Made in China

So, I know I missed the last two weeks' postings, but that can be chalked up to a spectacularly successful barbecue lasting over two days, and my subsequent recovery. And my sheer laziness last weekend. Also, the material didn't exactly lend itself to inspiration.

I picked up a Time Out at the off-license, and thought that it might be nice. From the outside of the package, it looked like a Twirl in between two wafer-y bits, which didn't sound half bad. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my (admittedly mild) expectations.

I'm not sure if the Time Out is supposed to be a 'diet' candy bar, although the addition of the Olympic rings on the outside of this one as well seems to point in that direction. But in any case, the bar was completely insubstantial - the thin inner layer of chocolate melts away almost as soon as you've bitten into it, and there's absolutely no sweetness from the thin wafers surrounding it, leaving you to rely on the stingily thin outside layer of chocolate. Seriously, if you wanted to be on a diet, wouldn't you just leave the chocolate bars behind for some fruit or something? The Time Out is more like the IDEA of a candy bar - so airy the taste has disappeared from your mouth as soon as you take a bite. This left me completely unsatisfied, and if there weren't some dark chocolate Hobnobs around, who knows what could have happened? 1.5 bars.


Just when I started thinking that Germany had spoiled me for good and I'd have to center this blog solely around Niederegger Marzipan and Zetti Fetzers, my very generous manager came back from a jaunt around China with not one but THREE weird Chinese treats to try! Only one of them actually qualifies for the blog, being a chocolate bar and all, but I decided to review all three to spice up this review a little in the wake of the great Time Out disappointment of last week.

First of all was a weird creamsicle-like orange and cream hard candy. I made it for about 5 seconds before having to spit it out. First candy FAIL. No bars.

Second was a espresso-flavored hardy candy with chocolate in the inside - kinda like a coffee Nips, but smaller. This was actually DELICIOUS. The outside was not too sweet, but with the right amount of coffee bitterness, and the dark chocolate filling was tasty and smooth. I could eat a lot of these - and it wouldn't be too hard, considering they were pretty small. 4 bars!

Last of the bunch was an actual candy bar - a Kaci. This one looked very promising - wafers layered with chocolate mousse, all in a satisfyingly thick chocolate exterior studded with peanuts. Alas, the great Time Out disappoinment was to be repeated. The wafer tasted like dry nothing and the chocolate filling is barely there. The outside, oddly enough, tastes of cocoa but is not at all sweet like chocolate, and the peanuts overwhelm the whole thing, making it more of a salty, crunchy mess than a tasty candy bar. At least I got some protein out of it - half a bar.

On average, 1.5 bars. Pretty weak! However, overall, can't consider it too much of a wash, as I actually managed to EAT two out of three Chinese treats. I mean, I could have ended up with any of these. 

Bar-o-Meter



Germany - Land of Culinary Delights

No, seriously. 


Maybe it's just because I have a soft spot for the country and its food because I spent a definitive few months of my childhood there, but whenever I visit Germany, it feels a little like coming home, food-wise. That's why I've been slack with the blog, by the way. On a weekend trip to Berlin, I consumed so much in the way of Spätzle, Spargel, Currywurst, the best ice cream in Berlin, Hanuta, and Laugenbrötchen to even THINK about reviewing chocolate.


But thankfully I planned ahead and packed two German candy bars to bring back (along with the 'real' stuff, including chocolate covered marzipan....mmmm.


The first one I tried was a Wunderbar, which really was a no-brainer to pick out. Perhaps not as whimsically named as a Plopp or Tronky, but certainly more appetizing. The Wunderbar, let me tell you, is wunderbar indeed. It's shaped like a log, with a nice peanut-y filling, a thin layer of caramel around this, and all covered in a thick-ish layer of milk chocolate. 

I really like this bar! The peanut filling is somewhere in between the cream you get in a Reese's cup and what a Butterfinger would taste like if it was soft. It also appears to have crunchy cookie bits and pieces of peanuts in it (kinda like chunky peanut butter), which appeals to my love of 'goodies' in the chocolate bar. The caramel surrounding this layer gives it a nice gooiness, and the chocolate is thick enough to be substantial. It occurred to me that it was a little weird to find a peanut-based snack in Europe, but then a closer inspection of the wrapper showed that it was produced by Cadbury's - in Canada! Authenticity fail, but a bar that almost gave the double decker a run for its money - four bars!

