Back to Basics

So I was in one of the more down-market newsagents near my office, and something new grabbed my eye. Not new to England, I know, but new to me! I discovered Cadbury's Chomp and Fudge bars, which, with their small size, no-frills wrappers, and 20p cost resemble the 'basics' line of groceries at my local supermarket. Undaunted, I decided these new discoveries deserved a chance along with the more expensive or exotic bars I had reviewed in the past.

I was pleasantly surprised. These two petite little candy bars are a refreshing change from the bells and whistles of the last review. They're nothing fancy, but they're good because they're simple.

Both bars are covered in Cadbury's milk chocolate, which is a nice complement to the fillings.

The Chomp is filled with a really nice, buttery caramel. It resembles a chewy Werther’s Original - not overly sweet and just sticky enough. I think I prefer this to the teeth-sticking yet tasty Curly Wurly. Really simple and tasty. 4 bars!

The Fudge surprised me, not being filled with chocolate but instead with a vanilla-y, soft filling. That's when I remember that fudge in England doesn't mean the chocolate-y kind we're used to in the US. But this isn't bad - it reminds me of the vanilla or maple fudge we’d get on vacation up in Vermont. It has a nice soft, chewy texture, but as it's a little sugary, I'll award it a slightly lower 3 bars.

The sheer bargain-ness of these bars amazes me – I can’t even actually THINK of anything else that costs 20p. So not only are they tasty, they also suit these austerity days very well. Recession bars!

In hard times, the people of London should return to a classic candy bar. It turns out you don’t always get what you pay for – sometimes (and not often!) it is an awful lot more.

Combined 3.5 bars.

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A Disappointing Return

So, I know I’ve been away for a while, but I genuinely thought I had reached the end of the UK candy bar selection. That is, until I saw an advert on a bus stop for Cadbury’s bars with a whole new set of fillings.

The bars are called ‘Marvellous Creations’, and seem to promise some kind of fantastic experience, what with their hyperbolic description (do you really need to try that hard to promote how good chocolate is?) and circus-like imagery. So you can imagine my anticipation when I picked up a Cookie Nut Crunch and Jelly Popping Candy Shells (?) bar.

The first bar is basically standard Cadbury milk chocolate surrounding an array of brightly colored candy, including some very tiny looking M&Ms. Having a taste, I discover the bar is actually filled with what tastes like a combination of stale Haribo and overactive Pop Rocks inside it – it kept making little explosions in my mouth long after I ate it, and left an unpleasant sensation in my mouth that completely overshadowed the taste of the chocolate. This is a good example of gilding the lily – the Cadburys milk chocolate is absolutely serviceable – moderately tasty, even - but it’s too hard to notice that when the inside of your mouth feels like it’s being bombarded with shells launched by an impossibly tiny army.

The next bar is a substantial improvement over the first, but that isn’t actually saying much. Again, this is a bog standard Cadbury milk chocolate bar with some random-ness thrown in – but this time the filling is absolutely stingy. There are miniscule bits of nuts and what purports to be ‘pieces of biscuit’ but what would better be described as ‘really, really tiny pieces of biscuit.’ Seriously, these fillings are so small they feel like an afterthought – instead of something that promises to be packed with delicious goodies, it turns out tasting like there are just hard pieces of the chocolate, like it’s been left in the cupboard too long.

These bars are far from Marvellous – in fact, they’re downright disappointing. It just goes to show that there might be a reason there are no new candy bars....

No bars.

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:(



Chunky Kit Kats - an addendum

So after irresponsibly missing one of the new Chunky Kit Kats in my last review, compromising the integrity of my taste test, I managed to secure the elusive missing bar - a Double Fudge.

The Double Fudge appears to be the best variety yet, with a really solid layer of fudge on top of the wafer, and some kind of lighter chocolate cream between wafer layers. This gives the bar a really nice texture that goes well with the milk chocolate on the outside. It's like a KitKat, supersized - the same successful original, but what would happen if you added yet more chocolate to it.

It was so good I wolfed most of it down, sparing only a small piece for Sally. I'm not sharing on this one!

This is the clear winner – 4 bars! This pulls the average up to a much more respectable 3.5 bars (almost - but I don't have facility to show a quarter of a bar!).

Now I’m really going to go on Facebook and vote. Seriously this time.

