 | If this week's 'Biscuit' wasn't made by Fox's whom we hold in some regard then I'm afraid it would have probably found itself so far into the the chocolate bar circle of the Venn Diagram as to be off our radar. However, having as it does a vestigial backbone of biscuit baked by Batley's finest biscuit bakers we thought we would swallow our pride along with a couple of packs of these and see what they were all about.
First off apologies for the rather less than perfect cross section of the biscuit. It's not quite at the required 90 degrees, plus the trusty NCOTAASD Kitchen Devil has managed to smear the chocolate a bit. However, what it does admirably demonstrate is that Fox's have painted a very honest representation in the form of their own pack front Echo bar dissection image. The ratio of pale green stuff to brown stuff appears spot on, and it's also possible to make out in the bottom right of the plucky little biscuit spine a granule of the green candy pieces that have been embedded into the biscuit. And whilst we are talking of the pack it has to be said that old Fox's M&S bells are ringing louder than ever. This pack looks like it was designed for M&S, the fonts, the colours, layout everything shouts M&S food hall, but yet is strangely a bit 80s retro. I'm half expecting to find an airbrush picture of a cocktail glass and somebody in leg-warmers with hair extensions. So before Kenny Loggins gets started, it's on with the review.
Fox's have always been keen on these little sugar pieces, perhaps most extremely so in their Sprinkle Crinkle Crunches of 2002, a biscuit so sweet that it made a boiled sweets seem like wholefood. The other exciting thing about the green granules indeed all of the green stuff in this biscuit is that apart from a pleasant minty flavour, they are rendered green due to chlorophyll. OK, maybe I shouldn't be impressed by that as plants have been pulling off the same trick for the last 3 billion years.
Upon opening up this or indeed any other of Fox's Echos one is immediately stuck by the quality of the moulding and smooth shiny chocolate surface. This feels like it's been carefully crafted and not just slapped together. The placing of all the elements is flawless and one feels quite destructive as you set about biting into it. The younger members of staff had no such compunctions and quickly decided that removing the green stuff from the biscuit was the first and most obvious plan of attack.
So enough of the aesthetics, what did it taste like? Well the bubbly mint flavoured chocolate is plainly some sort of cousin of the classic Mint Aero chocolate bar. Indeed Fox's must have thought long and hard to come up with a four letter name ending in 'O' that makes you think of large expanses of air. On another day no doubt I would get very pre-occupied with exactly how the bubbles get into the chocolate. However, today I'm still thinking about the Chlorophyll, so we'll take the bubbles as a given. Suffice to say the chocolate fans are going to love these, as they do taste a notch above the run of the mill. I suspect that the shiny surface and dark colour are a testament to a high proportion of cocoa butter in the milk chocolate. The biscuit, bless it's heart, hardly even made an appearance in the overall taste/texture picture, which when you consider is 76% comprised of chocolate is hardly surprising. Sure these are nice enough, but the next Fox's product I get my hands on would do well to find its way back to the biscuit part of the Venn diagram.
Your feedback 1 message |
