Tell them about the honey, mummy! (Dubble Bar)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	Dubble Bar
Date:	06/11/09 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gorgeous honey taste, Fairtrade, inexpensive

Disadvantages: Vague about its Comic Relief contribution, only 40g

I've been meaning to review the Dubble bar for quite a while. I first came across it in Oxfam shops, and that's where you still seem most likely to find it. My home town doesn't have an Oxfam, however, so around here the Co-op is the place to go to find one: mine cost 49p. It's very much branded as an "ethical" bar: not only does it use Fairtrade cocoa, sugar and vanilla - making 71% Fairtrade ingredients in all - but it also bears the Comic Relief logo, though (somewhat unimpressively) there's no indication on the wrapper of how Comic Relief specifically is inolved.

The bar is made by Divine, who also sell some very nice chocolate under their own name. As far as I can tell, Dubble is produced in the UK, and the bar weighs a slightly stingy 40 grams. It packs 210 kcal, which doesn't sound huge but when converted into kcal per 100g is actually slightly above average. As well as being Fairtrade it's also suitable for vegetarians, though obviously not for vegans. Its cocoa and milk solids contents are 27% and 20% respectively: pretty average for this sort of bar.

The Dubble bar's wrapper design is slightly odd: as far as I can tell, the purple areas to the sides are supposed to be stage curtains, while the red "DUBBLE" logo is apparently acting in some sort of comic play, judging by the hilariously-placed banana skin at the bottom. I can only assume that this is to do with the Comic Relief link, but at any rate it's strange. The actual packaging is the usual silver-foil single-layer wrapper; there's nothing of particular interest here.

Interest does, however, lurk within, even if the actual design of two large flat chunks isn't terribly inspired. Against expectations for a British chocolate bar, the Dubble does not contain any vegetable fat, and indeed it smells much more like a Lindt bar or something like that than it does like most of its British rivals. It does, however, contain honey, to stick the crisped rice together; this is gathered at the bottom of the bar, with solid chocolate higher up. The honey aroma is very noticeable even before you bite into the bar, and I like it.

Eating the Dubble is quite satisfying: there's a fair bit of resistance, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with very weak teeth, but the large mass of solid chocolate does feel nicely substantial. The honey I mentioned earlier is strongly in evidence when you attack the crisped rice, and it lingers for a long time in the (nice, smooth) aftertaste: this is certainly not a bar to buy if you're not fond of the taste of honey. My only real complaint about the texture is that the crisped rice could have been very slightly crispier.

The Dubble is not a bad bar at all, this, even before considering its ethical characteristics. Weighing just 40g as it does, it doesn't fill you up as much as some, but that lingering honey taste does mean the memory of it will last in your mouth for a while. The chocolate itself is not quite as nice as the benchmark Dairy Milk (I can already hear the chocolate purists spluttering!) but is well up with the second rank of solid chocolate brands. Considering all this, I can happily recommend the Dubble bar: perhaps not ravingly so, but certainly without any serious qualms.

Summary: Something ethical and a bit different without breaking the bank