Before I visited the William Curley store in Belgravia I was advised to try the William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Mou Bar. In my haste I picked up the William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Bar instead. Having looked on the website the only difference I could see is that the Mou bar offers two portioned bars in one whilst the non-Mou bar is a long bar with portioned grooves in it.
Both the William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Bar and William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Mou Bar come in almost identical packaging – a sleek black rectangular box with yellow and gold coloured print on it. It’s certainly one of the most poshest chocolate bars I’ve ever seen! I feel that the gold coloured print helps to add a luxurious touch, and this bar would certainly make a great gift.
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Inside the box, the William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Bar is wrapped snugly in gold coloured foiled paper, almost like a precious gift. From looking at the box you know that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill chocolate bar and the packaging certainly helps to continue the excitement as you unwrap the treasure.
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The bar itself is long, weighs around 45 grams and is grooved into five portions. These grooves are shallow so there aren’t five separate chunks of chocolate. The top and sides of the bar are patterned almost like tree bark. Perhaps this is a hint to the natural ingredients of the bar as it is made without artificial preservatives. In fact the ingredients list is actually quite short.
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The bar itself is made of a quality dark chocolate. It’s not bitter but similarly not sweet. The sweetness comes from the luscious soft caramel which is very creamy and gooey. The caramel tastes different to that used in the millionaire’s bar but perhaps that’s more to do with the fact that in this bar it’s not interfered with by shortbread. Here it’s simply a sweet caramel contrasted with a dark chocolate, two very clean flavours blended perfectly.
I couldn’t detect any salt in the caramel which is the mark of a good recipe as the Brittany sea salt in this bar is used to accentuate existing flavours, and not to introduce new ones.
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Overall, the William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Bar is a good bar done well. It plays on two clean and classic flavours which have been balanced together in harmony. If you want a bar that demonstrates that simple quality ingredients can still be exciting then this is the one for you.
Disclosure: I paid £4.50 for this William Curley Sea Salt Caramel Bar from their London Belgravia store and wasn’t asked for a review.
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