Unibic Choco Kiss Cookies

Everyone's riding the centre-filled cookie wave, and the latest brand to join the bandwagon is Unibic. This Australian brand has been in India since 2004, and today has a wide pan-Indian reach through a number of products distributed through supermarkets and local retail stores. Given the variety of products, I'm surprised this is turning out to be the first review of a Unibic product.

It is, however, no surprise that their centre-filled cookies, called Choco Kiss caught my eye since everyone is making these and the category seems to be doing really well. So far, I've reviewed Sunfeast's Dark Fantasy Choco Fills, Sunfeast's Dark Fantasy Choco Meltz, Parle's Golden Arcs Choco Filled Rolls. The Unibic Choco Kiss cookies resembles Sunfeast's primary offering in this category, Dark Fantasy Choco Fills more than any other.

It's a plain cookie filled with liquid chocolate in the centre and scores over Parle's product, which has a gooey, but not runny chocolate filling. While Unibic's chocolate filling doesn't score too high on taste, one has to give it points for a very crumbly cookie. However, Sunfeast trumps both in terms of an overall taste experience.

Unibic's Choco Kiss Cookies are individually packed and a 75g box comprises six cookies. Priced at INR 35, each cookie comes to about Rs. 5.80. This makes it the costliest product in the category as compared to Rs 5 apiece for Sunfeast's Choco Fills and Rs 3 apiece for Parle's Golden Arcs Choco Rolls. Sunfeast's Choco Meltz is a more premium product with a chocolate coating on the outside and is priced around Rs. 7 per piece. Unibic, therefore, needs to find another USP if it is to pose any real competition to the existing players. For now, though, they can be happy with one happy tiny customer.

RATING: 3/5

Nestle Nescau - Chocolate Energy Biscuits

What is it about the imported variety of Nestle biscuits that is so... weird? I remember hating Bono just as much. Nestle's Nescau comes all the way from Sao Paulo, Brazil and is apparently a variation of energy biscuits. Energia Que Da Gosto in Portuguese roughly translates to 'Taste that energy'. Although, the biscuits seem to have no glucose or any special component that might give the said energy.

The wheat flour, though, is fortified with iron and folic acid, and there are other regular ingredients like sugar, cocoa, vegetable oil, flavouring, milk powder, etc. I fail to see how such commonplace components can create such hideous flavours. The biscuit isn't tastleless, it is positively cardboard-y.

The cream is not rough with a sugary, crude taste. The taste of chocolate is weak, if anything. Reminds me of the cheapest kind of chocolates sold at local groceries here. You definitely shouldn't be paying INR 50 for a 140 g pack, however enticing the packaging may look. I know it has a superhero appeal, but the taste is anything but super.


RATING: 1/5

Cadbury Oreo Choco Crème

I'm back with another review of 'The World's No. 1 (overrated) Biscuit'; this time, it's the Oreo Choco Crème. I've tasted all varieties of Oreo, including Vanilla cream, Strawberry cream, Blueberry cream and Oreo Double Delight, which I have reviewed on Chocosophy, and I maintain there are better products out there. The Oreo Choco Crème is just another ho-hum variation from Cadbury's (now Mondelez International) Oreo stables.  

This classic sandwich biscuit comes with two thin dark chocolate biscuits with a layer of chocolate cream in between. The chocolate cream is lame with little flavour and all one gets in their mouth is a load of sugary goo. The cookie seems to have more chocolate than the cream! You do not want to twist-lick-dunk this shit, especially the lick part.

What is good news, though, is that Oreo in India has arrived at a very competitive pricing point with a 150g pack (including the 30g Free) costing only INR 30. I think this makes it cheaper than or at par with most other Indian products. So you won't be spending much and still be indulging in a fancy schmancy brand, if you so wish. I, for one, give it a thumbs down.


RATING: 2.5/5

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy Choco Meltz

I'll have to admit that I'm quite partial to the ITC Sunfeast's Dark Fantasy brand. While their other food products have fared an average, they've cracked it with Dark Fantasy. I've reviewed their Chocolate Cream biscuits and centre-filled cookies, Choco Fills, before, and I've bought them over and over. They recently launched a variation of Choco Fills called Choco Meltz and it immediately went into my shopping cart.

Basically, Choco Meltz are a richer version of Choco Fills, because these cookies have chocolate not just on the inside, but outside as well. It might be one of the first indigenous product, inspired by the famous Tim Tam format. Tim Tams are chocolate-coated cookies that relatives from the US/UK brought you during their annual visits. But Tim Tams are now easily available here too. More about that later.

