, it adds a soft, creamy texture to the piece, unfortunately bogging down the crispy wafer a little. I enjoyed the taste when eaten as a whole piece (which was stronger in the mint flavour, so I strongly suspect the chocolate is mint flavoured), but the texture could be improved.

In the middle we have the crunchy biscuit (not cookie) pieces in 'white mint fudge'. This fudge is interesting. It reminds me a lot of the fudge used in the Chunky 3 Cookies & Cream, in that it tastes like sweet white chocolate and not a whole lot else. I certainly didn't get any mint notes out of it! The biscuit pieces, when I encountered any, were small and insignificant. The wafer added more crunchy to the piece than the biscuit pieces. This was the most disappointing section of the bar.

Our final piece is the one I've been most looking forward to: the choc-mint sauce, and it doesn't disappoint. More chocolately than minty, the sauce is gooey and thick (but not runny or an escape artist in disguise), and compliements the crunchy wafer nicely. The mint flavour does linger a little afterwards, a mild flavour to remind you of the awesomeness you've just consumed. If they made an entire bar just of the choc mint sauce, I would so be all over it.

(For what it's worth, the nutritional panel advices that one 'square', not the entire bar, is one serving. That's a sneaky way to bring those figures on the 'Be treatwise' info panel down!)

(Apologies for the terrible photos; my usual camera was already packed away for the move at the time of review.)

Cadbury Flake Snow

Those with a sharp memory may remember spotting the Cadbury Flake Snow out on Australian shelves a few years ago. At the time it was the second seasonal Flake (that I can remember), and was available everywhere. I spotted this Flake Snow at Coles not long ago, alongside a sign that indicated it was exclusive to Coles supermarkets.

The product doesn't seem to have changed at all (made in Australia so not imported stock), and is a 'crumby Dream white chocolate Flake covered in Cadbury Dairy Milk milk chooclate.' Pretty simple, really! I have noticed that the enrobed Flakes tend to have more chocolate in the centre - but that might just be me. I do like looking at the patterns inside!

Broken down, the bar is quite simple - white chocolate and milk chocolate. Cadbury's Bubbly White is basically the same thing - the only real difference is the appearance and maybe a minor texture change at first bite. My bar was lovely and pristine: a squarish log 12cm , enrobed in milk chocolate with faint ripples over the top. My bar was not fully covered, through; some of the bottom had holes where the base did not meet the sides. Lucky for me, no white chocolate crumbs escaped and my bar was glossy and ripe for eating.

Interestingly, it doesn't smell as sweet as a block of regular Dairy Milk. There's more of a milky note there, and it's a little bit buttery too. Thankfully, the taste is exactly as you would expect - white and milk chooclate. The bar is sweeter than its scent suggests, but not so much to make my teeth hurt. I did feel a wee bit sick afterwards.

While eating this bar, I discovered that if you bite both ends off the bar, you could effectively use it like a straw due to the ripples of the Flake causing small spaces inside. So it was obvious what my next thought was - the infamous Tim Tam Slam (the art of drinking a beverage through a Tim Tam).

Readers, please go out and buy a Flake Snow, perform a Tim Tam Slam, and report back. I imagine it would be sickly sweet and therefore delicious!

Cadbury Flake Snow contains milk and soy. It make contain traces of peanuts and tree nuts.

Nutffles Red Velvet

Nutffles first arrived on the Australian confectionery scene a couple of years ago. The USA-made little bite-size pieces of chocolate were vaguely similar to the ubiquitous Ferrero Rocher - a shell of chocolate, a soft creamy chocolate centre, and a whole nut in the middle. While Ferrero Rocher contains a hazelnut in the centre, and a crushed nut exterior, Nutffles are enrobed in a thin layer of chocolate. The two original flavours were Almond and Hazelnut.

Originally, Nutffles came with three pieces in a pack. At some point, this changed to four bite-sized pieces.

I picked up this Red Velvet flavoured pack of Nutffles at Target not long ago. I don't know how new they are to the market, but as I hadn't spotted them before, I picked them up for review.

Red velvet cake is, I assume, huge in America. For those unfamiliar, it's a cake that is dyed red (sometimes chocolate flavoured), and served with cream cheese icing. It's not something I had heard of in Australia. Since the recipe doesn't contain nuts (according to Wikipedia), I was very interested to see how a nut-based truffle would work with this flavouring. And no, I've never tried red velvet cake before.

The Nutffles packing is easily recognisable. They truffles are packed in a clear plastic tray inside a thick foil package. The outer colouring of the packaging changes depending on the flavour, but the packs are very recognisable. A pack of four truffles weighs 34g.

Straight away, the first difference between the Red Velvet truffles and the other Nutffles flavours is that the outer layer of chocolate is white, rather than milk. The pieces are small, about the size of a Ferrero Rocher cut in half, and they have a flat bottom. The white chocolate is slightly bumpy from the ingredients underneath, and the bottom has a few small areas where the chocolate doesn't quite cover.

Underneath the white chocolate is a thin curved layer of chocolate wafer, and then inside that is a vaguely red-looking firm centre. It's definitely not the prettiest thing to look at - but given their small size, I suspect most consumers would pop the whole thing into their mouths.

The taste is interesting. Somewhere in there is a vague hint of cream cheese, but there's not a whole lot of flavour until you reach the whole almond inside. There's very little actual chocolate flavour in the bite. It's rather bland and unexciting for a truffle. The texture combination is nice - creamy milk chocolate, the hard nut, the slightly crunchy wafer. My truffles felt very fresh.

Although I finished mine, I wondered why anyone would waste money on these. I wouldn't even consider these nice - they were much more along the lines of 'meh'.

The Belgian white chocolate layer is actual chocolate (with cocoa butter as the second ingredient), and the whole 34g pack is one serve. They contain milk, wheat and soy products, and almonds. Traces of peanuts and other nuts may be present.