I was quite surprised to find that before now I hadn’t actually reviewed Matchmakers from Nestlé before, despite them being a permanent fixture on supermarket shelves I guess they just never tempt me. I saw them at Sainsbury’s for £1 a box though and I thought that was a pretty fair price so picked up the two flavours they currently run and opted to go for the orange ones first.

Originally released in 1968 by Rowntree’s and given more brand awareness in 2003 by Nestlé, Matchmakers are basically long twigs of chocolate with boiled, flavoured sugar pieces within. You get a decent amount in the 151g box but for some reason they just don’t stand out to me too much. I’m not sure why they’re now part of the Quality Street range as well and what bearing that has on these, but on the back of the box they refer you to qualitystreet.co.uk.

They call these zingy orange and it’s a good title for them. These actually surprised me somewhat because they’re actually very nice. The chocolate is relatively ordinary but the orange is very sweet and tangy, the way it’s mixed with the sugar means it almost bursts with flavour in your mouth. For just one pound I was very impressed, though with an RRP of almost double that I’m not so sure. If you see them on offer and quite like orange flavoured chocolate then give these a go.

It’s been a super long time since I’ve had a Twix, which is not to say anything bad about it, after all it’s hard to go wrong with biscuit, caramel and milk chocolate, but it just doesn’t capture me the same way that a lot of other chocolate bars do. I happened to eye this in my local Wilkinson store for 52p at the checkout, obvious impulse spot, and figured why not.

My first thoughts looking at the packaging and description (crispy wafer and caramel covered in milk chocolate) was that this was a Mars Delight-esque bar. I don’t know if Mars Delights are still around, I haven’t seen them in sometime, and this could be Mars’ way of creating a new product with some hype without really creating a new product. More of just a rebranding really.

This is kinda how it turned out too, which is not necessarily a bad thing as I actually really like Mars Delights, but it’s a little indicative of how the chocolate market has been for a little while that a new product is little more than an old product brought back into fashion. It’s nice, but if you’re wondering why it tastes so familiar, it’s because you’ve pretty much eaten it before.

Nope, I’m not making this up. I did actually buy this from Ann Summers’ website, and I am in fact about to eat it. Alone. Here we have the Strip Poker chocolate game, and it looks so cheap it’s unreal.

It has some really weird packaging. If you’re like me you’re probably wondering why there’s a circle on the front and a bunch of numbers, but that’s how you actually play the game (which I will explain in a bit). It then says at the bottom that there’s “12 delicious chocolates” with a nice puke green logo on the front claiming that there’s 3 bonus chocolates within. Also they have soft and hard centres, I’m sure there’s a pun there but I can’t be bothered to make it.

The back of the box is a bit more interesting. It has a picture of a man having his shirt taken off by two gorgeous blondes as he hides his head in shame. Also they’re holding cards…this game isn’t played with cards! I don’t know if it’s a stock photo they used or something they just completely missed but boy does it look odd, it’s a pretty big thing to miss and something I noticed straight away.

That is what I saw when I opened the box. Now you might look at that and think “hey, those look pretty nifty, look at those patterns!”, well my friend, those patterns are not a good thing and certainly not something Ann Summers did on purpose. That is the result of chocolate blooming after not being stored properly for extended periods of time. Indeed these chocolates go out of date next month, so no doubt they’ve sat in a warehouse for some time. I am not filled with joy.

I will be frank with this review. This is the worst chocolate I have ever had in my life. It is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I have had supermarket’s own brand chocolate that costs literally pennies that tastes far better than this. I can’t even describe how bad this is, but I had a bite of a hard centre chocolate, a bite of a soft centre chocolate, and then threw the rest out. I do not condone wasting food, certainly chocolate, but I refused to eat this. Seriously, do not buy this if you value your taste buds.

If you wish to play the strip poker chocolate game yourself though with some good chocolates, here’s how!