To atone for my Cadbury-abroad sins, the second bar I tried was an honest to goodness East German chocolate bar, produced by Zetti in Saxonia-Anhalt. According to articles across the web, this is one of the 'nostalgia' brands that people still buy regularly, looking for a taste of their DDR childhoods. :P  I picked up a Zetti Fetzer, swathed in a characteristically communist low-key wrapper. While this one also has a somewhat less exciting name than other foreign bars I've tried, this is definitely in the running for my German drag queen name, should I ever need one.

The Zetti Fetzer is basically a communist Milky Way (much in the way Vita Cola subs in for Coca Cola), with a milk chocolate exterior and a layer of caramel over a slightly thicker layer of what the wrapper describes as 'candy creme'. It's not quite nougat, but has much of the same consistency. I think it was slightly too insubstantial for me - it had a nice and creamy texture, but it wasn't as satisfying as bars with crunchier fillings, and it barely survived the journey back to London. What I liked best about this bar was the balance of flavors - the caramel was slightly salty and the creme filling wasn't overly sweet, which matched it well with the nice milk chocolate on the outside. Nice - three bars.

Even better (and weirder) were the small chocolate snacks that Morgan picked up from the same producer - Knusper Flocken. These are little milk-chocolate covered bit of rye crispbread. Think of the chocolate-covered pretzel concept, and substitute Ryvita instead. Weird, but oh so addictive - 3.5 bars.


So, an average of 3.5 bars for German candy bars - not bad! Of course, the 'real' German chocolate scored way off the charts, but that stuff is too fancy for this blog. I'll just satisfy myself with a secret stash to tie me over until my next Friday candy bar fix!

Bar-o-Meter



2012 - The Hype Begins

The 2012 London Olympics. The entire city is getting geared up for the spectacle. We have the countdown clock in Trafalgar Square. We have the thousands of consultation letters going out to those unfortunate residents living on the Olympic Route Network. And now - apparently - we have a candy bar.

To capitalize on the spirit of the Olympics (and to join other misguided athletics-food partnerships along the lines of McDonald's sponsoring the Olympic Village), Cadbury's has jumped on the 2012 bandwagon and has created a new bar - The Big Race. Cadbury's, as a British institution, has snagged the dubious distinction of being the "official treat provider of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games" (should athletes be eating "treats" anyway?). So to celebrate, they've released this new bar, which is accompanied by a indecipherable online game where "spots" can compete against "stripes" for no reason I can work out.

The Big Race bar carries on this theme, with "spots" (crunchy cookie-like spheres) are separated from "stripes" (layers of light wafers) by some chocolate mousse. The entire thing is covered in a thick layer of milk chocolate. It all KINDA works - there's enough crunchiness in the cookie crumbs to make the top half feel fairly substantial, along with the chocolate mousse, but the bottom half of wafers is what let me down. It was just too light for a chocolate bar - if I was looking for wafers, I'd be eating Tunnock's biscuits. Mmmm, biscuits. :)


So, like the actual 2012 Olympic Games are inevitably likely to turn out, this bar ended up a slight disappointment. I mean, really, Cadbury's - you had a chance to make an entirely NEW CHOCOLATE BAR and this is what happens? A tie in to a bad and confusing online game? Could it possibly be that all the good candy bar ideas have been used up? Surely not! Three bars for being decently good, 2 bars for lack of imagination. 2.5 bars total.

Bar-o-Meter



A Tale of Two Cadburys

So I've been so slack in updating this blog that I'll have to combine two reviews in one. It shouldn't make too much difference, since one wasn't even worth the calories anyway.

My bad will last week has been graced on the Bourneville, an attempt from Cadbury's to offer a 'fancy' dark chocolate bar. Apparently they've gone so far with the fanciness that you're not even supposed to refer to it as Cadbury's chocolate - it's 'Bourneville chocolate', thank you very much! The bar is just plain dark chocolate squares, with none of the bells and whistles you'd expect from a normal candy bar. My impression from this and the shiny wrapper (too reflective for pictures!) is that this bar is intended to for the 'sophisticated' chocolate shopper.

Seriously, though, wouldn't the sophisticated chocolate shopper just eat something delicious and only half the price, like Green and Black's or the abundantly available delicious dark chocolate bars on the market? Bourneville isn't even worth the time, in my opinion. It's too sweet and while it tastes like chocolate while chewing, it leaves an unpleasant sugary aftertaste with no hint of chocolate. I don't even think it cracks 40% cocoa content! I know I'm going to make a lot of enemies with this one, but I wouldn't even rate it better than a Hershey's Special Dark - equally aspirational and equally gross. Thank goodness I had some Hobnobs around to soothe my damaged palate. 


