We don’t get enough Freddo varieities here in England, just milk chocolate and caramel. Australia and New Zealand though get a whole bunch, and this is one of them, the white chocolate Freddo.

Now long term readers will know I’m a fan of white chocolate, so I’m not put off at all. This 40g Freddo (that’s a lot bigger than the British version, right?) is made from Cadbury’s Dream chocolate. In fact, they even advertise it as such, so it’s a Dream bar in frog format, uhh…great?

I’ve gotta admit I was actually a bit annoyed when I read that, it’s typically cheap of Cadbury to just rebrand their own chocolate like that, but I’m used to it from them so I’ll drop it.

So the Freddo is well…a Dream bar, reshaped into a frog. What more can I say? It’s nice enough, typical white chocolate really - sweet, creamy, sugary, but nice.

It’s underwhelming, but I’m not surprised, I guess if you live in Australia or New Zealand then you’d enjoy this, if you don’t, there is absolutely no reason for you to get this.

A rather odd After Eight product here, these have been around for a couple of years now, and I’ve never been tempted to buy them, I keep expecting them to disappear soon though, and so here we are.

These come in a cylindrical tub, about 15cm tall. It’s fairly plain to look at, and I’m surprised it has a grey theme, as opposed to the normal dark green/black theme After Eight has. These are billed as “Plain chocolate straws with a smooth mint centre”. Harmless enough, right?

The tub opens at the bottom for some reason, as you can see in the picture the outer container twists off, revealing a half-container inside, with the straws inside there. It seems like an odd design to me but I was just glad they didn’t fall everywhere.

Their initial appearance reminds me of pocky, except these are all chocolate, no hint of biscuit. As billed, the chocolate is filled with the typical After Eight peppermint fondant creme. They’re extremely soft and melty at room temperature, whether that’s good or bad is down to you.

Basically they’re After Eight in straw form. As an After Eight fan I quite enjoyed these, the chocolate doesn’t seem to be as dark and they’re not quite as strong, and that seems to suit them better. They’re kinda expensive and almost pointless though, and I can’t see myself being tempted enough to buy them again.

Per 100g (the entire tube is 90g) these have 526 calories, 5.1g Protein, 56.6g Carbohydrates and 31g Fat. Per straw they have 24 calories and 1.4g Fat.

Ah Hershey’s, that old American classic that hardly anyone outside America likes, and yet will still get defended to the death. I generally stay away from it wherever possible, but I figure that eventually I’d have to review their stuff, and this has the potential to actually be good, methinks.

I can only see this being good if the almonds are overpowering, and the bar does have a decent amount of them, 86% milk chocolate, hence 14% almonds. The bar is made in Mexico and the ingredients are translated approximately one hundred times on the back, so this bar gets around a bit. Hershey actually have an International Division based in Surrey too, so why they don’t actually release their stuff here properly as opposed to importing for a high price tag makes little sense to me.

Anywho, in terms of shape and layout, this bar is identical to the Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar and the Cookies ‘n’ Chocolate bar. Once again I split the bar in half and turned one upside down to show how the nuts are in here. The bar’s extremely thin so the fact that they show up isn’t exactly a surprise though.

What is a surprise though, is that this bar…well…tastes quite nice actually. I hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed eating it. It was more a case of I devoured it actually due to the easy devouring nature of this bar (it’s set out to have those blocks eaten in groups of 3 rather than 1 little rectangle each). It’s not a great bar, and my teeth ached a bit afterward, but I’ve got to admit, I did enjoy it. I doubt I’d get it again, but you can do so much worse than this, and in terms of the Hershey’s range itself, I’m not sure how much better you could do.

So I picked this bar up a little while ago in Asda and it’s been sitting in my mini-fridge for about 2 weeks now, and I haven’t really been that tempted to eat it. Maybe I’m getting bored of chocolate, I hope not.

Angst aside, this is a 120g (4.2oz) bar, which makes it pretty huge, though it doesn’t really look it. The Galaxy brand is a favourite of mine, I prefer it over Cadbury’s, and those two are pretty much direct competitors. Though this brand is so obviously marketed towards women, stuff like that really doesn’t bother me. So here we have a hazelnut and milk chocolate bar, as if I haven’t reviewed a hundred of these before.

