Springhill Farm

I love trying snacks in other countries, including Australia, where I spent a significant amount of time for a number of years.  At some point, I picked up these snacks from Springhill Farm, an Australian brand.

Springhill Farm has several product lines, but their dominant products seem to be Slices and Boodles.  All are vegan.  Slices are just healthy bars, and were less interesting to me as that is already a widely covered market.  Boodles however looked more interesting ...

They make several styles of Boodles, all of which are healthy grain clusters featuring soy protein crisps, brown rice puffs, quinoa, and buckwheat, sweetened with coconut sugar, and then embellished. Chocolate clusters are the most decadent chocolate covered confections, "healthy clusters" are made from a combo of grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruits, etc with added adaptogens, and lunchbox clusters are crispy grain puffs with kid friendly flavors like cocoa, vanilla sprinkles, and strawberry.  I tried only the chocolate clusters line.

Boodles Chocolate Clusters

"We keep it light taking the crispy, natural goodness of seeds and grains, like quinoa, buckwheat, soy and rice crisps and smothering them in smooth, creamy chocolate."

Boodles are a form of crispy chocolate cluster, but lower sugar (50% less they claim) and protein bolstered (15g protein) compared to regular chocolate confections.  The protein comes from soy protein cocoa crisps, quinoa crisps, cocoa rice crisps, and buckwheat.

They come in 5 flavors: original chocolate, chocolate and caramel, chocolate speckle (with nonpareils), peanut and pretzel, and chocolate and hazelnut.  I was only able to find the basic chocolate ones, and the hazelnut version, although I really wished I could find the peanut/pretzel or speckle ones!

Chocolate.

These were not bad.  I liked the variety of size pieces, some little bits, some bigger.  All had a great crunch, and good chocolate coverage.  The chocolate quality was decent.  They didn't taste too healthy, mostly just like a chocolate crispy oddly shaped candy bar.  I did want a little salt to make the flavor pop a bit more.  Awesome as an ice cream topping. 3/5.

Chocolate Hazelnut.

"We keep it light taking the crispy, natural goodness of seeds, grains and hazelnuts and slathering them all in smooth, creamy chocolate."

I'm not one who adores all things chocolate-hazelnut.  I don't go nuts over Nutella, etc, but it is a combo that works, and the hazelnut variety sounded a bit more interesting than the plain chocolate.

It really wasn't much different to me.  I didn't taste hazelnut.  But I did enjoy the crispy bits and the great crunch, and the decent quality chocolate.  Again great as a topping on ice cream or pudding.  But truly did not taste the hazelnut. 3/5.

Treats

Classic Rocky Road Slice.

"Jump on a joyride of marshmallow chunks, coconut pieces and chocolate as far as the eye can see – no two bites are the same. It’s not for the faint-hearted."

I wanted to like this so much more than I did.  But there were three issues, one minor, the others more major.

The minor complaint I have is that the milk chocolate wasn't very high quality.  It was "fine", but very sugary, and just not great.  That can be ok in a confection style treat though if the rest of the item is strong enough to carry it.  In this case though, the other elements weren't.

The marshmallows were fine, soft, squishy, sweet. But the ratios were all off here, just far too much marshmallow, and little else.  Another strike.

And then, the coconut.  When I think "classic rocky road", I do not think of coconut.  I think of other nuts.  I wanted crunchy other nuts.  And instead I had soft shards of coconut.  The coconut taste dominated, as did the texture I wasn't into.  

So, mediocre chocolate, poor ratios, too much unwanted coconut.  Low 2/5.