I generally don’t eat a lot of sweets–unless they happen to be in front of me. To lessen the odds of that happening, I don’t often buy desserts (although I do tend to get in the mood for ice cream every couple of months, or so). This is true especially when we’re forced to keep a close eye on what we spend on groceries–which we were doing on a recent shopping trip. Still, you only live once, and so when I stumbled on Specially Selected’s Chocolate Mousse Cups, I decided to appease my wife by getting them. Well, the fact I was shopping absolutely famished (a well-known no-no) definitely worked in her favor, as well.
How else can I justify paying $3 for two small cups of what is basically chocolate-infused air? But it looked so good that I didn’t care if it put us in the poor house, and so we took these home, and eagerly finished our dinner in order to give these a shot.
Prepping them is insanely easy: leave them out to thaw, then serve. Our thawing process was pretty quick, considering my wife just set them near the stove she used to cook up supper, and so by the time we were done eating, they were perfectly cool and ready to enjoy. I dug in…and have to say that these did not ravish my taste buds the way they did my wife, who absolutely loved them. The top layer, which is a milk chocolate mousse, was kind of bitter–chocolate fans will probably love it, but I like my chocolate on the sweet side, and so it didn’t appeal to me. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like mousse…maybe that could be the problem. The white chocolate hearts that adorn the top are a nice touch, as these are clearly marketed as a Valentine’s Day treat (which also happens to be my birthday…the only time I will ever mention that depressing fact); as can be expected, they are too small to really contribute anything to the flavor.
It does get better as you go down…there’s a small layer of chocolate cake, some white chocolate mousse under that (which is better than the plain chocolate), some crunchy chocolate candy pieces under that, and the bottom is a plain chocolate mousse that rounds everything out. I really enjoyed the sponge cake and the candy pieces, and while the white chocolate and plain chocolate layers were better than the milk that started everything off, it still didn’t have me craving any more, as I thought it would.
For $1.50 per cup, I’d file this away under “splurge”, and I would also be fine never getting these again. I’m not going to say I “never” will, because my wife really loved them and so I could see myself surprising her with them at some point, but if this were the case, I would let her eat both of the cups–they just didn‘t do much for me. Again, I’m not huge into sweets, so if you’re a chocolate connoisseur, like my wife is, then you will certainly like them a lot more than I did–it just becomes a matter of whether or not you want to pay $3 for two small cups of chocolate. It’s also a matter of finding them, as they are a Special Buy and only made available a couple of times a year.
Overall: 5.5/10. I wasn’t a big fan of these, though I would imagine chocolate lovers everywhere would love them more than I did–in fact, now that I think about it, it would have probably been smarter to have my wife review this as she likes chocolate more than I do. Oh well. The cup gets better as you go down, with the chocolate candies and white chocolate mousse layers my favorite, but these weren’t nearly as delectable as I was expecting them to be, considering they cost $3 (for just two small cups that an average adult will have gone in about five bites). I thought they were overpriced and underwhelming, but if this is your kind of thing, and you don’t mind the price tag, then you might as well give them a chance. They are a Special Buy, though, and thus only available occasionally.
