the sweet scrapbook

Ironically, the first Heidi product that I fell in love with ten years ago is still a part of their current range, although it has been slightly altered. Ten years ago, Heidi Piccoletti came in blue boxes (sorry, I know it's not a great image, but it's the best one I could find on the internet) of various sizes - 180g, 90g and a really small one that only contained five chocolates (and since there were six kinds of Heidi Piccoletti chocolates, one of them was missing from that box). As I've just mentioned, there were six Heidi Piccoletti chocolates: Amaretto Carre (praline filled with amaretto cream and having a special decoration, I thought they were brilliant), Cappuccino (cappuccino filling in a dark chocolate cup, topped with whipped cream and cocoa powder), Deux Freres (two caramelized whole hazelnuts on top of a praline cream, everything being covered in milk chocolate), Mousse Brasil (my personal favourites, delicious orange mousse covered in dark chocolate decorated with edible gold), Nougat Carre (milk chocolate with gianduja filling, topped with a crunchy nougat layer) and Rocher (fine gianduja cream covered with fresh roasted almonds all enrobed in smooth milk chocolate). Today, they come in a brown box and the Nougat Carre has been replaced by another chocolate - see the Heidi Premium Pralines Piccoletti page on heidi.ro/ a screenshot of that page taken at the end of February 2010. Don't get me wrong, I also like the new look, although I suspect the new box might have the same problems as the Heidi Premium Pralines Truffles box. First of all, that box has too much air inside for my taste - they could have made it more compact. Then, I don't really like the kind of cardboard they use for the box. The Truffles and the Piccoletti are supposed to be premium Heidi offerings, so maybe they should pay more attention to the presentation and use the kind of box they use for Heidi Premium Pralines Select - that one truly looks premium.

Heidi Dark was among the first dark chocolate bars that I liked. I also have fond memories about the Heidi Rum, Raisin & Hazelnut bar and about the Heidi Pralinetti bar - see the Heidi chocolate bars around 2003. Heidi Pralinetti would later be the name of a range of boxed chocolates. At first containing only Heidi Pralinetti Hazelnuts and Heidi Pralinetti Cappuccino, the range was later expanded to include Heidi Pralinetti Dark, which instantly became my favourite chocolates of the range. Only until Wednesday, the 4th of June 2008, when I discovered another new addition to the range: Heidi Pralinetti Mousse Brasil (sorry, the colours look really wrong, but I could not find better pictures on the internet and I cannot find the DVD with my pictures from that time period either... I'll keep searching for it, though - I know I took better pictures). They were very much like the Mousse Brasil chocolates from the Heidi Piccoletti box, except they were round. Soon after, Heidi dropped the entire Pralinetti range.

About five years ago, Heidi launched a new range, Heidi Truffe, comprising three chocolate bars: Heidi Truffe Baileys Irish Cream, Heidi Truffe Calvados and Heidi Truffe Cointreau. I loved them, especially the Heidi Truffe Cointreau. The range was soon dropped.

Then a new range was launched just before the summer. It was called Heidi Fruit Delight and there were originally three chocolate bars in this range: Heidi Fruit Delight Blueberry, Heidi Fruit Delight Lemon and Heidi Fruit Delight Cherry. This range lasted a few summers with some changes each year. For example, in this Heidi Fruit Delight collage you can see that the original Heidi Fruit Delight Cherry was a dark chocolate with candied cherry pieces, while a later version of the same bar (see the rightmost picture) did not contain cherry pieces, but a cherry cream. And I vaguely remember a white chocolate bar with peaches that was added to the range later on. Sorry, I've just found it on the internet, and it looks like while it was a summer edition, it was not a part of the Heidi Fruit Delight range (or could it be that Summer Delight was another name for the Fruit Delight in later years?). I only tried the Heidi Fruit Delight Blueberry and the Heidi Fruit Delight Cherry and I thought thee were both very good. I did not try the Heidi Fruit Delight Lemon bar because that one was white chocolate and back then, I usually avoided white chocolate. It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I started giving the white stuff a chance. The range didn't come back for the summer of 2009. Another fine range from Heidi was dead and burried.

2nd of May 2008. My first encounter with a Heidi Creamy Amaretto bar (I know, crappy picture, but I just couldn't find a better one). It wasn't quite like the Heidi Truffe bars, but I still liked it. For me, it was the best chocolate bar that Heidi had at that point. Needless to say it lasted less than a year.

