These were one of the many goodies I picked up in M&S recently. Caramels are a perfect Saturday night treat, they're so easy to mindlessly shove in my mouth in front the telly and that is exactly how this Saturday night went down - which explains my fabulous Liquorice Allsort spare duvet cover providing the backdrop. As I've preached to everyone, don't bother with throws and blankets just get a cheap duvet and use it just for on the sofa, it is so cosy and comfortable!
The M&S Soft Caramels aren't new but they do have a new recipe. Not that I'd tried the old recipe, if I've said it once, I've said it a million times - I'd spend a hell of a lot more money in Markses if they put their products on the website, I can never be bothered to wander round on the off chance there might be something I want to buy.
Underneath the bright pink wrappers the chocolates are up to Marks & Spencer's usual standards. I barely looked at the actual chocolate after I'd unwrapped them and it would have been easy to just stick a lump of chocolate with some caramel inside but they looked as nice as they would have had they been displayed in a box of chocolates rather than hidden inside some foil.
Initially I could only smell chocolate. Again M&S high standards play a role, in other bags of wrapped caramels it's not unusual to find a couple of broken chocolates where the caramel has oozed out but as always these were in perfect condition and the thick chocolate shells had sealed the caramel and any scents away.
The caramels only contain 30% caramel centres to a decent 70% milk chocolate shell and with those sorts of ratios I'd expect to taste even a hint of chocolate but that was not the case at all. It might not take up even a third of the overall product but 99% of the taste was the caramel.
It's thick, runny and gooey - I went to brush my teeth after eating these and my chin was covered in caramel - I'm not usually that messy of an eater! A perfect consistency for soft caramel in my opinion but the flavour let it down somewhat. It's a very tasty caramel flavour but it's soon overpowered by a burning, sickly sweetness. I hadn't even finished one mouthful when I said to Mr.1T "wow these are sweet aren't they?" and in fact the word sickly came from him, not me - and that's saying something!
The caramel was thick enough to be scooped out, Creme Egg style, so I got a good taste of the unadulterated chocolate too. I've had a few M&S milk chocolates recently and continue to be surprised at the quality. Even when used in flavoured bars or bags where the chocolate isn't a predominant flavour they don't fob you off with the cheap stuff. It's milky yet still has a proper chocolate flavour and is really quite good quality stuff. There was still a lingering sugary sweetness though and due to the overpowering nature of the caramel I'm unsure if this was a left over from that or the chocolate was on the sweet side too. I think I'll give M&S the benefit of the doubt, none of the other milk chocolates have had that problem, and blame it on the caramel.
Rating:
Overall I think I'd give them a 6/10 but if we pretend I wasn't a greedy guts and only had 1 or 2 it'll be
7/10
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