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Marabou

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Marabou Oreo Bar

DSC_8431rbOne of my contacts at Swede Sweets offered to send me this Swedish bar from Marabou which features Oreo cookie pieces.

Marabou is now owned by Kraft/Mondelez, so they can use real Oreo cookies and call them that on the package. I’ve had quite a few bars over the years that have Oreos in them, as Kraft also owns Cadbury, Toberlone, Terry’s and Milka. (Well, I’ve had the Cadbury and Milka Oreo bars, I’d love to try a Terry’s Chocolate Oreo-orange, once they invent that.) The bars that I’ve had were cream filled bars, that is, they were milk chocolate bars with a palm oil cream center with cookie bits mixed in. This bar is just what you’d think a cookies & chocolate bar should be.

The bar is made with Rainforest Alliance certified cacao, and contains at least 30% cacao. As a European “family chocolate” it also contains whey, which is considered a filler in the US, but then again, the US products with far less cacao mass to be called milk chocolate. Whey is just milk protein, it adds bulk without sweetness or extra fat, so as additives go, it’s not detrimental, though it can make the texture a bit more gummy.

It’s a big bar, at 185 grams, which is 6.53 ounces ... about twice the size of the usual large tablet bar.

DSC_8459rb

The look of the bar is good, it’s large, so it was broken in a couple of places, but along the segmentation lines. The bar isn’t particularly thick, which means that the inclusions weren’t going to be very dense.

The segments aren’t quite square, they’re about 1 inch on the longest side. There really aren’t that many big pieces of cookies, but a bit of cookie crumb/grit to the whole bar. Marabou chocolate is quite milky, though some of it’s flavor has that powdered milk note to it, but it’s also marked by some good notes of malt and a generic sweetness.

The cookie bits are good, less sweet than the overall milk chocolate. The bits aren’t numerous enough for me, which led to a moreish quality that kept me eating it ... hoping I’d stumble upon the piece where all the cookies were.

I think a single serve, thicker bar, might mean better proportions if they continue with this. The Hershey’s density of cookie bits in their Cookies N Creme bars is a good target (it’s easy to see how much is in there because it’s a white confection with dark cookie bits). I wouldn’t pay the premium to import this if I were ordering on the internet, but if I stumbled upon this in an airport, in a regular size, I might pick it up again.

As near as I can figure, this bar contains milk, soy and wheat (but your Google Translate experience will vary, as will your ability to find the umlaut key). There’s no statement about peanuts or tree nuts.

Related Candies

  1. Bourbon Everyburger Black Cocoa & Vanilla Cookies
  2. Marabou Noblesse Crisps: Original, Dark & Orange
  3. Dove Cookies and Creme + Ghirardelli Cookies Jubilee
  4. Milka Bars, Milka Drops and some Li’l Milka
  5. Glico Pocky Cookie Crush
  6. Oreo Bitter Bar (Japan)
  7. Trader Joe’s Mint Joe Joe’s versus Mint Oreos
  8. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint


Name: Milk Chocolate Bar with Oreo Pieces
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou
Place Purchased: Samples from Swede Sweets
Price: $2.99 retail
Size: 6.53 ounces
Calories per ounce: 154
Categories: Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Marabou, Chocolate, Cookie, Ethically Sourced, Mockolate, 6-Tempting, Sweden

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:41 pm     CandyReviewKraft/MondelezMarabouChocolateCookieEthically SourcedMockolate6-TemptingSweden

Monday, January 13, 2014

Marabou Black Saltlakritz Milk Chocolate

Marabou Black SaltakritsI knew from the first time I heard about this bar from Sweden that it was not for licorice haters. It’s called Marabou Black Saltakrits. It’s described (in English!) on the front as Milk chocolate with pieces of salty licorice.

When Swedes say salty licorice, they don’t mean sodium chloride, like the regular sea salt or table salt. They mean ammonium chloride which has a distinctly more metallic flavor profile and can give the licorice an ammonia note at times.

It’s marked as a king sized bar, and in Sweden that means 7.76 ounces ... they’re a unitary parliamentary representative democracy under constitutional monarchy, so they have a slightly more generous meaning for king-sized candy bars than we do here in our federal presidential representative democracy under constitutional republic.

This very big bar is about 8 inches long and 3 inches wide. As it traveled quite a distance to me (from its origin in Sweden to Kristian in Germany who packaged it up and sent it to the far side of North America) it was broken in several places, so photographing the whole was not very attractive.

Marabou is owned by Mondelez (Kraft) and this particular bar uses Rainforest Alliance certified cacao (30%). It doesn’t say anything else about the sourcing of the milk products or sugar. The bar contains soy and milk and may also have traces of almonds, other nuts and wheat.

