Hokey pokey, a.k.a. honeycomb toffee or sponge. By far, our fave filling in chocolate while Down Under. Also? FREAKING AWESOME mixed into ice cream. (Google Images)
Part of an occasional series about chocolates I have loved (or not)…
My friends, this is going to be an EPIC post, as the girls and I tried a great many new chocolates on our vacation. In fact, I’m not even sure if I’ve listed everything we tried, although I did attempt to keep a list the whole time, it’s possible I missed one or two treats. Took one (many, actually) for the team, we did.
I’m going to list things alphabetically by company in an attempt to organize all this.
We ate a lot of Cadbury’s on this trip, which is not surprising, given that Cadbury is the second largest chocolate company in the world but by far the most prevalent in Commonwealth countries. Their antipodean presence is strong, like the Force.
Most of what’s described below starts out with a base of Dairy Milk, which is a smooth creamy chocolate and tasty on its own. My girls love it. It’s a bit sweeter than I like in general, so I don’t normally eat plain Dairy Milk, but mixed in with other flavors, it’s quite nice.
We had Dairy Milk with Cashews, which was quite lovely, but rather sweet.
Cadbury.com.au
I tried Cadbury Black Forest, as we all know how much I love chocolate + cherries. This bar was a huge disappointment. Instead of a cherry filling or dried cherries or candied cherries, the bar is liberally peppered with these chewy cherry-ish “jellies” that are like jelly beans, only more insistent in their desire to ruin your dental work. There are also “biscuit pieces” in there — plain cookie bits or something like that. Overall, I was rather displeased with this combo and ended up chucking most of it.
(I didn’t share this with the girls, as they both have orthodontic hardware in their mouths that doesn’t allow for chewy things like jellies and the like.)
On the other hand, Cadbury Cherry Ripe was pretty yummy. This is Oz’s oldest and most popular chocolate bar, which is understandable, as it’s a cherry-coconut mixture smothered in dark chocolate and once which I could happily consume vast quantities of.
We also tried some thing called Cadbury Marvellous Creations. This was a combo of Dairy Milk with Jelly, Popping Candy, and Beanies (jelly beans, pop rocks, Smarties). Honestly, the first time we saw it in a store, the girls and I looked at it, laughed nervously, and moved on, unwilling to take the plunge. There’s a LOT of stuff going on in one chocolate bar — kind of like trying to host your house warming, your son’s bar mitzvah, and your anniversary all at the same party. We eventually bought a bar and sampled. Y’all, it was disgusting. It was so sweet that my teeth hurt. Even Ellie, who is truly the household sugar hound, admitted that it was just too much.
Dairy Milk with Smarties was also a bit of a disappointment, as I was expecting a bar just chock-full of Smarties. Not so. They were few in number and scattered unevenly, so not every bite had Smarties in it, while others nearly broke your teeth. Just eat Smarties on their own and not mixed in.
(Also, I just this moment learned that Smarties are made by Nestle, not Cadbury, as I had thought. I had no idea.)
Dairy Milk with Crunchie was much better. Down Under, Crunchie is called “hokey pokey” and it’s quite popular down there. It’s also quite popular with the residents of Jenworld. I don’t know how much of this we ate, but it was a considerable amount. Yum. See my further comments in the photo caption at the top.
Dairy Milk with Caramel (in small Rollo-type pieces) was terrible Down Under (as opposed to the U.S. where we happily eat it). It had a nasty, chemical taste and it was vile.
Cadbury with chocolate mousse was fine, but nothing special. There was no real distinction between the mousse and the base chocolate and if I hadn’t known it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed anything.
Cadbury Boost is a combination of biscuit (cookie) bits, chocolate, and caramel, all covered in more chocolate. Yum.
Cadbury Picnic was one of the few that Pete tried and then ate more than once. Unlike his womenfolk, he’s not big on sweets, so it takes a lot to tempt him. This one did. It’s a mix of peanuts, wafer, caramel, and rice crisps covered in milk chocolate. It’s hearty and while I wouldn’t ordinarily think of chocolate as reasonable fuel for running, I would consider having a bite or two of this for a late-run boost.
Cadbury Snowballs were marshmallows covered with Dairy Milk and then dusted with coconut flakes. A bit sweet for me, but my girls loved it. Also, the coconut is messy, which was annoying.
Okay, moving away from Cadbury…
Google Images.