Spin the wheel and see where the arrow symbol points. Take the corresponding chocolate (if that one has already been taken, take the next chocolate clockwise) and bite in! If it’s a soft centre you need put something on (Editor’s note: the English really is that bad there, not a typing mistake), but if it’s a hard one you’ll need to take something off!

I’ve been doing this gig for awhile now but never have I reviewed…sexy chocolate, or maybe it’s just sex chocolate, I really don’t know. At any rate, I was informed that Ann Summers had a sale on their online store and two of their chocolate products were reduced to just £1 each with free shipping, so I picked them both up. They arrived yesterday and I figured today I would review these chocolate rabbits.

The question you can see on the front of the tin these rabbits come in is pretty straight forward: ‘Better than sex?’ Well it’s my quest to find out. The top half of the tin has a woman holding a chocolate rabbit in her outstretched arm. The back of the tin is a little more plain, simply white text on a black background where they list the ingredients which are fairly simple, and at the bottom there’s a big message in capital letters reading ‘THIS IS AN ADULT PRODUCT’. Now I’m almost a little scared, when I open the tin will some sort of sex object pop out at me?

Well the answer is no. Instead there’s a plastic packet with all these dusty, scratched up chocolate rabbits inside. I opened the bag and poured them into the tin and they just about fit. Now I’ll be honest here, they look and smell terrible. Opening the bag up and seeing these all scuffed up and chipped is not a good first impression, and they just smell cheap.

That’s how they taste too. They taste like cheap Easter Egg chocolate that’s been sat in grandma’s cupboard for too long. Stale, tasteless, nothing but disappointing. I’m sorry Ann Summers, but back to the drawing board with this one. The only sex this is better than is sex with your aforementioned grandma, or with a cheap hooker who leaves you with an STD. Stay away.

I’ve previously reviewed the 12 piece Couture Box from Artisan du Chocolat, but when Forman & Field, a fine food (and more important, chocolate) mail order company, offered to send me a sample I couldn’t exactly turn down the opportunity to have a go at these again.

Now before you stop reading, Artisan du Chocolat produce 45 different flavours for these boxes and so this one is different to the one I had before. It’s nice to revisit and without any sort of guide on the flavours, trying to guess which is which. Also when ordering from their website, they do not add in Tobacco flavour unless requested…perhaps Forman & Field requested it on my behalf…

The packaging this came in was very good, even better than Artisan du Chocolat’s own if I remember correctly. Forman & Field packed it very carefully and with their own branded ice packs to keep the chocolates cool, it was a fantastic little touch.

So there’s our 12 chocolates, some with crazy patterns, some with little sprinklings of things, some very plain. Making my way from left to right, top to bottom (so starting from the top left) we have a hazelnut and dark chocolate ganache, it got me thinking that I don’t think I’ve ever had hazelnut with dark chocolate before in all the times I’ve had both, which is amazing in itself, and this chocolate was extremely good. Next was our tribal yellow chocolate, and I couldn’t place what the flavour was. Floral, again with a dark chocolate outer coating, it was creamy and almost nutty again, and then before I knew it it had melted in my mouth and was gone. Our last sprinkled bar in the top right was dark chocolate within dark chocolate, but still very sweet, and it hinted at other flavours, honey maybe, something was definitely balancing the bitter dark chocolate flavours.

The next row down, over on the left was a solid chocolate, it yielded like a caramel at just above room temperature, still holding its form but very easy to bite through. The taste was very subtle but it’s definitely caramel, I wish it hit a bit harder as it was very good. Next up was another dark chocolate within dark chocolate, except without any of the sweetness. I could not fathom what flavour I was eating, definitely floral, almost spicy in places, it was pleasant but I really don’t know what it was. Finally our yellow tribal chocolate almost broke apart in my hands, the shell cracked everywhere, this one just tasted like creamy ganache to me, I feel like I missed something with it.

