300g of chocolate for 99p? Something can’t be right, or at least that’s what I thought when I saw this titan in my local 99p store.

The bar appears to be Spanish, and it seems Suchard are owned by Kraft Foods. Everything on the wrapper is in Spanish except for a little sticker about the UK distribution, which is where I got the bar’s title from. The wrapper is quite sparkly, but it doesn’t quite work too well with the mud brown colour. There’s also a little picture of Father Christmas on the front, so I suppose this is a limited edition. On the back of the wrapper are pictures of 5 more bars in this series – Clasico, Almendras Enteras, Avellanas Enteras, Galleta and Blanco. Shame I could only find this.

Anywho, you’re probably wondering what this bar actually is. Well basically it’s plain chocolate with puffed rice. Inside the wrapper is a little plastic tray which the bar sits in. The back of the bar, like most with nuts or pieces of whatever inside, is absolutely riddled with the puffed rice. The topside is plain with ‘Suchard’ etched into it throughout. The bar is about 2 or 3 centimetres thick at least, so there’s a lot of chocolate here.

Personally, I’ve never really ‘got’ puffed rice. It goes well with chocolate, sure, but it has no taste, and that’s the case with this bar. It’s not bad in anyway, but the chocolate is of an ok quality, and the puffed rice just has nothing to it at all. The chocolate isn’t very dark, it’s definitely more plain, and so I could eat the stuff like milk chocolate only without any sort of creamy taste to it.

Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it’s definitely a very average chocolate bar. It’s perhaps more to do with the puffed rice than the quality of the chocolate, but this really did nothing for me. 300g IS a lot though, and you certainly get your moneys worth at 99p. I can’t complain about the price, but I wouldn’t buy it again.

500g of chocolate. Five. Hundred. Grams of chocolate. That’s what this is, and it is bloody huge. Never before have I seen a bar this big, and boy am I impressed and somewhat daunted by this beast. I’ve had a few of the Hotel Chocolat slabs before but in more manageable portions, let’s see if it can be just as good when it’s five times as big.

The Summer Deckchair slab as it’s known on their website, is called the Fruity Five Stripes slab on the package itself. The name speaks for itself, as the bar has five stripes with different flavours, the two fruity stripes are red berries with a white chocolate base, then we have two milk chocolate stripes and the middle stripe is vanilla custard white chocolate.

The bar looks great, once you get over the size then it is very aesthetically pleasing. The back of the bar reveals that the middle stripe, the vanilla custard, is actually backed by milk chocolate, so essentially there’s only half the flavour there, as the rest are their own distinct flavours right the way through (i.e. no matter which way you face the bar it will look the same).

The fruity sections are the best, berries aren’t used too much in chocolate, and it’s also rare I get to have chocolate this good, so it’s a lovely combination. Anyone familiar with Hotel Chocolat will know that I don’t need to go in to too much detail about their chocolate, it’s as amazing as always, a very flavoursome milk chocolate, creamy and full of cocoa and without the sugar hit that cheap chocolate bars go for. The white chocolate was nice but I failed to detect any custard flavours there. It’s a bit of a shame because it seemed like a really interesting idea, perhaps it’s because it’s backed by milk chocolate? The difference in taste between white and milk was evident, it just lacked the special flavour I was hoping for.

Overall though, delicious. 500g of deliciousness. It sure was a lot of chocolate, but think about how long this could last you, or you could…share it? No, ridiculous thought, I know. Enjoy a month’s worth of chocolate right here.

Last week I received a package from Hotel Chocolat with two samples within from their Summer range. I’m not sure how these are part of a Summer range but I won’t argue, as they look great.

Now the backstory behind this (there’s a story behind every Hotel Chocolat creation) is that these were first made when their downpour of molten chocolate naturally set into “its own unique puddlesque shape.” I didn’t know puddlesque was a word but you learn something new everyday. Now despite this, it seems more believable that they looked at Cadbury’s Giant Buttons and thought “let’s use this basic idea, and make them a million times better”, and it worked.

The bag that these come in looks small, but 140g as I’m sure you’re aware is a lot of chocolate. These are milk chocolate and caramel buttons with a hint of salt. The caramel is infused in the chocolate, so there’s no runnyness or anything like that, just a strong caramel flavour.

