caramel Archives - Page 2 of 7

March 24, 2021March 28, 2021 Michael

Mr. Big – Boring, but Tasty

Candy Bars

Mr. Big is one of those old, reliable candy bars that isn’t particularly exciting, but gets the job done. I was under the impression that it was a Canadian-only thing, but apparently it was released in the States in 1995.

Featuring a wafer surrounded by caramel, puffed rice, peanuts, and chocolate, this was a favourite of mine as a kid — mostly because, as the name implies, it’s bigger than average, and I was a fat kid.

It’s still good. The chewy caramel contrasts nicely with the crispy wafer and puffed rice. I guess there are peanuts as well, but they’re stingily applied and don’t make much of an impact.

The chocolate is probably the weakest link — I’m not even sure if it’s real chocolate (the ingredients lists three types of oil, though unsweetened chocolate is there as well), but whatever it is, it’s not the best. There’s enough going on here that doesn’t make a huge difference, but it’s a bummer regardless.

Manufactured by: Cadbury
Nutritional info (1 bar, 60 grams): 290 calories, 14 grams of fat (8 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 100 mg of sodium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fibre, 33 grams of sugar, 1 gram of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, glucose syrup, modified palm oil, modified milk ingredients, rice, modified vegetable oil, wheat flour (with barley), peanuts, cocoa, unsweetened chocolate, corn starch, salt, hydrogenated palm oil, malt extract, soy lecithin, baking soda, citric acid, natural and artificial flavour.

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 10, 2021January 10, 2021 Michael

Curly Wurly – Ultra-Chewy Caramel Coated in Chocolate

Candy Bars

Curly Wurly is a British import, and yeah, obviously. There’s something about it — the name, maybe? — that feels thoroughly British. I’ll bet it’s Ray Winstone’s favourite candy bar.

It’s fine. It’s chewy caramel coated in milk chocolate. The texture of the caramel reminds me a bit of Riesen, mostly because it’s super duper chewy. It is the chewiest of the chewy. If you don’t want to eat something that’s going to get all up in your teeth, stay away.

It has a decent flavour, though unlike Riesen, it is very, very sweet. I wouldn’t say it’s too sweet — there’s enough of a rich caramel flavour to balance out the sweetness, at least somewhat — but it’s clearly on the sweeter end of things.

Ultra-chewy caramel isn’t my favourite, and if I did have a craving for that I’d go for Riesen instead, but Curly Wurly isn’t bad. The relatively generous layer of milk chocolate compliments the caramel quite nicely, and the whole thing is tasty enough.

Manufactured by: Cadbury
Nutritional info (1 bar, 26 grams): 118 calories, 4.6 grams of fat (2.5 grams of saturated fat, unknown grams of trans fat), unknown mg of cholesterol, 15 mg of sodium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 0.2 grams of fibre, 13 grams of sugar, 0.8 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Glucose syrup, sugar, palm oil, skimmed milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, whey permeate powder (from milk), milk fat, emulsifiers (E471, sunflower lecithin, E442, E476), salt, flavourings, sodium hydrogen carbonate.

December 13, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Reese’s Take 5 – Sweet and Salty Goodness

Candy Bars

Reese’s Take 5 was formerly just known as Take 5, but last year Hershey crammed the Reese name onto it, because apparently all candy bars have to be affiliated with another candy bar. Think about it: pretty much every bar under the sun has about a billion variants (there are about a thousand different Kit Kat and M&M varieties alone), but when was the last time one of the major candy companies came out with an all-new candy bar?

By 2032, all candy bars will converge into one mega-flavour that will cause the universe to fold into itself and reset: a new big bang that’ll start this whole rigmarole over from scratch. Which, let’s face it, is probably for the best.

Until then: Reese’s Take 5, a combo of pretzels, peanuts, peanut butter, caramel, and chocolate.

It’s pretty good, though if you don’t like chocolate-covered pretzels you’re probably out of luck, because that’s clearly the dominant flavour here. I do like that combo, so I quite enjoyed it. In particular, the nice hit of salt you get from the crunchy pretzels does a great job of balancing out some of the sweetness from the rest of the bar. Which is a good thing, because Take 5 (sorry, Reese’s Take 5) is a scorcher; it’s intensely sweet. The caramel is probably superfluous, but the combo of chocolate, peanut butter and pretzels is so delicious that it barely matters.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 package, 42 grams): 210 calories, 11 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 0 mg cholesterol, 210 mg sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, enriched wheat flour (flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), peanuts, vegetable oil (palm oil, shea oil, sunflower oil, palm kernel oil, canola oil, and/or safflower oil), high fructose corn syrup, chocolate, hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel oil, coconut oil, soybean oil), partially defatted peanuts, skim milk, contains 2% or less of: dextrose, whey (milk), salt, corn syrup solids, dairy butter (milk), glycerin, corn syrup, lecithin (soy), sodium hydroxide, mono- and diglycerides, artificial flavor, baking soda, carrageenan, milk fat, yeast, TBHQ and citric acid, to maintain freshness, disodium phosphate.

November 25, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Caramel Crisp – An Overwhelming Punch of Caramel

Candy Bars

The smell hits you hard when you open the Kit Kat Caramel Crisp wrapper — caramel, but caramel times a million. It’s intense.

The flavour is equally intense. Featuring bits of crispy caramel in a thick milk chocolate coating, the caramel flavour here is unmistakable and overpowering. There’s also something about it that’s vaguely off; the packaging lists “natural flavour” among the ingredients, and there must be some kind of flavouring going on because normal caramel shouldn’t taste like this.

It’s also intensely sweet. The nice thing about Kit Kat, normally, is that the wafers do a great job of balancing out the chocolate’s sweetness. But the outer coating of chocolate here is so thick and so sweet that it completely overwhelms the wafer. The wafer adds crispiness, but that’s about it.

Also adding texture: the toffee-like crispy caramel bits. The creamy/crispy contrast here is quite nice; it’s just too bad that the flavour is a bit wonky.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (4 pieces, 40 grams): 200 calories, 10 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 45 mg of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 21 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, milk ingredients, wheat flour, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, modified palm oil, palm, palm kernel and vegetable oils, cocoa powder, sunflower and soy lecithin, natural flavour, salt, baking soda, protease, xylanase, tocopherol, citric acid.