Choco Meltz basically are the chocolatiest biscuits there can be and are quite awesome. And here's what you do to make them awesome-er. Dunk them in hot chai or coffee to let the top layer of chocolate melt a little and go mmm...But frankly, it's a little overwhelming. As a product concept, I think I prefer Choco Fills to Choco Meltz, because the former has a crisp cookie shell that complements the filling. In the case of Choco Meltz, the outer coating of the chocolate dominates, and the inside filling is kinda lost. But hey, no one died of an occasional chocolate overdose, right?

A 120g pack costs INR 60 and has 6-7 individually packed cookies. Try it, I say.


RATING: 3.5/5

Oreo Double Delight

Whatever they do to the Oreo, I'm going to think they are overrated. Since the world-famous brand was launched in India in 2011 (almost a 100 years after it was first created in 1912, FYI), it has been aggressively promoted. So despite tough competition from brands like Sunfeast, Britannia and Parle, Cadbury India (owned by Mondelez International; previously Kraft Foods) has managed to keeping the sales figures up In India.

While the original Oreo recipe calls for dark chocolate sandwich cookies with vanilla creme in between, it brings out variations from time to time. The dark chocolate cream Oreo is easily available and I even remember seeing a blueberry/ blackcurrant variety at a store. Speaking of varieties, I spotted this one recently. The Double Delight Oreo has two kinds of cream  - chocolate and peanut butter.

Both are equally lame. The chocolate cream tastes nothing like chocolate, so with the peanut butter cream. It has a vague sort of flavour and the plain vanilla is definitely better. The cookie remains the same; made of dark chocolate and the familiar logo-flowers-dots-and-dashes design. This version has been made and exported from Singapore, and Oreo releases such limited edition flavours the world over from time to time.

The 137 g pack costs INR 65, and definitely something you can give a miss. Unless, of course, you are among the Oreo fanatics who make it the highest selling biscuit in the whole world.

Chew on this:If every Oreo Biscuit ever made were stacked on top of each other, the pile would reach to the moon and back more than five times!

RATING: 2.5/5

Priyagold Italiano Premium Choco Cookies

Wouldja look that this dandy version of Priyagold!? The brand, to me, has always seemed like the poor man's Britannia, selling similar products at lower prices. Because the brand image, the commercials and the packaging have also been consistently aimed at the LIG, it was surprising to see packaging like this from them. The pretty blue box comes with a fancyass name; although what Italy has to do with chocolate chip cookies is anyone's guess. (Also funny because it is obviously inspired by Hide & Seek's Milano!)

Priyagold is the brand under which Surya Food & Agro Limited sells biscuits and more recently, they've ventured into chocolate and candy manufacturing. The company has been around since 1992 and has been a steady contender in the biscuit segment. The Italiano Premium Choco Cookies (*eyeroll*) are the latest from their shed and I must say, they've come quite far in terms of presentation and quality. The card paper box has two separate golden packs of cookies lined on plastic trays. The flimsy trays don't do much in terms of keeping all the cookies intact, but this is standard practice.

The cookies were also rather nice and crumbly, albeit a little on the sweeter side. But if I were to start expecting subtler flavours from Priyagold just because they gold their packaging right, that would be too much. There are a fair number of chocolate chips, but these cannot hold a candle to Parle's Chocolate Chip offerings like Hide & Seek, Milano, etc.

But given that they cost only INR 35 for a 150g pack, they definitely offer value for money and if the brand continues this pretty trend, it should catch up with the rivals soon.

RATING: 3/5

Mc Vities Digestive Chocolate Creams

The good thing about being a chocolate blogger is that chocolate never goes out of fashion. There is never a dearth of new chocolate-based products, because chocolate can never go wrong... or so the brands like to think. It's like a company wakes up one fine morning and says, Hey, I need to increase sales...let's slather some chocolate on an existing product and bingo! Well, because there are chocolate fanatics like me, the idea works most times, but not always.

Here's a classic case in point. I really don't understand why Mc Vities decided to go down the chocolate route and dilute its Digestive category. In my opinion, Digestive biscuits, which are usually associated with healthy eating, don't really sit well with chocolate. While a lot of biscuit brands make Digestives and this is probably a good advantage over competition, it definitely does disservice to its healthy food identity.

Sadly, the end product is not great either. The biscuits are soggier because of the moist chocolate cream, taking away the characteristic crunchiness one associates with Digestives. The chocolate cream itself is also average, but much better than the kind they have in their Choco Creams product.The packaging is the only attractive thing about this product. A 100 g pack costs INR 25, which is on a slightly higher side than products in the category. But then again, one isn't sure what category to place this product in. Meh.

