Ritter Sport – Cocoa Mousse

In past reviews I’ve praise Ritter Sport for finding new and creative ways to make new flavours and textures while being restricted to the same square shape and format. This was meant to be more of a compliment, as designing with restrictions requires more creativity, and some great ideas come out of thinking “outside” the box while trying to stay within it.

That’s why when I found out that this bar was the same size as the standard 4 x 4 bar, but was only a total of 9 pieces in a 3 x 3 format, my curiosity was piqued. Apparently I wasn’t the only one surprised or taken aback by this, because they explicitly state on their website that these are definitely not a normal affair for them, and these are indeed larger pieces. I discovered that the reason they opt for larger pieces is so the consumer can fully appreciate the texture of the filling of this bar.

If the title didn’t already give it away, this bar is the standard milk chocolate shell with a whipped cocoa mousse filling. It makes sense to have larger pieces, so that the ratio gives you more mousse to chocolate shell.

Visually, nothing out of the ordinary other than the fact that these are big pieces. I don’t have a standard bar on hand to show the comparison, but trust me when I say these are chonkers and noticeably larger. Definitely close to twice the size. It might just be my mind playing tricks on me, but it feels like this milk chocolate is also softer, and not quite as firm or brittle as the usual bars. It might be due to the soft filling. It also doesn’t seem to be tempered in the same way, as the typical bar has a shiny coating to them, while this does not. Touching the pieces seem to leave fingerprints on them.

Biting into this, it’s indeed very soft. The shell gives way quickly to the slightly darker filling that is really something else. I don’t mean darker in flavour, because it’s still more of a milk chocolate flavour. But it’s got a very light, almost airy texture. Not surprising when you think about what whipped mousse is. What is surprising is how they managed to make it like that. When I think about airy or aerated chocolate, I think of Aero chocolate bars that we have in Canada, where the inner filling is basically chocolate but a ton of tiny air bubbles so that when you melt it in your mouth it gives an airy texture. Unlike Aero though, this mousse is actually airy and soft, a much more difficult feat to accomplish.

The flavour of the milk chocolate is referred to ask alpine milk chocolate, with hints of honey or caramel in the flavour. The filling is what the focus here is though. The filling is a very rich, yet airy milk chocolate flavour. There seems to be a slight nutty, honey like flavour to it which keeps things interesting. While I tend to find milk chocolate sweet, this isn’t too sweet. The milk chocolate on the outside is a bit on the sweet side, but the mousse filling is fairly mild so it helps to balance things out quite well.

One approach might be to just chew through it, as the milk chocolate shell is still firm enough you would need to bite into it. The better approach in my humble opinion however, is to let it sit on your mouth and melt away. Once the chocolate shell melts away, you can truly experience that magnificence of the mousse filling. I’m amazed how they managed it honestly. There must be some crazy chemistry going on to keep this bar from not collapsing on itself. It’s one thing to make a hollow chocolate bar (I’m looking at you, disgusting hollow Easter bunnies). But to make a bar that has the mousse keep it’s shape and be so fluffy yet not a mess is something else.

I don’t say this about milk chocolate often, but I like these a lot. The milk chocolate shell is only slightly better than generic milk chocolate that I tend to avoid, but the mousse filling more than makes up for it. If memory serves, there’s also a darker variety of this bar, but I’m not sure if it is also the larger pieces. I’m also not sure whether a darker chocolate would work as well with mousse, but I intend to find out eventually.

All this is to say, go get this bar unless you are allergic to nuts. You won’t regret it. It’s also part of the standard lineup, so you should be able to find this flavour in most places you find other standard flavours. Boy is this dangerous for me.