Candy Bars Archives - Page 26 of 29

November 7, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Chocolate +Plus: Milk Chocolate Tiramisu Crisp – A Suprisingly Tasty (and Maybe Healthy?) Chocolate Bar

Candy Bars

I have to admit, my expectations for this were pretty low. Healthy chocolate seems like an oxymoron to me, and the thing that supposedly makes this bar healthier than the average chocolate – “bifidobacterium longum” – certainly isn’t one of the more appetizing-sounding ingredients I’ve seen in a candy bar. So colour me surprised that it actually tastes pretty good.

According to MicrobeWiki (now there’s an exciting web site), Bifidobacteria “promotes good digestion, boosts the immune system, and produces lactic and acetic acid that controls intestinal pH.” So that’s good, I guess…? I’m really not too concerned about how healthy this is, what I really care about is how it tastes.

Chocolate +Plus Milk Chocolate Tiramisu Crisp features creamy milk chocolate with a smooth, truffle-like centre. The bar has a pleasantly sweet, coffee aroma, and with the letters “+PLUS” embossed on the individual segments, it’s one of the nicer looking bars I’ve seen in a while. The bar is also slightly crispy thanks to little bits of puffed rice, though I’m not sure why as Tiramisu is probably one of the least crispy desserts you’ll find (it’s not crispy at all).

It’s good. The milk chocolate kind of reminds me of a slightly creamier version of Cadbury’s chocolate, and the truffle centre has a mild coffee flavour and is pretty tasty. I’m not sure how much it tastes like Tiramisu, but it’s good nonetheless. It definitely doesn’t have any kind of strange taste or unpleasant aftertaste that you might imagine, given that it’s a “health” bar, which leads me to believe that it probably isn’t very healthy at all. But healthy or not, it tastes good, and I’m curious to try some of the other flavours.

Manufactured by: Smart Confections
Calories (50 g bar): 290

November 6, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Caramilk Thick – An Improved Version of a Classic

Candy Bars

Caramilk is one of those bars that I like, but really only need to eat once every few months, because it’s so insanely sweet. It’s kind of like a Cadbury Creme Egg in that respect (and Cadbury, perhaps not coincidentally, makes both products). Caramilk is not available in the States, though according to Wikipedia, Caramello is pretty much the same product. I’ll have to verify that for myself the next time I get a chance.

The bar I’m reviewing here actually isn’t the standard Carmilk, it’s Caramilk Thick. It’s pretty much the same thing, only the squares are slightly bigger and seem to have a slightly higher chocolate to caramel ratio. The increased amount of chocolate actually works fairly well here, as the caramel is throat-burningly sweet, so a little bit of it goes a long way.

Of course the main selling point of a Caramilk bar is the consistency of the caramel; it is much softer than the usual caramel, and it flows rather easily (it’s probably a similar viscosity to a caramel sauce that you might put on ice cream). It’s pretty hard to eat without making a mess, so it’s advisable to pop an entire square into your mouth rather than trying to bite it in half. The chocolate is standard Cadbury milk chocolate, and is of a fairly high quality.

Overall this is probably a minor improvement over a regular Caramilk, thanks mostly to its increased chocolatiness. It’s also slightly easier to eat, as the segments are in one straight line rather than rows of two like the original, so you can just take a bite instead of having to break a piece off first.

Manufactured by: Cadbury
Calories (50 g bar): 250

November 4, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Kinder Bueno – Crispy, Creamy, Hazelnutty Goodness

Candy Bars

Though Ferrero are rather one-note as far as their product line goes (with a few exceptions, everything they sell has hazelnut in it), they’re probably one of the more reliable candy makers – I don’t think I’ve ever had a Ferrero product that I outright did not like. So it shouldn’t come as a big shock that I enjoyed this treat quite a bit.

Kinder Bueno consists of two individually wrapped bars (which is nice if you just feel like having a small snack and saving a bit for later). The bars are made up of a crispy wafer shell, filled with a “smooth milky hazelnut filling” and enrobed in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

The hazelnut filling (which is similar to the stuff inside the Ferrero Raffaello) is very creamy, and has a pronounced hazelnut taste. It is perhaps a bit too sweet, but that’s a minor complaint. The wafer shell adds a pleasing crispiness to the mix, and also has some flavour of its own to add complexity. The whole thing is coated in a thin layer of milk chocolate which, despite its thinness, contributes a definite chocolately taste (unlike, say, Cadbury Fudge, in which the chocolate is completely negligible).

