candy Archives - Page 19 of 31

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.

May 10, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Orange – It’s Just as Tasty as You’d Hope

Candy Bars

I’m not gonna lie; this one kinda blew me away. It has been a while since I’ve had a classic Kit Kat, so maybe I just forgot how good it is, but I enjoyed the hell out of this.

As you’d probably exect, Kit Kat Orange is basically a standard Kit Kat, but with an orange flavour. I know the chocolate/orange combo isn’t for everyone, but I’m a fan.

Kit Kats are great, chocolate and orange is great — so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this is great, too.

It’s exactly what you’re hoping it’s going to be. I’m fairly confident that I don’t need to explain the appeal of a Kit Kat to you; you’ve eaten it, and you like it. You’re not a monster, after all.

This is that, but with a satisfying amount of orangey flavour added into the mix. It’s creamy, it’s crispy, it’s chocolatey, it’s orangey; it’s delicious.

It’s quite sweet, but the sweetness is perfectly tempered by the wheaty/toasty wafers. And the orange flavour is very nicely tuned — it complements the milk chocolate flavour without overwhelming it. It reminded me a lot of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. It’s delightful.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (2 fingers, 21 grams): 110 calories, 5 grams of fat (3 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 20 mg sodium, 13 grams of carbohydrates, 11 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified milk ingredients, wheat flour, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, palm, palm kernel, coconut and vegetable oils, sunflower and soy lecithin, yeast, sodium bicarbonate, salt, natural flavours.

May 3, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Reese Outrageous! Stuffed with Pieces – Sweetness Overload

Candy Bars

I’ll admit that Reese Nutrageous isn’t one of my favourite candy bars. Reese’s Pieces, on the other hand, is one of my favourites. So what do you get when you cram a great candy into a mediocre one?

Uh… nothing great, that’s for sure.

Reese Outrageous (sorry, Reese Outrageous!) is basically a Nutrageous, but with the peanuts replaced with Reese’s Pieces.

The problem here is that it’s just way, way too sweet. With a standard Reese Peanut Butter cup you get a very strong peanut butter flavour along with a nice hit of salt to balance things out. There’s no such balance here; just an in-your-face level of chewy sweetness that’s a bit exhausting to eat.

There’s a tiny bit of peanut butter in the middle of this thing, but it’s completely overwhelmed by the dense caramel and the generous layer of very sweet milk chocolate. The Reese’s Pieces add some nice crunch and more peanut butter flavour, but those candies are basically perfect on their own; they’re very sweet, but the sweetness feels finely tuned. Once you add on caramel and chocolate, it throws things off. It’s too much.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (41 g bar): 200 calories, 10 g of fat (6 g of saturated fat, 0.1 g of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 60 mg of sodium, 28 g of carbohydrates, 1 g of fibre, 24 g of sugar, 3 g of protein.
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, milk ingredients, unsweetened chocolate, lactose, lecithin (soy), polyglycerol polyricinoleate), sugar, peanuts, partially defatted peanuts, hydrogenated palm kernel oil and hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, dextrose, sorbitol, modified palm kernel oil, modified milk ingredients, salt, colour, corn starch, high maltose corn syrup, corn syrup, artificial flavour, carnauba wax, mono and diclycerides, TBHQ, citric acid.

April 26, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Buccaneer – An Overpriced Mars Bar without the Caramel

Candy Bars

Buccaneer is a bit of an odd one. It’s ostensibly a premium candy bar; I bought it at Whole Foods for over three bucks, and the wrapper proudly proclaims that it contains “nothing artificial.”

But the wrapper also uses the word “chocolatey” not once, but twice. Chocolatey is absolutely, positively not a word you want to see on a chocolate bar wrapper (or on the packaging for anything, really). It’s the word companies use when they can’t legally use the word chocolate, because the thing in their product that purports to be chocolate is not actually chocolate.

So that’s not great.

That being said, the “chocolatey coating” here is actually not bad. It’s not great, mind you, but it has very little of the waxy greasiness you associate with mockolate. Eaten with the rest of the bar, it could pass for middling dark chocolate.

As for the bar itself, it’s basically a Mars bar, but without the caramel (it’s also quite 3 Musketeers-esque, though the nougat here is a bit more dense, which makes me think of a Mars bar).

It’s fine, I guess? Its sweetness is a bit more restrained than its inspiration, which is nice, but there’s also nothing about it that particularly stands out. It basically tastes like one of those cheap imitation candy bars you can find at Dollarama, only it costs like triple the real deal, for some reason?

Manufactured by: Go Max Go Foods
Nutritional info (57 g bar): 230 calories, 7 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat), 75 mg of sodium, 43 g of carbohydrates, 1 g of fibre, 33 grams of sugar, 1 gram of protein.
Ingredients: Cane sugar, organic rice syrup, organic dehydrated cane juice, palm kernel oil, cocoa powder, palm oil, enzyme modified soy protein, salt, natural flavors, sunflower lecithin, guar gum.