cherry Archives - Candyrageous

June 20, 2021 Michael

Aero Truffle: Black Forest Cake – A Delicious Combo of Cherry and Chocolate

Candy Bars, Chocolate

The last Aero Truffle bar I tried was the chocolate mousse variety, which I enjoyed, but probably wouldn’t ever buy again. I sort of figured that this would be more of the same. I also wondered about the black forest cake element; is that just a fancier way of saying that the truffle part is cherry-flavoured?

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It’s delightful.

I should note that I quite like black forest cake; your enjoyment of this bar very much depends on your fondness for the cherry/chocolate combo. The cherry flavour is not subtle.

If you do like that combo, however, you need to try this bar ASAP — it’s great. There’s no actual cherry in the ingredients, which seems like a red flag, but there’s absolutely none of the cloying, medicine-like flavour that you sometimes get from cherry candies. The cherry flavour is quite nice.

The bar features a dark chocolate coating and a milk chocolate interior, which does a great job of tempering the intense sweetness that you normally get from an Aero bar, and adds a nice punch of rich dark chocolate flavour.

Maybe I wouldn’t have come up with the connection if I had eaten this blind, but the whole thing is actually pretty reminiscent of a black forest cake. It’s a lot better than I was expecting it to be.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (8 segments, 40 grams): 230 calories, 15 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 15 mg of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fibre, 16 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, unsweetened chocolate*, modified milk ingredients, cocoa butter*, cocoa powder*, modified palm oil, beet red, natural flavour, soy lecithin, polyglycerol polyricinoleate. *Rainforest Alliance Certified

March 17, 2021 Michael

Cherry Blossom – It Tastes Better than it Looks

Candy Bars

The packaging for Cherry Blossom is bizarrely unappealing. If I hadn’t known how long it’s been around (since the 1890s!), I would have assumed it’s part of some sort of Producers-esque scheme to create an intentionally failed candy. But it’s been on the shelves for well over a hundred years, so I guess someone’s eating it.

It’s hard to get over how ugly the packaging is. I’ve seen it on the shelves since I was a kid, but I haven’t tried it until now, because why would I?? And let’s make something clear: I was a fat kid who wanted to try every candy bar in existence, and I still had no interest in this thing.

The ugliness persists after you open the box and unwrap it from the foil (yes, it’s still wrapped in foil, because apparently the whole experience is meant to replicate being a Depression-era hobo who can’t afford anything better). Is it impolite to say that it looks like a turd? It is? Okay, then I won’t say that it absolutely, positively looks like a turd, even though we can all clearly see that it looks like a turd.

Happily, it tastes better than it looks. It’s not great, mind you, but it’s not nearly as terrible as you’d think based on the packaging. The milk chocolate exterior features peanuts and coconut, which compliments the cherry and the goopy, cherry-flavoured syrup reasonably well. It’s a Hershey product, so the quality of the chocolate is about what you’d expect. The whole thing is way, way too sweet (a dark chocolate version of this might actually be pretty good), but if you like the cherry/chocolate combo, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 piece, 45 grams): 210 calories, 10 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 0 mg cholesterol, 40 mg sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 27 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), modified milk ingredients, unsweetened chocolate, coconut, peanuts, cherries, corn syrup, lactose, soy lecithin, polyglycerol polyricinoleate, invertase, natural and artificial flavours, salt, acetic acid, citric acid, sodium benzoate, colour, sodium metabisulphite, potassium sorbate, sulphites.

November 19, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Chocolove: Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate – Quality Chocolate and Crunchy Nuts

Chocolate

Though the name and packaging of this chocolate are seriously hokey (there is, as promised on the packaging, an actual love poem on the other side of the wrapper – in this case, Diaphenia by Henry Constable) it’s what’s inside the wrapper that counts.

A quick peek at the ingredients finds a refreshingly simple list: dark chocolate, dried cherries, and almonds. So the first question is: how’s the chocolate? It’s good; featuring a 55 percent cocoa content, it’s not the darkest chocolate ever, and is somewhat creamy and fairly sweet. The crushed almonds, which are plentiful, add a nice crunchiness to the bar. As for the cherries, they give the bar a chewiness which contrasts with the crunchiness of the nuts (it’s kind of similar to Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, in that sense). However, they don’t add all that much flavour, save for a few mouthfuls where you get multiple cherries. Dried cherries have a pretty strong, sour flavour, so it’s probably for the best that there’s too few rather than too many.

My initial fear, when I first saw this bar, was that it was going to taste strongly of artificial cherry. Cherry seems to be one of those flavours that science just can’t get right, and so anything with fake cherry tends to have a vaguely medicinal taste. So I was glad to see that it was real cherries in here, even if they don’t add too much to the bar (taste-wise at least).

Reasonably high-quality chocolate, crunchy nuts… it’s kind of hard to go wrong with that.

Manufactured by: Chocolove
Calories (90 g bar): 480