Conor Popereviews chocolate fudge

Green & Black's Organic Dark Fudge Collection €15.69 for 160g, €98.06 per kg

Highs:Coming in a very funky box, this scores highly for its presentation and it looks and tastes very posh. The 16 pieces of vanilla, ginger, hazelnut and honey fudge are coated in dark chocolate, which brings a lovely bitterness and offsets the excessive sweetness commonly found in sweets such as these. The honey pieces are decorated with flecks of pollen, which we liked, and each small piece was surprisingly light, allowing us to eat more of them than strictly necessary.

Lows:The price of nearly €1 a bite is wantonly excessive. The individual chocolates are tiny and it is way too nice to eat on your own. Unless you really, really love yourself.

Verdict:Tastes great, looks great, shame about the cost.

Star rating: ****

Butlers Chocolate Fudge €1.50 for 125g, €12 per kg

Highs: Unlike the Green & Blacks, these pieces of fudge come in the kind of bag you'd buy for yourself without feeling too guilty. It is made in Ireland from a "traditional family recipe in the old-fashioned way".

Lows: The traditional recipe includes glucose syrup, vegetable fat and that staple of the traditional Irish kitchen, glyceryl monostearate. It might be churlish to complain about fudge being too sweet, but these are excessively sweet. Butlers makes good chocolate but hasn't thought to include much of it here, which is disappointing. The bag, once opened, falls apart leaving you with two choices - gorge yourself or bin them. It is quite rough textured and lacks the finesse of some of the competition

Verdict:Fine but nothing special.

Star rating: ***

Thornton's Chocolate Fudge €8 for 420g, €19.04 per kg

Highs:This comes in a family-sized box and is dusted with icing sugar and roughly chopped to give it a nice home-made look. It has a very appetising chocolatey taste. The chocolate and fudge blend very well and it's easy (perhaps too easy) to eat a lot of it. It also comes in two separate (not very sturdy) bags, so one will stay fresh while you feast on the other.

Lows:The list of ingredients is hardly wholesome and contains, among other things, hydrogenated vegetable oils. The two bags are a lot smaller than the box might lead you to believe. The box has pictures of fudge pieces but the photography is "not representative of product size", which was mildly disappointing as we were looking forward to giant pieces.

Verdict:Good quality and value.

Star rating:***

Roskilly's of Cornwall Organic Chocolate and Orange Fudge €2.65 for 100g, €26.50 per kg

Highs:This organic fudge comes in 13 little cubes. As befits something hailing from a farm in Cornwall, it contains clotted cream. The packaging is nice and simple and contains an invitation to visit the makers on their farm. The ingredient list is wonderfully simple, without so much as a hint of anything artificial. It is light and crumbly and has a refreshingly natural taste. It might work well as an addition to a Christmas stocking.

Lows:The packaging makes it look a little cheap. It is also a bit dry. The only discernible tastes are sugar and orange and we couldn't detect the chocolate anywhere.

Verdict:Nice and natural

Star rating: ***

Man of Aran Chocolate Fudge €9 for 400g

Highs:This is amazingly good and just the kind of fudge you'd expect to find lying about Willy Wonka's factory, except it's made by a man living in Co Meath. While it is available in farmers' markets throughout the country, PriceWatch happened upon it at a stall in the basement of Arnotts. You can assemble your own box, picking from a vast array of wonderful looking, smelling and tasting pieces of fudge. The four big hunks of chocolatey goodness are great, and the peppermint fudge, marbled with chocolate is outstanding. "The best fudge I've ever had," said one person PriceWatch reluctantly shared it with. It's cheap too.

Lows:It might be hard to find, but www.manofaranfudge.ie is a good place to start.

Verdict:Excellent

Star rating:*****