Value for money

This week; profiteroles...

Tesco chocolate covered profiteroles

€3 for 262g, €11.45 kg

WE WERE impressed by this mountain of fresh-tasting and chocolatey profiteroles, each of which was lightly dusted with sugar. The 12 choux pastry cases were filled with 37 per cent fresh stabilised cream – that’s whipping cream and dextrose to you and me – and covered with 13 per cent chocolate sauce. The pastry is nice and light, the chocolate lovely and the cream actually tastes of cream – no mean feat when you consider what some other brands churned out. We did, however, find ourselves eating more of these than was strictly needed for review purposes.

VERDICT: Very good  ****

Dunnes Stores profiteroles

€3.99 for 500g €7.98 per kg

THESE EIGHT rolls are drowned in chocolate sauce or “chocolate flavoured sauce” as the packaging tells us, which is not quite the same thing. There are two types of hydrogenated fats among the ingredients which earned this another black mark. The cream at the heart of each profiterole is alright but the choux pastry is mushy and tasteless, and the chocolate sauce is sharp-tasting and distinctly artificial. They’re cheap, mind you.

VERDICT:Poor **

Weight Watchers chocolate profiteroles

€2.69 for 169g, €15.91 per kg

THESE WERE on a buy-two-for-€2 in Centra but, if you think that’s good value for money, think again. We counted at least six “E” numbers listed in the ingredients, although there may have been more – the ingredients are listed in tiny letters and are immensely difficult to read. The first ingredient was reconstituted skimmed milk and vegetable fats come a long way before actual cream on the list. It is made with just 2.5 per cent chocolate, is incredibly sweet and the cream centre tasted like a cross between custard and lard. It also left a thin film of grease on our lips that was most unpleasant.

VERDICT: Saved, kind of, by the sauce **

Solo Italia profiteroles

€2 for 170g, €11.76 per kg

WE MAY be missing the point here but a profiterole on a brownie on a bed of chocolate mousse covered in chocolate sauce doesn’t sound like it has any place in a calorie controlled diet to us. The mousse is okay, the brownie is terrible – synthetic and sharp-tasting – and the profiterole is soggy, hardly surprising as it was filled with a substance which reminded us a little of cream and had been suspended in the mousse for God knows how long. The chocolate sauce is pleasant enough, mind you.

VERDICT: Terrible *