It’s probably not the best thing that Ferrero makes (which is – and will likely always be – the classic Ferrero Rocher), but it’s still pretty tasty.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Calories (2 bars, 43 g): 240

October 31, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Skittles Chocolatey Eruption! – Do Not Eat this Under any Circumstances

Candy Bars

My initial assumption, upon seeing these in the store, was that these were going to be real chocolate, kind of like Smarties or M&Ms. Nope. They’re actually pretty similar to regular Skittles, only with chocolatey flavours rather than fruity ones. Real chocolate certainly would have been preferable, but then pretty much anything would be preferable to eating these, so that’s not saying much.

The first thing I noticed was that these things smell bad. And I don’t just mean that they smell slightly unpleasant, I mean that the bag emanates a bitter, garbage-like aroma that actually stings your nose if you take too deep of a whiff. They sort of smell how I imagine chocolate would smell if it were allowed to rot in a compost heap.

Skittles Chocolatey Eruption! is broken down into five flavours. From left to right in the photo above, they are:

Brownie: Easily the worst of the bunch. I’m pretty sure that this flavour is the culprit for the garbage smell coming from the bag. The first thing that hits you when you eat one of these is an overwhelming bitterness. It gets a bit better as you chew it, but not by much. Once you eat a few of these you realize that it does kind of have a brownie-like taste, albeit the worst brownie you’ve ever eaten.

Chocolate: This flavour actually isn’t so bad (especially after eating the brownie ones). It basically tastes like a Tootsie Roll with a candy shell.

Vanilla: This is probably the best of the five flavours, though using the word “best” in this context is sort of like trying to determine the least evil serial killer. It kind of tastes like a really artificial vanilla cake frosting, sort of like Betty Crocker or something along those lines. It’s not bad. If I could buy a whole package of just this flavour I might be tempted to do so.

S’mores: Not bad, but not good either. It doesn’t taste much like a s’more – it has a vaguely marshmallow-like flavour, but mostly it’s just sweet, and it has the same sort of funky flavour that all of these have.

Caramel: Again, this doesn’t taste much at all like its namesake. It’s bitter (though it’s nothing compared to the egregiously bad brownie flavour). It’s just unpleasant, really. It also has a pretty bad aftertaste.

In case it’s not clear by now, I really did not care for these. I’m not sure how something this bad makes it to the market, what with all the rigorous testing I’m sure a place like Mars does, but… well, here they are. Blech.

Update: It’s been a few hours since I ate these, and I’m finding that the taste and smell of them – the brownie flavour in particular – are periodically popping into my mind, and each time they do it turns my stomach a little bit. I’m like a veteran just returned from ‘Nam. I can’t take it, man.

I was going to give these one out of four, but I think I’m going to downgrade that to half-a-chip out of four (only because the vanilla and chocolate flavours weren’t completely objectionable, otherwise I’d give it a rating of zero for sure).

Manufactured by: Mars
Calories (56 g bag): 230

October 30, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Chunky – Might Even Be Better than the Original

Candy Bars

Generally speaking, I haven’t been the biggest fan of the “Chunky” line of candies – they’re fine, but not really a big improvement over the original bars, and the addition of sickly-sweet caramel or peanut butter in some of them tends to feel unnecessary. Kit Kat Chunky is, however, an exception. A sweet, sweet exception.

A standard Kit Kat bar comes with four separate chocolate covered wafers; the “Chunky” variant (known as Big Kat in the States) is essentially an oversized version of one of those bars. There are a few differences: the chocolate to wafer ratio seems to be a bit higher here than in a standard Kit Kat. Also, I think the wafer is slightly crunchier and a bit more substantial.

What’s good about this is that it strikes a good balance between the chocolate and the wafer; the wafer adds a lot of flavour, but not so much that it’s overpowering. The milk chocolate is fairly sweet, but it never crosses the line into “too sweet” territory. I actually think I prefer this to the original Kit Kat, but I’d have to taste them side-by-side to give a definitive answer on that.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Calories (50 g bar): 260