13th of December 2007. Somebody tipped me off that Heidi would launch two new fruitty chocolate bars - an orange one and a cherry one. Exactly five months later, on the 13th of May, I found them in a supermarket. The two new chocolates were Heidi Fruit Orange (white chocolate with candied orange slices) and Heidi Fruit Cherry (dark chocolate with candied sour cherries). I only tried the Heidi Fruit Cherry bar (again, because white chocolate wasn't something tempting at all for me at that time). It wasn't the greatest chocolate ever, it wasn't even the best Heidi chocolate ever, but, for me, it was still one of the best bars out of what Heidi had at the time. Well, I guess you already suspect what I'm going to say? Yes, the Heidi Fruit range didn't last for more than a year.

And I'm not even going to start complaining about the disappearance of bars such as the Heidi Pralinetti Cozonac - milk chocolate with a traditional walnut Romanian cake flavoured cream (yes, the traditional Romanian cake is the one pictured on the wrapper and it's called "cozonac"). That bar was a limited edition anyway.

Spring of 2009. Big changes started being made in the Heidi range. Dropping products, reshaping, renaming products, moving products from one range to another. And I did not like a lot of that. The Heidi Fruit range was dropped and so was the Heidi Creamy Amaretto bar. And the Heidi Fruit Delight range would not return for yet another summer, as it was being replaced by the Heidi ChocoVenture range. This range originally (May 2009) consisted of six bars: Heidi ChocoVenture Banana Split (white chocolate with banana pieces 5%), Heidi ChocoVenture Raspberry (white chocolate with raspberry pieces 4% and raspberry powder 3%), Heidi ChocoVenture Lemon & Mint (dark chocolate with lemon pieces and mint flavour; in the meanwhile, they have moved this into another range), Heidi ChocoVenture Strawberry (white chocolate with strawberry pieces 5%), Heidi ChocoVenture Pear (milk chocolate with pear pieces 12%), Heidi ChocoVenture Cranberry (milk chocolate with cranberry pieces 4%). A year later, Heidi ChocoVenture Coconut (white chocolate with coconut pieces 7%) would be added to the range. As white chocolate was never my kind of chocolate and I cannot stand mint, I chose to only try the Heidi ChocoVenture Pear and Heidi ChocoVenture Cranberry, which both tasted fine, though I was less than delighted with the texture and overall, none of them was as good as the Heidi Fruit Delight Blueberry or the Heidi Fruit Delight Cherry. Yes, I know these new combinations are more unusual than the dark chocolate and cherry/ blueberry pairings. But those old ones were much better!

Two months and a half later I would come across new chocolates from Heidi, also under the ChocoVenture name. The Heidi ChocoVenture range was going to be split into two: the first ones, the fruitty ones would be Heidi ChocoVenture Fruit, while the newer ones would be called Heidi ChocoVenture Natural. There were initially (July 2009) five such Heidi ChocoVenture Natural chocolate bars: Heidi ChocoVenture Hazelnuts & Flakes (white chocolate with crunchy flakes and hazelnut pieces), Heidi ChocoVenture Hazelnuts & Raisins (milk chocolate with hazelnut pieces and mellow raisins), Heidi ChocoVenture Walnuts & Honey (milk chocolate with tasty walnuts and luscious honey), Heidi ChocoVenture Dark & Hazelnuts (dark chocolate with caramelized hazelnut pieces), Heidi ChocoVenture Milk & Hazelnuts (milk chocolate with caramelized hazelnut pieces). A new bar, Heidi ChocoVenture Cocoa & Coffee (milk chocolate with crunchy real pieces of cocoa and coffee), was added to the Heidi ChocoVenture Natural range in February 2010. I suppose this range came out to replace similar (Heidi Milk Delight Walnut & Honey/ Heidi Crunchy Hazelnuts) or somewhat similar (Heidi Milk, Rum, Raisin & Hazelnut/ Heidi White, Raisin & Hazelnut) products that had been dropped.

