Swedish chocolate vs Finnish chocolate

One of the great joys of travelling, so I’m told, is tasting new foods. I don’t do this because I’m a Special Person but I do like to get to know new chocolate. My rule of thumb is “if it’s been bought by Kraft, it’s going to be good.” Chocolate Kraft owns includes Cadbury’s, Milka, Terry’s, Toblerone and Milka. When I went to Denmark in 2012, I bought a bar of Swedish chocolate called Marabou, which I enjoyed greatly. Turning it over, I saw the Mondelez logo on the bottom – Mondelez, as far as I can understand, being the new name for Kraft – and I wasn’t at all surprised. I haven’t yet found (maybe just not noticed) Norwegian or Danish chocolate. If you know of a brand, let me know and I’ll get some next time I’m in that part of the world. Icelandic Sirius chocolate… well, in my opinion chocolate-making isn’t one of Iceland’s talents, so no taste test here. I eat imported Milka when I’m in Iceland.

Today I’m taste-testing Swedish Marabou and Finnish Karl Fazer, which have been sitting in a drawer for a fortnight, driving me crazy because I haven’t got around to writing this.

Appearance – forgive the dents, they’ve been shoved in a bag and carried halfway across a continent.

P1030156 P1030157Marabou (200g)comes in a nice yellow plastic wrapper with one of these neat and tidy peel things. Karl Fazer (250g) comes wrapped in metallic paper with a layer of foil inside. It’s a little bit thicker than the Marabou. So far so good. I have no preference to either. The Karl Fazer looks classier but then it’s a limited edition that I was ordered to buy at the airport over the standard version because they had a deal on that meant the 250g special version was the same price as the 200g standard version. But the Marabou stands out more on a shelf, I think.

I’m not going to take photos of the inside, of the whole bar of chocolate, because it’s a bit dented and bit crumbly from the abuse it took getting home but here is a sample block of each. The Marabou is lighter and a bit wider and more block shaped. The Karl Fazer is darker and has a beveled top.

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I think I prefer the Marabou. The Karl Fazer tastes a teeny bit more powdery. Most acceptable, much better than Sirius but I think in a taste test, Marabou wins. Yes, a second piece of each confirms that I think Marabou tastes richer and slightly creamier. I win either way – I have the rest of both bars, and a bar of peppermint Karl Fazer in the drawer to eat whenever I like. A third confirms that I’ve had more than enough chocolate for the time being.

I would also like to add that in the battle of orange chocolate, Marabou wins by far due to my preference for orange crisp over the slightly gooey orange pieces used by Karl Fazer but that’s entirely a personal preference and both were perfectly delicious.

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