Candyrageous - Page 9 of 35 - A Blog about Candy

February 10, 2021 Michael

Hershey’s Gold – Kinda Tastes like a Reese’s Pieces Bar

Candy Bars, Chocolate

Like a lot of Hershey products, the word “chocolate” is conspicuously absent from the packaging of Hershey’s Gold. The reason for that is pretty simple — chocolate (even white chocolate) has to have a certain percentage of cocoa butter to legally use that name, and if you look at the ingredients here, you’ll notice a couple of types of oil, but zero cocoa butter.

Which means that while the base of this bar is theoretically caramelized white chocolate (a type of white chocolate that’s roasted to give it a deeper flavour), the stuff here is actually “caramelized creme.”

It also has peanuts and pretzels, and it’s actually pretty good. No, it’s not real chocolate. Yes, it’s a bit waxy, as you’d expect from the fake stuff. But it’s tasty enough.

The bar is so thoroughly suffused with little crispy and crunchy bits that the mockolate’s lack of creaminess is never all that obvious; the peanuts and pretzels add enough texture to (mostly) hide the mockolate’s faults.

It actually reminded me quite a bit of the filling of Reese’s Pieces; there’s no peanut butter in here, but the peanut bits are so generous that it definitely has that flavour.

As for the pretzel, it’s mostly just there for crispiness and for a mild hit of salt; the pieces are too tiny to particularly stand out.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 39 grams): 210 calories, 13 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.2 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 85 mg of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 19 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), milk ingredients, peanuts, wheat flour, lactose, lecithin (soy), salt, malt, soybean oil, yeast.

February 7, 2021 Michael

Jelly Belly Mint Filled Chocolate Bar – Shockingly Good

Candy Bars

I’ll admit that I had extremely low expectations for this one. I mean, it’s Jelly Belly. They’re legendary for their jelly beans, but what do they know about chocolate?

Quite a bit, apparently!

Yes, this is a Jelly Belly product, but it has absolutely nothing to do with jelly beans — it’s just milk chocolate with a minty filling. It’s so much better than I thought it was going to be.

It’s basically like something that Andes would make, but better. Unlike an Andes product, it’s real chocolate, which helps. And it’s good quality chocolate, too — it’s nice and snappy, it’s rich and creamy, and it has a satisfying flavour that isn’t too sweet.

In a lot of bars like this, the chocolate itself is infused with a minty flavour, which makes the whole thing taste a bit toothpastey. But the mintiness here only comes from the filling, which gives the bar a great balance of minty and chocolatey flavour. I feel like this might have been slightly more satisfying if the mint were a bit softer (it’s basically the exact same texture as the chocolate), but that’s a minor complaint.

I started out assuming that this would be more of a novelty than anything else, but now I feel like I need to seek out other Jelly Belly chocolates. It’s weird how good it is.

Manufactured by: Jelly Belly Candy Company
Nutritional info (1 bar, 49 grams): 280 calories, 18 grams of fat (11 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 10 mg cholesterol, 35 mg sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 26 grams of sugar, 0 grams of fibre, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, chocolate liquor, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), vanillin), sugar, coconut oil, cocoa butter, nonfat dry milk, contains 2% or less of the following: whole milk powder, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), natural flavor, vegetable and fruit juice (color), turmeric (color).

February 3, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Chunky: Caramel – Way too Sweet

Candy Bars

I don’t think there’s any other candy bar with as many varieties as Kit Kat. It’s not even close. According to Wikipedia, over 300 flavours of Kit Kat have been made for the Japanese market alone, and Japan definitely isn’t the only country in the weird Kit Kat game.

They’re able to do this with Kit Kat because the wafer/chocolate combo is basic enough to lend itself to any number of flavour varieties, and delicious enough that basically anything you throw at it is going to taste good.