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Variety Makes a Friday Afternoon Interesting

The combination of Christmas, a new year's diet, and general busyness has kept me from eating chocolate (and blogging about it), but never fear - I am back! Having exhausted all the unique candy bars in the stores near work, I have decided to embark upon the variations. Very exciting stuff, let me tell you. This week, being a slave to marketing and spotting a large ad on a bus on my way to work, I decided to review the different varieties of Chunky Kit Kats. The Chunky Kit Kat, for the uninitiated, takes one of the four original Kit Kat fingers and supersizes it, blowing it up to normal candy bar size. There is a thick layer of chocolate covering a hefty amount of wafer, and in some variations, a layer of caramel, hazelnut, etc. atop the wafer layer, enclosed in the chocolate.

There are currently eight varieties of Chunky Kit Kats on the market (including original flavor).  and in the grand UK tradition of flavor competitions, people are currently being encouraged to try a whole bunch of new varieties and rate them on Facebook. Personally, I wouldn’t be so eager to advertise my gluttony to my entire online social network, but then again, as I link to this blog on Facebook pretty much every other week, I probably shouldn't be talking.

Today I'll be reviewing six of the varieties - only six because I nixed the white chocolate version and missed the chocolate fudge version (which will be rectified, I assure you). I cut a small piece of each (what, do you think I can consume 6 whole candy bars at once??) and offered up the rest to my eager co-workers. In the informal office tasting, hazelnut and peanut butter seemed to duke it out for the top spot, although mint also received high praise.

Without further delay, the reviews:

Regular – to start, the classic. I wanted to establish a standard here, and the regular Chunky Kit Kat doesn’t disappoint. There is a nice flavor combo here – the crispy, just slightly savory crunch of the wafer with the not-too-fancy milk chocolate on the outside. Kit Kat still beats other wafer bars dead in that it's not at all dry. However, I’m going to be picky here and say that the chunkiness ruins the simple proportions of the classic Kit Kat – an issue that extends to all of the varieties, to be honest. I think it’s the chocolate to wafer proportions that makes the original skinny Kit Kat so good, and the chocolate surrounding the Chunky version of this isn’t exactly nice enough to be enjoyed in such a thick layer. Still tasty, though. 3.0 bars.

Hazelnut – This has an inferior hazelnut flavor, with a texture like Nutella but not as good. In fact this is Tronky-quality hazelnut, not the oh-so-chic-circa-1993 Ferraro Rocher. Despite the positive reviews from co-workers, I find the first filling cheap-tasting and unsatisfying. The wafer and outside chocolate are tasty, though – 2.0 bars.

Coconut – Oooh, now this is actually nice! I had the lowest expectations for this one, but it actually works, with a fairly subtle taste that's almost refreshing, without being too sweet. This is kinda like a Bounty (Mounds for you Americans) fused with a Kit Kat. The coconut flavor actually seems to be layered in among the wafer, not all glooped on top. 3.0 bars.

Peanut Butter – This is nice, as the classic combo of peanut butter and milk chocolate usually is, not surprisingly. Unlike a Reese’s Cup, the layer of peanut flavor in this bar has more of a peanut-butter-like consistency than a grainy one. Yum. The peanut works well with the sweet, slightly melty milk chocolate. 3.5 bars.

Mint – This is really nice, like a milk chocolate After Eight. The mint flavor is actually in the outer layer of chocolate on this one, rather than in the bar. (I have to appreciate the ingenuity of the different approaches to making the bars taste different – I think the bars work because it's not quite a one-size-fits-all approach). But as my co-worker Sally rightly pointed out, this is nice for one or two bites but way too sweet for a whole bar. Points off for that. 2.0 bars.

Caramel – The layer about the wafer in this one veers towards the toffee end of the caramel spectrum, with a soft and yielding texture. However, there's no gooey caramel here, which is a total disappointment. This could have reached Wispa Gold levels of deliciousness, but instead it just falls short. 2.0 bars.

In the end, I probably consumed about a whole Chunky Kit Kat in total. And the truth is, I’m feeling a little ill. I don’t know if I should blame this on the mix of flavors, but I don’t think I could eat one of them straight through (probably except the classic one). Keeping this in mind, the different variations on the Chunky Kit Kat get a somewhat disappointing overall score of 2.5 bars.

