Craving Cereal...Choco-Squares #2

It's only the beginning, but I feel it time to go and calibrate my findings on cheap choco-squares by sampling the popular Kellog's Krave.

So I went out to the local shop with my pennies and purchased regular old vanilla style Krave and have just finished eating.

Now the unfortunate thing about all choco-squares and quite a lot of cereals is the boxes are becoming ever smaller, and at £2.99 per 375 gram this makes Krave much more expensive than Asda equivalent.

2 for 1

I noticed upon opening these pillows were significantly smaller than the Asda equivalent I previously munched down on, to this end I can only assume this must result in a higher chocolate density per mouthful.

















Before I move onto the all important taste test I want to draw attention back to the box and packaging with a few observations.

1. Kellog's tagline beneath their logo ''We don't make cereals for anyone else.'' Bit of a poor business ploy if they don't intend to sell to anyone except myself, I can think of no other meaning of that statement
2. In an inviting green worded label round the box (designed for us to make us think it's healthy) is the statement of the purpose of B vitamins and Iron, but next to it the words:

'Chocolate - For a delicious Chocolate experience'

Now this recursive statement is I guess okay, except when combined with the top description ''Contains a chocolate/hazelnut flavour.''

I suddenly got scared of eating this, a brown substance in the centre of my cereal I assumed to be chocolate is not chocolate, but chocolate flavoured...suspicious.

Right, to the consumption!

Pre-Consumption MAR

Naturally I began as anyone in the cereal business would, and measured the MAR (Milk Absorbance Ratio) and the value came out to be 0.23333 (recurring of course). Now this is already a startling revelation, for the same mass of cereal the MAR is about twice the value for the equivalent choco-squares from Asda (0.12) could this be predominantly due to the proportionality larger surface area because I'm using the same mass of cereals in both cases...probable, but let's not jump to conclusions.

The Dry Run

As any whisky drinker may say, try your product before adding the liquid. See below for a.....Sound Bite (chortle) 

And then adding milk a notable decrease in crunch-ability, quite expected.

The initial mouthful let my tongue explore a velvety surface, all apparent powder and roughness seemed to have vanished, the wetness of the milk and the smooth surface allowed the pillow to move freely around my taste-buds, however the flavour was quite bland.

Upon that crunch, oh that wonderful crunch, a firework of sensations rushed to my brain as my tastebuds were hit by a sweet chocolatey taste, and true to advertising hints of hazlenut. Now despite not being real chocolate, but chocolate flavour, my brain didn't care so much and was tricked into releasing endorphins and serotonin making me feel happy with myself and oblivious to the fact I am eating cereal at eight pm.

This flavour didn't linger, it quickly dissolved into the background of my sense making me want more, forcing me to repeat this menagerie of milk and mouth. Next thing I knew it was over, I was left with a yellowish milky substance at the bottom of the bowl, which was very sweet, but not sickly sweet. 

Overall I was pleased with the inner chocolatey taste provided, and when purchasing choco-squares that is but half of what I expect (the other hald being a square shape).  I was most won over by the smooth outer shell, smooth like those fancy socks you can buy that are so smooth and fluffy, yet degrade after one wash (you know the ones). Despite this smoothness around the shell, and for it's small size, I felt for sure with such a high MAR the shell would be a mush distasteful to chew. I was wrong, as evident from the sound clip, it still yielded a satisfying crunch which left me yearning for more Krave.

Final Thoughts

Price: 4/10 Despite being ludicrously expensive, it is a trend that is becoming more apparent, and supermarkets know this and often do some great deals to make them reasonably priced.
Flavour: 8/10 That delicuous imitation chocolate flavouring must have done something making me want more..very clever Kellog's
CRUNCH: 8/10  The dryness/crunch is a hard metric to score, some times a wet cereal is ideal, others crunchy is necessary. In this case I gave an 8 as i enjoyed the crunch despite the high MAR, and I can't stress enough the smoothness of the shell. Try it yourself.

Overall 6.5/10

I feel this cereal is superior in taste and form to it's counterpart, however I do not believe it is worth being ~3x the price.

Cereal #1 - Chocolatey Squares

Whoever invented the concept of chocolatey squares deserves a medal.
There are however so many varieties, do I go for well branded 'Krave' which is costly, or is there better choice in cheaper alternatives. Who has the time and effort to find out? Well, I have nothing better to do, so why not.
Through this I'm going to sample and review a variety of chocolatey squares and come up with the best option.

So let's dig in.

Cereal # 1
The first chocolatey squares I have acquired is Asda ''Chosen by you'' Choco Squares (see figure 1). The name sort of implies they must be good, as they were chosen by you, the well knowing public, so I was quite excited to open the box.

Figure 1: How can you refuse an offer from a cereal bear

Now first a few details:

• Asda choco squares were marked at the time of purchase (02/01/14) at 97 pence! Which when compared to a leading brand of choco squares (Krave) at £2.78, is a massive saving. So do we sacrifice taste and substance for a sub-pound cereal?

• The next detail I'd like to introduce is the concept of what I call the Milk Absorption Ratio (MAR) illustrated in figure 2. This is a number between 0 and 1 and is calculated in the following way:
• Add known mass / volume of milk to cereal.
• Wait 30seconds.
• Pass milk cereal complex through a sieve.
• Measure mass of milk remaining.
• Re-add milk to cereal.
• Enjoy cereal.

Figure 2: "I know of only one way to eat cereal, with science'':- Abraham Lincoln

Quite a simple calculation that will tell us how much milk is absorbed into the cereal, giving us a way of quantifying how soggy a cereal can be. There are other things I'm working on, notably a spectroscopic technique to measure colour change of milk post cereal consumption to determine how flavoursome leftover milk will be.

Right, back to the cereal.

First off, the calculated MAR was 0.12, so my guess in advance would be a fairly dry cereal. An initial taste with no milk produced quite a crumbly, powdery substance in my mouth, with little taste of chocolate, the dryness suppressed the senses, and with a MAR of merely 0.12, I thought little would change upon addition of semi-skimmed bovine lactate emulsion.

I was wrong, the choco-squares were surprisingly tasty, the 'pillow' was quite thick and managed to absorb some milk round the outer shell, that couldn't quite diffuse all the way through. The result of this gave a soft chewable exterior, but still a distinct satisfying crunch towards the middle. 

But what of the chocolate.

The thickness of the pillow left little room for much of a chocolatey core, and what chocolate was present didn't possess the soft consistency of Nutella or the inside bit of a Ferrero Rocher one would hope. Despite this, there was enough chocolate to satisfy my taste-buds giving occasions of a sweet almost almond flavour. 

So as time is fleeting i'll get to the final numerical review, which is measured out of 10 as my satisfaction with the variables labelled.

Price: 9/10 - I was overjoyed to see a sub-pound chocolatey square cereal 

Dryness:  6/10 - Cereal gave a satisfying crunchy texture, but was not too dry, nor too soggy.

Flavour: 5/10 -  quite sweet, although not in a chocolatey sense, I'm a bit suspicious of the no artificial flavourings remark, but hey ho.

Overall   6/10

Good job Asda, or should I say the public for choosing it.