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 

Rittersport 73% fine extra dark chocolate

I have no clue whether this is new, I work in central London and there are a few independent petrol stations I go to that have different chocolate and sweets from around the world every time I go in there and this was one of the new ones this week. 

It's a Ritter sport bar, a brand I love and go out of my way to buy as they have such unique flavours we don't get in the UK and are a better tasting chocolate in my opinion than most of the mass produced stuff we get here. Sometimes you just fancy something normal though and this is a dark chocolate made using 73% fine cocoa from Ecuador apparently. The back of the packet as written exactly are "cocoa solids 73% minimum. Ingredients: Cocoa mass (thereof fine cocoa 40%), sugar, cocoa butter, butterfat (milk) and vanilla extract". I'm a bit confused if the cocoa solids are 73% or 40% or it includes the cocoa butter but there you go. 

The bars a bit different to normal Ritter, there are far more squares than is standard as they are half the size but I suppose that's as most people find a square or two of dark chocolate is enough. I'll make clear before I go into this that it is an enjoyable chocolate, it tastes perfectly fine and is as expected good chocolate.

But. 

It just didn't taste dark enough to me, when I want a dark bar its usually because I'm craving that distinctive, slightly bitter bite of dark chocolate and that wasn't present here. It was very tasty but it was smooth enough that I ate the bar like I would a milk chocolate. 

Don't get me wrong it doesn't taste like milk but I think my dark chocolate hating fiancée would have had no trouble eating this. He didn't get a chance to try though, as I found this so easy to eat I ate the lot in one go, normally the richness of dark chocolate leaves me having had enough after a few squares but there was none of that here. 

I'd eat this again as it was very tasty, but not if I'm after an 'extra dark' chocolate as the name claims. 

Rating 7/10 

The start of my Christmas Chocolates (and a few I forgot about!)

Wow I was supposed to blog about these weeks ago, I've noticed a lot of blogs slowing down recently so I suppose the madness that's Christmas has taken over everyone!

First up was Maynards Sour Tricks.

Apologies for the slightly blurry stolen from Google images picture but I completely forgot I had said I would blog about these and by the time I remembered, they were gone. Oops.

This is a seasonal Halloween bag from Maynards so unless any shops have some leftover I don't think you'll be able to get this again until next year. I'll probably buy these again it was nice to have a fizzy sour version, normally I buy the plain jellies but these were good. There's no point going into too much detail as they're off the shelves now… Must try harder!

Rating 6/10

Rowntree's Randoms sweet n sour.

The packet says new, are they new? I don't know how new by my late standards but I do know I haven't tried them before.

The packet has some nice pastel coloured, sugar coated squishy sweets. I can work out a snowman, a rocket, an icecream, milk shakes, a lock and possibly a tortoise? So far so random.

It also contains some typical fizzy jelly sweets. I can't lie I didn't really try too hard to work out what these are, I think there are some crowns, roller skates, a car and chess pieces in there though.

There isn't too much to say on this bag, it's an enjoyable bag of Rowntrees who usually manage to do sweets well and this is no different. I had a feeling I wouldn't get round to blogging about these straight away and so I usually make notes on my phone about something I plan to review. All these say is good - yellow ones not sour but too tart for me. I do remember that being the only sweet I wasn't keen on but the rest of the bag gets a thumbs up from me.

Rating 6/10

 Lidl Deluxe Butter Fudge

I loooove fudge. Any kind of fudge - chocolate covered fudge, harder chewy fudge, soft smooth fudge and the crumbly grainy fudge.

I think you can tell from the photo this is a lovely crumbly, melt in the mouth, grainy fudge. It's very buttery without being too rich. The texture and flavour are spot on and being from Lidl is a bargain too. I will be buying this again.

Rating 8/10

Waitrose Christmas Cracker Selection

I'm a sucker for gimmicks and when I saw this miniature 100g box of chocolates I wouldn't normally bother, however give me the same miniature chocolates in a box that looks and opens like a cracker and I'll buy it in a heartbeat!

The box was supposed to contain 9 chocolates - I got lucky and had 10 and my extra was milk chocolate fudge, not that I got to eat it as someone else in this house is rather partial or fudge too!

Dark chocolate orange crème

Milk chocolate strawberry crème

Milk chocolate coffee truffle

Milk chocolate caramel barrel

Milk chocolate biscuit in caramel

Milk chocolate Hazlenut in caramel

I didn't bother with pictures of the plain chocolate, or the toffee or fudge, they look the same in all boxes (I did notice the toffee is the same as the big 200g bags of toffee they sell) but as you can see from the pictures they are all nicely packed out chocolates with a good ratio of filling to shell. The flavours are good and I did enjoy this little box, the caramel is deliciously gooey and unlike the next product the coffee chocolate was the one that really stood out. It has a lovely strong coffee taste and smell and is easily my favourite in this box, however once Id noticed that the toffee included is the same as the cheaper,larger bags they sell in store (and that I already have sitting in my cupboard!) I was a little disappointed. I thought they'd at least put some special christmas chocolates in. Anyway they still tasted good.

Rating  7/10

Rittersport Kaffee + Nuss

My bar came back with a friend from Germany so I don't have any English info available but I think the name is pretty easy to work out.

I love rittersport bars. The milk chocolate is always of a good quality, they're nice and thick and the fillings are normally tasty and substantial.

I enjoyed the chewiness the nuts bring to the bar, but the coffee flavour was just underwhelming for me. I do however drink my coffee black and always put an extra scoop in the machine when it's just for me so other people may well find the coffee perfectly strong enough. It was just more of an aftertaste to me and being that it's the first word in the name of the bar I thought it would have more of a presence. I'm really dissapointed as I was so looking forward to this. It is another nice bar from rittersport though, it just didn't meet my coffee expectations sadly.

Rating 6/10 

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 

Hazlenut Chocolate

Rittersport white whole Hazlenut

I’m a big fan of rittersport and first tried them after I managed to fill my suitcase with bars of them while on holiday – they were the only souvenirs I bought home and they were all for me! So I’m a very happy bunny now they seem to be on sale everywhere in the England! I’d never got round to trying the white whole Hazlenut bar, the dark is probably my fave but after reading http://eveningtreats.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/ritter-sport-white-whole-hazelnuts.html I decided to try for myself!

The front of the bar looks like an ordinary white bar but the back shows just how packed out these bars are! Rittersport definitely don’t scrimp on the fillings.

Normally I find white chocolate gets a bit sickly, I’m not sure if this is because I’ve been eating the cheaper versions but this was the opposite, infact I’d ate the whole bar without realising!

I won’t write too much, the link above has it spot on I will be buying more of this bar though.

Rating 4/5

Divine milk chocolate with hazelnuts

This came in a hamper I received for my birthday a while back and I’ve finally got around to trying it. I’ve never tried Divine chocolate before but I have seen it on sale in Tesco (I think!). I liked the packaging of this chocolate, it came in a paper wrapper and inside that was a nice thick foil. I’m not sure what effect this has on the chocolate but it seemed more luxurious opening it than the standard plastic wrappers on most chocolates.

The chocolate itself was lovely, really creamy and I might buy a bar of the plain milk chocolate as it really is a nice base however I probably should have eaten this before the rittersport….

The hazelnuts weren’t whole they added a nice flavour to the bar but the texture was more chewy whereas I really enjoy the crunch with nut bars. I realise that’s personal preference though and if you’re a fan of the Hazlenut flavour rather than texture this is definitely a bar to buy.

Rating 3/5