Passing The Time With Chocolate (Blog 28)

Today is another day in London Bridge. As I sit in a room above a pub, I wait for the London Comedy Writers meeting to begin. With me, I have a Thai green curry that tastes of bubble gum, a gin and tonic, a donut and the food of my review… the ‘Cherry Deluxe’, by Hotel Chocolate. With the product in my hand, immediately I’m perplexed. On its cover, it says it contains ‘kirsch-soaked cherries suspended amaretto cream, double-sealed in dark then milk.’ ‘In dark then milk?’ Am I missing something, here? I don’t understand what that means. Technically it’s not even a sentence. It seems we’re already off to a bad start. To make matters worse there is a rather feeble boast, again on the packaging; ‘we order special-sized cherries a season ahead to leave space for the amaretto cream.’ I’ve never heard of special sized cherries. It may be something to proud of if they were extra large, but that isn’t the case, here. ‘Special sized’ just means the cherries fit inside the chocolates. Hardly something to write home about. In fact, if I know cherries the way I think I do, the fruit in the treats are smaller than normal. How can anyone brag about this? Expert marketing is clearly at play, here.

Nevertheless, the snacks are very good. I once paid around £15 for about 15 chocolates, and I couldn’t taste any difference from similar snacks a fifth of the price. The same goes with the ‘Cherry Deluxes’. What’s the moral of the story? Despite the eccentricities of the containers, you’re not getting ripped off, here. Can I go into detail about the taste? Afraid not, all sweets have been eaten as I have been writing. All I can say, is they’re moreish. That’s good! Both you and I want to know about the freaky shit, however, so that’s what I’ll focus on. I don’t have to go far, check out the ingredients… ‘Kirsch soaked cherry in an amaretto ganache sealed in a dark chocolate shell, enrobed in chocolate’… The cherries are ‘enrobed?’ That is some very colourful language for a fruit you look at for a few seconds and never see again. And that’s only if you bite into the confections and examine them. The majority will probably never appreciate the apparent care that goes into housing the incredible, smaller than average berry lookalikes.

Now for the nutritional information. I wouldn’t expect great things, it’s generally accepted that foods high in glucose are basically poison. But maybe things are different here, so let’s have a look… Per 100g of chocolate, you get 33.5g of sugar? That is quite a lot, isn’t it? I’m surprised this isn’t bragged about with clever wording. The same goes for the high fat content. Everyone needs fat, right? Therefore, the Cherry Deluxes are part of a balanced diet. Finally, we move onto the barcode and rather disappointingly, it is nothing special. You get the typical skinny bars and fat bars and the classic spaces in-between them, but the code is rather forgettable. Only a person with way too much time on their hands would even consider memorising it. Furthermore, the number that goes with the lines is ‘14046’. Just another number, isn’t it? It’s not an interesting one, like ‘12345’ or the symmetrical ‘12321’. Even so, I am actually very happy with the product, on the whole. At the end of the day, it’s all about the taste, isn’t it? Only a madman would rate food on its wrapping. Why I chose to do so is highly questionable, so I guess I need an increase of my brain medicine. :D :D :D