The Grown Up Chocolate Company Fruit & Nut Hunky Dory

Today's review comes courtesy of The Grown Up Chocolate Company, who kindly sent me some of their bars for review recently.

The Grown Up Chocolate Co are a small company producing hand-made luxury chocolate bars in small batches using only quality ingredients. They set up their business in 2011 and have grown in popularity ever since. For more info do check out their website here: http://www.thegrownupchocolatecompany.co.uk/about/

The idea behind Grown Up Chocolate Bars is that they're reminiscent of the chocolate bars we ate as children, but with an adult twist. I think they've certainly succeeded - all their bars are like much higher quality versions of a lot of mainstream chocolate bars, for example they do a coconut bar that is similar to a Bounty bar, but is much nicer.

Today's review is for their Fruit & Nut Hunky Dory. Firstly I have to comment on the packaging; the design is very quirky and..."different". I've never seen any chocolate brands use such a concept before, and it certainly stands out. It's not my cup of tea personally, but I'm sure lots of people will appreciate it - let me know what you think in the comments!

The description for this bar set my expectations very high: "A decadent muddle of nuts and fruit on a bed of milk chocolate gianduja, enrobed in luxury milk chocolate". Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Opening up the box, the chocolate comes in two pieces in a plastic tray. They looked very chunky and knobbly; you can tell they are hand-made because they lack the precision perfection of mainstream chocolate bars. Which is a good thing - I like my chocolates knobbly and chunky!

Biting into one of the pieces I was met with the delicious taste of praline - it was very smooth and nutty. And then the fruit (cranberries and citrus peel) and nuts (hazelnuts and almonds) came to the party, adding chewiness and crunch. They were really fresh, and tasted delightful combined with the praline. My favourite part of the whole bar though was the citrus peel, which I thought was really tasty with the other ingredients and made a lovely change from raisins, which you usually get in chocolate bars. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more of it to be honest.

Make no mistake, this is a very rich and indulgent bar. My only issue was that there was an uneven distribution of fruit and nuts, but I guess that's the charm of handmade chocolates - there's no machines to robotically calculate the exact ratio of ingredients in each bar!

Overall, a lovely indulgent bar from The Grown Up Chocolate Company and one I would love to try again. I wish they were more widely available because I'd happily buy them over most other mainstream chocolate options.

Allergy advice: Contains milk, nuts, soya. May contain traces of gluten and peanuts.
Price: £2.50.

You can check out The Grown Up Chocolate Company's bar range here:

http://thegrownupchocolatecompany.com/acatalog/Our_Delicious_Bars.html

Plus they are also available at Fortnum & Mason and Booths stores.

*The Grown Up Chocolate Company sent me these bars for an honest review and all views expressed are my own. 

Please stay tuned for more Grown Up Chocolate Company reviews!