November 5th: Cadbury Dairy Milk Desserts Berry Pannacotta

Kcal 570 Fat 36.9g Fat(sats) 21.1g Carbs 52.1g (per 100.0g)

I have had a bit of a turbulent time with these Cadbury Desserts bars that Shopenzed have been sending me from New Zealand. Whereas the first one I tried, the Creme Brulee flavour (See HERE) was pretty excellent the next one I sampled, the Tiramisu variant (See HERE) was not quite so great. Although it is obviously not the most consistent of ranges it seems to have caught the imagination of many readers as the review requests came flooding in when this new Berry Pannacotta flavour was announced. One e-mail to Shopenzed later and it wasn't long before I had this Cadbury Dairy Milk Desserts Berry Pannacotta bar in my hands.

The bar came in a 210.0g size ... no that it not a typo!! Within one year these Cadbury Desserts bars have gone from 250.0g, to 235.0g, and now down to 210.0g. I would be very interested to hear from one of my readers from the Southern Hemisphere as to whether the prices have fluctuated at all? Anyway as with the rest of the range I thought the presentation looked swish with the Berry Pannacotta flavour communicated through an on-pack picture and pinky purple secondary colour scheme incorporated into the traditional purple Cadbury background. The chocolate itself was nicely held within a branded silver foil though neither the smell of the look the chocolate appealed to me all that much. The pink inner filling to me looked odd and it had that familiar terrible artificial sweet, berry smell that just didn't entice me in any manner.

Despite the chocolate failing to impress me up to this point I was hoping that it was going to prove me wrong like many have done in the past. Like all Cadbury Dairy Milk products I ate the chocolate one block at a time letting the blocks melt away on my tongue. Just as I expected the outer milk chocolate was of good quality and the Dairy Milk didn't fail in delivering its highly milk driven sweet chocolaty taste. Personally I think Dairy Milk from Australia and New Zealand isn't quite as thick in melt or rich in taste as our UK Dairy Milk though the differences are minimal and it delivers a similarly pleasurable experience. Unfortunately where the chocolate was the good the filling was poor - how many times have I written that over the last two years? Much like the smell suggested the filling seemed very artificially derived and the berry flavouring was very sugary in its fruity taste. The pannacotta element was delivered reasonably well bringing a slightly creamy cheesiness to the aftertaste but my feelings towards the filling on the whole were that it was reasonably poor.

Overall I have to give this bar a thumbs down despite the milk chocolate being of a good standard. The one fundamental problem with this chocolate was the way the berry element was executed which was undeniably poor. Rather than mix the berry and pannacotta constituents together I think Cadbury would have been better off splitting the two. I would have kept the underlying pannacotta filling bit but I would put a layer of either raspberry or strawberry jam placed on top to bring the berry element in to the mix. I think Cadbury should have taken more care when putting this bar together. It is great that they are willing to attempt to make new and exciting flavours like this one, but having tried a ridiculous amount of fruit flavoured yogurt bars from Germany this summer I think I am in a good position to say whether this was executed effectively. Unfortunately this isn't one I would recommend from this range - stick to the Creme Brulee!

6.6 out of 10