the sweet scrapbook

Both bars came in wrappers that were clearly branded and clearly stated what their content was. Unwrapped, they also looked like the other bars from Majestic or Kandia that I had tried before. The Majestic bar had those waves on top, while on top of each Kandia block was either the Kandia name or those words meant to appeal to the sensitive side of whoever unwrapps the bar - "iubire" (love), "emotie" (emotion), "tandrete" (tenderness), "bucurie" (joy), "sinceritate" (sincerity). The Majestic bar didn't smell of much from a distance. It was only when it was right under my nose that I could detect some faint strawberry and very faint cocoa odours. The Kandia bar wasn't so discrete. As soon as I unwrapped it, a strong strawberry smell (which seemed a little fake) hit me. After sniffing it, I could also detect some cocoa scents.

Side by side, there was a visible difference in colour between the two. The colour of the Kandia bar was a more chocolaty brown, while the Majestic bar had a more whitish brown colour (no, it wasn't bloom, the colour of the chocolate was lacking intensity). I also liked the luster of the Kandia bar better.

Cutting the Majestic bar into pieces, I could feel the strawberry smell growing stronger. I liked the look of the filling. I also tried cutting one of the Kandia blocks into two, but the result was a mess because the chocolate shell was a thin one in the case of the Kandia bar (as opposed to the Majestic bar, where it was thicker). The filling was slightly lighter in colour for the Kandia bar.

I tried the Majestic bar first. Strawberry flavoured chewy sugar bar. That's what it tasted like to me. It didn't seem to want to melt in the mouth so I had to chew it. That one piece that was a quarter to a third of the 28g bar (about 8g piece?) was throat-burning sweet. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the cream had a nice texture. Moving on to Kandia. Full of hope. It was impossible for anything to taste worse, right? The memory of the Kandia Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cream (Romanian original: Kandia ciocolata amaruie crema zmeura) made me reconsider that thought - I thought that raspberry cream had probably the most disgusting taste that I have ever found in any of the sweets I have ever tried. Such a pity, Kandia's dark chocolate is a nice dark chocolate. Coming back to the strawberry bar, the cream was similar to that found in the Majestic bar. It was extremely sweet. At least the chocolate was really chocolate, even though a sweet milk chocolate and not the greatest milk chocolate there is. But it was chocolate, not some horribly sweet, chewy brown thing that pretended to be chocolate. It did melt in the mouth and I could taste the cocoa. But the chocolate shell was thin and there was a lot of cream so the overall taste was a very sweet one.

Conclusions? I sure didn't pick the best bars for this. Majestic... well, it's probably the cheapest thing that can be found on the market. And it tastes like it. Kandia... they certainly have better bars.

Ingredients:
» Majestic Strawberry: sugar, hydrogenated vegetable fat, whey powder, glucose syrup, isoglucose, cocoa powder, humectant agent: sorbitol syrup, skimmed milk powder, emulsifiers: soy lecithin & polyglycerol polyricinoleate, inverters, acidifiers: citric acid & lactic acid, strawberry natural powder 0.04%, identical natural flavour: strawberry, ethanol, iodized salt, flavouring: vanillin, natural colouring: carmine, preservative: sorbic acid; strawberry cream: 43%; manufactured on equipment that processes milk, hazelnuts, peanuts, soy and gluten;
» Kandia Milk Chocolate Strawberry Cream: milk chocolate 62% (sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, whey powder, emulsifiers: soy lecithin & polyglycerol polyricinoleate, flavouring), strawberry filling 38% (sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, humectant agent: sorbitol syrup, acidifier: citric acid, strawberry powder 0.26%, stabiliser: invertase, natural flavouring, colour: anthocyanin; milk chocolate: min. 33.1% cocoa solids, min. 16.4% milk solids; contains: milk, soya; may contain traces of peanuts, hazelnuts, wheat, eggs.

Storage:
» Majestic Strawberry: keep dry and cool; avoid exposure to direct sunlight;
» Kandia Milk Chocolate Strawberry Cream: in a cool, dry place.

Nutritional info per 100g of product:
» Majestic Strawberry: 384.4kcal, protein 5.3g, fat 17.7g, carbohydrate 65g;
» Kandia Milk Chocolate Strawberry Cream: 485kcal, protein 3.5g, fat 22.6g (saturated 10.8g), carbohydrate 67.8g (sugars 60.8g), fibre 1.5g, sodium <0.1g.

Price:
» Majestic Strawberry: 0.28 lei (28g bar); that's the equivalent of €0.07/ £0.06/ $0.09;
» Kandia Milk Chocolate Strawberry Cream: 2.68 lei (100g bar); that's the equivalent of €0.63/ ₤0.54/ $0.86.