RJ’s Orange Dark Choc Log

Second in the RJ’s series is one that freaked me out a little when I first saw it. Orange licorice with dark chocolate, seems like a strange combo, no? Let’s hope it’s a good one…

I like the little bit of blurb on the front of the pack – “You obviously have a keen sense of taste. Because these Dark Choc logs are made to our unique recipe, with a delicious chocolatey centre carefully made from an old Belgian recipe”, so I have a keen sense of taste? Thank you RJ!

What you have here is a long dark chocolate stem, covered by a thicker stem of orange flavoured licorice. The licorice today is unsurprisingly orange in colour, like the red raspberry licorice yesterday. But it’s the way it’s done that’s so good. The chocolate and orange go so well together, it’s a classic blend of flavours and RJ’s have got it right here.

I don’t know how dark the chocolate is but it didn’t seem that dark to me, it was very good though. Just for a such an initially strange sounding combo, it all goes together so well.

The bar has 162 calories, 1.16g of Protein, 30.1g of Carbohydrates (16.4g of which sugars) and 3.5g of Fat (3.1g of which saturates). I highly recommend this bar if you can find it, RJ have impressed me again, delicious stuff here.

RJ’s Natural Raspberry Soft Eating Licorice Log

And now begins the mini series of RJ’s Soft Eating Licorice. The first is the Raspberry Licorice Log. This is basically a ~20cm (just guessing here) long pencil-like log of licorice, that’s raspberry flavoured.

From what I understand, these are very popular in New Zealand, where the company originates from. My local shop got these from a supplier who imports them. It’ll be very hard to find these anywhere in the UK, so it’s best not to worry about finding these too much, unless you’re really desperate for them.

This bar doesn’t actually look like regular licorice, instead of being black in colour, this is completely red, and can just about be seen through. I suppose this is a good idea, considering the flavour of it, and it’s not an off putting colour. I hear that red colours in food activate salival glands and such forth, making you hungry, due to it meaning that a food is ripe. I don’t think I felt that when I looked at this, but it did look and smell good. Not a strong smell, but a pleasant, mild raspberry waft.

It tasted good as well. There’s no distinct licorice taste, it’s instead just a mild, pleasant raspberry taste. I don’t think it would have tasted nice if there was ordinary licorice flavour there as well, so I’m not sure how they’ve got rid of that flavour here, but they’ve done a good job. I’ve tasted the other flavours previously and they’re nearly all better than this, but that doesn’t take anything away from this bar. It really is quite nice.

And the wonderful thing about this is that it only has 138 calories. Pretty awesome compared to most snack foods here. It also had 3.1g of Protein which is pretty high for something like this, 32.1g of Carbohydrates (14.6g of which sugars) and under 1g of Fat per bar, and even 2 and a half bars would have under 1g of Fat, which shows how little there is in the entire thing. If you do happen to live near a shop that sells these then try them, they’re a little pricey (55p per bar) but are well worth it.

P.S. Since originally writing the review for this a couple of months ago, I have since found these in a few online stores. I highly suggest checking out this now if you are a licorice fan.