Hotel Chocolat Macadamia Turtles
So another in our Hotel Chocolat box, this was the most short dated of the lot (expired on 1st August, about 2 weeks after I got the box), this nice looking cardboard box of macadamia turtles looked well…nice.
It has some pretty nice blurb too, Hotel Chocolat big this one up. “The crunch of whole roasted macadamias with the yielding softness of milk chocolate. Textured with little cereal flakes which create turtle-esque shapes.” Sounds nice to me, though I don’t think I’ve ever eaten macadamia nuts before so this should be an interesting product.
So as I mentioned it comes in a cardboard box which looks pretty nice, there’s a nice ribbon on it too which makes me want to laugh at Whittard of Chelsea again for their attempt at that. So these are whole roasted macadamia nuts covered in milk chocolate and studded with cornflakes, as the more literal description tells us on the back. This has a few vitamins in it too which is kinda interesting to see.
The downside to this box design is that when opened the pack of turtles is squashed down, and you pretty much have to pull it out to open it up. I guess you can then put it back in and eat them from the box but at this point the whole idea of it was lost on me, and I didn’t bother. These also look nothing like turtles. I can see how they’ve tried to do it with a little tail but it just hasn’t worked out, ah well, it doesn’t really matter.
So how do these taste? Actually really nice. The nuts have a great taste to them with a delicious roasted flavour, the cornflakes add a crunchy texture and the chocolate adds a sweetness and its own chocolatey (duh) flavour. Nut is definitely the main taste here and from time to time the cornflakes appear, and overall these are great. At £5.50 I’d be more than loath to buy them myself (evidently that goes for a lot of people considering they’re a part of this box) but that goes for everything on Hotel Chocolat’s website, if you can afford these then they’re worth looking at.
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August 19th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Mmm…. Turtles
August 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Actually, the high price in this case is probably justified – macadamia nuts are expensive. Just to illustrate: at Waitrose, roasted salted macadamia nuts cost £2.60 per 100g, comared with about £1.20 for cashews and about 35p for peanuts. These Hotel Choc bags contain 150g, of which about 100g will be the macadamias, so £5.50 per bag really isn’t that bad.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Bagnew – The…green meat?
Paul – Congrats on making me feel stupid. Still, while it may not be that bad for people who shop at Waitrose, it is bad for us slum dwellers at Asda buying peanuts with peanuts.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Yep, green as er…. Green stuff?
apparently it tastes a bit like chicken, just crossed with beef.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Nice review, I love Hotel Chocolate stuff.
See if you can get them to send you a box of their hand piped selection, it’s hands down my favourite box of chocolates and a must if you like pralines.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Following up Chris’s comment – I’m wondering how much you’ve tried actually approaching the manufacturers of all these choccies, and asking them nicely for some samples. If you included a link to your website, and ideally were able to quote them some traffic figures about how many views / comments etc you get, you might be surprised at how willing they’d be to send samples. After all, publicity can be very expensive, so compared to that, the cost to them of sending you (say) fifty quids’ worth of chocs, on the understanding that you’d review them all, would be seen as very cost-effective publicity for them. Go on – put your cheeky head on! Angus Thirlwell, who founded Hotel Choc, has always bee a very friendly guy when I’ve had dealings with him, likewise Lynn who runs the Hotel Choc Tasting Clubs.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Paul – Hotel Chocolat have sent me plenty of stuff before, check out my category for them on the right hand side and you’ll see my reviews, all of them except for the recent ones were free samples. I did email them though last summer and they ignored me, I then tried to contact them again a few months after and they basically told me to get lost so I’m not holding out much hope (I email companies all the time, vast majority of them ignore me and I make it clear in my reviews when what I have is a sample).
Just to follow up myself – Divine are pretty much my favourite company as they’ve sent me their entire range. Great communications with them, really good company.