Ritter Sport Goldschatz

This weeks Wednesday world food review is once again Ritter. Ritter Sport Goldschatz to be exact. The name might not scream eat me but that shiny gold wrapper caught my eye, I must have been a Magpie in a previous life. 

I was sold on the wrapper alone, so didn't have a good look at the actual contents until I got home. I was confused, is it a dark chocolate? Is it a milk? Milk chocolate doesn't tend to state the cocoa percentage on the front of the bar but 40% is on the low side for a dark. Turns out it is a milk chocolate with 40% cocoa solids and only 18% milk solids. 

Once again it was a hefty bar (and extremely reasonably priced as a special buy in Lidl) at 250g, British manufacturers could learn something from our European cousins - these are proper sized chocolate bars. I struggled to photo the wrapper because not only is it in a shiny gold foil but it was wet? I hold my hands up and admit I refrigerated the chocolate, I live with people constantly moaning it's cold but this house is a sauna - I can put up with the heat but I refuse to give in to melted chocolate! I assumed something inside my fridge had leaked but weirdly the actual chocolate was wet too! If anyone has any ideas on what that's about please let me know! 

Off the bat this smelt like dark chocolate, not a dark dark chocolate but not quite sweet milky chocolate either. As always it's in the standard Ritter Sport format, thick chunky fat squares. Just how I like a chocolate bar, thick enough for a good bite but perfectly sized to pop a square on your tongue and let melt. 

 

So it smelt like dark chocolate but looked like milk chocolate. It handled more like dark chocolate, melting a lot quicker than a normal milk and after only breaking one or two squares off, my hands were covered in chocolate. 

Once again Ritter have created an extremely tasty bar of chocolate. I'd long given up trying to decide what type this was (I know it's milk officially!) the flavour was bang in the middle of the two. It takes the best parts of both and combines them beautifully; an almost dark, deeper, rich cocoa flavour but still with a creamy taste and feel. In fact Mr.1T dark chocolate hater even really enjoyed this, saying that even though it had a bit of a dark taste it was still really creamy. Something we finally agree on! 

I'm gutted that I only bought one, I can't say I've noticed this sold anywhere else and knowing Lidl it's long gone now! It's not often, in fact it's never happened, that we find a chocolate bar milky, creamy and sweet enough for Mr.1T with enough cocoa flavour to satisfy my dark chocolate cravings. 

Lovely.

8/10 

Ritter Sport Alpine Milk Chocolate

When I'm reviewing foreign brands, I like to find what would be considered the British version too. If Milka can be called the Europe wide Cadbury, then Ritter Sport would be the German equivalent. That's being generous to Cadbury - Ritter Sport are sold absoloutly everywhere in Germany in lots of different flavours just like Cadbury are here but the quality of the chocolates are worlds apart. It'd be like comparing Spam to steak! 

I've tried a large number of Ritter Sport bars (still nowhere near all of the flavours) but never a plain milk chocolate. This isn't just a milk chocolate though, this is Alpine Milk Chocolate - made with 100% milk from The Alps. 

Of all the brands I've tried Ritter Sport probably have my favourite mould - thick, chunky little squares that are very satisfying to take a big bite out of.

I could smell the chocolate immediately and it smelt absolutely amazing. I'm sure it's not confirmation bias as I asked Mr.1T to give it a sniff too but it smelt so milky, the strength was like when you open a chocolate scented body butter and far stronger than any other chocolate I've eaten recently. 

It was just as impressive in flavour, incredibly milky tasting and wonderfully smooth. I'm not normally keen on smooth chocolate but I loved the thick, velvety feel here. It still had a lovely chocolate flavour as well as the milkiness due to 30% cocoa solids. It's like Ritter have taken all the desirable factors of other popular bars - the milkiness of (original) Dairy Milk and the smoothness of Galaxy and added it to the delicious, proper chocolate flavour found in most Ritter Sport bars. 

The amount of Cocoa Solids meant that this is a rich chocolate that a couple of squares would be enough, but the sweet milky taste means that it's perfectly easy to eat the whole bar too. 

This was bloody lovely! My local One Stop are selling them for £1 at the moment and so I'll be stocking up - I think I've found my new go-to milk chocolate bar. 

9/10 

Part Two - Rausch Chocolate

You can find part one of my Rausch Chocolates review here, where I reviewed the Costa Rican and Venezuelan bars.  

All four of the bars included contain only four ingredients; cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder and cocoa mass. Each is also made with single origin cocoa from various areas. 

The third bar I tried was the Madagascan. 

Rausch say about this bar "Light coloured, creamy and aromatic chocolate with a delicate vanilla flavour made from the best SAMBIRANO no.1 fine flavour cocoa in the Ambanja region" and "Fruity, tart and slightly tangy giving this aromatic, lightly coloured chocolate a hint of vanilla". 

Well as stated, twice, it was certainly lighter than the previous two bars. It smelt a lot sweeter and creamier than the Costa Rican and Venezualan too and despite my skepticism did have a slight vanilla like scent to it too. 