What I found was that these were very creamy and caramelly (I can make up my own words too), but I wasn’t able to detect any salt. I suppose it removes a lot of the sweetness that caramel would usually bring, but don’t buy these expecting a sweet and salty experience, because you won’t get that. What you will get though is a little back chock full of delicious caramel buttons. Far better than any type of caramel you’d find in a regular bar, this is the special kind of stuff only a company like Hotel Chocolat could make. Lovely, and well worth it.

Alright, I saved this one until last for a reason, because it’s bloody bacon with chocolate! It’s like they combined the two most delicious things in the world and tried to create a super delicious hybrid, but geez…bacon and chocolate? Can they really go together?

Now I know Vosges in America have done a bar like this for awhile but I’ve not had a chance to try it, so I’ve been really eager to try this as soon as I saw it in the package I was sent from Oxford Ethical. This is 70% dark chocolate filled with nougat and pork crackling (7.27%), let’s analyse this.

The wrapper is a bit more low key than the Mango bar, but still retains some class. Again the ingredients are fairtrade, and the pork crackling is organic, awesome. At this point I should also probably point out that this bar is not suitable for vegetarians.

The bar also contains chocolate liquor, whatever that is, and 23.33% hazelnuts, which is a lot, and that basically forms the nougat within the chocolate shell. The bar is the same plain tablet style from yesterday, and again it’s very soft, with a lovely truffle like interior as well as some very…crackly bits within.

The crackling pieces are large, about the size of raisins. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the bar, and I wasn’t sure what I got either. It’s not very bacony (that’s not a word), as in this won’t taste like a bacon sandwich with a chocolate bar on top, though there’s an idea there…

It’s unlike anything I’ve had before, I savoured the aftertaste which was definitely faintly bacon and a little nutty. The bar tastes very nice, and it has a mix of flavours which I can’t put my finger on, and I assume that’s the bacon and the praline and the chocolate all mixing together and creating something previously unknown to my tastebuds. This is certainly something different, it’s something you should have just to say you did, and now I can officially say I have eaten bacon and chocolate at the same time. I have lived the dream.

Another of the bars I was sent from Oxford Ethical is this Austrian made ‘dark mountain milk chocolate filled with mango and Brazil nuts’. The ingredients are fairtrade certified and from controlled organic cultivation.

The wrapper is very retro looking and quite arty, not like something you’d see in the supermarket but in a specialist shop. The ingredients make for interesting reading, you’d expect to see sugar or chocolate at the top of the list, but no, instead ‘mango & mango mash (32%) tops it. Mango mash? I’m not sure if that sounds great or terrible, but it did make me laugh, I wonder if it’s like the monster mash.

Within the paper wrapper is a nice foil-paper wrapper, and within that is our bar. It looks very plain at first sight, it’s just a tablet style bar. It’s very greasy to the touch, and quite melty, and the taste is unlike anything I’ve ever had before.

The amount of mango in this bar is unreal. 32% is a lot, a heck of a lot of mango. It’s definitely mashed mangos, and they seem to be on a bed of Brazil nut paste. So basically we have bittersweet chocolate, and within is one layer of mango on top of one layer of Brazil Nuts. It’s quite thick, very fruity, and very tasty. I’ve never really had mango before and I’ve certainly never seen a bar use it anything like this before.

Zotter have created something special here, this is how a real fruit and nut bar should work. Screw throwing a few raisins and hazelnuts into a bar, let’s grind up some mangos and Brazil Nuts and stick a massive amount of it in. Good job Zotter, probably the best fruit and nut bar I’ve ever had.

Once again me and Oliver share an intimate moment. Another 52% dark chocolate bar, this one with candied orange pieces within the bar. It’s a little surprising that he went with this, as you’d have expected him to have coffee bean pieces in the espresso bar if he was going to do it for this bar, but whatever.

So the bar has 7% candied orange peel as well as orange flavour in the bar itself. Sounds nice and orangey. The wrapper is of course nice and plain, the only real thing setting his bars apart in terms of appearance being the actual text on the front of the bar.

Inside is our foil wrapper is…the chocolate bar! It’s the regular relatively thin chocolate that I have come to expect from Oli. You can also see where the candied orange sticks out from the bar in places, which is strangely quite nice.

And that about sums the bar up. The orange pieces, due to their candied nature, are a little bit crunchy and yet still soft, and they give off a lovely orange tang, The chocolate is ok, not too sweet or bitter, and it compliments the orange well. Overall pretty nice, and I’d probably take it over the coffee bar if I had to have either again, with the milk chocolate bar definitely being the loser overall.