Sally's hippo gets in on the act

I have to say this approach was fun - I got to try every variety and I was also the big Friday afternoon hero at work for my hordes of hungry co-workers who helped me eat up the leftovers. Now, off to do my civic duty and vote! But should it be peanut butter or coconut....?

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Nostalgia Doesn't Always Cut It

So this week I'm reviewing a very special trio of bars - Nestle's Girl Scout Cookie bars!

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you've probably heard me rave about my obsession with the elusive, overpriced, and absolutely delicious Girl Scout cookies. In fact, I've probably compared a couple of candy bars to them. Imagine how excited I was, then, when my sister told me there was a series of Girl Scout Cookie candy bars coming out (oddly, only sold at Walgreens). So excited I requested she send them through the mail as I couldn't wait until Christmas, when I will be back in NJ.

So my wonderful little sister gladly obliged, traveling to a far-flung Walgreens, and when I reached the last stop on my recent West Coast odessey, I found the bars (only slightly crushed and melted from their cross-country journey) waiting for me. Bliss!

So it took me this long to finally review them, and the anticipation was high on the day. Could it be possible that one of my favorite candy bars - Crunch bars - would pair with not one but THREE Girl Scout cookies - Coconut and Caramel, Thin Mints, and Peanut Butter Creme. I think I was actually bouncing in my seat with the anticipation.

And then I sampled the bars. At first, it was great. The three bars had different fillings, but the same structure - thin layered wafers alternated with flavored fillings, and covered with a thin layer of chocolate.  They also all bore an incredibly strong resemblance to their original cookie - the peanut butter crème was very peanuty, which went well with the vanilla wafer and milk chocolate coating, the caramel and coconut had layers of chewy caramel and coconut that tasted exactly like the cookie, and the Thin Mint version was fittingly covered in dark chocolate, with mint chocolate crème and chocolate wafers (and for some reason, the chocolate coating seemed thicker than other two bars.) But then it all started going downhill.

First of all, these bars bore absolutely no relationship to a normal Crunch bar. They were all a bit wafer-y, missing the satisfying heft and crunch from the crispy rice pieces in solid chocolate.In fact, I'm not sure why they were branded under Crunch bars at all – they're more like an oversized, bizarro Kit Kat.

And then it started getting worse. The strong flavors, which made the bars so strongly resemble the cookies on the first bit, got more and more sickly sweet as I went on. Also, the wafer/chocolate and filling ratio is all out, meaning you also start to get a dry taste in your mouth as you go along. Luckily, the bars are divided into two mini bars, meaning I could pawn off the leftovers on unsuspecting co-workers.

I was so disappointed! These bars were good on the first bite, but then quickly rendered inedible by the awful aftertaste. I think I was being too generous when I compared them to a Kit Kat before - these are a disappointment along the lines of the infamous Tronky. I actually even felt a little sick the rest of the afternoon.

A big disappointment for a superfan - I'm going to stick to the cookies. 1/2 bar.

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Breaking the Fast

So last Friday I found myself battling a bit of afternoon weakness. After a long day in the office on very little sleep, I found myself violating my cold turkey 'no sweets' rule (self-enforced after my recent food-heavy vacation) by heading down to the canteen for whatever would be left at that time - likely some run-of-the-mill Snickers or Kit Kat. I hid my head in shame as I bemoaned my incredible lack of willpower.

But wait! As I approached the shelves with the candy bars on them, I noticed a bar I HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE. I am redeemed! This has suddenly transformed into a research mission!

The mystery bar is the Dubble Bar, which appears to be a special Fairtrade bar to support Comic Relief (which also means it's about double the price of the other bars - a source for its name, perhaps?). From the insignia on the back, it looks like it’s made by Divine (a fairly decent purveyor of chocolate bars - real ones - and advent calendars), so it can’t suck that much, right? The promise of 'milk chocolate crispy crunch' bodes well – I love crispy bars.

The bar is pretty simple - a thin layer of crispy rice encased in milk chocolate, topped with a double layer of fairly dense milk chocolate. 

YUM. It’s like a slab of milk chocolate pasted to the top of a Crunch bar. And the chocolate is GOOD. This is no cheapo, oranguntan-killing, palm-oil padded candy bar chocolate. This is actual chocolate, which doesn’t disintegrate in your mouth like so many other cheap bars.. And it might be the early-winter-cold-induced fatigue and general Friday malaise, but I can’t get enough of it. And thanks to the work canteen, it is also refrigerated – which I absolutely love.

