My first solo chocolate purchase was a Flake. My cousin Mary had taken me to the local newsagent and I was heady with autonomous choice. My parents had a café and the only chocolate bars we sold (and I had ready access to) were Cadbury’s Fingers or Bar Six; I was sick of both, thus they held no new-purchase glamour. What I wanted was a Flake. But I faltered when it came to it. Should I really buy the Flake which had a high percent wastage (all that flakeage) but a superb ad campaign full of women with flowing hair, cheesecloth skirts and caravans, or the more sensible flake-with-a-cardigan, also known as a Ripple? In the end, I bought both.
Sadly, those days are over. None of those kind of bars (called ‘countlines’ in the trade) really interest me any more. At a push a Twirl – the king of countlines – or a thinly sliced, chilled Snickers, but otherwise they are too sweet for me.
Although moulded chocolate bars have really come on in recent years – more choice, better chocolate, less sugar to cocoa – confectionery bars haven’t, other than the established brands bringing out different versions, still loaded with sugar and a low cocoa content.
I have searched high and low for a better-quality countline (criteria: available to buy singly; higher cocoa content; first ingredient not sugar) and there is only one I want to recommend: Harris & James Hazeleta (£1.75) : a 40% cocoa domed chocolate bar, replete with hazelnut praline and wafer pieces. It’s not widely available, but hopefully that will soon change.
