So I was disappointed with Canderel’s milk chocolate bar, citing a lack of real, distinct flavour and kick to their bar as my reasoning. So I come to this bar with low expectations, and it’s up to them to surprise me, or prove me right.

Obviously once again this has no added sugar, what’s different though is that cocoa mass is the first ingredient, with sweeteners being second (maltitol and aspartame again). The bar only has 49% minimum cocoa solids which isn’t what I would call rich at all, but go figure.

The chocolate has an odd feel to it, almost glossy. There’s no residue which is obviously a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like it would melt even if you were to sit it in the sun for hours. Obviously it’s the same shape as yesterday’s bar, only noticeably darker.

As for the taste, it’s most definite that the sweeteners suit a dark chocolate bar a million times better than a milk chocolate bar. Because the dark chocolate is much less sweeter anyway, the lack of sugar and the replacement of it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in taste, and so this tastes exactly like a regular dark chocolate bar.

That’s not quite correct though. At only 49% cocoa solids this is a low standard dark chocolate bar, and it shows. Perhaps it’s because sweeteners can’t have the same effect as sugar when the chocolate is darker? I’d like to think that Canderel have a good reason for using such a low amount of cocoa and not just to be cheap.

Overall, it’s ok. I don’t think Canderel’s venture into the chocolate market has been a great success, but now a year or so on from first launching these bars they’re still making them, so maybe it has been a success for them. Each 100g bar has 413 calories, 6g Protein, 34g Carbohydrates (2.2g of which sugars, which is excellent) and 31g Fat (20g of which saturates, not so good). 26g of Fibre too, not too shabby.