Vive le Manger!*

Hi everyone -


Just got back from exploring the joys of Paris with my little sister, who was here to visit (although, let me tell you, those joys are a lot less joyful in rain and near-freezing winds. In July. Le sigh.)


And somehow, in between stocking up on various pates from Le Grande Epicerie (food hall heaven!), mistakenly buying nearly two kilos of bread from famous baker Poilane (I panicked! I don't speak French well...or at all), and stuffing myself silly on baked egg in foie gras and duck with blackberry sauce at my favorite restaurant in Paris - nay, maybe my favorite restaurant in the WORLD - I somehow managed to get my hands on some cheap chocolate bars so I could have something to review. Now that I'm finally recovering from my eating fest, here they are!


The first bar I got was a Nuts, simply because it fit with the model of getting bars with funny/ridiculous/unappetizing names when I visit other countries. The Nuts (hee) bar is creamy, light colored nougat with a layer of caramel on top, all covered in a very thick layer of milk chocolate. The added ingredient that makes the bar so nutty are the chunks of hazelnut buried in the nougat.

Now this sounds fantastic - and could probably be that way if some essential modifications were made. The nougat was lovely - light and whipped, kinda like a Three Musketeers bar from the US (one of my favorites). The caramel wasn't overly sweet, and the chunks of hazelnuts were big and crunchy. But somehow it just didn't all come together. Because the hazelnut chunks are just floating in the nougat, the contrast between tastes and textures was just too strong. Now, I like added crunchiness in my bar probably more than the average person, but it veered too much towards the chocolate-covered pretzel kind of mix of sweet and non-sweet (even salty) that I totally abhor. Seriously, how does a salted caramel macaroon from Laduree taste oh so good but this tastes oh so slightly wrong? A nice bar all the same, and a middling 2.5 bars - if only the hazelnuts weren't ruining the rest of it for me.


The next one I tried was slightly harder to find. My sister and I saw it advertised in cafes all over town but weren't able to find one until we passed a corner store with a generously stocked candy section somewhere near Bastille. The bar in question was a Ballisto, and it was worth the hunt!


So I almost completely missed reviewing this bar. That's because, after squeezing myself onto the Metro and then waiting an hour standing up to see the fireworks on Bastille Day, I ate it in a sugar-starved frenzy. Luckily , there happened to be two bars in the pack (much like a Twix). Otherwise I don't think I would have had enough recollection of what it tasted like to go on. (Don't judge - being a tourist is hard work.)

The variety of Ballisto I tried was honey and almonds - or at least that's what it said on the wrapper. What I got didn't taste entirely of these two ingredients, but it was delicious. The bar consists of two thin fingers of a crunchy cookie-like bottom with a light-colored cream (which I assume is the 'honey and almond' part) on the top, all covered in milk chocolate. The cookie base was fantastic, kinda hovering somewhere between the taste of a graham cracker and the consistency of Chips Ahoy. The cream was sweet but not too sweet, and added just enough substance to still make it feel like a candy bar and not a chocolate-covered cookie. My only complaint was that the chocolate on the outside could have been a little thicker, but all in all, one of my faves so far! 4.5 bars.


In total, that works out to an average of 3.5 bars, but seriously, it's Paris, so I'm going for 5 bars in commemoration. And also to mark the discovery of another non-chocolate confection - supermarket-brand strawberry cones. MMMMMMMMM French gummies. Vacation WIN.

Bar-o-Meter


* Badly translated by Google Translate, this is my attempt to title the post 'Hooray for eating!'

Crunch Time

I've repented for my evil, rule-breaking ways of last week, and have finally picked up a Crunchie from the local shop. I promise, I'll never stray from the straight and narrow path of sequential chocolate bar tasting again. (Unless, that is, I have another day at work that drives me absolutely crazy and in need of some serious chocolate therapy...but of course that would NEVER happen. Obviously.)


So, the Crunchie. It's a bar consisting of pretty much straight honeycomb covered in a layer of milk chocolate. Honeycomb (and I'm not sure that this actually exists in America) is a British treat consisting of hardened but slightly chewy sugar - see here. I'm generally not a fan, as it only tastes of sugar and has the annoying habit of getting stuck to your teeth. So an entire bar of it didn't seem too appetizing - or interesting!