Getting down to buisness, it tasted absoloutly delicious. It contains a minimum of 39% cocoa solids so there's still a good, rich, proper chocolate flavour and 22% milk solids which give a sweeter, milkier taste than the two before. It has a beautifully creamy flavour and is extremely moreish. I didn't notice any tartness but there were the hints of vanilla as promised every now and then, nothing too strong and not as vanilla-y as it smelt, but enough to taste. 

Strangely, I noticed with this bar where I didn't really before, that it had a very slow melt - it melted on my tounge eventually but most mouthfuls I ended up chewing. It did take away a little of my enjoyment of the bar (and Mr.1T actually commented the same) but the flavour was nice enough that I didn't mind too much. 

This was a wonderfully thick, creamy chocolate that managed to be milky and flavourful while still tasting like actual chocolate should. 

8/10 

Last and by no means least was Papua New Guinea. Rausch say about this bar "Balanced light coloured fine milk chocolate with a harmonious, creamy, caramelly flavour made from the best KUL KUL fine flavour cocoa in the Madang province." 

This bar smelt a little richer and less sweet than the Madagascan despite having less cocoa solids at 35% and more milk solids at 26%. 

It did however, taste milkier initially and once again I was surprised to find it did have a caramel aftertaste. I think what is confusing me with these final two bars, are that the have that familiar (albeit a lot better quality) milk chocolate taste but don't have the almost immediate melt you find with everyday chocolate bars. The Papua New Guinea bar did melt slightly faster and had a thicker, better mouthfeel than the Madagascan though. Again the chocolate itself was delicious - thick, creamy and rich.

I decided to see if the power of persuasion was at play with this chocolate and asked Mr.1T to try the same bar at the same time as me. I asked him what he thought and he said there was an aftertaste that was on the tip of his tongue but he was struggling to name it. As soon as I mentioned caramel he (literally) shouted "That's it!! It tastes like a much nicer Galaxy caramel!"  I had to listen for a good twenty minutes about how it's a thicker, nicer, better quality Galaxy, how he makes the best chocolate choices and we need to find somewhere that sells these bars. Make of that what you will but it reminded me why I usually review alone! 

Anyway I can see his point, I wouldn't go as far as an actual Galaxy Caramel but it does have the caramel flavours and is very similar to the smooth, silky, milky (though not as milky as Dairy Milk) Galaxy. Which could explain why I couldn't pinpoint why this wasn't my immediate favourite considering there's something I don't find quite right with Galaxy too. This was outright Mr.1Ts favourite though, I'm torn between all four! If you're a fan of Galaxy chocolate you will love the Papua New Guinea bar. 

Rating 8/10 

Part one - Rausch Chocolate

I've come to the conclusion that, health aside, it's probably for the best I need to put weight on right now as I've clearly married a feeder. 

Another day, another knock on the door from a delivery man with a box full of 12 full sized chocolate bars from the German company Rausch. 

The box was beautifully presented, I felt bad ripping the label to open it and inside the chocolates were wrapped in paper with a little seal. There are three of each of the four varietys all with cocoa sourced from a different place. 

The bars all look the same, long and thin with six snappable squares and they weigh in at 40g each. 

Each chocolate contains only four ingredients; cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder and cocoa mass. 

I kicked things off with the bar with highest Cocoa solids, Costa Rican.

Costa Rican has a minimum 47% cocoa solids and a minimum of 18% milk solids. You can go onto the Rausch website and it gives a little detail about each bar. The Costa Rican says 'Especially rich, light coloured chocolate with a fruity flavour made from the best TRINITARIO TSURU fine flavour cocoa in the Turrialba region'. Now I don't fancy myself as a chocolate connoisseur, I love all chocolate, cheap expensive, white, milk, dark - I'm not a snob and I wasn't going to start waving it under my nose like I was tasting a fine wine, I wouldn't know how to to be honest! So I stuck with what I know and I just ate it. Like a Cadbury bar. 

The first thing I noticed was it smelt like actual cocoa and not sugar. To taste was along the same lines, it didn't taste dark as such but the flavour was all chocolate, the cocoa does give way to a milkiness though that was definitely absent at the start of each mouthful. The chocolate was sweet but not sugary sweet like in everyday chocolate at all and despite what Rausch say I didn't detect any fruity notes - I'd be interested to see if someone who knows what they're talking about does. 

Very nice bar and I really enjoyed it. 

7/10 

Next I tried Venezuela - 43% cocoa solids minimum, 19% milk solids minimum and 'Punchy, slightly nutty fine milk chocolate with hints of almond and caramel made from the best Ocumare fine flavour cocoa in the Aragua region'. 

