Category: Candy Bars

Michael

Snickers Creamy Almond Butter – Sweet and Salty Overload

Candy Bars

The first thing you’ll notice about the almond butter variety of Snickers is how comically small it is.  Consisting of two tiny little squares that can’t even fill up the small wrapper, it’s definitely one of the smaller candy bars you can buy.  I’m assuming the candy companies have done a bunch of research showing that 200 calories is the magic number, and because this is so dense, it had to be tiny.  But it’s still weirdly small.

Snickers Creamy Almond Butter

The illustration on the wrapper seems to indicate that it’s just smooth caramel and creamy almond butter enrobed in chocolate, but the caramel is actually dotted with tiny little almond shards.  This is a good idea in theory — crunchy nuts would be a nice contrast to the bar’s chewiness, and of course, the peanuts in a regular Snickers are one of its defining characteristics.  But the minuscule almond bits are way, way too small to bring a satisfying crunch.

Other than that, it’s fine, I guess.  It’s generally decent enough, with a satisfying chewiness that never feels overbearing.  But boy is it ever sweet; it’s a throat-burner, that’s for sure.  Of course, a standard Snickers bar is also quite sweet, so I guess that’s par for the course.

Snickers Creamy Almond Butter

There’s also a decent amount of saltiness, which helps to counteract the sweetness and gives the bar that satisfying sweet/salty combo.  But the intense sweet and salty punch kinda kills all the other flavours of the bar; you can barely even taste the almond butter or the chocolate.  It’s basically just there for texture.  A more apt name for Snickers Almond Butter would be “Sugar and Salt: the Bar.”

2.5 out of 4

Manufactured by: Mars
Nutritional info (2 squares, 38 grams): 190 calories, 11 grams of fat (4 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 0 mg of cholesterol, 140 mg of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fibre, 17 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Almonds, sugar, invert sugar, milk ingredients, lactose, corn syrup, cocoa butter, corn syrup solids, cocoa mass, modified palm oil, dextrose, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, vegetable glycerine, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, calcium carbonate, soy lecithin, TBHQ, flavour.

Michael

Twirl – An Easier to Eat Flake Bar

Candy Bars

Twirl is basically just an enhanced version of Flake; it’s a Flake bar that’s been covered in milk chocolate.  That doesn’t seem like much, but it actually makes a pretty huge difference when you’re eating it.

Twirl

Flake is one of the more painful chocolate bars to eat.  Its distinctive shape means that as soon as you take a bite, it starts crumbling into bits.

Twirl thoroughly solves that issue; the chocolate coating holds it all together quite nicely.  Every bite is crumb-free.

Twirl

Other than that?  It is what it is.  It’s standard Cadbury milk chocolate, but in a different shape.  It’s certainly not the most interesting candy bar in the store, but if you’re craving chocolate, it’ll hit the spot.  The flaky texture makes it a slightly different experience from eating a standard block of chocolate.

As for the quality of the chocolate itself, it’s very sweet, but it’s nice and creamy and has a pleasant milky flavour.  It’s good.

3 out of 4

Manufactured by: Cadbury
Nutritional info (1 finger, 21.5 grams): 114 calories, 6.3 grams of fat (3.6 grams of saturated fat, unknown grams of trans fat), unknown mg of cholesterol (British labeling standards are different, I guess), 50 mg of sodium, 13 grams of carbohydrates, 0.5 grams of fibre, 12 grams of sugar, 1.5 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Milk, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, whey powder (from milk), vegetable fat (palm, shea), emulsifiers (E442, E476), flavourings.

Michael

Kit Kat – An Absolute Classic

Candy Bars

After reviewing (and being delighted by) a bunch of Kit Kat variants, I figured it was probably time to write about the original.

I was under the impression that Kit Kat had gone down in quality; the last couple of times I’ve eaten it, I’ve been underwhelmed.

Kit Kat

Well, either I was wrong or the quality has gone right back up, because this one was absolutely delicious.  Top-notch stuff.

Everything here just works.  In particular, the ratio of chocolate to wafer is spot on; there’s enough chocolate to give you a satisfying chocolatey hit, but you also get a good amount of crispiness from the wafers.  It’s a great balance, and as I’ve mentioned in previous Kit Kat reviews, the wheaty wafers do a great job of offsetting some of the sweetness of the chocolate.

