November 28th: Thorntons Creme Brulee

Kcal 180 Fat 10.4g Fat(sats) 7.0g Carbs 20.2g

As requested by ChocolateMission reader Lily I today bring you the first of two seasonal limited editions from our friends at Thorntons UK. Joining the Thorntons Christmas line up this year we have been treated to two new variants from their single bars range - one of which is this Creme Brulee variant. This bar came described as 'milk chocolate with a creamy vanilla flavoured centre' and was certainly up against it from the outset given the quality of the recent Lindt Petite Desserts Creme Brulee chocolate I tried just a few weeks ago. Just so you know I bought this bar from a local Thorntons shop, where I believe is the only place to track these new bars down.

Like most products from this range the bar came in a 33.0g serving size which I of course ate in one single sitting. Looking at the presentation of the product as a whole I was pretty impressed and thought everything from the outer wrapper to the inner bar looked aesthetically pleasing. The outer wrapper incorporated a bit of a Christmas theme with a few silver snowflakes printed across the front giving it a sparkly and inviting look. The bar itself looked a little on the small side for my liking though I must say I did like the light dusting of brown sugar on the outer chocolate and the inner layering certainly looked appetising. Upon opening the plastic packet I was met with a waft of sweet, chocolaty smells that enticed to an extent but a the same time seemed nothing out of the ordinary.

When Thorntons put the required effort into their products they tend to do pretty well on the ChocolateMission rating system but it is an all too common occurrence that they fall fowl of this and serve up some right old rubbish. To be honest this bar didn't quite fit that mould, in that Thorntons looked to have put sufficient effort in, but just didn't quite produce a quality product. Starting off with the outer constituents the milk chocolate coating with the brown sugar pieces was pretty good. The chocolate was nice and creamy, whilst the brown sugar pieces delivered the sweet, crunchy texture that you would get on a creme brulee pudding with real effect. Unfortunately the taste was dominated by the inner creme which was pretty unpleasant and tasted sickeningly sweet. Whilst the wrapper promised a vanilla flavoured centre the reality was that it was more a sugary gloop that was monotonous and overpowering of the other flavour influences. As I have mentioned above, looking at this bar my immediate thoughts were that it simply looked really small and this did ultimately not fulfil my hunger to a satisfactory degree.

Overall I felt Thorntons didn't quite crack the Creme Brulee flavour in this bar and it unfortunately is yet another product that falls in to the bracket of 'it sounds better than it actually is'. In the defence of Thorntons it is nice to see them give this sort of innovation a try and they weren't far off producing a relatively fair standard product. This Creme Brulee bar fell down in two pretty obvious areas; firstly (and most importantly) the actual creme brulee inner filling wasn't good enough and was terribly sweet tasting and lacking the sophisticated creamy custard flavours I was hoping for. Secondly the product was simply just too small and had this bar actually been tasty I would most likely been left feeling disappointed given the miniature size. I don't want to lay into Thorntons too much here as I was pleased they actually gave something like this a go and they were up against pretty hot competition from the likes of Lindt. Look out for my second review of the limited edition bars from Thorntons this Christmas coming in the next couple of days.

6.6 out of 10