So roasted AND caramelised hazelnuts, eh? Wow, how exciting! As you can see from the picture above, I tried to make my picture show everything that this bar has to offer. First off, on the back of the wrapper there’s a huge long note entitled “Falling into that beautiful thing called Love”, spare me please. I then broke the bar in half so you can see the topside, which is rather pretty, and the bottom side, which as you can see is chock full of nuts.

As for the taste, well like I said, I’ve been here a million times before. It’s a milk chocolate bar with hazelnuts in, and describing that almost seems patronising. The chocolate is a little overly sweet, it hurt my teeth after a few pieces, but it’s a pleasant enough bar. It’s just a bit boring, a bit plain, and the UK market is over saturated with these kind of bars, rant over.

“Smooth, creamy Galaxy milk chocolate in a crispy chocolate shell”, that sums these up pretty darn well. I realised awhile back I still hadn’t reviewed these and I finally remembered again yesterday, so better late than never, methinks.

So, these minstrels have no relation to actual minstrels, but that’s going way off topic. As part of Mars’ Galaxy brand, you know what you’re going to get with these, and that’s good quality, creamy, affordable chocolate, and that’s basically what Minstrels are.

What we have is a bag full of small chocolate discs, as described they have the appearance of an extremely large M&M, only…without the M on it. Inside the chocolate shell is a big solid disc of Galaxy’s patented milk chocolate, again like a good quality M&M.

These are simple, they don’t push any boundaries, yet they do what they set out to do very well, and whilst I hadn’t bought them in years previous to this, and will no doubt not buy them for years afterward, I do still recommend them, certainly over Smarties and M&M’s.

I like revisiting things I’ve reviewed every so often, usually when they’ve been repackaged, to see if anything has changed. With Oreos recently launched officially by Nabisco in Britain, I figured this would be a perfect chance to check them out again.

First off, I’m not sure if this will be a good idea. Oreos sell well in import shops, sure, but as for mass production in supermarkets, I’m not convinced. I paid 75p for this 165g pack though which is about normal for a pack of biscuits, so there’s hope yet. This pack was only made not even 2 months ago, so I’m sure they’re fresh.

I was less than impressed with the American Oreos, I found them to be plain, and devoid of any real good, rich flavour. They’re chocolate discs with a vanilla creme flavouring in the middle, somewhat akin to our English Bourbon Cream biscuits, except they have a chocolate creme. They also use the same eating message which they do in America - Twist, Lick, Dunk (in milk), not something I’ll be doing, but perhaps it makes a difference.

And so, that is what we have inside the packet. 14 Oreo biscuits, these are actually produced in Cheltenham too, so they’re not being shipped over from some factory, which is something I like. But, onto the biscuits themselves. Again, I feel like I’m eating a bourbon cream, only with an ever so slightly different flavour, which would of course be the vanilla cream.

These don’t taste as dry as the American ones, maybe it’s because they’re a bit fresher, as I doubt they’ve changed anything in terms of ingredients for us (except for the use of actual sugar, perhaps). They’re nice, no doubt about it, but they’re just a bit plain, and lacking that something special that makes me want to come back for more.

The final Total Raw Food bar, though there are more in the range, I definitely won’t be paying £2.85 each for the rest (editor’s note: They’ve been reduced to £1.90 each for all of May, typical, eh). Same old situation: 58% cocoa solids bar, all organic, dairy-free, ethically sourced ingredients. This bar though has whole goji berries mixed in, lovely!

I’ve never had goji berries before, and know practically nothing about them other than that the health food people are all over them nowadays. They’re also known as wolf berries, and are so expensive that I’ve never bothered going near them.

The bar only has 5% goji berries here, so it’s not exactly full of them, and I actually had to get halfway into the bar before I located a bit, though one of the squares ended up having about two or three of them in, which was the only piece I could taste them.

When I did taste them, I liked them. I can’t describe the flavour too well, but with the deep flavour of the raw cacao, this was obviously fruity and well…pleasant, for lack of a better word, and definitely the tastiest of the three bars.

My overall impression of the bars is that they’re nice, I like that everything is ethically sourced, with good ingredients and no damage to the environment. But this comes at a high price, they are simply too expensive, far too expensive, even at half the price I would think twice about buying them.

Also, the bars don’t have enough variety in flavour. I’ll accept I have a lack of experience with raw cacao, but once there was a definite flavour in one of the bars (goji berries), I could taste it. Yet with the others, there was nothing. I’m unsure of how the others match up, but I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t be more of the same.