Kit Kat

I mean, it’s a Kit Kat; it’s not the most exciting thing at the store, but if you haven’t had it in a while, I think you might be surprised.  The chocolate is pretty decent, the wafers are nice and crispy, and it’s not too sweet.  It’s not gourmet, but for a mass-market candy bar made by one of the huge candy companies, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

4 out of 4

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 bar, 45 grams): 230 calories, 12 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 35 mg sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 22 grams of sugar, 0 grams of fibre, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, whey powder, lactose, soya lecithin, polyglycerol polyricinoleate, natural flavour), wheat flour, sugar, modified palm oil, cocoa, sodium bicarbonate, soya lecithin, yeast, natural flavour.

Michael

Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough – A Downgrade From the Original

Candy Bars

Everyone loves cookie dough.  It’s delicious.  That’s just a scientific fact.  And Kit Kat Chunky?  Also objectively delicious.  So then Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough must also be delicious.  Okay, well, that was a short review — see you next week.

Wait, what’s that?  It’s not delicious?  Well then.  I guess a bit more of a review is necessary.

Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough

The biggest problem here is the so-called cookie dough; it does a fairly abysmal job of recapturing that particular taste.  If you close your eyes and really use your imagination you might be able to conjure up vague whiffs of cookie dough flavour, but mostly, it just tastes like an overly sweet, sugary paste.  If this had been a blind taste test, I’m not sure that I ever would have figured out what it was supposed to be.

That’s an issue, because:

A) If I buy something that says cookie dough on the packaging, I kinda want it to taste like cookie dough.  I feel like that’s not unreasonable?

B) It throws off the balance of the Kit Kat Chunky.  The wafer here is reduced by about 50 percent to accommodate the layer of “cookie dough.”  In a normal Kit Kat, the wafer does a great job of balancing out the bar’s sweetness, but the thinner one here is a bit overwhelmed.

Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough

The whole thing is still decent enough, but it’s clearly inferior to a regular Kit Kat Chunky in every regard.  If you really need Kit Kat + cookie dough in your life, just buy a standard Kit Kat Chunky and a package of cookie dough and eat them together.  Problem solved.

2.5 out of 4

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 bar, 52 grams): 280 calories, 16 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0.2 grams of trans fat), 15 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 26 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre.
Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, glucose), modified milk ingredients, modified palm oil, cocoa butter, wheat flour, unsweetened chocolate, palm and vegetable oils, soy and sunflower lecithin, cocoa powder, natural and artificial flavours, polyglycerol polynoleate, salt, baking soda, yeast, calcium sulphate, ammonium carbonate, citric acid, protease, xylanase, ascorbic acid, potassium carbonate, sodium phosonate.

Michael

Crunch – New and Not-So-Improved

Candy Bars, Chocolate

You may not realize this, but you couldn’t buy Crunch for a little while; in 2018, Nestle sold Crunch to Ferrero, who pulled it off the shelves so that they could “reformulate” it.

Well, it’s back, and either I’m remembering Crunch being better than it was, or it’s gone down in quality.  Which is weird; you’d think the jump from Nestle to Ferrero (the makers of Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, and many other delicious things) would be a clear upgrade.  Alas.

Crunch

Still, it’s not bad.  It’s also not “good” per se; the chocolate is fairly bottom-of-the-barrel, with a generic sweetness and not a whole lot going on in the flavour department, and even the crispy rice is a bit more anemic than you’d expect (it’s mildly crispy, but the texture isn’t quite there).

Also, this is purely psychological, but I miss the old design of the bar, with the big embossed “Crunch” lettering.  The new segmented bar is boring in comparison.

Crunch

And yet…  I mostly enjoyed it.  The chocolate has a nice creaminess, and while the rice doesn’t bring the assertive crunch you’re looking for in a bar called Crunch, it still has enough of that creamy/crispy contrast to be satisfying.  If I didn’t have nostalgia for the old Crunch bar my opinion on this would probably be a bit lower, but I do, so here we are.  I didn’t particularly like it at first, but it (mostly) grew on me.

2.5 out of 4

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Nutritional info (1 bar, 43.9 grams): 230 calories, 12 grams of fat (8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 60 mg of sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 24 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, natural flavour), crisped rice (rice flour, sugar, barley malt, salt).