I just discovered a British food import store near me that I guess has been there forever.  I popped in to look around and saw an old treat that my friend in highschool would bring back from her annual travels to visit family in Ireland, flake.  I don’t know if Ripple came around after flake or not….oh wait – the internet – now I know Ripple came out 30 years after flake started being sold in 1930.

Did Ripple somehow perfect the flake model of crumbly chocolate?

Flake:

We found flake to have a very pleasant texture, the density of something light like the Aero bar but with different distribution of space.  The chocolate itself is very creamy and not too sweet.  Because of it’s creaminess, pockets of air in the chocolate help distribute the richness of the chocolate.  Personally, I always find Cadbury milk chocolate to be too heavy for me, so this is the perfect presentation for Cadbury.  One thing about flake that isn’t perfect is that no matter how careful I try to eat this, I look like cookie monster.  There’s just no way around it’s flaking off into particles all over the place.  I wonder if “crumble” might have been a more appropriate name.

Ripple:

Visually, Ripple’s interior is similar to flake with it’s folded ribbons of chocolate.  We were interested to see how the chocolate coating would hold up and if it would help with the crumblefest that is unavoidable with flake.  The outershell does help, but to our dismay the chocolate wasn’t very enjoyable.  Tastewise it lacked chocolate flavor and tasted artificial – and it stuck to my teeth so that took away from any enjoyment.

Wrap up:
If we had to choose looking like a civilized human being or eating something worth the calories, we’d stick with flake.  It might be messy but at least it tastes good and you don’t have to deal with chocolate adhering to your teeth and it actually tastes like chocolate.
We both couldn’t even finish the Ripple, it just tasted so gross.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though I’m a fan, I always have a little trouble pronouncing  the “Ferrero” in “Ferrero Rocher”.  I don’t know why, it’s not the most complicated name, but I guess growing in the 80’s I think of Geraldine Ferraro and even then, it’s pretty much the same pronunciation but will refer to them as “Ferrer” – I don’t know what my problem is but I mostly just call them”Rocher”.  Everyone does, right?

Rochers were their own little novelty until I noticed the Hershey’s version creeping around a little too close on the shelves at CVS and since they’re a standard offering at the dollar stores , Ethan and I figured it’s worth a comparison. Let’s take a look behind the gold wrapper…

Kisses Deluxe:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cross section looks just okay visually.  You’ve got your crunchy element, the ganache-esque smidge of a layer and of course the hazelnut in the middle but upon tasting we could tell the Kiss was lacking.  While I thought the crunchies were okay, Ethan didn’t even find the detectable.  The “ganache” to me was sub-par at best and not much of it.  We both found the chocolate to be kind of fake tasting and overly sweet.  Ethan’s last note on this was “the nut was okay”.

Ferrero Rocher:

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s so nice about Rochers is the clearly defined layers that work separately, yet together for a full multi-texture experience.   Chopped hazelnut pieces coat a wafer layer which surrounds ganache and in the center is a whole toasted hazelnut.    One of the major advantages Rocher has over the Kiss is that wafer later- I don’t know how they do it, and I guess hershey’s doesn’t know either, but it makes such a difference.  Biting through the top crisp later, into the light airiness of the wafer  and  the smooooth creaminess of ample ganache before crunching into the hazelnut really makes eating a Rocher a real treat.

Wrap up:
Not a big surprise Ferrero Rocher was a clear winner with us.  The Kiss “Deluxe” is clearly trying to pull a fast one on Rocher fans with the similar gold foil wrapper but the lack of defined layers, missing wafter and poor quality of chocolate just make for a disappointing experience.  If you want a treat, just go for the real thing.