Very similar to the Blakes Coconut bar, this is a 38% cocoa solids, 100% organic, fairtrade milk chocolate bar with a praline filling, despite this it has a different title to the coconut bar but hey ho. An interesting note is that it says on the wrapper is that this product is ’suitable for Coeliacs’, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bar mention that before but if you’re coeliac then I guess you’re in luck with this one.

Unfortunately though you’re going to be out of luck when it comes to the flavour. To call it bad would be a huge disservice, but to call this praline also seems to be odd, as I could hardly detect any. They say there are hazelnut pieces here but I couldn’t detect any, as it was also a praline paste. Unlike the coconut bar though, which had a lovely coconut taste, this was pretty much just milk chocolate.

Like I said, it wasn’t bad, I still enjoyed this, but it wasn’t what I signed up for. I’ve never had a praline bar that tasted less of praline before.

I recently had an email from the owner of Oxford Ethical, an online store based in Oxford who sell tea, coffee and of course, lovely chocolate. He sent me 4 bars which he personally recommended, and I had to go for coconut first. This is 38% cocoa solids milk chocolate, made up of 100% organic ingredients.

The bar also sports the fairtrade logo, so it puts Blakes in the same sort of category as Divine and Green and Black’s. The bar itself was made in Switzerland and they themselves are an Irish company, which is why I personally hadn’t heard of them before and had never seen any of their bars around either.

It looks nice, with a fairly plain wrapper. It’s made of a thick paper, and whilst you’d expect foil within, it’s instead a strange plastic wrapper, and inside that is the bar. It’s very, very soft at room temperature, to the point where the bar is sort of pulled apart rather than snapped.

There’s a large amount of coconut filling, but there’s no grain to the coconut at all, it’s more of a paste than anything else, despite the bar having 18% coconut flakes on the ingredients. This didn’t seem to affect the pretty great taste of the bar, it wasn’t overly sweet and it had a lovely authentic taste. Coconut fans looking for something nicer than a regular Bounty should look no further.

Once again me and my favourite German chocolatier, Oliver Kuhl (i.e. the only one I know by name, except for Mr Ritter) join forces again. I previously consumed his organic milk chocolate bar and found it to be completely devoid of flavour. Will this bar pack a punch or will he be limp wristed again?

The first difference between the two bars is that this uses dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate. 52% dark chocolate to be exact. It simply say it’s “with espresso”, and so consulting the ingredients shows it to have 9.5% espresso powder within the bar. It’s also fairly high up the ingredient list so to be fair on Oliver, it sounds like he’s tried to really pack some flavour into this. I guess he read my previous review, didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, dude.

The wrapper is still plain as hell. I guess that’s the look he’s going for? Anyway open the bastard up and inside we have a foil wrapper, open that up and BAM coffee smell all up in your nostrils. Actually not really, the bar seems to lack any real smell at all. Not the best first sign.

Take a bite out of it and the first thing you taste is a bit of dark chocolate, within a second or two though this is eradicated by the strong coffee taste. Definitely more espresso than capuccinno, this is a dark coffee taste without being too dark. The fact that the chocolate is only 52% works in its favour here, as anymore and it would have been far too bitter for my liking. The coffee is nice and strong without being overbearing, and is just the right kind of flavour.

It’s a smooth dark chocolate bar, the coffee is simply blended in, and overall it’s really good. I always prefer my coffee bars to be more creamy than dark, but this one got it in the middle, perhaps vearing towards the dark side a bit, and did it very well. I criticised Oliver in the past for lacking flavour but this one had plenty of it and what was here impressed me.

Choccies! Choc choc choali-oh wait, I’ve made that joke before. Ok, well, here’s a more regular toffee version of those lovely choccies I had before from Thorntons. For the uninitiated, this is praline, fudge, oats and toffee covered in milk chocolate, and it’s just as lovely as it sounds.

I still think the box looks kinda cheap, all of the boxes in this range do really, it’s a very small point but I’m not too fond of the design. There’s no faulting the execution though, 200g of bitesize pieces of lovelyness.

They taste oaty, they’re very soft and yield easily, with crunchy bits of toffee inside. The hazelnut doesn’t have much of a taste but there is a nutty taste to it in parts, and the chocolate is of the good, milky variety. Overall, these are delicious, not just nice, but really nice. If you can buy these then you should, if you like oats and warm flavours, this will just do it for you, there’s something here that isn’t in any other type of chocolate. Lovely stuff.