September 17th: Cadbury Dairy Milk Coconut Rough

Kcal 492 Fat 29.2g Fat(sats) 16.0g Carbs 49.6g (per 100.0g)

Todays review again comes courtesy of my friends over at Shopenzed who included this Cadbury Coconut Rough bar in the latest package they sent me a few weeks ago. I happen to think that coconut is one of those ingredients that is criminally under utilised and as far as I am aware this is not a bar that has ever been in distribution here in the UK. Having done a little research I believe this bar might actually be available in Ireland, though the one I reviewed today was actually produced in Australia and constituted of 'milk chocolate with toasted coconut'.

I am sure they do smaller sized bars in Australia but generally all the ones I get sent from Shopenzed are large, which is great as it means I get to share it with some willing taste testers. This Coconut Rough bar came in a 200.0g size and was split into about 60 really quite small blocks. I thought the outer cardboard packaging was smart with its appetising coconut and chocolate images, whilst I also particularly liked the envelope type mechanism at the back of the box ... I don't particularly know why, I just thought it looked pretty swish. The chocolate was contained within a bright, Cadbury branded foil layer which released a simply stunning coconut biscuit like smell when unwrapped.

At this point I had seriously high hopes for this product but this was before I had actually physically laid hands on it. Breaking my first piece of the first thing I noticed was how oily and soft the chocolate was. Despite having a long bout in the fridge the chocolate yielded easily in my hands and left a slightly greasy feel on my fingers. Obviously I didn't find this all that pleasant, though I must admit as soon as the chocolate entered my mouth some of this had been long forgiven. Tastewise this chocolate reminded me of one of my other favourite bars the Romy Classic (from Germany See HERE!) and blended a terrific amount of different flavours influences into each and every small block. Of course the taste at all times was underpinned by the wonderfully, creamy sweet Dairy Milk which of course didn't fail in bringing a nice touch of cocoa to the party. Forming 15% of the total bar though the toasted coconut really brought this bar to life, adding a plethora of nutty, milky, salty elements to taste with its crunchy diverse texture. The back of the packaging stated that a serving of this bar should constitute of 5 blocks. This wasn't enough to satisfy my hunger entirely but the amount of flavour generated by each of the small blocks made it a fair proposition nonetheless.

Overall I have a few mixed feelings about this bar. On one hand it tasted great, but on the other it had a pretty horrible element to its texture. Personally the slight greasiness of each block wasn't all too my liking and it must be said that the similarly tasting Romy bar avoided having this problem to the degree that this bar suffered. Although I wasn't impressed with this element of the bar, I was more happy with the taste as it brought a simply delicious coconut based taste and delivered it with a wonderful Cadbury Dairy Milk base chocolate. I guess your enjoyment of this bar will simply be down to whether you can get over the slightly odd elements that are brought to the texture. I think I probably would have this bar again, though I am not sure I would pick it over the Romy bar.

7.9 out of 10