After Eight Mousse

A definitive ruling on the reality of soft and fluffy. 

There are three types of mousse in this world: thick and with good quality; light, fluffy and with no quality; and those that can speak English because they learnt it from a book. Given the reliably pessimistic tone of this blog there should be little doubt which category the After Eight Mousse falls into.

Essentially, After Eights are the poor man’s Ferrero Rocher. They’re like Blackpool compared to London, or Rihanna to Rick Astley. You can pop into any discount store, pick up a small box for a pound and display it proudly on your coffee table at home so that other people can politely acknowledge that you’ve made an effort for a change – while quietly consigning you to an inevitable future in the workhouse.

It turns out that the mousse version of After Eight is basically a workhouse made from jelly. Blackcurrant flavoured jelly.

The mousse certainly fell into the light and fluffy category, providing literally no resistance or substance at all – never has a spoon been so deadly. The white sponginess emitted a mildly mint and milky taste; contained within were several thin strips of solid chocolate, which gave the product a slightly greater existence than air and a further weak flavour of mint.

Costing one pound for a four-pack they’re probably not bad value for money. On the other hand, four plastic tubs filled with air is bad value for money. It’s like something you’d buy on eBay. It was a strange sensation to consume an alleged foodstuff that had no material compound at all – and it left me hungry afterwards.

If you desperately crave the After Eight Mousse experience the best thing to do is to find something minty and take a good, long sniff; that way, your craving will be satisfied and it will have cost you nothing (depending on where you do it – it could cost you some dignity). I like mousses when they are thick, creamy and at least partly filling (ideally, everything should have a purpose), but the After Eight creation is tasteless and bereft of any tangible structure and relevance.

Final review rating: a naughty mousse – 1* out of 5.

Review by JAMES LEWIS Wanderer, wonderer and writer of the Chocolate Dissection blog (which will ideally melt hearts rather than brains). Reliable with sarcasm, less so with a scalpel. Twitter: @IdeasJimbound

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