Nestle Aero with Caramel – This is a variation of the bubbles that the girls and I like so much. While we’ve had the basic Aero plenty of times, this was our first taste of Aero with caramel. The short of it is that this combination is fine. The overwhelming flavor is sweet, rather than of a nice caramel.
Moving on to our next brand…
Whittaker’s chocolate is a New Zealand based company that also sells in Australia. I had been told that we should definitely try out some of their flavours and I’m glad we did. They sell treats made of both milk and dark chocolates and naturally, we tried both. Yum. The milk chocolate — which is the base of some of the other things we tried — is smooth and milky, but not too sweet.
The Creamy Milk (33% cocoa) bar was delish.
We also had the Hokey Pokey bar, which was, as you can imagine, among our faves and I really wish I’d brought more home with us.
The Kiwi Fruit was not at all what I was expecting, which was a bar with a gooey fruity center. Instead, it’s a bar laced with fruity jellies, just like the cherry bits I mentioned above. It was okay, but not something I’d try again, both because kiwi + chocolate is odd for me and also because I’m not wild about that chewy texture.
We also had the Dark (50% cocoa) bar and it was quite tasty, although we tend to prefer dark chocolate paired with something else, like caramel or nuts, in order to help cut the intensity of the flavour.
Surprisingly, I didn’t gain any weight on the trip, in spite of the chocolate I sampled. I can only chalk it up to all the walking we also did.
We wanted to bring back loads and loads of chocolate with us, but ended up restraining ourselves. I think we had around five, maybe six or seven, pounds in a carry-on bag, most of which was shared with friends back here.
So that’s the antipodean Chocomania report. I hope you aren’t drooling too much.
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Dammit Jen. It’s 9 am. That is way to early for me to start scarfing chocolate. But you have aroused my taste buds and the craving center of my brain. Oh! Genius – I have some chocolate granola bars stashed around here somewhere. I KNEW I bought those for a reason. : )
I really love that this mission was part of your vacation.
I’ve never had a Cadbury Crunchie –I’ll have to look out for those. Smarties are something we’ve had –we buy them from a placed called Peanut-Free Planet, which sells lots of Canadian treats that Emma can eat. (The Canadians have much stricter rules for separating nut-containing treats from non-nut treats, so we don’t have to worry about contamination. Why are all other countries more consumer-friendly than the U.S.?) We get Smarties and Mars bars for Emma, so it’s as if she can have M&M’s and Milky Way, neither of which she can eat because of possible peanut-contamination.
Tell me you had Tim-tams when you were there? I had an NZ flatmate and have an Australian friend and they both spoke/speak nostalgically of Tim-tams and how even the closest thing they can find, Penguin biscuits, are not quite right.
Also, I have ANOTHER reason why you have to move here:
http://www.mackies.co.uk/product_range/other_flavours/honeycomb.aspx
Just call me a party pooper. None of that sounds appetizing to me at all.
5, 6 or 7 pounds you brought back with you??? Holy cow!
Oh excellent! Now I know what to request if my brother ever sends me a package from down under!
When I came back from London, I packed my carry-on suitcase FULL of the big Galaxy bars. I’m sure the security people were amused at that. But hey, the stash lasted me almost a year, so it was worth it.
Man I want a Violet Crumble right now!!!
I love it all. And I’m on my way to taste some new varieties too
I am a huge fan of Hokey Pokey (it’s called honeycomb in the UK). If you can find Crunchie ice-cream (the cadbury one) you will never be able to resist it, I tell you. Also, I don’t think it’s that difficult to make Hokey Pokey at home. I’ve never done it, but here’s a link: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-Honeycomb-treats/ it’s basically golden syrup and bicarbonate of soda. You could even chocolate-coat it yourself, I’m sure.
One other thing – did you know that Oz and NZ are used as test-markets for Cadbury’s? So you get all kinds of chocolate options there that you don’t get in larger markets such as the UK. If they fail in Oz/NZ they will not make it to the UK market.
Why do you do this to us? Just kidding, I read about chocolate the way some people read cookbooks.
And Champlain chocolates just showed up at WF, so I may sample them.
Purely research.
what a walk on the wild side chocolate style! I’m not sure I’d be indulging in any of the ones you talked about here…..I’ve even recently nabbed an Aero bar, and did not care for it….but then again hormones (lack thereof) have decreased my craving for chocolate to just about nil….VERY occassionally will I eat chocolate, but it’s just the usual supermarket variety, nothing exciting.
reread the above, and the Cadbury Cherry Ripe definitely grabs me.