RATING: 2.5/5

Parle Golden Arcs Choco Filled Rolls

This curiously unbranded product has been in the market for a while now and thanks to its promoted page on Facebook, has a great fan following. What I want to know is why Parle doesn't want its name stated clearly on the packet. It may have to do with Parle's primary positioning as a 'affordable confectioneries' brand, and Golden Arcs doesn't exactly fall in that category. Although at INR 35 for a 150 g pack is cheap, it is definitely not in the Parle G category - a product most associated with Parle.

Golden Arcs obviously wants to compete with the chocolate-filled cookie category, which has become very popular lately, with products such as Sunfeast's Choco Fills entering the market. Golden Arcs is much more competitively priced and will offer stiff competition to high priced products in the segment. Not to forget, it offers a number of fruit flavoured varieties, as opposed to the competition that offers only chocolate.

As for quality, they aren't far behind, though the packaging is a little sloppy. The plastic tray inside my pack was breaking apart, as you can see in the picture above. But the pack is designed well and looks premium.

The product itself is also decent, shaped square with a crunchy and not-too-dense cookie exterior. The inside is filled with gooey chocolate, which is rather sweet to taste. But the biscuit and chocolate come together well and make for a decent enough product. While Parle's Golden Arcs aren't quite at par with Choco Fills, their pricing point is their winner. Chocosophy recommends!

RATING: 3/5

Nestle Bono Chocolate Biscuit

This one seems to have travelled all the way from Brasil to my local supermarket and to my kitchen and into my mouth. And boy, what a wasted trip! I picked up a pack of Nestle Bono impressed by the fancy packaging, and also because I haven't reviewed imported chocolate biscuits in a while. And what a pity that Nestle, Brasil should dent the brand's image with this sorry product.

So, beneath this pretty pack are some of the lousiest chocolate sandwich biscuits I've reviewed. The cookie is overdone, and that makes it taste slightly burnt. It might be a faulty batch, but that's just too bad. One would expect stringent quality control from a brand this big. 

Coming to the cream, there's very little of it in every sandwich. The layer of dark-ish chocolate is so thin in the sandwich that the taste hardly registers. So I did what all good children should do; licked the cream straight off the cookie and that didn't impress me much either. A complete waste for my INR 50 for a 200 g pack. So, here's rating it poorly for taste, value for money and quality.

RATING: 1.5/5

Baker Street Choco Nut Cookies

I saw this attractive box of cookies at a local supermarket and picked it up to see how much it would fare on a scale of local bakery ka maal to multinational-made biscuits. The store had a number of products from this new brand and I was surprised at the variety. Of course I chose the Choco Nut cookies, because CHOCOLATE!

The makers turned out to be some Sarjena Foods Pvt. Ltd. from Mumbai and one ought to laud them for churning out a fair variety and taking over supermarket shelves almost overnight. Yes, I know those spaces can be bought, but they've managed to hang around for a while now. On my subsequent trips to other supermarkets, I saw more Baker Street products. Also, hat tip for a wonderful choice of brand name, an ISO certification, and packaging, which has all the trappings of fancyass brands - you know, nutrition chart and all. Only the ingredients list had no mention of nuts in the said choco NUT cookies. :D

That, however, makes the cookies no less good. Although more bakery than multinational, the cookies were rather appealing in terms of quantity and quality. A 200 g pack costing INR 45 (INR 50 outside Mumbai)  has about 20 cookies that are crunchy, nutty and somewhat chocolate-y. They're a little greasy to touch, but taste good enough for one to ignore that. Apparently, the brand also exports to the US, Canada, Australia, the Middle East and the far East, if their website is to be believed. I won't go as far as to say, they're export quality, but they sure are a good attempt by a homegrown brand to make better than average quality stuff.

RATING: 3.5/5

Mc Vitie's Choco Cream biscuits

McVitie's is over a century-old biscuit-making company, with a global presence. But they're now part of the UK-based United Biscuits group and are produced and marketed in India by them since 2009. McVitie's has a small-ish range of biscuits in India and I daresay they aren't the best ones around. There has been some aggressive marketing going on with freebies on offer, but a basic lack of quality can't take one too far.

Especially sad are their chocolate cream biscuits that they called Mc Vitie's Choco Creams. Insipid chocolate cream inside equally insipid chocolate biscuits makes for (no prizes for guessing!) insipid chocolate cream biscuits. The pack claims the product has no artificial colours, which might explain the lack of 'character'. While it is a good thing, tasteless and colourless food just isn't appealing.

