This unusual chocolate, filled with a fibrous Turkish dessert, is now available in Russian stores like Vkusvill and Samokat. Will this new exotic sweet match the success of the popular Dubai chocolate?
Angel Hair is a new and potentially promising dessert on the Russian confectionery scene. Available as white, dark, or pink chocolate bars, it features an extraordinary filling made from fine strands called “pishmaniye.” This traditional Turkish sweet is similar to cotton candy but incorporates flour and other ingredients alongside sugar.
Last spring, “Angel Hair” caused a sensation on social media. When a bar is broken, delicate fibers appear to stick out from the center, resembling strands of blonde hair—a perfect visual for short videos.
Ekaterina Abramova, a pastry chef and founder of the Abramova Cake School online school, commented on the novelty`s potential:
Pastry Chef and Founder of Abramova Cake School
“I liked this idea. As a blogger and pastry chef, I naturally tried to make it myself last winter because it looks interesting and unusual. The filling in the form of hair is Turkish halvah, which is very tasty on its own, but combined with chocolate, it`s extremely sweet – almost inedible. If you add additional fillings, the pishmaniye, the Turkish halvah, starts to melt, and very quickly. I made it based on just halvah and also added raspberry confiture, which supposedly adds tartness, but then the filling starts to melt very quickly, and when the chocolate bar is broken, it all turns into mush. This chocolate doesn`t store well for long. If you take Dubai chocolate, you can mix it with absolutely any ingredients, and it will truly be cool. It`s crunchy, it has pistachio, which everyone loves, chocolate – the combination is great. But here, I think this trend won`t last. People will find out about it, try it, and realize it`s too sweet. Maybe the interesting, unusual break is impressive, but it`s not for long, in my opinion.”
Beyond the taste, the name itself might pose a problem for “Angel Hair.” A journalistic experiment at Business FM revealed that some staff members refused to even sample the dessert, expressing disgust at the idea of “hair in your mouth,” even angelic hair. Jokes circulating about “Cupid`s fur” or “seraphim`s fluff” also do little to aid its popularity. Ekaterina Ermilova, founder of “Klubnika v Shokolade” (Strawberries in Chocolate) in Russia, adds:
Founder of “Klubnika v Shokolade”
“`Angel Hair` is indeed an off-putting name. A name should be appealing, something that makes you want to try it, while also evoking an emotion, not an association with something unpleasant. Dubai chocolate is just ordinary chocolate with butter and pistachio paste, but `Dubai` sounds very exclusive, expensive, and something everyone wants to try. Today, product taste is often secondary; what matters are marketing, advertising, and hype. It`s the same with Labubu. How long was Labubu hyped? Now it`s already considered passé.”
Retailers stocking “Angel Hair” seem to implicitly acknowledge the naming challenge. Samokat, for instance, offers the dessert under the rather plain name “Chocolate with Pishmaniye Filling” for 1,500 rubles, while Vkusvill adopted the English name “Angel Hair” for 1,000 rubles. Unlike Dubai chocolate, which was created by British-Egyptian entrepreneur Sara Hamouda in 2021, the culinary originator of “Angel Hair” remains unknown online.
Rupert Blackwood 
Clement Ashworth