The second of three reviews of these unique bars from Total Raw Food. The Real Purple bar is another 58% minimum cocoa solids, 40g raw cacao bar, except this time, it has this purple corn added to the mix. Now, I don’t even know what purple corn is, so once again I have no idea what to expect from this.

The bar looks the same as ever, the only difference between all of these in terms of looks are their colours. The ingredients list looks nice: virgin cacao butter, agave nectar, cacao powder, carob powder, sesame seeds, purple corn powder (0.7%) and trace of sea salt. It’s a refreshing list to look at, and all ingredients are sourced ethically. Lovely.

The bar retains a vast number of the same characteristics as yesterday’s bar, such as the greasy feel of the chocolate, the slightly off-texture, and the soft, truffley centre.

When it comes to taste, again there are a lot of similarities. it retains the same musky, deep flavours that the previous bar had, though once again I’m unsure as to what exactly the purple corn adds, as in all honesty it tastes extremely similar to the real blue bar.

So, is it nice? Yeah, it certainly is. It’s a bit different, it’s deep and rich, different to any processed chocolate, but I just can’t help but feel that these flavours they add are just a little pointless.

I picked up three of these bars from Total Raw Food: Real Blue, Purple, and Red. The Real Blue bar is a 58% minimum cocoa solids, 40g bar, with cyanobacteria (commonly known as blue-green algae) mixed into it. Yeah, no kidding.

So these bars have “no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no refined sugar, no destructive heat processing, no problem”. Great, eh? This is raw cacao too, i.e. unroasted chocolate. That in itself is something I haven’t tried before, and with…blue-green algae…well, I took a bit of a risk with this.

The bar comes inside a little plastic wrapper, which like yesterday, is a little underwhelming, but there we are. And again like yesterday’s bar, as soon as I touched it, I was left with a residue all over my fingers.

The bar has an odd look to it, I’m reluctant to call it greasy, lest I be made to look like a fool, but that’s really what it looks like. As you can see, it’s not too thick, but what it is pure chocolate, with the inside being ever so slightly truffle-like.

It’s very rich, considering it’s only 58%, I think they did that about right. Anymore and I think it would just be too rich. As for the blue green algae, what does it add? I have no idea because I just don’t have any prior experience with raw cacao, in order to be able to tell the difference, though it does have a slight aftertaste.

At £2.85 a bar, I’m reluctant to recommend this. It’s nice, sure. It’s different, sure. It does wonders for the environment, sure. But it’s just too expensive, and there’s just not enough of it. If you can afford this, give it a try, if not, then you won’t be missing out on too much.

A gourmet, organic bar, this. These long, thin bars come in a few different flavours, though green tea was the only one in stock, so now I get to see a Western view of how Belgian chocolate and green tea should go.

There’s a bit of blurb, and here it is: “The Charlemagne Belgian chocolates are made in an ancient renovated farmhouse (the birthplace, twelve centuries ago, of the Emperor Charlemagne), using a patented process which allows delicious and unexpected natural oriental flavours to be subtly infused into the organic chocolate.”

Usual rubbish, methinks, but they call it gourmet, as well as calling themselves “chocolatiers”, suggesting some sort of class involved somewhere. The box looks…odd, it’s extremely thin and long, but it looks nice, and comes in some good quality cardboard.

The bar then comes in a plastic wrapper which isn’t as impressive, but anyway as you can see, the bar is also very, very dark. It took a lot of work to try and take that picture and get the bar to have any complexion at all. With 74% cocoa solids this is to be expected though, and when smelling the bar, it just smells of dark chocolate, not a hint of green tea.

And sadly, the same goes for the taste. I know there’s green tea somewhere, I can almost taste it, sometimes as it melts it’s almost there, but really, it’s just dark chocolate with an ever so slightly modified taste. Now it’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but I paid for a chocolate and green tea bar, and that’s what they marketed this as, and that’s just not what it is.

Overall, a disappointment. I always cringe when a company has to big themselves up, as I always fear they’re setting themselves up for a fall, and Charlemagne have done that here. Don’t get me wrong, the bar was nice, the chocolate was good quality, and I liked it, but it’s not green tea at all, and that greatly disappoints me.

I can’t recommend this, perhaps it takes a more refined palette, but I don’t want to give them an excuse, try the other flavours if you can and let me know how they are.