November 22nd: Galaxy Orange & Shortcake

Kcal 544 Fat 32.5g Fat(sats) 19.9g Carbs 55.1g (per 100.0g)

New product Monday returns to ChocolateMission!! The number of e-mail and comments I have recieved about this bar has been astonishing - apologies I can't mention you all by name (that would take forever!), but thanks to all the people who made me aware/requested that I take a look at this bar. After checking out last months Galaxy customer exclusive for Tesco (Smooth Truffle - See HERE), it appears that Mars have had to offer exactly the same deal to Sainsbury's (another UK supermarket for all you non-UK readers!). Indeed, along with the rearrangement of their shelves, Sainsbury's have now started stocking this Galaxy Orange & Shortcake bar, which on-pack is described as 'milk chocolate with shortcake and orange pieces'.

To my knowledge, this bar is only currently available in a 120.0g format - suffice to say there was more enough to share round my work office to get some opinions. Neither the orange foil or small on-pack picture gave the bar any great standout from the other variants on the shelf, however it still looked classy so I had little issue with it in that regard. The chocolate inside was blocked in the the shapely Galaxy form, with a multitude of biscuit pieces evident in the underside of the bar. At this point it was notable that the orange pieces seemed few and far between, but the fruity smells emanating from the foil wrapper suggested otherwise.

Galaxy milk chocolate - what more is there to be said about it on this site that I haven't already? In my opinion it's very tasty for the price you generally pay for it. It's not as flavoursome, or rich in cocoa flavours as some of the finer end market options like Hotel Chocolat, but to be fair to it the soothing cream based sweet cocoa flavours are delivered within a very definitive thick, melting smooth texture which I think gives it a very important uniqueness. As you would expect these flavours took up the majority of the taste with this bar, however I'm pleased to say that neither the orange or the biscuit got lost in the experience. As I gauged from looking at the chocolate, by far the most prominent was the shortcake biscuit. These pieces added a playful crunchy element texture wise, and also brought small bursts of buttery saltiness to the party. The orange element to this chocolate was established through what seemed like tiny pieces of orange gummy sweets. Although they were a little sparsely portioned, when come across they added a very real tasting burst of juicy orange flavours to the chocolate which has to be said was very nice. As with most Galaxy chocolates a 40.0g serving amount was comforting portion.

Overall this was never going to be a Galaxy Caramel beater, but for what it was it was enjoyable orange chocolate. It has been discussed on ChocolateMission recently that we are currently lacking in options when it comes to mass produced chocolate orange offerings - Terry's being the only real one out there from the likes of Cadbury, Kraft, Mars and Nestle. Whilst Mars haven't 'turned up any trees' with this one, it still proved itself to be a tasty orange flavoured chocolate that is certainly worth a look at if you are looking for a more subtly flavoured alternative to Terry's. The feedback from my colleagues was similar to my own in that it needed more orange bits, but on the whole this chocolate was met with a pretty positive response with a number of people claiming they would happily buy it. At times like these when manufactures seem content on releasing already made products in different formats (Galaxy Counters etc), it is nice to see Mars try something new. On that basis this bar gets a ChocolateMission thumbs up.

8.2 out of 10