After Eight Dark & Milk Peppermint Chocolate Box Review

The After Eight Dark & Milk Peppermint Chocolate Box costs £3.98 and you get around 199g of chocolate. It's not really great value given how the quality is not the best. The chocolate dominates more of the peppermint in the selection and there's a bit of grittiness too. I generally feel disappointed by these and the fact that they are the same price as the thins but give less quality is awful.

Taste and Texture

The Peppermint and Milk Chocolate flavour tastes less of peppermint and has more of the chocolate dominating it. I tried the peppermint part on its own and frankly; I found that it is just almost flavourless. Yes, I can taste the peppermint but it is just extremely weak and the texture of the peppermint fondant is a slightly gritty texture and it really isn't nice to eat. The chocolate on its own is really just the standard chocolate and it makes this flavour feel cheap and low quality.

The peppermint and dark chocolate are just like the milk chocolate variant. It has a strong peppermint aroma to it; as per usual with After Eights chocolate and the flavour is much stronger in peppermint than the previous. However, it suffers from the same grittiness and the dark chocolate just comes off the fondant. It separates and it shows the low quality when it does that. The fondant layer itself doesn't taste much of peppermint and just tastes stale. This one is another bad chocolate in the selection box. The only good part is the dark chocolate as it tastes exactly like the After Eights Mints. But you can buy the pack of the mint thins for cheaper than this box.

The dark chocolate mint fondant is absolutely amazing though. It's exactly what you expect from an after eight. It's not got the gritty texture that the other two had suffered with and I find that it's just like the after eight thins but just a bit chewier and wider. Delicious! The peppermint flavour is very strong in this too. The milk chocolate mint fondant offers the same experience just without as strong of a chocolate taste to it.

The dark peppermint crisp is crispy as it mentions but it's not really that crispy. Then you have the peppermint taste which in this one is just extremely weak and all you get is the dark chocolate. I feel like they could've really just added more of the peppermint crisp and this would be an amazing chocolate.

Ingredients and Nutritional Information

Ingredients: Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Vegetable Fats (Palm, Palm Kernel, Shea), Dried Whole Milk, Glucose Syrup, Cocoa Butter, Butterfat (Milk), Whey Powder Product (Milk), Emulsifiers (Lecithins, Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate), Peppermint Oil, Stabiliser (Invertase), Safflower Concentrate, Spirulina Concentrate, Colour (Chlorophylls), Flavourings.

Nutritional Information per 2 sweets: 96 calories, 4.4g fat (2.6g saturates), 13.1g carbohydrates (12.3g sugars), 0.5g fibre, 0.8g protein, 0.01g salt.

Conclusion

Overall, I found that the After Eight Dark & Milk Peppermint Chocolate Box is an absolute let down. Especially when you compare it to the brands usual high quality. While the packaging and the idea of a mixed selection seems appealing; the execution is bad. The chocolates just lack the signature smooth peppermint fondant and refreshing menthol flavour that make the thins so good. They have a bit of grittiness, a weak peppermint taste and the separation between the fondant and chocolate makes it feel cheap and poorly made.