Wawel Chocolate Bars

Wawel are a Polish company and I've reviewed a few of their chocolates before.

Polish chocolate bars are sold near enough everywhere in the UK now and all the supermarkets and smaller shops near me are rammed full of either Wawel or E.Wedel chocolate bars. Asda had a huge display on the end of the world food aisle pushing four new Wawel chocolate bars, the two I've got to review today and two which didn't really appeal to me - though most people on my Twitter at least would disagree - ordinary dark chocolate and a filled peanut butter bar. 

Fresh & Fruity 

Milk chocolate with jelly. 

This was the first bar to catch my eye. It's a 100g bar with nice thick squares as seems to be standard for Wawel, no 89/90g mucking about like Cadbury! I was suprised opening the wrapper that I couldn't smell chocolate at all - not even a tiny whiff - the only thing to be smelt was a fruity jelly. 

I tried a square which had no jelly pieces first though there was a gap where some must have been before I'd snapped it off. Strangely it had no chocolate flavour at all (the packet has stated in bold that this bar contains vegetable fats as well as cocoa butter, I wonder if that contributed) instead, it just had a hint of jelly like taste to it. It really didn't taste like chocolate. 

I picked this bar as I thought it would combine two of my loves - chocolate and jelly bean/sweets. But no these aren't jelly sweets at all, they're actual lumps of jelly! Not only did they have a weird texture, as in where's the custard to go with this wobbly jelly texture, but most had absoloutly no flavour. In the photo above you should be able to see two different coloured jellies, the red had a nice fruity flavour but most of my pieces were the clear/white jelly which was plain. 

So add the wibbly wobbly jelly on a plate texture, the mostly plain flavour of the jelly and the complete absence of chocolate taste and it all adds up to an unimpressive bar. 

I had one square with no jelly and none that seemed to be touching it and the chocolate had a little flavour there, quite milky and creamy but nothing I'd go out of my way to buy. 

5/10

Cocoa Mousse Limited Edition 

Chocolate with cocoa filling (28%) and chocolate filling (20%)

Like when I opened the Fresh & Fruity bar the chocolate scent took a back seat, instead of awful jelly there was a delicious cocoa smell this time round. 

I broke a piece of just chocolate off to see if this one had any flavour and pleasingly it did. It's 55% so not very dark but not too sweet or milky and was perfectly tasty alone. 

The cocoa filling is the star of the show though, I know mousse is in the name, and it's described as filling but this was so thick it was almost like a paste - and for once I didn't refrigerate the bar so there's no chance of it thickening up because it was cold. It has a beautiful rich cocoa flavour, I wish I knew what they used I'd like to buy a tub of purely that! 

There's also a chocolate filling, if you look carefully in the photo you'll be able to see two different colours in the paste centre. To be honest it takes a back seat to the cocoa flavour and blends in with the actual chocolate but it does add some sweetness that I didn't notice when I tried the chocolate alone. 

Overall the bar is fairly sweet but the cocoa filling is what stands out the most. It's such an intense, creamy, rich flavour but manages to stop short of being too much which I think is due to the sweeter chocolate filling balancing it out. Polar opposite to the Fresh & Fruity bar! 

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!) 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Rocky Mallow Road

Another day another new product for Cadbury, the new bar is from the Marvellous Creations line and is replacing the banana bar and the cookie bar (I believe). The Marvellous Creations range seem to be Cadburys take on Willy Wonka and feature all kinds of strange mash ups in chocolate bars, bags and ice creams - please please please Cadbury bring the entire Australlian Marvellous Creations to the UK especially Rainbow Rockin' Bears!! 

This chocolate bar is Rocky Mallow Road, each country apparently has its own take on Rocky Road according to Wikipedia, the U.K ingredients are chocolate, marshmallow, biscuit, raisins and sultanas. Australia's are chocolate, marshmallow, desiccated coconut, glacé cherries, nuts, and Turkish delight(?). Finally the USA's are chocolate, marshmallows and walnuts or almonds. Cadburys Rocky Mallow Road has milk chocolate with marshmallow, strawberry flavour jellies and shortcake biscuit. Where the strawberry jellies came from who knows, but there you have it.

The bar looks identical from the outside to the previous Marvellous Creations bars, oddly shaped blocks and lumps and bumps where it's full of extra ingredients. The chocolate used is Dairy Milk and I think most people have tried that before so I'll skip describing that part. 

I fully expected the usual smell of Dairy Milk when I opened the wrapper so I was a bit surprised to first and foremostly smell strawberry and the sweet sugary smell of marshmallow. 

Taking a bite was the same case, sure I had the texture of chocolate in my mouth but even though visibly they seem the least in the bar, all I could taste was the strawberry jelly. It's very strong! I assumed the jelly pieces would be similar to jelly beans but they're actually little squares of jelly!! While this gives a stronger flavour it makes for a strange texture as once the chocolate has melted away you're left with a very sticky, chewy jelly that ended up stuck in my teeth. The marshmallows are also very chewy, the strawberry tended to drown it out a little but as there are more of the marshmallows in each bar, they did make themselves known soon enough. I didn't have that much biscuit in mine and while it didn't have too much of a noticable flavour they provided a very welcome texture change to smooth chocolate and chewy jellies and marshmallows.

The wrapper claims 7% marshmallows, 5% strawberry jelly and 5% biscuits but I found that hard to believe, it must be a low estimate because the bar I got was absolutely jam packed full of pieces, so much so I struggled to taste the chocolate at times! The strawberry jelly was by far the most dominant flavour and texture, it tastes nothing like other strawberry filled chocolate bars I've tried - it legitimately tastes like strawberry jelly. The flavours all went well with the Dairy Milk - I know there's a lot going on here and for some it might be a bit much but I really did like it, it's fun if that makes sense, I said on Twitter it's like a fairground in a chocolate bar! 

If you don't like strawberry, or you don't like chewy in a chocolate bar you won't like this. If you're into darker, more grown up chocolate you won't like this. But if you take it for what it is, a bit of fun, probably a bit too sweet and a bit weird all round you should enjoy it! 

Rating 7/10