Tirol Chocolate – Creme Brulee

Repetition is the mother of all learning, as the ancient Latin proverb tells us. I’m not sure that applies similarly to reviews of snacks. After all, most people barely have the attention span to read through one of my long winded reviews, let alone a repeat. While I normally don’t like to review something I’ve already had, I’ll make an exception sometimes if it’s different enough, or I liked it enough to feel it deserves a repeat. An encore if you will. Or perhaps there was an update to the formula, or something has drastically changed. I can’t really tell if that’s the case, but I’m hoping I’ll find out as I type all this out.

Last year I did a review of the French Bakery Mix and it was one of the more memorable mixes I’ve had so far. Not only was it unique, but it was for the most part tasty. What really stood out to me about that mix was good the creme brulee pieces were. That and the adorable pastry chef on the packaging. But I lucked out and found a bag of just the creme brulee flavour. While I’m sad that I don’t get to see more of that little pastry mascot, I am excited to get a full seven pieces of creme brulee.

Not as great as the baker mascot, but it gets the job done.

Perhaps it was the lack of creme brulee pieces in the original mix, or nostalgia panting a rosy picture, but I had a pretty good impression of them after that review. I can only hope it holds up, and I can give a more detailed and extensive review now that I have more to work with.

Strong smell of caramel and toffee.

The packaging on these is a little more plain, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts. The piece looks fairly similar to how it did the first time. Just based on the outer appearance, you can see the top is a thin layer of white chocolate with the liquid caramel ready to burst out just beneath the surface. There’s a layer below that which looks whitish, and the bottom is an orangish hue. Flipping it over the bottom is a light brown.

This piece has layers.

Cross section, the outer chocolate is fairly thin, with the flowy caramel at the top. The middle layer appears to be toffee, and the bottom is more chocolate. The whole thing has a somewhat eggy aroma to it, which makes sense given that the dessert makes extensive use of yolks. There’s also that unmistakable smell of burnt sugar. It seems to have a strong smell of that than it did the first time around.

It all kind of falls apart when you bite into it.

It might just be my memory being off because I’m getting up there in years, but the flavour of this seems much stronger than I remembered a year ago. The most distinct flavour that hits me first is that of the burnt sugar. Apart from the burnt sugar and caramel, the flavour of the chocolate itself is somewhat mild, and kind of reminds me of pancake batter. Oddly enough, this piece isn’t as sweet as I remember, but the burnt sugar flavour comes through stronger.

The texture is just as awesome as I remember – the gooey caramel and the satisfying snap and crunch of the toffee center work in tandem to simulate that top layer of the creme brulee. The remaining chocolate is soft enough to somewhat resemble the eggy heart of the dessert, and the whole thing works together magically.

My opinion on the flavour hasn’t really changed since, that is to say that I really like it. I would put this flavour in the “don’t miss” pile. If you can find a way to get this, even if it seems overpriced, I would still recommend getting it if you can. If you like creme brulee, I doubt you’ll regret paying a premium for this.

Pretty high calorie per piece. But worth it.

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