Marabou Black Saltlakritz

The bar smells great, like sweet creme brulee and a hint of anise. The licorice was not at all what I was expecting. The bits are little little toffee shards, they’re crunchy, not chewy. There’s no molasses, so it’s a much more pungent licorice flavor than a mixed sort of Australian or American chewy flour-based licorice. If you’re familiar with cinder toffee or sponge candy, which has a note of sodium bicarbonate in it, you might find this familiar, too. The licorice has a sharp note that’s rather salty but sometimes taste more acidic. It’s sharp and sweet but overall pleasant in small bits, but large pieces are off-putting. The creamy and ordinary chocolate is great as a background, it balances it all out, though offers nothing in the way of actual cocoa flavors. It’s quite milky, which is also fine.

A few bites, and I like it. But more than a square and I definitely start getting an overabundance of the ammonia going and have to give it a rest. This is something I absolutely do not need a king sized bar of, I simple little one or two ounces would have sufficed. Still, it’s one of the best salted licorices I’ve had - I liked the crispy texture and quick dissolve.

Related Candies

  1. Marabou Noblesse Crisps: Original, Dark & Orange
  2. Theo Salted Almond Dark Chocolate
  3. Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond
  4. Darrell Lea Dark Choc Liquorice Bullets
  5. 12 European Licorices
  6. Kookaburra Choc Coated Liquorice
  7. Dutch Licorice
  8. Salted Licorices: Djungelvral and Dubbel Zout


Name: Black Saltlakritz Milk Chocolate
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou
Place Purchased: candy swap with CandyBrain.de!
Price: $4.50 retail
Size: 7.76 ounces
Calories per ounce: 147
Categories: Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Licorice Candy, 6-Tempting, Sweden

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:21 pm     CandyReviewKraft/MondelezMarabouChocolateEthically SourcedLicorice Candy6-TemptingSweden

Friday, December 13, 2013

Marabou Noblesse Crisps: Original, Dark & Orange

Marabou NoblesseThe Marabou Noblesse Crisps are chocolate thins made in Sweden. They come in four varieties, I have three of them to try: Original, Dark and Orange.

Though I’ve never seen Noblesse before, the concept is pretty simple. They’re thin disks of chocolate, about two inches around and really wafery. They have a little bit of crunch to them, thanks to some corn flakes. While I might have thought these were copycats of the Belgian Thins I’m seeing everywhere now, the Noblesse version has been around (if Google translate is accurate in this article about the package redesign two years ago) since 1964.

Marabou Noblesse

The boxes are simple, though not quite as enticing as some others I’ve seen at this price point. Here in the States these retail for about $6 to $9 for just 5.3 ounces. However, Marabou is working on sustainable sourcing for their chocolate and have the Rainforest Alliance logo on the front with at least 30% of their cacao content from certified sources.

I got my packages from Swede Sweets, which sent me a large selection of candy to sample.

Marabou NoblesseThe disks are stacked in four slots in the box, they’re easy to take out and portion (though I’m unsure how much a portion actually is, as the nutrition panel gives me the option of eating 3.5 ounces (100 grams) or the whole box, but not a normal amount, which I’ll guess is one stack or 1.33 ounces.

At about eight thins, it seems like a lot of candy.

The Noblesse Original Crisp comes in light red box and features milk chocolate. The Marabou milk chocolate ingredient list includes milk whey, which is not permitted in products labeled chocolate in the US, though it doesn’t bother me that much. The cacao content is 36%, which is a fairly robust milk chocolate. The flavor, however, isn’t terribly deep or complex. It’s sweet and milky with the little corn flake bits giving it more of a chew than a crunch.

Marabou Noblesse

The Noblesse Mork Choklad Crisp (Dark Chocolate Crisp) is very appealing. At only 48% cacao content, it’s not challenging, more comforting than anything else. The flavor is a bit thin, but the texture is nice with a strong coffee note to the whole thing. I finished this box first and if I were to seek these out, this is the option I would go for.

The Noblesse Apelsin Crisp (Orange Crisp) is also the same 36% milk chocolate with a strong orange oil note. This cut the sweetness for me substantially, but it’s a lot of orange. It’s even a bit salty, though the listing only says 100 mg per 100 grams of candy.

They’re a lot easier to serve from the package than the Belgian Crisps (also found at Trader Joe’s in a house brand). They’d be a nice hostess gift and something fun to serve to guests with coffee, tea and cookies around the holidays.

