Ritter Sport – Milk Chocolate with Caramelized Almonds

Ritter Sport has historically done a great job with it’s nut related bars. This one seems promising for sure. I love caramelized or candied almonds, and I love chocolate. How could this go wrong?

Sadly, these are almond pieces, not whole almonds. I enjoy a good caramelized almond as much as the next person, but I get a little less excited when you tell me it’s not a whole almond and it’s in pieces. I can see the value in having them minced into pieces, as it makes it easier to consume and better for your teeth, but I guess I don’t consume almonds enough that it becomes an issue. And when I do I want to experience the nut in all it’s wholesome glory. I’m sure not everyone would agree with me on that, but that’s how I see it, so we’re going to roll with it.

The texture is mostly from the many almond pieces strewn about – the caramelization gives the almonds an extra sugary crunchy on the outset, and along with the almonds adds a nice crunch to the bar. Keep in mind that the caramelization also means that you’re basically crunching down on sugar so it might feel a little grainy as it dissolves, but that was not really an issue for me. If you like that sort of texture though, which I do, it’s a plus. Overall the texture works quite well, more than I expected.

The flavour is fairly sweet, as the milk chocolate Ritter uses often is. Add on to that the sweetness of the caramelized almonds and you have a pretty sweet bar – flavour-wise, not metaphorically or anything. The almond itself is not bad, and the caramelization reminds me of candied almonds I loved having as a kid. The only issue is when you add that to an already sweet milk chocolate, things get a bit dicey. If they used a darker variety of chocolate, this would have been excellent. Having said that I think if they found a way to tone down the sugar, this would have been an easy win.

My bias is pretty clear here – I prefer the whole almond variety that Ritter does. I would also have preferred if this had a dark chocolate variety, as that would have helped balance out the sweetness of the candied almonds, but I am sure plenty of people enjoy that level of sweet. It just ain’t me dawg. I would probably not get this for myself again, but this did get me craving the whole almond bars, so there’s that. If they come out with a dark chocolate version of this, I might just get that as well.