Candy Bar Lab

I previously reviewed Annabelle’s Rocky Road - an American made candy bar with chocolate, marshmallows and cashews. I was underwhelmed by that product, so I’ve been on the lookout for a great rocky road candy bar since. So, I was really excited when I received this Australian made rocky road bar last week. From the packaging, I could tell it’s different from Annabelle’s. Instead of using a solid slab of marshmallow enrobed in chocolate, this version has big pieces of marshmallow mixed into a slab of chocolate. And instead of cashews, VooDooo’s version has peanuts.

Structure
Whole marshmallows and roasted peanuts in milk chocolate, cut into rectangular slabs.

Texture
This is a very non-uniform product. There are different sized marshmallow and peanut pieces mixed throughout. The chocolate is really thin in some places and really thick in others. Along the outside of the bar, the chocolate barely coats some of the marshmallow pieces. I think VooDooo might be making these by hand, rather than using automatic machinery, but I can’t confirm this.

Taste
The marshmallow and peanuts are fine. The chocolate - a huge disappointment. It’s really sweet and flavorless. It barely tastes like chocolate actually. If I were served this candy bar blindfolded, I would have guessed that it had white chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

Verdict
VooDooo Rocky Road was a big let down. I had high hopes from the packaging and first look that this would be a great candy bar. But immediately upon biting in, it was clear that the chocolate was sub-par and that ultimately killed it’s chances of getting a thumbs up from me.

I like most candy bar packaging. There are plenty of examples of both upscale and common candy bars that have great packaging. The Troika, on the other hand, has terrible packaging design. I think they were trying to make it look upscale, but in failing to do so, created a design that looks cheap and generic. More annoying though, is that the packaging of the Troika fails to convey anything about the product itself. I shouldn’t have to comb through the ingredients in small print on the back to get an idea about what’s in the product.

Structure
The Troika consists of three inner layers enrobed in dark chocolate. From top to bottom, these layers are raspberry jelly, chocolate truffle, and marzipan.

Texture
Upon biting in, the chocolate shell broke off into thin pieces - separating easily from the rest of the bar. The jelly was soft. It reminded me of canned cranberry sauce, though a little firmer. The chocolate truffle layer was lost in the mix between the jelly and the noticeably dry and crumbly marzipan. Overall, kind of an odd combination of textures.

Taste
I’ll start with the good news. The dark chocolate coating is very high quality and tastes great. The bad news… the rest of the flavors aren’t good at all. The raspberry flavor is underwhelming and didn’t work with the marzipan at all. Like the texture, the flavors were an odd combination.

Verdict
This candy bar just isn’t very good. I don’t understand why they tried to put together this combination of ingredients. Marzipan and raspberry jelly? I don’t understand the appeal of that. The one bright spot for this product was the chocolate, but I’m kind of annoyed good chocolate is being wasted producing Troikas.

I love the packaging for this bar, which is simply called Cuba. The candy bar itself is wrapped in gold foil, which is then covered in plastic - twisted off on the ends like a Tootsie Roll wrapper. The Cuba logo type is clear plastic, so the gold foil shows. I’ve never seen a candy bar wrapped like this before and I award them points for creativity. As for the candy product on the inside, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from the Norwegian description, but I could figure out that it had chocolate and almonds in it from the ingredients.

Structure
A molded high cocoa percentage milk chocolate with a soft chocolate filling containing small pieces of almonds.

Texture
The chocolate shell is thin and snaps apart nicely as you bite through to the soft center. The filling is light and fluffy like a mousse or a whipped ganache. The almond pieces are chopped very fine and add a little bit of crunchiness. I also noticed some small sugar granules suspended in the filling.

Taste
Cuba has a deep, intense chocolate taste with a bit of saltiness - a welcome shot of flavor in contrast to some cheap, tasteless chocolate I’ve had recently.

Verdict
This bar is a definite thumbs up. It’s more like a truffle you’d find at a chocolate shop than it is a candy bar you’d expect to pick up at a convenience store.