Like Hershey's, a Bourneville is only good for one thing - making s'mores. And I as I was not equipped with neither graham crackers nor marshmallows nor an open flame, I give it one bar and one bar only. Fail.   

On the other side of the spectrum is a Twirl, which was this week's chocolate selection. This is also Cadbury's and also relatively plain, but it actually builds on Cadbury's strengths - decent milk chocolate for a wide audience.

The Twirl (conveniently separated into two Twix-style bars for more than one snacking occasion) is kinda like a Flake (not yet reviewed) covered in milk chocolate - that is, a whorl-y, twisty mess of milk chocolate covered in a slightly more solid shell of the same. It feels light and airy to bite into, and actually tastes of...air, almost, in a good way. It's kinda like a little breeze entering your mouth with every bite (to describe the texture in the cheesiest and absolutely most demented way possible). Bog-standard (by which I mean, actually, pretty good) Cadbury milk chocolate (I think I'm warming to the stuff) and smooth. 

Overall, not as exciting as my favored candy bars loaded full of delicious stuff, but nice all the same. A solid three bars.

So really, it just goes to show. Cadbury, stick to what you're good at and leave the nice dark chocolate to the professionals.



Long Time

I've been remiss in updating the blog, but I've been busy stuffing myself with sourdough bread, Danishes, and beer in Copenhagen, making far too much food for a post-Easter brunch, and being possibly the only person not to celebrate the Royal Wedding because I was too busy stuffing myself with delcious Turkish food from Dalston. So you'll have to forgive me as I've been pursuing obesity through other means. :)


But let's get down to business. My lovely cousin Christie just visited from North Carolina, and not only did we have a fantastic time in London being super-tourists (having afternoon tea, Pimms, fish and chips, and stocking up on Kate and Will souvenirs), we also managed to make it out to Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden (briefly) for a quick vacation. So I obviously took the opportunity to sample some of the finest cheap chocolate bars these countries had to offer.


First, Denmark. While I managed to get some really bizarre chocolate in the supermarket for my work colleagues, including marshmallow mice, chocolate with mint candies in it and boiled sweets that at least five people have already spit out in disgust, I picked up the incredibly boring - read: tastes just like a Milky Way -Yankie bar for myself. Actually, it wasn't a complete disaster, as it tasted more like the American version (decent) than the British Mars bar (yuck - see previous post). I ended up freezing half of it and having a flashback to summers spent around the snack bar at the Orange Avenue Pool. Ah, memories. 2 bars, if just for that.

But Sweden, on the other hand, offered up a veritable cornucopia of chocolate bars. Christie and I of course indulged in a Daim bar, but I figured I'd go for something a bit more exotic for the blog. After passing by some dodgy liquorice-looking ones, I settled on a Plopp, if only for the absolutely amazing name. I mean, this rivals a Tronky for sheer comedy value. (And by the way, a colleague who will remain unnamed but who has a distinctive accent picked up ANOTHER one of these failures for me when she was recently in Italy - again, see previous post for a poor review. Anyone fancy a Tronky?)

Anyway, I digress. Despite the slightly unfavorable connotations "Plopp" brings to the chocolate eating experience, it was actually a delicious bar. Think a Cadbury's Caramel bunny, only with segmented sections filled with a slightly runnier caramel filling. So it made it a mess to eat, but the taste was fantastic! The chocolate was pretty bog-standard milk chocolate, but was thick enough to be a good match for the slightly salty caramel inside. Yum. I liked this a lot. Of course, my enjoyment of this bar may have been heightened by the fact I was singing along to 'Newsies' at the time. If you haven't already experienced the joys of a young Christian Bale and a pre-'Independence Day' Bill Pullman singing and dancing in a musical about newsboys in 19th-century New York, you have no idea what you're missing. Just ask Morgan. We forced him to watch it. :)


So in total, Yankie = 2 bars. Plopp = 3.5 bars. Chocolate, even not-so-amazing chocolate, eaten on vacation = priceless. 4.5 bars for the experience!


Also, for your viewing pleasure, some actually nice chocolate we got in Copenhagen, in a suitably Easter-like setting...

So that's about it! Unless any more international bars appear, I'm back to the British ones next week. Which seems fitting, what with all the Union Jacks still hanging about. 