The chocolates continue on like this, the tribal looking ones tend to be floral, I was never able to pinpoint any of their flavours, they all taste different and very good in their own way. Most of the others are far more delicate with their flavours except for the one at the end which was simply marzipan. It’s an interesting box, not something I see for personal consumption and I feel it’s something you should be sharing with at least one person or a great chocolate gift, half the fun is trying to see what each flavour is. The chocolates are just big enough for two bites, so I highly suggest sharing these with a significant other and enjoying each little chocolate while it lasts.

Obviously very similar to yesterday’s Milk & Hazelnuts bar, is today’s White & Hazelnuts Belgian Chocolate bar from Guylian. This review will be shorter because this bar is essentially the exact same thing, except with white rather than milk chocolate.

The box looks almost identical, and again there’s 14% hazelnuts in this bar. Some things I didn’t mention before were that this these bars are actually made in Belgium itself, and are also available in Australia and New Zealand according to the back of the box. Obviously I don’t know much about that myself but I’m sure some of my readers from Down Under will have seen these bars around.

Again the bar comes wrapped in some lovely gold, Guylian emblazoned gold foil. I decided to take a picture of how the bar looks when you open the foil this time, to show you just how many hazelnuts are packed in. There’s a lot! Flip the bar over and it looks just like the milk chocolate version, except of course, it’s white.

My problem with the milk version was that you could hardly taste the actual chocolate, the nuts were great, it was a delicious bar, but I know that Guylian make great quality chocolate and I wanted to taste it. Unfortunately that problem is with this one too. The bar is sweeter than the milk chocolate version, I’m sure that blindfolded I could tell which one was milk and which was white, but apart from that, it’s really very similar, you just can’t taste the chocolate.

It’s still a really good tasting bar, the hazelnuts are numerous and crunchy, but it’s a bit too thin, and not chocolatey enough, which is weird for a chocolate bar. Try either bar out, there’s not much of a difference between them, I don’t doubt you’ll enjoy them, provided you like hazelnuts.

A little while ago Guylian released two 100g chocolate bars in milk chocolate and white chocolate varieties. I’ve never seen them on any sort of special offer and so hadn’t been too tempted to pick them up, but I finally bit the bullet and paid £1.49 per bar at my local Sainsbury’s, and today we’ll take a look at the milk chocolate version.

It comes in quite a stylish, almost Japanese style cardboard box which I really like the look of. The box has a pull tab close to the bottom which then pulls the bottom of the box off. Alternatively the back of the pack can be torn off should you wish to just rip into the thing. The back of the box describes this as “Belgian milk chocolate with pieces of hazelnut (14%)” which isn’t necessarily new to me, but I’ve reviewed a few Guylian products in the past and they don’t disappoint, so the hope is that they’ve put their own unique touch on the classic hazelnut-milk chocolate combo.

The bar comes within a gold foil wrapper, and is actually turned the other way when you first open it. It’s full of tiny pieces of hazelnut and as you can quite clearly see, as soon as I put my fingers on it the prints stayed on, which isn’t something you see too often. The bar is very long but not too thick at all, though as I mentioned they still managed to cram a lot of hazelnuts in there, and the taste definitely matches that.

The bar is great tasting, with a really strong hazelnutty taste. The chocolate is masked a bit by the hazelnuts which is a shame but it’s still a really good bar. I’m not sure if this bar will last in the rather bloated market, but Guylian have a good reputation and this lives up to it, and I’d recommend this bar over a lot of similar bars.

I’ve seen the Bar of Plenty bars in my local supermarket for awhile now but haven’t been too tempted to pick them up, but I was happy to accept a sample from Cadbury themselves. This particular edition is limited to Morrisons stores only which is quite interesting, let’s delve in.

The bar looks quite small but weighs in a fairly hefty 140g. It sports the usual Dairy Milk purple theme, with a large picture of honey and pecans on the front. It also says ‘Charity Pack’ on the front, the reason for this is because 10p from every sale will go to Help the Hospices in conjunction with Morrisons’ Charity of the Year, which is a pretty cool idea.

