July 23rd: Lily O'Briens Sticky Toffee / Honeycomb Crisp

Sticky Toffee Kcal 500 Fat 25.0g Fat(sats) 12.5g Carbs 65.7g (per 100g)
Honey Crisp Kcal 508 Fat 27.5g Fat(sats) 17.5g Carbs 62.5g (per 100g)

You may recall that I recieved a nice sample pack from Lily O'Briens a few weeks ago. Included in this pack were two flavoured bars from their range....the Sticky Toffee and the Honeycomb Crisp. Both bars were formulated using Lily O'Briens milk chocolate (30% cocoa and 20% milk solids) and their respective flavours. The Sticky Toffee bar centre was exactly the same as the Sticky Toffee chocolates I reviewed a few weeks ago with a soft centred caramel like filling. The Honeycomb Crisp had honeycomb pieces and crispy cereal dispersed throughout the milk chocolate.

Much like the original milk chocolate bars I was really rather unimpressed with the aesthetic look of the bars...they just looked so basic..merely blocked and sectioned bars...they looked like cheap supermarket chocolate when taken out of the fairly blandly designed looking packaging. When the blocks were split the Sticky Toffee did look a bit more appetizing with the toffee oozing out slightly...the Honeycomb Crisp was also slightly more interesting looking when sectioned with the crispies providing some textured detail...still though both were pretty uninspiring and plain looking. Both bars smelt remarkably similar - the aroma of the chocolate was the dominating scent I got from both...a soft milky smell with a strong undertone of honey...at least they smelt better than they looked!

The milk chocolate in both bars was idential in taste and texture. It had a nice milky flavour that had a smooth texture that melted at a nice rate of the tongue. As I previously stated in the original milk chocolate bar reviews the taste was still pretty one dimensional and didnt develop alot.. if at all during its duration in my mouth - luckily this wasnt so much of an issue with the additional flavourings in the bars which added secondary layers to the taste experiences.

Simply put the Sticky Toffee flavour was not quite aswell delivered in bar format than it was in the single chocolate format. The ratio of chocolate to toffee filling was far more weighted on the chocolate ingredient which meant that the flavour of the filling wasnt as impactful. It still had a pleasant sweet taste but the slightly grainy texture and salty aftertaste elements I got from the individual chocolates were absent here. Solely due to the dominance of the milk chocolate these aspects just didnt come through in the taste or texture.

The Honeycomb Crisp bar was quite simiar to the Sticky Toffee in that its added flavour was diluted somewhat by the milk chocolate. The honeycomb pieces and crispy rice added a nice differentiated aspect to the texture - obviously adding an extra crispy and crunchy element. Unfortunately the flavors of both were just simply not strong enough to make a real impact on the taste and apart from a slight added sweet honey note to the aftertaste both their presences were hard to seperate from the milk chocolate.

Overall these are two relatively fair flavour variants from Lily O'Briens though neither are really that spectacularly strong tasting. If I was to pick a 'Sticky Toffee' flavoured product from the Lily O'Briens range I would definately choose the individual chocolates...the filling is simply portioned more thus making for a greater toffee flavour hit. The Honeycomb Crisp added a nice texture to the milk chocolate but flavourwise could be far more impactful - its simply overpowered by the milk chocolate. If your interested in the Lily O'Briens range these are the more exciting option to the standard milk chocolate bars so I would recommend them in that sense. Both are pleasant twists on the original milk chocolate offering...but just beware the flavours here are subtle.

Lily O'Briens Sticky Toffee 7.6 out of 10
Lily O'Briens Honeycomb Crisp 7.9 out of 10