They make up for it with their packaging, though. Bright colours and yes, Doraemon on the packet make it an easy pick-me-up. The INR 10 pack weighs 63 g and has just about six biscuits and a small Doraemon jigsaw puzzle. Cute, but the pieces and interest are easily lost.

Sunfeast Dream Cream Bourbon biscuits

I've said this before and I'll say it again, ITC's Sunfeast is not the best of biscuit brands barring one or two exceptional products. ITC forayed into the biscuit market almost nine years ago with the brand Sunfeast and has since expanded to include pastas and instant noodles in their profile, but it might never catch up with the Nestles, Parles, and the Britannias of the world. Why? Because they've consistently made below par products like this one.

Sunfeast has replicated all popular biscuit types including Marie, Nice, and Bourbon. The Dream Cream Bournbon Delight is your typical chocolate cream sandwich biscuits with a sprinkling of sugar on the top layer.

As you can see, the amount of cream is quite meager and they don't look too good either. The taste is just as average. There's no reason why anyone would pick up a Dream Cream Bourbon over a Bourbon biscuit of some other brand, except maybe because they were the first things one saw on a supermarket shelf.

Sunfeast is probably worried about keeping the price on the lower side for affordability's sake, but the quality is compromised. At INR 12 for a 75 g pack, they are very easy on the pocket, and also perfectly forgettable.


RATING: 2.5/5

Parle Hide & Seek

First things first, Parle's Hide & Seek cookies will never qualify as 'cookies' in my eyes, because only round and crumbly and buttery things can be called that. And secondly, they are definitely not the 'World's Best Moulded Chocolate Chip Cookies', but they're good in a way all things with chocolate are. Wikipedia defines moulded cookies as those... 'made from a stiffer dough that is moulded into balls or cookie shapes by hand before baking.

Moulded into balls or no balls, Hide & Seek is one consistent product. Since they launched a few years ago, I've consumed packets of these and they've always been the same. Slightly hard textured, but perfectly crunchy, these 'biscuits' have the right amount of chocolate chips in them to give them full flavour. The biscuit is mostly sweet, and the chocolate is just a tad dark, making for a good combination.

Parle's Hide & Seek is available in INR 5, 10, 20, 30 or 50 packets, and are perfect to go either with hot beverages or eaten by themselves. I like.

RATING: 3/5

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy Chocolate

Because biscuits, especially chocolate cream biscuits, are forbidden to those that huff and puff about with weights in the gymnasium every morning, these are a staple in my larder. Between fitness and chocolate things, there's no question about who wins. So, carrying forth my streak of shamelessness into the New Year (resolutions be damned), I tucked into one of these with my morning chai. And mmm...

Sunfeast's Dark Fantasy Chocolate have got to be one of the best chocolate cream biscuits in the market. I'd even say they are better than the much-hyped Oreos. ITC has nailed it with this star product among its array of consumables manufactured under the Sunfeast banner. In fact, it inspired a host of similar products by competitive brands*. Before Dark Fantasy, most Sunfeast products I had tried were lame, despite Shah Rukh Khan crying hoarse about their goody-goodness.

These chocolate biscuits sandwiching the chocolate cream are quite divine. The biscuits are beautifully dark, and the cream wonderfully smooth. The degree of sweetness is just right and I'm obviously partial to them. The standard 96 g pack has about 6-7 biscuits and is priced at Rs. 25, which some might find a little steep. But what's 25 rupees to indulge your dark fantasies, I say? :)

Happy 2013, folks!

RATING: 4/5

*Britannia's Pure Magic

Britannia Bourbon Cappuccino

Because chocolate biscuits are the natural fallback for a chocoholic in the absence of the real thang, here comes my first review of the quintessential chocolate biscuit - the bourbon. This variety by Britannia is, however, of the cappuccino flavour. And it is good like all things coffee. 

Priced at Rs. 10, the 50 g pack has four cream sandwich biscuits in it with that fancy-schmancy plastic tray in which the biscuits break anyway. Although it is shaped square, unlike the usual rectangular bourbon biscuits, it has the age old sprinkling of sugar. But broken or not, the biscuits are Britannia perfect with the correct amount of browning and crunch. The chocolate cream is sufficiently coffee-ish, but sweet to a fault. Dunkers will like it only if their chai ki shakkar levels can rival the biscuit's. Go for it, I say.

RATING: 3.5/5