Milk Chocolate with Mango

I think this is another first for me and I'm not feeling the chocolate love with this one. Mango in a fruit salad? Yes. Mango in a cheesecake? Yes. Mango in chocolate? Well the jury is out on this one. This particular bar is from Thorntons chocolate block range.


I haven't touched a morsel of this bar yet but I'm already mighty impressed with Thorntons. This particular bar is a limited edition. Why? Well the good people of Thorntons are donating 91p to Save the Children to help rebuild children's lives in Haiti with every bar purchased. The money is going towards life-changing education work in Haiti - reaching thousands of children with safer schools, classroom equipment and quality teaching.

The Chocolate: It's worth pointing out that no artificial colours or flavours are contained within this particular chocolate bar. A lot of thought has gone into this bar and obtaining the cocoa from Haiti itself must have been a real logistical nightmare. Until today I didn't realise that Haiti was a cocoa producer and there is an interesting article on the following link, 'Better farming could boost Haiti'. The cocoa being tasted today is a milk chocolate with 37% cocoa solids. The mango is not evident when you open up the package just a delicious smell of rich cocoa with a hint of tobacco. The chunks of dried mango are big and a little bit chewy. Do you remember chewing little pieces of paper when you were kid to make pellets for your pea shooter? Well it feels a bit like that as you bite down on the chocolate. The flavour of mango is there in the background and it's one of those flavours that you either love or hate. I really enjoy fresh mango but in chocolate it's not brilliant. The sweet, creamy milk chocolate masks the taste of mango which is good or bad depending on your point of view. At the end there is that hint of tobacco.

Overall I enjoyed this bar and I think it deserves 6/10 for flavour and 10/10 for Corporate Social Responsibility. I hope we find out from Thorntons how much they raise for this good cause. This particular bar was purchased for £1.89 and for 80g this is a fair price to pay. The bar is slightly cheaper on line but you have to pay for P&P. It might be worth following this link as Thorntons are running a competition at the moment, celebrating 100 years of Thorntons. Apparently 100 keys have been hidden in their chocolate blocks. Click here!