Cadbury Chocolates Aplenty, Part 1

Let's return to an Australian company we recently reviewed and shared an information piece from: Snack Box Hampers. Today I'm going to share what was in the Cadbury Faves Chocolate Gift Box Hamper that the company sent my way. This had a lot of products in it, 24 of them, and since I'll cover each item that hasn't previously been talked about on this blog I'm going to divide this feature into two articles – one today and one next week. Assistant testers' words will be put in italics as is our norm and I will clearly state when someone helped me with a product. Let's get the legals out of the way. I was sent the free product in exchange for a honest review of this product in today's post; no other form of compensation was received for sharing my experiences.

Of the 24, I picked these 12 to focus on today. Why? My birthday was recent and I've been eating a lot because of that and other events that happen in my family in September, so I focused on smaller candy first. The smaller Cherry Ripe we covered last month in the dark chocolate hamper review as well as two of the seven types of Roses, so we will not cover those again. To read about those, please visit that post.

We'll start off with the Cherry Ripe which we covered in the Dark Chocolate Snack Box Hamper review and the Cherry Ripe Double Dipped. I had an assistant tester who tried it out and reported this: Much stronger chocolate that overwhelms the cherry and coconut easily. Otherwise the bar is much the same as the Cherry Ripe bars that I tried earlier. If you were expecting cherry, you won't get much of it in this one. 

The official Cadbury site doesn't have individual images of the flavors and they have special edition versions of them during different seasons and in different years. This meant that I had to guess which were which based on only what these smelled and tasted like. This gift box selection included the Green (mint cream) and dark pink (strawberry cream) varieties we described previously in this post, so we won't cover them again.

Before we look at each Rose one at a time, note in the above photo how they are different shapes and sizes, but none look like a flower! I found a couple of charts of what the wrappers may represent, but I cannot be 100% certain of the flavors I will be discussing below, because the same looking wrapper sometimes had a different name.

Let's begin our deeper dive with the Orange wrapped one may be Caramel Deluxe given the shape and design as well as what you see under the milk chocolate shell. The scent of caramel is strong. The shell makes a soft sound when I take a bite, but the milk chocolate is so creamy and sweet that it is overpowered by the sweeter yet still tangy caramel inside. The caramel is thick and a bit sticky, but not difficult to chew. It takes several minutes for the intense flavor to dissipate so don't get this unless you love sweet caramel.

The Teal wrapper is likely the Classic Caramel variety. You see the large caramel center in the photo I hope. The scent is less sweet and more tangy caramel. This is basically a big piece of semi-soft caramel with a milk chocolate facade that stood chance of competing in terms of flavor. That's great if you love caramel, but not if you are looking for chocolate. The caramel is not as sticky as it was with the orange wrapped Rose.

The Navy Blue wrapped variety is probably the Classic Milk Chocolate. As you can see it is solid inside suggesting this is not molded chocolate but a truffle. It was actually easy to cut in half and easy to chew, the only sound was the first bite. The chocolate nature builds up with each chew, but the creamy and sweet nature of Cadbury milk chocolate remains strong. Letting it melt in your mouth decreased the chocolateness. For a sweet milk chocolate lover, think Cadbury eggs you might have around Easter, this could be great, I image that kids would really love it.

 IThe Gold wrapped Rose turns out to be Vanilla Nougat. With the wavy pattern on the top of the rectangular piece and the multifaceted inside, I'm fairly confident in this identity. The oddest thing about this Rose is that it has almost no fragrance. The inside is crunchy but still soft, the flavor of vanilla builds up but I also get a coconut-like texture and flavor I was not expecting. It shouldn't have any coconut, so I must be the combination of flavors that is tricky me. I really dislike this type of Cadbury Roses.

The Yellow wrapped piece ends the seven Roses in this Snack Box Hamper. This is the Turkish Delight flavor with the semi-solid fruity center inside the almost square, milk chocolate shell. The shape, design, and the inside make this identification certain. This was quite difficult to cut because the bottom layer is do thick The top half is the fruit jelly which is seems like a mixture of orange, raspberry, and pear maybe; it has a bit of a sour edge to it and is far less sweet than the caramel varieties of Roses I've tried for this post. I can't say that I'm fan of this at all. 

The Twirl bar says it is a "caramilk" flavor with milk and white chocolate, as well as caramel. There are two pieces measuring approximately 4 X 0.5 X 0.5 inches. When I cut one open, I discovered that was a challenge because inside are folded layers of what look like wafer... which is not listed on the wrapper. It turns out that is made of caramel in thin layers along with white chocolate in thin layers! The caramel scent is strong even before I cut one piece in half. The caramel is sweet as is the chocolate, making this more sweet than I ideally like. There is no crunch at all and you could let it simply melt in your mouth instead of chewing it, but it will make it taste creamier and sweeter.

The Flake bar is the longest of the ones we're revealing today measuring 5.75 inches long and 0.75 thick. Don't you think it looks like a piece of wood? That effect is made with thin layers of milk chocolate laid over each other, similar to what we saw in the Twirl bar before. Mind Blown! It is very sweet and creamy smelling, nearly overwhelmly so. It doesn't make a sound when I bite into it, and it doesn't' crumble much. The flavor reminds me of Cadbury Eggs which are one of the few Cadbury products you can easily find in the USA. 

The final bar we're revealing today is Fry's Turkish Delight, which will be soft Turkish Delight covered in milk chocolate. This is not what I've had before that was called Turkish Delight; that was a nougat or jelly with nuts and fruits in it. However, upon research, the basic jelly version is legit. Instead of a dusting of icing sugar, cream of tartar, or copra, the milk chocolate surrounds the 'delight.' The ingredients don't include any fruit flavors real or artificial, but the scent and flavor is a generic berry and quite sweet. The chocolate smells and tastes creamy and sweet. When combined with the firm but not hard jelley center, it is actually too sweet for me. I think this would work well in a dark chocolate version.

The two Snack Box Hamper gift boxes I received came in a larger box packed with biodegradable peanuts. I wanted to highlight this because sustainability, being eco friendly, and not generating as much trash as possible is important here on The Chocolate Cult. Remember, as far as we know, only Earth grows chocolate and cacao trees only grow in a limited region on this planet. Let's protect it!

Snack Box Hampers has a lot of options. While some of them are chocolate or include chocolate, several are not. There are themed options for occasions, there are lollipop, snack, and cookie focused gifts, as well as vegan and gluten free hampers. Check them out! While I can't recommend all of the chocolates in this half of the medium box I was sent, I did like some of them, though not enough to strongly recommend this product. Perhaps when we reveal the second half of the box in November, I'll find more Cadbury I do like or even love.