Carmit Ego's Dark-Chocolate Coated Pretzels & Milk-Chocolate Coated Grissini

A few months before I started this blog Carmit, under their Ego line of products, was the first (and as far as I know still the only ones) to make a line of chocolate coated pretzels here in Israel. Their first two products were milk-chocolate coated pretzels and white-chocolate covered pretzels. Being the dark-chocolate fan that I am I was waiting and hoping that they will expand the line to include a bittersweet-chocolate pretzel as well. Low and behold, the other day I found just that; dark-chocolate coated pretzels, on the store shelf, along with milk-chocolate coated mini grissini (mini breadsticks)

          כרמית אגו בייגלה מצופה שוקולד מריר וגריסיני מצופה שוקולד חלב

A few days later I saw a press release about the new products that also mentioned a new chocolate coated cookie but I didn’t see that in the supermarket. If I find/taste the cookie I will either add an update to this post or, if I think it warrants it, I will give it its own review in a separate post.

I got my first disappointment when I opened the package to find that all the chocolate coated pretzels must have melted and then "re-hardened" to form a large lumped together mess. The chocolate had obvious sighs of chocolate bloom (whitish spots on dark chocolate). The blooming indicates that sugar and/or fat have separated due to poor storage. At some point the chocolate underwent a change in temperature, causing the chocolate to soften and re-harden. Although that's not an indication that the chocolate has gone bad, it still makes the chocolate and in this case, the coated pretzels, very unappealing to me.

As I mentioned in my reviews of Loacker's Wafer Snacks and Lindt's Double Milk Chocolate Bar, summer in Israel is simply the wrong time of the year to début anything chocolate or chocolate coated. I think Carmit should have waited just a few more months to release these chocolate coated pretzels. Or taken a cue from Elite's summer/refrigerator chocolate and made a product that can or should be refrigerated.

My second disappointment was with the lack of salt on the pretzels. If they are going for the sweet/salty trend, I thought they needed just a touch more salt to give the proper sweet to salty contrast.  

Finally, I was slightly disappointed, yet not surprised, when I realized that the dark-chocolate coating was a dairy dark-chocolate. I guess they add dairy to the chocolate because they think it needs it to improve the taste, but there are high quality dark chocolates on the market which are non-dairy that they could have used. Then again nothing about the chocolate coating on any of these Ego products resembles a high quality chocolate. So what did I expect from the dark-chocolate version?

I don’t have much to add about the Milk-Chocolate Coated Grissini other than the fact that I found them crispy yet very bland. I thought they needed a flavor of some sort or at least a richer/better quality chocolate coating.

Bottom Line :I was fairly disappointed with both these products. I'd say the Dark-Chocolate Coated Pretzels needed a bit more salt and the Milk-Chocolate Coated Grissini could have used some sort of flavor as well. In my opinion, they both needed a better quality chocolate. Lastly, I thought it was a mistake to début them during the hot Israeli summer.

120 gram bag 9.99 NIS

Kosher Dairy Badatz

 Update: Winner of 2012 Product of the Year Award Israel

Disclaimer: All items were purchased by me. No one is paying me for this review. All opinions are my own.