20 September 2010

House of Dorchester: Double Chocolate Slabs (Sainsbury’s)



These chocolates caught my eye in Sainsburys as they had a label saying just ‘75p Introductory Offer’ and I thought that sounded like excellent value for a decent slab of chocolate. I couldn’t help but be disappointed when I picked up the packet, as firstly the bars where bendy i.e. not a solid slab and also that they were so light. Still it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t purchase a new product!
When I got them home I found that each pack consisted of four ‘slabs’, each one beautifully decorated with its appropriate topping, but disappointingly concave on the underneath. To me the word slab has connotations of something big, chunky, meaty and solid so these bars felt like they were pushing the definition. Having the back of them hollowed out just made you feel like you were missing out on chocolate that really should have been there.

In fact I just looked ‘slab’ up in the dictionary (on the internet)!
"slab:-
1. a broad, flat, somewhat thick piece of stone, wood, or other solid material.

2. a thick slice of anything: a slab of bread.
" from dictionary.com

I would think that if these were ‘thick’ chocolates they really should be solid and not hollowed out on the back, and they really ought to be bigger in general. I have made my point now, and shall move on to eating them!

Double Chocolate With Mini Marshmallows
Well I really can’t complain on appearance, these choccies really do look the part. The base milk chocolate was flavoursome, and smooth and clearly of a decent quality. The dark chocolate decoration didn’t seem to add much in the way of flavour, but the mallow added a slight chewy texture dissolving quickly and adding an extra sweet buzz. I liked these chocolates, but was still left with a slightly unsatisfied feeling after eating them. Lucky for me I had another bar!

Double Chocolate with Caramel Fudge Pieces
This time I was at least expecting the mini pieces, which muted the disappointment a little. The chocolates were again really nicely decorated and did look very appetising. The base was the same good quality rich milk chocolate, but this time the topping let the product down. The ‘caramel fudge’ pieces had a poor texture as they were solid, and hard and oddly crunchy – they felt wrong to me. So wrong in fact I actually checked the sell by date to see if they were stale, they weren’t but I do wonder whether the ones on my bar were just a one of manufacturing fault? Although the base chocolate was pleasant the ‘caramel fudge’ pieces seemed to leave bits in my mouth, which ruined the smoothness of the chocolate and indeed the bar.

Has anybody else tried these bars? What did you think? I’d be particularly interested to know whether or not anyone else found the ‘caramel fudge’ pieces in the second bar to have such a strange texture, or whether or not I was just unlucky?

2 comments:

GrumpyTart said...

I agree, slab implies a heavy chunk to me - I've just looked these up and they are only 40g packs, I wonder who thought using the word "slab" to describe these was appropriate?

They do sound quite nice though :)

cinabar said...

40g is just so little - more of a taster than a slab :-(