Monday, August 20, 2007

 

Choc it up to experience…

 

Well, it turns out that Australians love chocolate. I mean, so do I, but the chocolate bars they sell here (mostly Cadbury’s) are 250 grams! That’s more than half a pound of chocolate in a single bar. We’re talking about a chocolate bar that is about a foot long! Since most of you readers probably can’t really imagine how big 250 grams of chocolate is (besides the fact that the bar is about a foot long), let me give you a comparison: The standard size Hershey chocolate bar is 1.55 oz (2003 data – sorry, couldn’t find a more recent weight). If you convert 1.55 oz into grams, you get 44 grams. Well, 44 is considerably less than 250. In fact, it would take more than 5 and a half of those little Hershey bars to equal the weight of a large Cadbury’s bar! AND, there is an entire row, nay, practically a whole counter devoted to these chocolates in almost every store you go in to.

 

From extensive observation of these rows of chocolate in every store, it appears that Australians (or at least Tasmanians) prefer milk chocolate (or “Dairy Milk” as Cadbury refers to it). However, they have lots and lots of different flavors. Now, I remember from Germany lots of delicious fillings for chocolates, like raspberry, orange, and mint. However, this is not what you find in Australia. Sure they have they regular flavors, like hazelnut, almond and dark chocolate. But they also have cashew, mint chips (green chips, but not too bad), black forest and Turkish delight.

 

Well, after falling in love with Cadbury’s milk chocolate (after a REALLY long hike – nothing could have tasted better, and the size was not an issue…) and days and days of wondering about these bizarre flavors (and I actually love black forest cake, so it ought to be good, right?), we had to buy some. So I started it off by buying a Black Forest Cadbury’s bar. It turns out it is a milk chocolate bar with “cherry jellies and biscuit pieces”. It’s basically like a chocolate bar with cherry gummie bears in it. In fact, it’s the worst candy I’ve ever tasted (and that includes a gummie “hamburger” that Annapurna assured me was one of the best candies ever!). Guess what? The whole family agreed with me. So now we have just slightly under a half pound of Black Forest chocolate. Ah well. So, to make up for it, we bought two more chocolate bars, allowing the kids to pick the flavors. Eileen picked Triple Decker and Annapurna picked…. Turkish Delight! Triple Decker was the best of the bunch – milk chocolate with a layer of white chocolate topped with “raspberry confectionary”, basically white chocolate-type candy with raspberry flavor. It was OK, but we all agreed it was not as good as milk chocolate. The Turkish Delight however, was a surprise. Now, in case you’re not familiar with Turkish Delight except in literary works, such as “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, it is actually a wonderful treat (remember? This is why Edmund betrays his brother and sisters to the White Witch). It’s a powdered sugar-coated, quivering, fruit jelly flavored with such mouth-watering flavors as lemon or rose or mint. They are quite popular here and can be found at lots of small stores (all the ones that sell the rows of large Cadbury bars!). We have had a few here and they are, indeed, delicious. The chocolate, however, was so bad that at Annapurna’s first bite she shouted, “Ew, ew, yuck, yuck” and tried to spit it out. I thought it wasn’t that bad, but was overly sweet. I would rate it better than the Black Forest bar, but she said it tasted like “grape jelly” – a low cut, coming from Annapurna.

 

It is kind of amazing to have a chocolate bar that doesn’t taste good. And, as Rama pointed out, both Cadbury’s chocolate and Turkish Delight are good. How could Cadbury’s have gone wrong?? Perhaps it’s kind of like tasting root beer when you haven’t grown up with it. This must be how Europeans feel when they come to the US and try a root beer, or a PB&J. Well, I’m certainly going to be more conservative the next time I buy a chocolate bar!

 

I regret to say how much money we spent on these Cadbury bars. My only consolation is that the American dollar is currently worth more than the Australian dollar. But not much more!

 

Ah well. I think I may stick to plain milk or to hazelnut in the future. But what to do with these pounds of chocolate we still have?

 

 

 

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

 

UPDATE: Eileen polled two friends at school today about their favorite Cadbury’s flavors. Unprompted, they both said “Turkish Delight!”. We mentioned this at work (Wednesday), in the tearoom (more on this institution later) and the woman we were chatting with said that it had been her favorite flavor as a child!

 

So, two pieces of evidence for the theory that you just had to grow up with it…

 

Also, this gives us an idea of what we can do with the remaining ½  pound of Turkish Delight chocolate – send it in Eileen’s lunchbox for her friends!