Recently, Nestle launched their range of premium chocolated Les Recettes De L'Atelier into Sainsbury's stores. This range has proven very popular in Europe so they are testing the waters in the UK it seems. There's some interesting flavours in the range, most notably L'atelier Blonde Chocolate with Roasted Almonds and Hazelnuts, although at £3.50 per large bar I have been put off trying it. A bit more reasonably priced is this thinner Dark Chocolate Sharing Bar with Salted Caramel pieces, usually £2 but reduced to £1.50 per 115g bar recently.
Most of the bars in the range have the added ingredients clearly visible on top, with the salted caramel pieces clearly visible on this one:
The bar can be broken into 5 pieces, although it's a bit difficult to get a clean split.
The underside has an unusual pattern on it, presumably due to how it is moulded:
Unfortunately, despite being dark chocolate this bar isn't suitable for vegans as it contains butterfat and cream, boo! The percentage of cocoa solids is listed as 54% minimum.
Taking a bite, it has a nice sweet flavor and was quite rich and flavoursome, moreso than I was expecting for such a low percentage of cocoa. The butterfat adds a pleasant buttery creaminess, with the caramel pieces providing bursts of sweet crunch whilst eating. They didn't taste particularly like salted caramel although there was the faintest hint of salt there. Overall, this is a pretty nice tasting bar and the salted caramel definitely makes it a bit different from most types of dark chocolate, although I'm not sure it's better than Lindt Dark Crunchy Caramel.
All in all, not a bad bar and this looks visually interesting but it's not something I would say justifies a very high price tag. £1.50 is about right as a standard price so I would only recommend buying this when it's on special offer.
Ingredients: cocoa mass, sugar, salted caramel pieces (8%) (sugar, cream powder, whole milk powder, salt, cocoa butter, whey powder, natural flavouring), butterfat, emulsifier sunflower lecithin.
Nutrition (per 100g): 547 Calories, 34.5g Fat, 47.2g Carbohydrates, 44g Sugars, 7.8g Protein.
8 out of 10.