Later on, Heidi would further expand the ChocoVenture range by adding a new sub-range, Bars, which would include their two 30g bars that I had known for so many years, Heidi Crispy Bar and Heidi Crunch Bar... now a little reshaped (flatter in the new version) and rebranded as Heidi ChocoVenture Bars. I distinctly remember the first time I've tried the Heidi Crispy Bar (wafer covered in milk chocolate with rice crisp)... and I really liked it. It was on Friday, the 11th of October 2002, after the Calculus and Programming Languages courses. Yes, that's why I remember. It was only the second week of my life as a student, fresh in a new city... oh, the memories! I never tried the Heidi Crunch Bar (raisins and hazelnuts in milk chocolate, all covered in white chocolate with rice crisp) because it was, well, with white chocolate. In addition to the two old ones, a third new 30g bar was added to the range - Heidi ChocoVenture Crunch Milk Bar (raisins and hazelnuts in milk chocolate, all covered in milk chocolate with rice crisp). That also meant that the old bars were renamed to include the type of chocolate used in the name: Crispy Milk Bar and Crunch White Bar.

Not long before learning about the Heidi ChocoVenture Natural bars, I had tried a couple of some Heidi bars from another new range - Heidi Bouquette. It comprised cream-filled chocolate bars and Lindor-like pralines (I shall say no more about the resemblance between the Bouquette pralines/ their predecessors, the now deceased Pralinetti on the one side and the Lindt's balls on the other side). Heidi had produced for a while a Creamy bar range (Heidi Creamy Amaretto, Heidi Creamy Hazelnuts, Heidi Creamy Tiramisu, Heidi Creamy Dark, Heidi Creamy Cappuccino) and all those flavours, except the only one that I really liked, the Amaretto, were now to be found in the Bouquette range (although the dark only in praline format). In addition to the Heidi Bouquette Dark pralines, the Heidi Bouquette Hazelnuts pralines and chocolate bar, the Heidi Bouquette Tiramisu pralines and chocolate bar and the Heidi Bouquette Cappuccino pralines and chocolate bar, it also introduced the Heidi Bouquette Yoghurt & Strawberry pralines and chocolate bar and the Heidi Bouquette Caramel chocolate bar. The two bars I chose to try were the Heidi Bouquette Caramel and the Heidi Bouquette Hazelnuts. They were fine bars, especially the caramel one, but they were below the Creamy Amaretto bar. Recently, the wrappers for the Heidi Bouquette bars have been redesigned and the Heidi Bouquette Caramel has been taken out. Boo!

The one range that Heidi decided to keep completely, without even changing its name (well, not exactly, I'll explain that in a moment) was their whole hazelnut range, Heidi Grand'Or. Precisely the range I wasn't interested in as I am not a hazelnut fan and, while I can be fine with hazelnut paste or with hazelnuts chopped into tiny pieces, I cannot take whole hazelnuts. And now to explain that "not exactly" - the Heidi Grand'Or range got expanded and divided into sub-ranges. The first sub-range, called Heidi Grand'Or Nuts, was the former Heidi Grand'Or range with three whole hazelnuts bars (white, milk, dark). The Heidi Grand'Or Nuts sub-range would later expand to include Heidi Grand'Or Nuts Florentine (milk chocolate with a layer of crunchy caramelized almond flakes). The second sub-range would include most of what had been previously known as the Heidi Dark range. I say "most of what had been" as one bar was left out. There used to be four chocolate bars in the Heidi Dark range: Heidi Dark Intense 75%, Heidi Dark Orange 65%, Heidi Dark Coffee 55% and Heidi Dark 45%. Then a Heidi Dark Chili 50% bar and a Heidi Dark Extreme 85% bar were added to the range. When Heidi Dark became Heidi Grand'Or Dark, the Heidi Dark 45% bar was dropped. And one more thing that I noticed was that, while they didn't have the cocoa percentage on the wrapper anymore, the Dark Orange and the Dark Coffee were now both made with 50% cocoa dark chocolate. Later on, at the beginning of this year, they moved the only dark bar from the Heidi ChocoVenture Fruit range (the Lemon & Mint) into the Heidi Grand'Or Dark range while slightly changing its name - it's now Heidi Grand'Or Dark Mint & Lemon. Also the Heidi Grand'Or Moments boxed chocolates appeared into the Heidi Grand'Or range.

The introduction of two more premium boxes - the Truffles (I was actually really excited when first seeing that truffle box box) and the Select was a good thing in my view. And then I tried them. They were fine, but not amazing. I would have liked the chocolate shell surrounding the creamy centre of the truffles (nice creamy centre, especially in the dark truffles) to have been thinner and creamier. And the only memorable thing about the Select was the box the chocolates came in and the Honey Desir.

