Notes on chocolate: top marks, sparks fly at M&S
Recently, for reasons we need not go into here, I hadn’t really been out much, having been confined to rest by an imaginary matron. So when my friend, Tamsin, offered to take me to a state-of-the-art Marks & Spencer in the next county (we live in the countryside) I jumped at the chance.
I discovered that M&S has started doing new chocolate and not told me about it!
It’s not as if I’ve never been to huge M&S in London – I’m a regular visitor to both of the big branches along Oxford Street. But not lately, because: matron.
There is something intoxicating about being out and about after being largely confined to the house, isn’t there? I was like an overexcited child. Look at the people! Look at all the things!
This is when I discovered that M&S has started doing new chocolate and not told me about it. It’s called, imaginatively, CHOC MARKS (ludicrous) and with its bright and brash packaging it looks, shall we say, familiar… But I couldn’t possibly comment on this. The bars come in £1.30/50g or from £3/180g. This is not craft chocolate by any stretch of the imagination. The Milk bar is 35% cocoa (34% for the inclusion bars, below), and the Dark is 55% cocoa (it reminded me of Bourneville, which I thought was dark dark chocolate growing up, but now tastes insanely sweet).
The inclusion bars (pictured, £3.50) involve: one with pretzels, caramel, almond nougat and sea salt; another with caramel, shortbread and chocolate crispies; and a surprising (if highly divisive as you might imagine) favourite – chocolate candy beans, orange jellies and popping candy. This latter was all shades of wrong and yet… While you’re in store, nab the Big Daddy, £6.50/300g, a massive brick of sin involving chocolate, caramel and peanuts.
