Cadbury: (Dairy Milk) Turkish

I'm approaching my third week spent in Europe (this time around, at least) and I'm wondering why I didn't pounce upon all the chocolate I saw in France and Germany. It's not that Ireland doesn't have chocolate, and it's not that I've exactly looked hard yet, either, but in my limited search I have found little other than Cadbury.

It's not really a bad thing, because Cadbury is delicious. But it might mean that this blog will see a lot of Cadbury in the coming months. That, and Nestle, too. And maybe once I get my bearings about me, I'll find a health food store or a more upscale food shop where they sell more unusual things. For now, I'll just have to deal with same old delicious Cadbury bars.

Cadbury: (Dairy Milk) Turkish

Cocoa content: 21%

Notable ingredients: Turkish delight jelly*

Origin: n/a

*Turkish delight jelly. What is it? Well, we'll start with: what is Turkish delight? Turkish delight is (usually) small cubes of thick, firm, sugary jelly, dusted with sugar and often flavored with lemon or nut flavors. It does indeed come from Turkey, but is now equally popular throughout all of continental Europe. If you've eaten it before, you probably ate it out of a tin.

Now this chocolate filling, of course, is not the same dense jelly dusted with sugar. This is a softer, more melty jelly that is engineered as a filling for the chocolate casing as opposed to a stand-alone confection to be held between the fingers and bitten into. And basically, I've determined that the jelly here is entirely sugar and emulsifiers. It's just gooey, pink sugar. It has a slightly medicinal taste, like the good cough syrup -- the light pink one?

And the chocolate is delicious. It's creamy, thick, and melty -- never chalky or stale. I have to give this bar a mediocre grade because of the creepiness of the Turkish jelly, but for a bar of this ambition the chocolate sure is good. B-.