Cavalier Banana Cocoanibs

Here’s something a little bit ‘dangerous’ for you – that tricky combination of banana and chocolate. In theory the humble banana was made for chocolate and of course fresh bananas are great with chocolate. The problem seems to come about when chocolate makers try & put banana into a bar. At worst it can taste either totally artificial in a ‘perfumey’ way, or at other times the banana seems almost alcoholic.

I picked this Cavalier Banana Cocoanibs bar up in Egypt but it happens to be Belgian in origin. Oh, and note the ‘no added sugar’ label. There’s malitol in this bar. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of ingredients, I started to get a little worried when reading the list on the wrapper. When a chocolate bar’s first three listed ingredients are ‘sweetener (Malitol), vegetable fat, milk powder’ I tend to find myself rapidly downgrading my expectations!

Further down the list I discovered that the actual cacao content of this milk chocolate covered bar was 37% which cheered me up a bit – that’s Green & Blacks levels. The addition of cacao nibs for a little crunch and extra flavour seemed like a wise move as well, although that would very much depend on how you feel about little chunks of cacao nib floating around in your mouth. It all boiled down to the filling really – could this be one of those rare occasions when a banana and chocolate combination didn’t disappoint?

I hate to say this, but it was okay. Just okay really. The chocolate and cacao nibs added enough flavour to mean that the banana cream filling didn’t overwhelm, and for me that’s about as good as a banana and chocolate combination is going to get. It’s certainly one of the better versions I’ve tasted. The quest continues for the ultimate banana chocolate though.

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