Bar-o-Meter



Bunnies and Eggs - It Must be Easter

As many of you have probably heard ad nauseum, I am a firm believer in establishing distinct seasons for each holiday. For example, you can't celebrate Christmas before Thanksgiving is over, but you also can't start on Thanksgiving until Halloween is out of the way. This same principle applied to seasonal/holiday-themed food - it would be too much of a good thing if you started in on the mince pies before December 1st, or indulged in hot cross buns before the start of Lent. Basically, it just tastes better when you know you only have a short while to completely enjoy it.

So, needless to say, I've been holding off on eating reams and reams of Easter candy so far this year, despite the fact that it's been in stores since about, oh, January. But this weekend I've embarked on an Easter candy feast, to glorious results.

The first two things I sampled were a bit of a cheat, as I've eaten (and thoroughly enjoyed them) before (and they're not technically candy bars) - Cadbury Mini-Eggs and Caramel Bunnies. It's important to note here that you should never accept any substitutes for these - the original is the best! Caramel Bunnies are pretty self-explanatory - basically an abnormally tall and skinny chocolate bunny filled with buttery caramel. It's nice - nice and thick chocolate that's soft enough to kind of meld with the not-too-runny caramel inside - but the filling pales in comparison with last week's Irish Cadbury's caramel filling. A solid 3 bars.

For the unititated, Mini-Eggs are small egg-shaped chocolate covered in multi-colored speckled shells, and they besically taste like the best M&M's EVER. Luckily I had Morgan to help me finish the bag, otherwise I would have eaten them all up in about 5 minutes. :P 4.5 bars! (And...this post has now motivated me to go out and buy a fresh bag - whoops.)

The third component of my Easter chocolate extravaganza was the riskiest - a Twisted Bar. I wasn't sure about this one, as it's a candy bar based on the ever-popular Creme Egg. I hate Creme Eggs (maybe it's the goo-iness or the fact that eating something resembling a raw egg is never really that appetizing), but I actually liked the Twisted bar! The bar is thick chocolate surrounding a creme filling that is slightly more dense than the Creme Egg (it mostly stays within the bar when you take a bite) but with the same garish white and yellow coloring. The filling is still overly sweet, but this is tempered by the fact that you don't have to swallow a whole mouthful at once or risk it dripping down your chin (ew). And the chocolate to filling ratio is a lot better - the chocolate is nice and thick so there's not too much creme versus the shell - an example the Turkish Delight could learn from! It was still too sweet for me to have the whole thing (my willing assistant - and Creme Egg fanatic - Morgan graciously finished the bar for me) and I'm not sure I'd eat it again, but it was a lot nicer than expected. 2.5 bars.

Altogether, a delicious combo - really, all that was missing were the Peeps! (http://www.justborn.com/product-finder/peeps/easter) It's ok, I'll compensate by whipping up a batch of these instead (http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Chocolate-Nests).

A combined 3.5 bars!

Happy Easter, everyone, will be on hiatus next week as my lovely cousin Christie is coming to visit but will return with a thrilling new installment featuring whatever we can pick up in Copenhagen/Malmo.

Bar-o-Meter

1/2



Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland, Oh My!

Dear readers -

Apologies for the long hiatus - I've been in Italy seeking obesity through other means...namely, pasta, pizza, and at least one gelato a day. The work of a food-lover is never done. For all of you who have been waiting the next post with baited breath, wait no longer!

In celebration of my vacation, and because I have wonderful friends who keep me well stocked in exotic chocolate bars, I'm skipping my regular British candy bar this week and reviewing a veritable smorgasbord of international chocolate bars. Yum.

First, Carol kindly brought back a selection of Irish chocolate from her holiday last week (all in the interest of research, of course) and gave me a few Cadbury versions to try. The Irish version of Turkish Delight fared much better than the English one, having a better ratio of weird jelly filling to chocolate, the Golden Crisp bar had nice little honeycomb-like crispy bits buried in chocolate, and the Caramello had a nice buttery caramel filling, just the right amount of runny-ness. However, I think what really got me excited about the Irish chocolate were the three versions of Snack! (that's their punctuation, not mine) bars - wafer, sandwich, and shortbread. In short, not only are Snack! (love the exclamation point) bars tasty little biscuits covered in chocolate (which is always nice) but they also have fantastic Irish-type sayings on the front, like "Oh, go on then" and "Tis lovely". This made me laugh, and only added to the chocolate experience...4 bars for the lot!