Again it had a wonderfully rich, deep cocoa smell and surprisingly I could actually taste what they were talking about with the hints of caramel. Don't get me wrong it wasn't like eating a caramel bar or anything like that but there was definitely something reminiscent of caramel I could taste, I missed any almond notes though. It was slightly sweeter than the Costa Rican bar and milkier all round rather than just at the end of each bite but the overall flavour was definitely more of a cocoa chocolate than any milky sweetness though. Everyone says have a couple of squares of a dark chocolate to satisfy your sweet tooth but that doesn't work for me, I'll sit and eat 100g bars of 80% and still want more but I can honestly say this is the first bar that properly hit the spot, it was rich and luxurious tasting and my chocolate craving was satisfied in one smallish hit. 

Delicious. 

8/10 

Milka Choco-Mix Jelly

Milka are Cadburys European cousins, once upon a time you might have been hard pressed to find two identical products from the Cadbury and Milka lines but since Mondelez took over its harder to find anything that's not the same! 

Milka don't seem to have the Marvellous range but they do have to Choco-Mix bags which look suspiciously familiar, one is with Mini Oreos, milk and white chocolate buttons and what look like Pebbles and the other is the Jelly. I didn't bother with the Oreo bag as we have literally the same over here. 

We also have the Maynard bag but the Choco-Mix Jelly seems to have more my kind of chocolates inside. 

Each bag has Milka Toffees, Peach gummies, a hazelnut chocolate and mini Daim bars inside and is quite a bit heavier and bigger than our pouches at 140g. 

Pleasingly I got a decent mix and a good amount for a 'sharing' pouch. 

Toffee 

Quite a thick chocolate coating with a runny, gooey centre. Very chewy with a good flavour that went well with the others. Lovely texture alongside the crunch of the rest of the bag. 

Peach 

For the first few seconds after I took a bite I couldn't taste any peach, the flavour soon develops though and wow it's strong! A beautifully juicy, fruity peach with a good chew to it. It's a shame Milka haven't listed who makes these gummies (Haribo or whoever) like Cadbury do with Maynards as I need to buy a bag of just these! 

 

Hazelnut 

These looked a little like a rolo from the outside but a nice big crunchy hazelnut was hiding in each. The hazelnuts didn't leave much room for the chocolate but I couldn't miss the sweet, milky taste. The nuts were nice and crunchy and these were extremely addictive, I'd like a bag of these too! 

Daim 

Finally each bag has a good amount of mini Daim bars in it too. The almonds add a different nutty flavour to the bag and a different kind of crunch. 

Overall I really enjoyed this, it's so much better than the Maynards bag we get. There were no fillers, just chucked in to get the bag to a decent enough weight to justify the prices - each separate chocolate or sweet was as good as the rest. The bag has quite a nutty, caramel flavour to it as a whole but the peach really refreshes things up. My one complaint is that I'm lazy and I was getting impatient unwrapping the Daim bars. I wonder why they're still wrapped? 

Rating 8/10 (would be a 9 if not for the wrappers!) 

World Foods Part 3

Dark Chocolate Covered Cookie Dough Bites (USA)

I've seen these cookie dough bites around quite a bit, mainly in the supermarkets but just the ordinary or fudge brownie version. Typically after I'd eaten these and went to buy more everywhere seems to have stopped selling them! 

From what I've seen online these are a typical cinema snack in the US, people mix them with popcorn which I imagine is delicious! They wouldn't last very long with me in the cinema though, the chocolate is actually not bad quality, and although it overpowered the cookie dough flavour I still really enjoyed it - they're like malteasers but but with cookies inside! The biggest 'problem' I found with these are they are incredibly moreish, I got through this packet in no time at all, and I will be keeping my eyes open for the other flavours.

Rating 7/10 

Haribo Funny Mix (Halal)

These are a halal version of haribo, looking at the ingredients as expected the only difference is beef gelatine used instead of pork. Haribo also sell a vegetarian (or vegan I'm not too sure) version sold in a yellow bag. 

I couldn't taste any difference to tell you the truth, all the pieces tasted the same and the only difference that I can see is that the bag didn't include any of the fizzy/sour sweets, which may be because of the gelatine used? I'm not too sure. I would have marked this down but because the bag was more than half of my favourites that were supposed to be in my liquorice Allsorts but were suspiciously missing, it gets an extra mark. Yummy and just as good if you need to eat Halal. Thumbs up from me!

Rating 8/10 

Rittersport Cookies And Cream (Germany) 

These bars are available pretty much everywhere now, and most people know of Rittersports reputation for decent everyday chocolate. I'm not sure why seeing as the picture on the front shows milk chocolate, I assumed this was a white bar for some reason but it is Rittersport standard delicious milk chocolate. 

As usual it's split into 16 squares, which are easily broke into bars of 4 if you're that way inclined, which I'm not - this bar was eaten in one go! 

It has a very generous and thick cookies and cream filling, after eating the Cadbury Chips Ahoy bar the filling in this was more solid than I expected but that isn't a bad thing. A great texture and a lovely creamy flavour, as far as I'm concerned Rittersport can do no wrong! 

Rating 8.5/10