Chocolate Licorice Pandas

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If you had asked me a few years back if I thought the idea of chocolate and licorice together would have worked, I would have thought you were crazy. Since then however, I've had the privilege of tasting a Finnish chocolate bar with little licorice nibs throughout it, and it tasted great. The flavour combination of these Chocolate Licorice Pandas isn’t really something completely new to me, and I’ve seen it work in the past. I am a little concerned because of the fact that these gummies are chocolate flavoured and not real chocolate. Real chocolate can, and often is, a very powerful flavour, strong enough to cut through other powerful flavours like licorice. For this treat to work the chocolate flavour has to be well balanced with the licorice in order to cut down the strong astringent licorice flavour.

As you can see, there are two different kinds of pandas to choose from, one with a licorice face, and one with a chocolate face. As I had feared the chocolate flavoured gummy/marshmallow stuff isn't nearly as strong as a good quality chocolate, and the licorice flavour does dominate. The chocolate faced panda is not as unbalanced as the licorice faced panda, but it's not great. The licorice faced panda’s chocolate flavour is really just a slight hint of chocolate on the first few chews, but soon the licorice takes over completely.

The chocolate faced panda is the better of these two treats, but I have to be honest, the chocolate flavour is weak. The texture is also really strange, particularly with these odd flavours. Since I'm not a huge fan of licorice to begin with, I'm not really liking these chocolate pandas that much.