Second, I picked up a chocolate bar in Italy while in a tabaccheria in Verona. This was no easy task. The Italians apparently do not enjoy their cheap chocolate bars like the English, since there was only KitKat, Snickers, and Kinder varieties to choose from. (I don't know, maybe the Italians are too busy eating, say, pastries, or homemade egg pasta, or delicious bread.....ah, stop now!) However, I did manage to snag a gem of a bar called a Tronky, which said it was made in Italy right on the wrapper. Yes, that's right - TRONKY. Seriously, this bar should get points just for having the best name so far. Sadly, the taste does not live up to the name - the Tronky (hee) is a thick, dry wafer surrounding some chocolately-hazelnut filling. The wafer, while brown in color, doesn't taste enough like chocolate, and actually, isn't even sweet. This completely detracts from the filling, which is passing in a Nutella-like way. BIG disappointment - I didn't even like eating the thing. Whatever the Tronky's other faults, I just have to point out that it was a remarkably robust bar for traveling, actually managing to survive the trip back to England intact. And that's why it's getting 1 bar.

Third, the bar that didn't even make it out of Italy intact. Julia, one of my traveling companions, took a day trip to Switzerland (like you do) our last day in Italy, and was kind enough to bring me back a bar - the Torino. (Again, this was the only bar that actually seemed to be Swiss - maybe the Swiss are too busy with fondue? Oh, and real chocolate.) In any case, the Torino was the opposite of the Tronky and promptly melted into a smushy shape in my purse on the 3-hour trip home. Luckily, a stint in the refrigerator made it edible. And edible it was! The Torino is notable for being the first bar to be covered in 'real' milk chocolate - this stuff put Cadbury's to shame. The inside of the bar is a nice creamy hazelnut filling, which was equally nice just out of the fridge and at room temperature. The bar was a bit rich for my taste (took me two sittings to finish!) but I think the lovely chocolate on the outside really made this bar a winner. For the chocolate coating alone - 3 bars!

So, my international feasting over, I'm having a special Easter edition next week before sampling the best of what Coperhagen/Malmo have to offer when my lovely cousin Christie comes to town. Stay tuned!

An overall 2.66666666666667 bars! (Use your imagination - haven't figured out how to make the Bar-o-Meter do that yet)

Bar-o-Meter



Transport and Chocolate - Perfect Together

I've been a little remiss in sticking to the Friday candy bar routine lately - this week I was derailed by a particularly plentiful bake sale at work - of course I had to sample not only the Bakewell tart but also the intriguing-sounding Chocolate Beet cake (which, incidentally, was nice but a bit dry, and really only tasted marginally like beets). The sacrifices I make for research...

But despite all the distractions, I managed to secure the next bar in the row on Friday and bravely sample it on Saturday so I can keep delivering these reviews to my faithful readers. And what might this next bar be, you ask? None other than the venerable Double Decker.

I have to admit, I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. (A bit of disclosure - I'm actually bending the rules a bit this week as I have not only tried the Double Decker before, I've actually actively sought it out when I haven't been living here because I like it so much.) So how does the bar I was willing to buy for a hard earned $3 ($3!) at Cardullo's fare in the official English candy bar test?

It's still as delicious as I remember. For those of you that haven't had the opportunity to eat one of these delicious bars, it's a thick bar with a layer of crispy rice in chocolate on the bottom and a layer of chewy nougat on top. Oddly, I had always thought there was a thin layer of caramel between the nougat and crunchy bit, but that actually doesn't exist. Weird - doesn't detract from the tastiness, though. What's so unique about this bar is its robustness - it's incredibly hefty and filling, in a good way. The bottom slab is compact and dense in the way an American Crunch bar is, and the nougat on top is chewy and substantial, not like the mousse-y texture of a Topic or Mars Bar (ew). Also, it's not too sweet, which is nice - I wasn't all over the place after eating it, unlike the sugar overload disaster post-Boost Bar review.

Four and a half bars!

A high rating, but I'm still leaving myself room to be wowed by some as-yet untested bar. I think I was a little less impartial with this bar than the others, as I've always loved it. Nonetheless, it fully deserves the rating. I mean, what's not to like? A delicious candy bar, and a name that serves as a tribute to a much-loved icon of public transportation. Unless they're coming out with a Monorail bar, I don't think there's any better combination for me. :P

Bar-o-Meter