Related Candies

  1. Sockerbit Swedish Candy Selections
  2. Milka Bars, Milka Drops and some Li’l Milka
  3. Belgian Milk Chocolate Thins
  4. Cloetta Kex Choklad
  5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Crisps
  6. Frugal Swedish Sweets


Name: Noblesse Original Crisp
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou
Place Purchased: samples from Swede Sweets
Price: $8.00
Size: 5.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 158
Categories: Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Marabou, Chocolate, Cookie, Ethically Sourced, 7-Worth It, Sweden


Name: Noblesse Apelsin Crisp
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou
Place Purchased: samples from Swede Sweets
Price: $8.00
Size: 5.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 158
Categories: Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Marabou, Chocolate, Cookie, Ethically Sourced, 7-Worth It, Sweden


Name: Noblesse Mork Chocklad Crisp
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou
Place Purchased: samples from Swede Sweets
Price: $8.00
Size: 5.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 158
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Marabou, Chocolate, Cookie, Ethically Sourced, 7-Worth It, Sweden

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:22 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewKraft/MondelezMarabouChocolateCookieEthically Sourced7-Worth ItSweden

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Kraft Daim

DaimThe Daim bar is a popular crunchy toffee bar covered in chocolate that originated in Sweden.

According to Wikipedia, the development tale is rather curious. Marabou, the preeminent Swedish chocolate company, approached Heath Bar back in the early 1950s for permission to license the Heath name and recipe to be produced for the Swedish/Norwegian marketplace. Heath said they couldn’t but did furnish the basic recipe so Marabou created the Daim Bar. The Daim went on to become quite a sensation, so much so that Hershey’s decided it needed its own crunchy toffee bar and copied the Daim in the US and called it Skor (along with the tag line of “The Taste of Sweden” in their launch advertising). The funniest part of the whole thing about Hershey’s marketing a copy of a Swedish candy that was a copy of an American candy was that Hershey’s ended up buying Heath Bar when they acquired Leaf Candy Company in 1996.

Marabou, in turn, was bought out by Kraft back in 1993 which distributes the Marabou chocolate products around the world. The easiest place to find Daim bars is at IKEA.

Daim

The bar does look a lot like the American Skor. It’s a smallish bar, flat and with a crisp buttery toffee center with a few bits of almonds in there. The milk chocolate coating is a little thicker on top with some attractive swirls and waves.

At only 28 grams (about .99 ounces) it’s a small bar but provides a lot of crunch.

I’ve bought this bar at least three different times for review on Candy Blog and each time I’ve managed to eat it before reviewing. (The photos here are from a 2008 episode where at least the bar made it into the studio for documentation.)

Daim nuggetsWhile I was in Europe I was pleased to see Daim widely available. Not only does it come in the familiar bar format, the toffee chips are also used in other co-branded confections, like a version of the Milka Bar (Jim’s Chocolate Mission has a review)

Since I knew I could find another bar in the States if I wanted it, I picked up this 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bag of Daim. The package says nothing else on the front - no description, no brand name ... just Daim. Not even the fact that this is not a bar but little chocolate covered nuggets. I guess the picture on the front says it all. My guess is since Daim is available in so many countries, it’s just confusing to say things, why not show them? The back of the package features micro-printing to accommodate at least 8 different language versions of the ingredients and still no actual name of the product. So I’m going to call these Daim Nuggets.

Daim nuggets

The little pieces are actually better, in my opinion, than the bar. I loved them. The chocolate is certainly not of excellent quality but good enough for this purpose. It’s milky and sweet and just creamy enough. It seals in the crunchy pieces of toffee to keep them from getting sticky and syrupy.

The toffee has a light burnt taste to it, plenty of milk and a touch of salt. It’s crunchy and every once in a while I think I got a little bit of an almond. The toffee is cooked to perfection - it’s crunchy but not too hard (having small pieces helps) and also doesn’t get tacky or stick to my teeth in large clumps.

I bet this is great on ice cream or added to cookies, of course it would need to come in larger bags, because this one is empty.

Other Daim reviews: Chocablog, Jim’s Chocolate Mission and Candy Addict.

