26 October 2017

Barfi - Diwali sweet treats (@NLi10)

Happy Diwali! As Birmingham is a wonderfully multicultural city we celebrate everything, and usually with foods of the people who came up with the original holiday.

This weekend saw Diwali celebrations explode over the skies of our city resulting in a shower of sweet treats. Here we have one deluxe box of Barfia.


Essentially this is Indian version of fudge where it’s mostly sugar and a few flavours thrown in, but the person providing these went the extra mile and we have ones that appear to have been flavoured by their specific ingredients. Let us start from the bright blue one and work clockwise.


Blue is for Bubblegum And boy does this taste like the penny bubbly you got as a child at the bottom of a Screwball icecream. This is a massive problem for my brain which has been trained not to swallow things that taste like bubblegum. I manage to cope but I don’t think I could eat massive amounts of this. It would be perfect as an icing on a child’s cake but is in the ‘too sweet’ side of the flavours.

Next we have he first One I tried and quite probably my favourite. This is elderflower And it even has flowers on top. I’m a big fan of botanicals and this hits all the right notes, the subtle floral base flavours playing nicely with the sweet sensations. I could eat more of this quite happily.

The purple one is Vimto. This was probably the least interesting of the lot, being just sweet and a little like the drink. More just purple and too sweet. One for those with the sweet teeth.

The light brown one with the sprinkles is millionaires - and depending on who you asked this tasted of shortbread or cheese cake.  For me this was the best of the chocolate/real flavours and with the extra textures and flavours of the topping is almost a mini desert in itself. Very good.

The Erin Mess however was just another version of the sweet Barfia and didn’t really excite. It was probably the nicest out of the three though so worth a try.

Green was minty chocolate and was a little bit of a let down. Others really liked this but it just didn’t do much for me. It was sweet and minty.

Top left was birthday cake. A ludicrous idea, this was probably a close third to the millionaires. It tasted like the buttercream filling and I think there was maybe a hint of vanilla too. I’d love more of this one too - but again it was so sweet a little goes a long way.

The chocolate one was last and very much a disappointment. Chocolate fudge is a lot more of a hybrid of the two, this is just sweet Barfia with cocoa added. Not a fan.

And so there we have it. I’d love more elderflower, millionaires and birthday cake. I wouldn’t say no to the Erin mess and maybe a tiny bit of bubble gum. The rest is skip.

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