After all those changes, Heidi didn't even have one simple milk chocolate or one simple white chocolate anymore. They did partially fix that by further expanding the Grand'Or range with a new sub-range, Heidi Grand'Or 250g, which includes a simple 250g milk chocolate, Heidi Grand'Or Milk 250g, and 250g versions of the milk and dark Heidi Grand'Or Nuts bars, Heidi Grand'Or Milk & Hazelnuts 250g and Heidi Grand'Or Dark & Hazelnuts 250g.

I know, I know... "short" personal history...

Considering all these things, I was not interested in anything Heidi at the beginning of last month. I had already tried everything I considered I might have liked (of course, stuff containing chili, mint, yogurt, cappuccino, whole hazelnuts was out of the question) and, excepting most of the Piccoletti box, nothing was truly awesome. And then I saw in a supermarket two new bars that somewhat resembled the two Heidi Fruit bars that disappeared more than a year ago. They were called Heidi Gourmette Cherry and Heidi Gourmette Orange. And they seemed to scream "try me!" So what did I do? I listened to them!

They each came in a carboard box that didn't look that much like the Heidi Fruit boxes. I liked the Heidi Gourmette boxes better, I thought they looked more elegant. However, inside their respective cardboard boxes, each chocolate was further protected by a plastic box that was identical to the one my Heidi Fruit Cherry (yes, the one that I've tried two and a half years ago) came in. Each of the two bars was divided into ten thin squares (like most other 100g Heidi chocolates).

I first opened the Heidi Gourmette Cherry (described as "whole candied cherries and the purest dark chocolate") box. Oh, that was the loveliest cherry smell I have ever felt in a chocolate. The chocolate itself looked really messy with all that cherry juice spilled around the cherries. But the smell was amazing. It didn't taste bad at all either. It was quite a sweet dark chocolate, I personally would have liked a more intense cocoa taste. However, I loved the fact that the cherry taste had got into the chocolate and that I could feel that sour cherry taste everywhere in the dark chocolate.

I opened the second box, the Heidi Gourmette Orange (described as "sweet milk chocolate and delicious candied orange coated in dark chocolate"), and I could feel a nice orange smell. It wasn't nearly as strong as the cherry smell from the first bar, but it was pleasant. And so was the taste. I particularly enjoyed the acidic orange.

Ingredients:
» Heidi Gourmette Cherry: sugar, candied cherries 27% (cherries 52%, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, sour cherry juice, acidity regulator: citric acid, dye: anthocyanin, flavours, preservative: sulphur dioxide), cocoa mass, cocoa butter, emulsifier: soy lecithin, flavours: natural vanilla extract & sour cherry; dark chocolate: min. 50% cocoa solids; may contain traces of nuts, gluten, milk and eggs.
» Heidi Gourmette Orange: sugar, candied orange 22% (orange 52.6%, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, acidity regulator: citric acid, preservative: potassium sorbate & sulphur dioxide), cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, skimmed milk powder, emulsifier: soy lecithin, flavors: natural vanilla extract & orange; dark chocolate: min. 50% cocoa; milk chocolate: min. 30% cocoa solids, min. 18% milk solids; may contain traces of nuts, gluten and eggs.

Storage: keep cool and dry.

Nutritional info per 100g of product:
» Heidi Gourmette Cherry: energy 474.63kcal, protein 6.25g, fat 26.43g (saturated 17.5g), carbohydrates 52.94g (sugars 51.01), fibre 1.93g, sodium 0.0009g.
» Heidi Gourmette Orange: energy 423.36kcal, protein 5.01g, fat 22.96g (saturated 15.11g), carbohydrates 49.17g (sugars 47.04), fibre 2.13g, sodium 0.0008g.

Price: 6.5 lei each 100g bar; that's the equivalent of €1.51/ ₤1.34/ $2.1.

Looking around heidi.ro while writing this, I've discovered three new interesting additions: Heidi Grand'Or Almonds, Heidi Grand'Or Dark Pear & Almond and Heidi Grand'Or Cranberry. I like almond taste and almond smell, but I'm not attracted to whole almonds. However, I'll certainly try the other two bars as soon as I can find them.