Freia Premium Passion Fruit

Freia is a long established Norwegian chocolate manufacturer, with a shop in Oslo since the late nineteenth century. Rebranded in Sweden and elsewhere as Marabou (due to existing copyright problems), Freia was bought out by Kraft some years ago. The shop still sells handmade chocolates under the Freia name but the bars and pre-packaged chocolates are all branded Kraft as well.

Sad to say that this ‘premium’ filled dark chocolate bar doesn’t carry information about cocoa content, and the passion fruit element is actually a mixture of passion fruit juice and banana puree mixed with sugar and crystallised. Thankfully the fruit flavour is nowhere near as aggressive as a certain German passion fruit bar I reviewed a long time ago, but everything about this bar is sweet. The filling is sweetened, and the fruity ‘bits’ add more sugar to the taste. The chocolate is slightly greasy, with very little in the way of depth of flavour. The finish is mainly fruit and not much cocoa although I could detect elements of dark, slightly bitter chocolate sitting between the sweetness of the filling and the extra sweetness of the fruity pieces.

I’ll be frank. This bar did nothing for me at all. None of the elements were in any way exceptional and it offered virtually nothing in terms of good flavour. The fruit was dulled by virtue of the way it was presented and the chocolate (with lovely extra vegetable fat) left me wishing I hadn’t popped a piece in my mouth. I just wanted a clean palate, and to forget this one altogether.

This bar is at best dull and at worst an appalling attempt at quality confectionery – the sort of thing British consumers might have considered sophisticated in 1972. I didn’t even keep the remainder to offer to friends and colleagues. It’s in a hotel bin in Portugal.

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