Notes on chocolate: ‘It helps that the Big Daddy bar is excitingly, indulgently, huge’

Nearly two years ago I wrote about Marks & Spencer’s Big Daddy bar. A huge parcel of a bar containing milk and dark chocolate, roasted peanuts and caramel, which is (craft chocolatiers look away) extremely tasty and surely destined to be a classic. It reminded me of a Twix and a Snickers (Marathon) and basically of childhood. It helps that the bar is excitingly, indulgently, huge.

So it was with some trepidation that I accepted a parcel from M&S for its new (additional, don’t panic) version: Big Daddy Pistachio, £8.50. I’m embarrassed for anyone and everyone getting in on the Dubai chocolate craze. The original, started by Emirati chocolate makers FIX four years ago, is a chocolate bar with pistachio cream, tahini and kataifi (shredded pastry like you get in some baklava). I haven’t tried it, it’s meant to be amazing, but the original bars are only available in the UAE and on sale for two hours each day.

Incidentally if you like kataifi, then do try Honey & Co’s amazing feta and honey cheesecake on a kataifi base, best bought and eaten at one of their London stores, but a recipe is also available. It’s the best cheesecake I’ve ever eaten.

Back to Dubai chocolate. So many people have jumped on this bandwagon that there is now a worldwide shortage of pistachio nuts and prices have risen to more than $10 a pound. I was therefore sceptical and nervous of M&S’s offering. It’s not labelled as Dubai chocolate and it isn’t because they fortuitously haven’t gone down that route. Instead, it’s got pistachio cream, roasted pistachios, caramel, biscuit pieces, white chocolate, all covered in milk chocolate. It really does work.