Review: Karl Fazer Travel: Toffee Rocks & Salty Cookie, Iced Coffee & Mudcake, Raspberry & Liquorice, Mint & Choco Drops

I’d been looking forward to tasting these new chocolates from Fazer, and on our recent trip to the grocery store, we finally found them! Four entirely new chocolate flavours! I thought that the toffee & cookie version as well as the mudcake were absolute must-haves, and my daughter, a fan of white chocolate, wanted to try the white chocolate with raspberries and liquorice. At this point, my DH talked some sense to us... why buy three when there are four new chocolates available?

So we bought all four and organised a little tasting event. Here, a picture of our highly professional ;) tasting table (we even made sure that everyone had a glass of water to cleanse their palate between bites).

This is a new “Travel” brand from Fazer, and the bars are named after cities: London (milk chocolate with toffee rocks & salty cookie), New York (milk chocolate with iced coffee & mudcake), Copengahen (white chocolate with raspberry & liquorice) and Rio de Janeiro (milk chocolate with mint & choco drops).

The bars are somewhat different from the classic Fazer bars in size, shape and even in wrapping style. The background of the otherwise colourful wrappings is white and each features a drawing that illustrates something iconic about the city the bar is dedicated to. I especially liked the Copenhagen’s little mermaid statue with its tiny Viking helmet (even if the helmet does have horns).

Now, a short look at each flavour:

 

Milk chocolate, Mint & Choco Drops

The chocolate is mint-flavoured and there are small drops of chocolate candy that look like tiny versions of Smarties. The milk chocolate is rather sweet but very smooth and despite the strong scent, the mint isn’t overpowering. The result is a kind of silky, cool flavour... the chocolate drops provide a surprising contrast in that they’re crunchy and very colourful (a fact that my seven-year-old daughter adored).

White chocolate, Raspberry & Liquorice

This is white chocolate, very sweet and creamy. Raspberry and liquorice come in small, crispy pieces - tiny pink and black dots which give the chocolate a cute appearance. Unfortunately, I could hardly taste the raspberry. The liquorice flavour was somewhat stronger, although it mostly came through as saltiness. The main appeal to me here is not so much the taste itself but the contrast between the sweetness of the chocolate and the saltiness of the liquorice. A little more tart freshness from the raspberries, and this would be quite interesting.

Milk chocolate, Toffee Rocks & Salty Cookie

I had great expectations about this one – after all, I love toffee and the salty trend in chocolate has been much to my liking. The milk chocolate is again sweet and smooth. The saltiness is very mild and the chocolate cookies (listed in the ingredients) aren't easy to locate. The toffee rocks are crispy pieces of something like hard sugar candy - they add a lovely, warm burnt sugar aroma. I like it very much, but this seems like a flavour that you can only truly grasp and appreciate when you have a bigger piece to sample.

Milk chocolate, Iced Coffee & Mudcake

As with the previous one, I expected much from this chocolate, and I wasn’t disappointed! Coffee does not appear on the list of ingredients, the wrapping simply says “coffee flavoured chocolate”. The sweet, smooth milk chocolate does however have a distinct, pleasant coffee flavour (it also smells deliciously like coffee). Chocolate cake, in turn, is included in the list of ingredients, and there are small, soft pieces of chocolate cake that contribute to an interesting texture and a more intense chocolate flavour. Chocolate cake in chocolate! That's about as good as it gets (except chocolate ice-cream with chocolate cake and chocolate sauce and... well you get the idea. ;))

Final verdict: My daughter, who generally abhors the idea of choosing a favourite, fairly judged that all four chocolates were equal and very delicious. My husband found them all rather sweet and "candy-like". I would not have minded some more variety - for example, one of the bars could have been dark chocolate - but on the whole, they were very tasty. My DH and I both rated the mudcake as our favourite, something I could easily get addicted to, and the salty toffee version is also something we'll probably buy again. All these would be perfect for munching on when watching a movie.