Kit Kat Chunky, on the other hand, seems to be a different story. I think the biggest problem is that, instead of merely adding a flavour to the chocolate, they actually cram something into the bar itself, on top of the wafer (caramel, in this case). This means that they have to use a smaller wafer (about half the size, as far as I can tell), which throws off the balance of the bar.

Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough had the same issue. The crispy wafer normally does a great job of balancing out the bar’s sweetness, but the smaller version here isn’t particularly able to perform that function. This is especially an issue with the gooey caramel, which is intensely sweet. It’s overwhelming.

It’s too bad, because this seems like a great idea in theory, but in practice it’s a bit sickening in its unrelenting sweetness.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 bar, 55 grams): 280 calories, 15 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0.2 grams of trans fat), 10 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 30 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 4 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, glucose), milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, modified palm and modified vegetable oils, wheat flour, coconut oil, soy lecithin, cocoa powder, polyglycerol polyricinoleate, salt, baking soda, yeast, calcium sulphate, natural flavour, protease, xylanase.

January 31, 2021 Michael

Duplo – Like a Hazelnutty Kit Kat

Candy Bars

Confusingly, Ferrero actually makes two different European candy bars called Duplo; one features three segments, each with a whole hazelnut surrounded by chocolate cream, and the other is a Kit-Kat-esque wafer bar infused with hazelnut. This particular one is the wafer variety, and it’s made in Poland, with nothing but Polish on the wrapper.

It’s quite good. It has so much resemblance to a Kit Kat that it would be hard for it not to be tasty. The wafer is nice and crispy, the chocolate is creamy, and the pronounced hazelnut flavour compliments it perfectly.

I wish the quality of the chocolate were better (it’s a bit one-note sweet), and the crispiness of the wafer could be more pronounced. But mostly, this is an above average chocolate bar that really capitalizes on the inherent tastiness of the hazelnut/chocolate combo.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Nutritional info (100 grams): 555 calories, 33.5 grams of fat (19.1 grams of saturated fat, unknown grams of trans fat), unknown mg of cholesterol, 191 mg of sodium, 56.09 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 50.49 grams of sugar, 6.19 grams of protein.
Ingredients (Google translated from Polish): Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, full-milk powder, cocoa butter, emulsifier: lecithin (soya), vanillin), sugar, palm oil, shea vegetable oil, wheat flour, hazelnut, wheat powder, cocoa powder with reduced fat content, emulsifier: lecithin (soya), wheat starch, salt, raising agents (ammonium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate), vanillin.

January 27, 2021January 30, 2021 Michael

Hershey’s Cookies ‘N’ Creme – An Oreo Transformed into a Candy Bar

Candy Bars

Do you like Oreo cookies? If you do, you’re almost certainly going to like Hershey’s Cookies ‘N’ Creme; it’s basically an Oreo in candy bar form.

(And if you don’t, what is wrong with you?? Go jump into a volcano so you don’t inflict your weird defective taste buds onto the next generation.)

The bar features something resembling white chocolate that’s studded with a whole bunch of chocolate cookie pieces. Sadly, it’s not actually white chocolate — a quick perusal of the ingredients reveals a whole bunch of oil and zero cocoa butter. But in the context of this particular bar, it doesn’t really matter. There are so many cookie pieces here that the fake chocolate’s lack of creaminess never particularly feels like an issue. The chocolate is almost just there to bind the cookie bits together.

It’s quite tasty. It’s very, very sweet, but like with an Oreo, the pronounced cocoa flavour helps to balance out the sweetness — and because there are so many cookie pieces, that’s the primary flavour. The white mockolate basically tastes like a slightly more solid version of the creme in an Oreo cookie. It’s a delightful combo.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 43 grams): 220 calories, 11 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 100 mg of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 20 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), modified palm kernel oil, modified milk ingredients, corn syrup solids, wheat flour, lactose, cocoa powder, lecithin (soy), high fructose corn syrup, unsweetened chocolate, baking soda, salt, natural and artificial flavours, polyglycerol polyricinoleate.