I’m unsure of what Cadbury is going for with the Bar of Plenty brand, they already have sharing bars in the form of their regular Caramel, Turkish Delight, Crunchie, etc bars, so I assume that these are supposed to compete with higher end stuff such as Green & Black’s and Lindt. I’m not of the opinion that Cadbury are quite at that level and think of them as a complete middle of the road chocolate, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to branch out.

The bar is quite thick and chunky and you’d expect there to be big pieces of pecan, but this isn’t the case. Instead there are numerous slivers and little pieces, which was somewhat disappointing as I’m a big pecan fan and I’d have liked to see Cadbury give them the same treatment that they give their hazelnut bars, perhaps it’s a cost issue? Unfortunately this means that the bar is far more chocolatey than it should be, which is a weird thing to write, but it’s more plain than I was both expecting and hoping it would be.

Now don’t get me wrong, Cadbury’s chocolate is nice, I liked this bar quite a bit, but for an upmarket bar saying it has pecans, it didn’t have enough of a pecan taste for my liking. I’ve had bars with caramelised nuts in the past that have a real crunch to them and they’re delicious, but this didn’t have enough of that. When the bar melted slightly the pecan and honey came through a lot more though, so if your taste buds are similar to mine you might want to try eating this at room temperature or slightly warmer and letting it melt in your mouth.

At an RRP of £1.59 I’m not quite convinced on this one, it’s nice and it’s interested me enough to try the other bars in the near future, but I don’t think I’d buy this one again unless it was on sale. Again, keep in mind this is only available from Morrisons and I assume for a somewhat limited time, so if you do want to try this then make sure you’re shopping in the right place.

Maltesers Ice Cream have just launched an Ice Cream Forecaster application on Facebook that you can find right here. The app lets you know when the weather has hit ice cream eating highs and features a thermometer with the average UK temperature at that time of day, perfect for when you need a chocolate fix. You are able to share it on your wall to let your friends and fellow chocolate fans know when the time is right for Maltesers Ice Cream.

Cadbury recently brought their milk chocolate bars into the biscuit market, with these Turkish Delight biscuits, as well as Caramel and Crunchie biscuits. These are, according to the pack, ‘A delicious shortcake with a Turkish Delight flavoured jam, covered in milk chocolate’. I’m a big Turkish Delight fan so it’s nice to see Cadbury offer it in other forms, and it’ll be interesting to see how it is with shortcake.

The pack is standard Cadbury fare. It looks almost identical to their bars, with the dark purple Cadbury theme and the large amount of light purple for the Turkish Delight, as well as a picture of one of the biscuits. Honestly there’s not too much else to comment on in regards to appearance, Cadbury have their own distinct look and they stick to it, so let’s open the pack up.

Now as you can see we have a long plastic tray with eight biscuits within. Straight away you can tell that these biscuits can’t be shared round too much, there simply isn’t enough, as compared to the majority of other biscuits on the market. I broke one in half to show what it looks like within, and it yielded quite easily. The shortcake is soft but firm as it should be, and the Turkish Delight is thinner than in their regular chocolate bars, but there is less space for it to fill as the biscuits are fairly flat, as opposed to the chunky chocolate bars.

These do taste quite nice as you’d probably expect. It’s rare that Cadbury’s put a bad product on the market, the downside of this though is that it’s hardly anything new. It tastes very similar to a regular Cadbury’s Turkish Delight bar, except with a biscuit taste added in, that’s stating the obvious a bit because that’s exactly what these are, but it just doesn’t excite me. If you like Turkish Delight and you’re looking for something just a little bit different, give these a go. These are quite nice, Cadbury’s chocolate is good stuff and the Turkish Delight isn’t too sweet and has the traditional rose flavour.