Delicious AND benefiting a good cause (although PS, this donation seems pretty paltry!). Nevertheless, this is a big win.

4 bars!

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The Olympics are Over...

...and all I got is this lousy mascot-shaped chocolate.

Actually, its not lousy at all. To finish off the British summer to end all summers, I thought I'd write a review for the chocolate Wenlock that I got as a thank-you from one of my co-workers. Not only does this beat the chocolate medals that everyone else seemed to be getting hands down, its also another addition to my totally creepy mascot collection, as I have been OBSESSED with these things this summer. (But not as obsessed as this person. Or the creative team that made this.)

At least it WAS an addition to my collection. Fatigue from one too many early shifts set in and I devoured the entire thing in 10 minutes of madness. Although the wrapper is pretty sweet, the chocolate isn't much to write home about, as it's kinda like eating a Cadbury's easter egg, only one that's oddly shaped. I know I haven't been too generous to Cadbury's chocolate in the past, but maybe it was the sleep-deprived deliriousness or the Olympic and Paralympic spirit going to my head, but this thing was pretty tasty. The chocolate shell was a little thin (this is no substantial Lindt chocolate bunny) and therefore a little floppy, but tasty all the same. Nothing amazing, but some pretty decent milk chocolate. 2.5 bars.

I am off on vacation (finally!) the next couple of weeks, so I expect you all to be waiting with bated breath to see what kind of weirdness I manage to bring back from the US. Until then, I will stuff myself on delicious seafood and California produce as I wend my way down the west coast. So much for that Olympic diet...

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Insert Clever Title Here

So, I thought it would be clever to try and tie this review into the Paralympics, but the long weeks of shift work have rendered me unable to be creative. I've got nothing, people.

Ok, I DO have a review of not one but TWO bars. And thanks to the generosity of my little sister, I have two bars from Central America. Exotic guest review, here we come!

So the two bars that made it back from Nicole's Central American adventure are the wonderfully named Huevitos from Ecuador and Canonazo from Paraguay. And they almost even came back without having been completely melted and reformed in this adorably labeled ziploc bag:

So, the Canonzado is a round bar that kind of looks like the fake logs that take you around a log ride in any amusement park. It's a multi-layered affair, with a layer of crispy rice-studded chocolate wrapped around a tube-shaped cookie layer, all filled with soft chocolate cream. It's like what you would get if you rolled a Crunch bar out flat and wrapped it around one of those chocolate-filled wafer straws you get in the Pepperidge Farm cookie variety pack at Christmas.

Unfortunately, it doesn't actually taste as good as that would suggest. The cookie tube is really dry and the chocolate (both within and without) is pretty tasteless. This is an interesting concept, but doesn't really deliver. No bars.

Next up - Huevitos. Even those of you with the most rudimentary grasp of Spanish (myself included) will recognize that the name means something little and cute. And it delivers, with four little chocolate covered balls (not unlike chocolate-frosted donut holes from Entemann's) inside the wrapper. The Huevitos (little eggs!) also go for the layered effect, wrapping a chewy marshmallow center in a thin layer of something between honeycomb and wafer, covering it all in chocolate. 

Again, this is somewhat of a disappointment despite all the variety it provides - the honeycomb/wafer is a little dry, which kinda takes away from the overall experience. However, I find that I can't stop popping these little chocolate eggs into my mouth because of the crack-like (I only can imagine, Mom, I have never taken drugs) hit of sweetness from the marshmallow in the middle. So sugary, so chewy! Plus, they're fun to eat. However, if asked if they were GOOD, I'd probably say no. 2 bars for the sheer joy of eating.

Two fails, then. Much like the zero medal count from both Ecuador and Paraguay in the Paralympics, so far (do they even have athletes competing?). Perhaps central America should stay away from candy bars and simply devote their energies to making delicious food instead, which I will continue to devour with relish.  

Overall? 1 bar. Ouch. Better luck next time.