Related Candies

  1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
  2. Godis Gula Snoren (Toffee Laces)
  3. Lindt Excellence Toffee Crunch
  4. Roca Buttercrunch Thins
  5. Valerie Toffees & Nougats
  6. See’s Peanut Brittle Bar


Name: Daim
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Kraft
Place Purchased: Rewe (Cologne, Germany)
Price: unknown
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: Candy, Kraft/Mondelez, Chocolate, Toffee, 8-Tasty, Sweden

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:07 pm     CandyReviewKraft/MondelezMarabouChocolateNutsToffee8-TastySweden

Friday, September 22, 2006

Pigall & Brejk

A friend recently came back from Sweden, and you know that means I got some fun new European candy bars. The first one has the best name ever for a candy bar ... Pigall.

image

Frankly, a bar named Pigall is kind of scary. This bar actually had part of the label in English, so let me fill you in on the ingredients: sugar, hydrogenated vegatable oil, cocoa butter, rice crisps, dried partly skim milk, cocoa mass, milk, sugar, milk fat, buttermilk, hazelnuts, fat-reduced cocoa, emulsifier, salt, flavorings. The 40 gram (1.4 ounce) bar had 250 calories ... that’s 177 calories per ounce. (The label says it’s actually two servings) It might win an award for the highest caloric density product I’ve ever tried. Pigall is right!

The bar is long and kind of soft. The chocolate on the outside is very light in color and of course it smelled very sweet. On the inside there’s a “nut truffle” filling that I can only describe as a chocolate buttercream. It was seriously buttery though from what I could read on the ingredients, it’s some sort of whipped vegetable oil filling.

Mixed in with the buttercream filling are rice crispies.

I found the bar interesting, but too much like eating the frosting off of a piece of cake. The prospect of that much trans fat kept me from eating more than half the bar.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the second bar, Brejk. It’s hefty, clocking in at 56 grams.

image

It also came in two pieces, which I always like. Good for sharing, a little neater and you can save some for later. This one came on a little tray and I thought for a moment that they were Finnish 100 Grand bars.

The bar is built like this - a light chocolate cookie is covered with a stripe of dark caramel then the whole thing is covered in a light milk chocolate studded wtih crisped rice.

The chocolate is sweet and has that European milky taste and a kind of tang to it. The textures are interesting too, think of it as a cross between a Twix bar and a 100 Grand and you’d pretty much have this bar. The cookie center is crumbly and bland but maybe had a little hit of salt to it. The caramel is dark and chewy, but not too sweet. The milk chocolate covering it is sweet and creamy though there aren’t as many rice crispies as you’d get in a 100 Grand.

I thought it was a great bar and I wonder why we don’t have something like it here in the States. The only place that I reliably see Marabou products is at Ikea, so if you see this one there and you like

Trix

Twix or 100 Grand bars, pick it up for a try.

Name: Pigall & Brejk
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou (Kraft)
Place Purchased: gift (thanks Russ)
Price: unknown
Size: 1.41 ounces & 1.98 ounces
Calories per ounce: 141 & 177
Categories: Chocolate, Caramel, Cookie, Finland, Kraft, Marabou

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:18 am    

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Frugal Swedish Sweets

Thanks goodness Ikea’s proclivity for sassy names does not extend to their treats at the food section. I have enough trouble buying candy shaped like rats that looks like the felt pulled out from a highlighter pen that I don’t need it to be further called Bjarf, Puke or Funkis.

Name: Licorice Boats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Licorice

 

I gave these to Russ to try the other night and he agreed that, “The licorice in my licorice boat had already set sail.” These are definitely sweet - you just open the bag and the sugary smell permeates the air. But there’s no there there. The jelly center has a bit of a licorice perfume to it, but no bite. I think I’ve come to expect molasses with my licorice as it’s a good anchor for the flavor.

Name: Jelly Rats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Jelly

 

They’re rather scary looking, and I’m telling you that’s the actual color - some sort of slightly translucent-neon hazard color. They also have a strong sweet smell infused with violet which didn’t thrill me, but biting into them I found a nice, tart and fruity jelly candy. The flavors aren’t complex or strong, but just nice. If I am planning on having a Swedish jelly candy though, I really want some Swedish fish.

Name: Marabou Milk Chocolate with Nuts
Brand: Marabou (a Kraft Foods division)
Place Purchased: Ikea
Price: $.99
Size: 2.4 oz
Calories per ounce: 128
Type: Chocolate/Nuts

 

This was the positive find in the whole experience. They’re little chunks of milk chocolate with crushed hazelnuts. Really creamy, very sweet with good nuts. The chocolate is smooth and the toasty taste of the nuts infuses it well.

It’s simple and satisfying. The roll is easy to share and I might make a point to pick these up at the start of my shopping experience at Ikea as a little boost. I ate them all before I finished typing this review.

Ratings: Licorice Boats - 4 out of 10
Jelly Rats - 5 out of 10
Marabou Milk Chocolate and Nuts - 7 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:37 am     CandyReviewKraft/MondelezMarabouChocolateJelly CandyLicorice CandyNuts4-Benign5-Pleasant7-Worth ItSweden

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