A new package has arrived from Australia! Inside are some interesting looking snacks, and the one that I am trying out first is called Violet Crumble. I have heard that it is a bit like the Crunchie bar that is available here in the UK. The name doesn’t grab me, though. The colour ‘violet’ evokes in me an idea of some scented oil, which doesn’t sound particularly tasty when mixed with chocolate. In fact, I wonder if the colour is linked to the snack at all, but checking the ingredients doesn’t give any clue as to colouring agents. This suggests either that there are no colouring agents in the snack or that Australia has less strict laws about listing ingredients in foods. I may find out soon enough. But maybe not.
The packaging has a slogan on it that is deterring me a little from trying it. ‘It’s the way it shatters that matters’ is catchy enough from an rhyming angle, but I’m not endeared towards eating something that is likely, or almost guaranteed, to ’shatter’. I am concerned that I’ll be picking shards out of my cheeks with tweezers after the first bite. But I’m doing this for SCIENCE, so I’ll open the package up and give it a taste.
Erk. This ‘delicious shattering choc coated honeycomb’ is perhaps more volatile than it first makes out. On opening the package and pulling out the chocolate bar I am presented with only a fraction of the bar. It has been pre-shattered, either in transit or part of its shattering half-life. I’d better start eating it before it spontaneously shatters some more. It smells awfully sweet, and the honeycomb isn’t quite as golden as a Crunchie. The good news is that the ‘violet’ description seems to be misplaced, as neither the chocolate nor the honeycomb are the wrong colour. Maybe that means the marketing men also lied through their teeth about its shattering nature too.
Num num num. Eating a Voilet Crumble is quite a pleasant experience. The chocolate is a bit different to what I am used to, but it’s nice enough. The honeycomb is sweet and crumbly, not shattering at all. It almost promises to melt in the mouth, but actually requires light chewing to achieve smooth passage down the throat. It’s a bit of a tease in a way, tempting you to leave the honeycomb in your mouth to dissolve, and even though you know you must chew it it still seems a cheat to start chewing.
The Violet Crumble is a tasty little chocolate bar. I’m not sure quite how it compares to a Crunchie, they seem pretty similar to me and I don’t have one to hand to make a direct comparison, but it certainly stands quite well on its own. To end, I’ll just point out that I got confused by the ‘best before’ date, wondering what ‘15 10 20 08′ could possibly mean before realising that it was referring to the year ‘2008′ but with ambiguous font spacing.
I like milk. It may not be a particularly popular drink amongst adults, but that doesn’t bother me. I still like to pour a pint of milk in to a glass and enjoy a cool, creamy drink. A milkshake to me is a popular choice in restaurants. I also like coffee-flavoured snacks. I was never much of a drinker of coffee itself until recently, but coffee-flavouring has always been a good choice for sweets, ice cream and, where available, milkshakes. Coffee-flavoured snacks may not actually taste of coffee, in the same way that banana- and other-flavoured snacks don’t, but that doesn’t matter in the case of coffee flavouring. Kerri was awesome enough to send the official state drink of Rhode Island, I kid you not, of Eclipse Coffee Syrup. It is a coffee-flavoured syrup to add to milk to make a coffee milk drink, surprisingly enough. I am excited by this snack.
Taking the seal off the lid to enable me to pour the syrup in to a glass of milk gives me my first chance to smell the syrup, and it is an appealing coffee-flavouring scent that greets me. I have a pint glass full of milk waiting for the syrup to be added, so I put the top back on the bottle and start pouring. Asking me to add ‘2 tablespoons to an 8 ounce glass of milk’ is confusing for me as we don’t measure drinks in ounces over here, which is why I have the pint of milk ready poured. The fall-back position of ‘or to desired taste’ is what I’ll be working towards. I put a few squirts of the syrup in to my milk and decide to go with that for now. A quick stir, and I lick the spoon clean so as not to waste any of the drink. Mmm, tastes of coffee milk. That’s a good start. I now have a glass full of what looks like a really weak latté. Time to give it a proper tasting.
Cor, that’s good. This tastes just like the best coffee milkshakes I have had, but without the thickness of the added ice cream. The coffee flavouring is delicious, and adds to the texture and coolness of the milk wonderfully. I often add Nesquick powdered flavouring to my drinks of milk, generally the strawberry flavour as I don’t like banana flavouring and despite liking chocolate itself chocolate flavouring is distasteful to me. When I have my strawberry flavoured milk I drink the whole glass pretty quickly, as I have the texture and chill of milk mixed with a sweet flavouring. There’s something different about this coffee syrup. I don’t want to drink this quickly. I want to savour it. I want to enjoy every sip, feel all the flavouring pass down my throat. Just lifting the glass to my mouth offers me a smell of the coffee syrup as it sits mixed with the milk, enhancing the whole sensation.
This is a fabulous drink. Rhode Island have the right idea about official state drinks. I’m not even going to look further at the bottle or labels, the drink is clearly the focus here. It’s good. I heartily recommend this product and/or service. I will have to pretend that I never got this in the package so that Kerri will be compelled to send me some more. What are the odds that she doesn’t read this blog?
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