Tesco 8 Dark Choc Ices

What is it?

The dark version of the choc ice, and the shell is where the difference sits. The pack describes it as a dark chocolate flavour shell, which in this part of the freezer usually means a compound coating built on vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter alone. That matters for how it breaks. A compound shell sets harder and snaps more cleanly than real chocolate at freezer temperature, which is exactly why it's used on something that has to survive being handled straight from the box. The real difficulty in any coated bar is adhesion. Chocolate has to stick to something frozen and stay stuck, which is why cocoa butter is added to a coating that would otherwise slide off, and why the shell on a choc ice is thinner than it looks. The darker shell also reads as less sweet than the milk version, which is most of why both stay on the shelf.