casali white rum-kokos
On a Saturday, at the beginning of June 2005, I went shopping with B., my boyfriend at the time. Of course, we both wanted something sweet. He suggested the Casali Original Rum-Kokos (the milk chocolate version). I was (and still am) a big fan of chocolate and rum combinations so I had been curious about those rum-filled chocolate balls ever since first seeing them. However, I had always been unsure about the coconut component and about their weird shiny look. But B. said they were very good... And that's how I first tried something from Casali. Hello, Koko!
I would later learn that the Casali story began almost 220 years ago in Trieste (at that time, a free port within the Habsburg Empire) when Joseph Casali began producing Rosolio (a liqueur made using rose petals), rum and punch. The business was relocated to Vienna in 1810. Casali would step into a new territory, that of confectionery manufacturing after being sold to the Beer family in 1913. 1955 was the year that Casali was sold again, this time to Franz Andres, the man who had founded Napoli in 1949. Casali Napoli thus became Austria's second largest confectionery manufacturer - the first being Manner (founded in 1890 in Vienna). In 1970, Manner (who, by the way, make some awesome gingerbread and wafers*) took over Casali Napoli.
Since 2005, I have also tried the Casali Schoko-Orangen from the Casali Zarte Schoko-Fruchte range and the two new additions to the "parrot range" - the Casali Pina Colada (with white chocolate) and the Casali Vodka-Orange (with milk chocolate).
In early 2009 (actually, it was the autumn of 2008 for Austria, but I only noticed this happening in Romania in February- March 2009), they redesigned the wrappers, making them less colourful. I liked the redesigned wrappers (I thought they looked more elegant)... with one exception - they also gave up the bigger colourful parrot and replaced it with... a smaller red one. I was very disappointed. In my mind, the colourful parrot on the old wrappers looked just like the colourful parrot of the rum-loving pirate from a cartoon adaptation of Treasure Island (it would be interesting to know just when did the parrot come to be paired with Casali; I used to think the link was pretty obvious since the book came out 30 years before Casali started producing sweets, but then I found this picture... and, while that bottle is obviously a post-1970 one, I have absolutely no idea just when did they start putting the parrot on their rum bottles). Without the colourful parrot, I just didn't care anymore for Casali's alcohol-filled balls.
I recently learned that they had discontinued the Casali Pina Colada and that they were also dropping their only alcohol-filled balls that I had not tried yet...
... the Casali White Rum-Kokos. I had never tried them before because... well, white chocolate was never my favourite kind of chocolate and they also exist in a milk chocolate version, so why bother? However, after trying some delicious (and addictive) white stuff from Lindt earlier this year, I became more willing to try zero cocoa mass chocolate (that's white chocolate). Given that, unlike the Casali Pina Colada, the Casali White Rum-Kokos could be still found in stores, I went and I bought a small bag (100g). I was in for quite a suprise - they've made the parrot colourful again! The wrappers are the same 2009 (2008 in Austria) wrappers, the parrot is still small, but it's colourful again. Just to make things clear for everyone, this is how the Casali wrappers looked before the redesign and this is how they looked after the redesign, with the red parrot. And below, you can see the pictures I took less than two weeks ago - the parrot has red, yellow and blue feathers again.
The white chocolate balls looked just like the original milk chocolate balls, except they were... well, obviously, white. They were shiny and quite irregular. Some of them were bigger than others and none of them was a perfect sphere. There were 17 chocolate balls in the 100g bag (that would mean around 6g each). I took one out of the bag and started sniffing it. It smelled like... nothing? I went past that and I took a bite... unfortunately, without being very careful while doing that. As a result, I was left with sticky fingers. One thing I did not know before biting into them is that, underneath the thick white chocolate layer, there is a thin milk chocolate layer (it can be seen in the second picture I took). There is nothing on the front of the bag that might indicate that, however, on the back, they describe them as "rum-coconut dragees with alcoholic filling 10%, covered with chocolate 9%, and white chocolate 55%". The first taste encountered was... mmm, rum! And quite strong even. And it was the first thing that was gone. I pressed the piece on my tongue against my palate, the white chocolate started to melt and I started feeling a milky taste. The coconut taste is a very faint one. What I did not like was that, after the rum and the white chocolate were gone, I was left with pieces from the sugar shell on my tongue. And that sugar crust was too sweet and grainy... quite an unpleasant feeling on my tongue and my palate. With the second white chocolate ball I could detect some scents of milk and burnt sugar before biting into it. After biting into it, the scent of rum hit stronger than the milk and burnt sugar scents. I tried eating this ball in a different way, so that the rum wouldn't be gone before the milk chocolate melted. In this way, the rum mixed with the melting white chocolate. It was a pleasant combination, dominated by the rum. Unfortunately, the sugar crust was again left last. I think that's the only thing I dislike about Rum-Kokos: the sugar shell around the liquid filling. Other than that, I've enjoyed all of Casali's alcohol-filled chocolate balls.
I tried eating them in various ways. Probably the craziest way was to put a whole chocolate ball in my mouth, let the white chocolate melt completely and only then break the sugar shell. Oh, that was quite an alcohol hit! I wonder after how many of these you're not allowed to drive anymore...
Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, dessicated coconut 7%, sweet whey powder, rum 4%, cocoa mass, flavourings, emulsifier: soya lecithin, glazing agents: gum arabic & shellac, glucose fructose syrup, wheat starch; may contain traces of nuts.
Storage: keep cool and dry.
Nutritional info per 100g of product: energy 495kcal, protein 3.6g, fat 25g, carbohydrates 59.9g, dietary fibre 1.1g.
Price: 4.99 lei (100g bag); that's the equivalent of €1.16/ ₤1.03/ $1.62.
* The "I bet you didn't know this" section: Manner wafers appear in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and they are one of Schwarzenegger's favorite snacks in real life.
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