I have to say, the bar wasn't as bad as I expected. The garish, orangey-colored honeycomb (THAT can't be natural) was overly sugary and sweet, but the chocolate layer surrounding it was actually thick enough to provide a good contrast. The middle is nice and light, and veers towards a meringue-like texture, rather than a teeth-cracking or overly gooey candy (both of which I've had in the past).

I was actually going to give it a halfway decent rating until the aftertaste kicked in. While the chocolate covering does a good job of toning down the honeycomb flavor while you're eating the bar, the only taste that actually remains after a few minutes is sugar. Boo. This bar is wildly unexciting, although not as bad as I expected. Let's give it 2 bars to prove it wasn't totally inedible.


Next week I'm off to Paris (joy!) and while I'll be on the hunt for some kind of slaggy chocolate bar to review (do the French even DO bad chocolate?), I'll more likely be stuffing my face with crepes, baguettes, pastry, and cheese galore. Vive le obesite!

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Flaking Out

Dear Readers - 


I've got to come clean. I've broken my own candy bar blogging rules. I thought I could get away with it but I just couldn't keep silent any longer. Go ahead and judge, but I had my reasons.

After a particularly stressful week, and with a raging hangover, I headed over to the regular shop for a new candy bar. But the selection completely failed me - first a Starbar, which I found out is actually the same as a Wunderbar (see post on Germany), which was a close miss. (Imagine the horr of reviewing the same bar twice!) 


Then about 7 different varieties of the big Cadbury's Dairy Milk (Dairy Milk, Dairy Milk with Fruit, Dairy Milk with Nuts, Dairy Milk with Fruit and Nuts, etc.), which I skipped as I've experienced Cadbury's chocolate covering about half the bars so far, and since Morgan pointed out it would mean I'd be eating virtually the same bar for a month and a half. Then a Bounty, which is basically an American Mounds, so an easy skip there.

But here comes the egregious flaunting of the rules. I looked to where the next bar should be and it was a Crunchie. Now, I've eaten a Crunchie before, but I think my reading of the rules only rules out any bar that I've eaten before IN AMERICA. A Crunchie, no matter how disgusting to me, still falls within the reviewing criteria. But I was dehydrated and craving sugar and totally pissed off for a number of reasons, so I skipped it. And then I skipped the next one. Let's face it, a Flake just isn't interesting. It needs to be put into a soft-serve ice cream cone most of the time just to jazz it up. So I went for the next one, a 'special' variety of Flake.

But I've repented, and I went back the following week for the regular Flake, for a special double review. (I'm not sure I can handle the Crunchie yet, but I'll get there eventually). 


I'm not sure why I thought this would be a terrible task. I LOVED the original Flake. It had a perfect crumbly texture - the flakes of smooth milk chocolate broke up and melted  so nicely, that I almost (ALMOST) felt it deserved the reaction of the creepy soft-porn like commercials my co-workers insisted I watch before reviewing this bar. It was like it crumbled and melted at exactly the same rate. It's like a milk chocolate pillow! Yum - a classic, and deservedly so. Four bars.

The special Flake on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. The 'special' aspect of this bar - called the 'Flake Allure' - is a thick layer of soft chocolate 'truffle' coating the bottom half of the bar. This does absolutely nothing to add to the deliciousness of the Flake - if anything, it actually takes something away from the simplicity of the original bar. The 'truffle' has a different chocolate flavor than the Flake itself, taking away from the milk chocolate loveliness of the inner bar. The outer layer also means the bar holds together better and doesn't crumble away as satisfyingly as the regular Flake. Not a terrible tasting bar but points off for messing with a good thing - only two bars.

So a combined three bars for the two varieties of Flake. As there seem to be new versions of tried and tested bars popping up everywhere (chunky KitKats, everything under the sun covered in dark chocolate instead of milk, etc.), I might do this kind of review more often - it was kinda fun trying two bars so similar to each other (and yet so dissimilar in deliciousness!). Just goes to show, why ruin a good thing when you have it? And next time, I'll be less disdainful of the good things which seem a little too boring to review - I could miss out on a treat! 


But that treat won't be a Crunchie, I can tell you that. Ew.

Bar-o-Meter



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. 

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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!

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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.

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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. 

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