Candy Bars Archives - Page 19 of 29

June 21, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Hershey’s Birthday Cake – Like Betty Crocker Frosting in Bar Form

Candy Bars

Birthday cake flavour can be extremely hit and miss; it’s often just vanilla-flavoured sweet overload. That’s basically what I was expecting here, so this was actually a pretty delightful surprise.

The aroma hits you as soon as you unwrap the bar: Betty Crocker frosting. And it hits hard.

That’s what it tastes like, too; it’s like someone took a tub of Betty Crocker vanilla frosting, mixed in some sprinkles, and then magically transformed it into a candy bar.

I actually like that flavour (a childhood spent eating Dunkaroos probably has something to do with this), so I liked this, but your enjoyment entirely depends on your tolerance for overly sweet, artificial-tasting frosting.

The sweetness level here is intense, but in the context of the birthday cake flavour, it feels right. It would be weird if it weren’t a throat-burning assault of sugary sweetness. That’s the deal. That’s what it is, and it works.

The sprinkles work too — they add a nice crunchy counterpoint to the creamy white chocolate.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 39 grams): 200 calories, 11 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 35 mg of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 22 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, com syrup solids, lactose, glucose), cocoa butter, milk ingredients, modifed palm oil, sunflower oil, lecithin (soy), corn starch, natural and artificial flavours, carnauba wax, beeswax, turmeric, spirulina extract, beetroot red, palm and shea oil, polyglycerol polyricinoleate.

June 7, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Hazelnut Crunch – A Sweet Combo of Chocolate and Hazelnut

Candy Bars

Like Kit Kat Senses, Kit Kat Hazelnut Crunch kind of feels like Nestle’s attempt to do their own version of a Ferrero product. This one isn’t quite as blatant, but with its combo of milk chocolate, hazelnut pieces, and crispy wafers, it’s hard not to think of a Ferrero Rocher.

But then there’s no creamy filling, so maybe I’m just seeing connections where there are none. Ferrero certainly can’t lay claim to the chocolate/hazelnut combo.

Kit Kat Hazelnut Crunch is tasty enough, but if I had the choice between this and a Ferrero Rocher, I’d pick the latter ten times out of ten. It’s no comparison.

The main issue is the intense level of sweetness, which kinda bulldozes all of the bar’s other flavours. The taste of the chocolate and hazelnut are certainly there, but they’re in the background.

A standard Kit Kat is balanced out somewhat by the wheatiness of the wafers, but the chocolate version here isn’t quite able to perform that function.

Still, the snappy chocolate has a nice creamy texture, and the hazelnut bits add a decent amount of crunch. Between that and the crispy wafers, the texture here is quite satisfying. And it’s nearly impossible to go wrong with chocolate and hazelnut; making a candy bar with that combo is almost like cheating. You’d have to work pretty hard to mess it up.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (4 fingers, 40 grams): 210 calories, 12 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 30 mg sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 19 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre.
Ingredients: Sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, wheat flour, unsweetened chocolate, hazelnuts, modified palm oil, palm, palm kernel and vegetable oils, cocoa powder, sunflower lecithin, natural favour, baking soda, protease, xylanase, tocopherol, citric acid.

May 31, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Reese’s Stuffed with Crunchy Cookie – A Delicious Twist on a Classic

Candy Bars

The last time I tried a Reese product stuffed with something, it was the underwhelming Reese Outrageous, so I’ll admit that I didn’t have particularly high hopes for this one. I love Reese Peanut Butter Cups; would this be ruining a good thing? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

Well, it ain’t broke, but apparently it did need to be fixed, because this was delicious. Maybe even better than the original?

It’s a pretty basic concept: it’s the standard Reese Peanut Butter Cup, but filled with crunchy cookie bits (think Oreo, but without the creme).

It’s fantastic. It’s very, very sweet, but it totally works — the slight salty hit from the peanut butter does a decent job of balancing out the sweetness, and the chocolate and peanut butter combo is predictably delicious.

The cookies are great. I figured they might be a bit sogged up from the peanut butter, but they’re aggressively crunchy and add a great amount of texture. They also have a pronounced cocoa flavour which works perfectly with the peanut butter cup.

The chocolate seems a bit firmer than the fudgier chocolate that you usually find in a Reese Peanut Butter Cup, and it’s extremely sweet, but it’s tasty. The whole thing is really tasty. If you like peanut butter cups, this needs to be in your life.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 package, two cups): 200 calories, 11 g of fat (4.5 g of saturated fat, 0 g of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 125 mg of sodium, 24 g of carbohydrates, 1 g of fibre, 21 g of sugar, 4 g of protein.
Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nofat milk, milk fat, lactose, lecithin (soy), PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, cornstarch, contains 2% or less of: salt, cocoa processed with alkali, vegetable oil (canola oil, palm oil and/or palm kernel oil), modified cornstarch, high fructose corn syrup, lecithin (soy), artificial flavor, TBHQ and citric acid to maintain freshness.

May 24, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Les Reclettes de L’Atalier: Raisins, Almonds & Hazelnuts – Creamy, Crunchy, and Chewy

Candy Bars, Chocolate

You know that a company is trying very hard to make their candy seem gourmet when they pull out the French. Les Reclettes de L’Atalier; oh la la. Well that must be fancy.

Aside from the pretentious name, this is basically a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar, but with the addition of hazelnuts.

It’s good (sorry — I mean c’est bon). If you like Fruit & Nut, it’s a safe bet you’ll like this; the flavour of the chocolate is actually quite similar, and the addition of hazelnuts is a welcome one.

I mean, the chewy/crunchy/creamy combo is always going to be great, and the quality of the chocolate is pretty decent. It’s sweeter than it needs to be (the addition of more sweetness thanks to the raisins doesn’t help), but the nicely toasted nuts do a decent job of balancing it out. It’s not going to blow anyone’s mind, but if you’re looking for a decent quality piece of chocolate, you could certainly do worse.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (3 segments, 42 grams): 230 calories, 13 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 10 mg of cholesterol, 25 mg of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 21 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, raisins, almonds, hazelnuts, sunflower lecithin, vegetable oil, natural vanilla flavour.

May 18, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Ritter Sport: Coconut – A Tasty Combo of Coconut and Chocolate

Candy Bars, Chocolate

I was under the impression that Ritter Sport had gone downhill; the last couple I’ve had have been fairly mediocre, so I had mostly written them off. But this one was quite tasty! So there’s my entire world-view, shaken to its very core.

I will admit that I’m a sucker for the chocolate/coconut combo; Bounty would easily be in my top five favourite candy bars. So maybe I’m just going easy on this one because the combination is so inherently delightful.

Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s basically like Bounty, but with a higher chocolate to coconut ratio. Oddly, the chocolate flavour isn’t quite as pronounced as you’d think it would be; it has a bit of a generic sweetness, and I wish it packed a more chocolatey punch.

That’s pretty much my only real complaint here. Otherwise, the chocolate is nice and creamy, and there’s a good balance of coconut flavour along with a mild crispiness from the flakes. I don’t know that I’d pick this over a Bounty, but then the increased amount of chocolate makes it feel fairly distinct.

Manufactured by: Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG
Nutritional info (6 pieces, 38 grams): 220 calories, 15 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 25 mg of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 19 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, palm fat, cocoa butter, grated coconut (9%), whole milk powder, cocoa mass, skim milk powder, lactose, butter fat, coconut milk (1%), glucose syrup, soy lecithin, pea protein, concentrated lemon juice.