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Going for Gold

Yup, here it is - the obligatory Olympic-themed post. I promise I'll keep it short. :P

Today's competitor is the Wispa Gold, which my English friends tell me used to exist, was sadly taken off the market, but has made its triumphant return in time to join the legions of Olympic-themed products in 2012 (Its long and complicated bio on Wikipedia states: launched in 1995, relaunched for a limited time in 2009. Discontinued in 2010. Relaunched in 2011.)

The Wispa Gold is basically a pimped-out version of a normal Wispa, which as you'll remember from a previous review, is actually pretty good on its own. I was planning on starting my reviews of the variations with the 5 billion versions of KitKat out right now, but the Wispa Gold in its shiny foil wrapper simply caught my eye first, with its Very Willy Wonka-esque with its offer to ‘Unwrap Gold! And win Olympics tickets’.

I pulled open the shiny wrapper and found more or less exactly what I expected - a Wispa with a layer of somewhat runny caramel on top. And it's delicious - the regular Wispa portion of the bar  tastes like chocolate nougat – not unlike a Three Musketeers bar, another US favorite of mine. This is tasty stuff - and in fact, this is the only bar in months that I've had all to myself and haven't offered pieces of to my colleagues. 

Wispa Gold - too good to to share. 4 bars!

Happy Olympics, everyone. :)

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More International Fixtures

Perhaps fittingly, I've had two international contenders gifted to me in the previous weeks, which just all ties in with the Euro 2012 spirit (go Deutschland!). I thought I'd review them, in the spirit of updating the ever-shifting international league table. 


A few weeks ago, Carol most generously brought me back a mint crisp from Dublin, after my past disaster tasting. (Apparently I got the cheap rip-off rather than the true Cadbury's bar?) Ok, it would be more accurate to say Carol generously brought me back HALF of a Cadbury's Mint Crisp (a small price, I'm sure, for getting one hand delivered, what with the restrictions on airline luggage nowadays). 

So, after being given another opportunity to try this bar...I have to say I still don't really like it. (Sorry, Carol, I am truly an ingrate.) The bar (which I actually forgot to take a photo of, so this one is from the internet), is Cadbury's milk chocolate with oddly yellow-green bits of mint crispiness inside. Although I am a loyal proponent of the mint/chocolate combination, I'm not quite sure this works with milk chocolate. Maybe milk chocolate is just a little too sickly for the combo? I also am pretty sure a pre-requisite for liking this bar is actually liking Cadbury’s chocolate – which I still find pretty difficult, even if it is the more superior Irish Cadbury's (read the comment at the very end of the page). Sorry, Cadbury's lovers, I just didn't grow up with it! 

So I'm a little sorry to report this bar gets a measly one bar in the ratings. I was a little worried this would bring down Ireland in the league standings, but fear not, the sheer quantity of deliciousness I reviewed last time outweighs this poor score easily. Better luck next time, Cadbury's?

Second bar comes from Sally, who brought me back a Ciocori from her recent holiday to Italy. Apart from being nearly impossible to pronounce (Cho-coree? Chio-coree?), it seemed to be a marked improvement on the last Italian disappointment. (It's ok, Italy, you disappoint me in so few things.) The wrapper was a bit incomprehensible (why is that chipmunk carrying an American football?) but the promise of CROCCANTE was tantalizing.

And CROCCANTE it was! The Ciocori is a lot like an Italian version of an American Crunch bar, one of my favorites (especially in its pleasantly petite 'fun size'). The bar had bits of crispy rice (or...riso croccante) in a pleasingly sweet milk chocolate layer. The bar was a little disappointingly thin - some of the riso was protruding from the other side and I think I would have preferred something a little more substantial, as this bar disappeared in no time at all. Also, strangely (but not unpleasantly), the chocolate had a slight tinge of Nutella-like hazelnut flavor, but that might just be me remembering pretty much all the rest of the chocolate from Italy. All in all, quite tasty.


Che buono! A solid 3 bars. This is MILES above the Tronky and brings Italy up to a more respectable score of 2 in the rankings. 


So, a combined two bars from this week's selection, and just in case you were interested, the revised rankings below. Enjoy the football (I know, it's really called soccer), everyone!

Sweden: 3.5

Denmark: 2

Germany: 3.5

France: 3.5

England: too lazy to average them all, will go with 3 to be safe.

Ireland: 4

Italy:2

Switzerland: 3

Latvia:4

Poland: 2 (combined score)

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