coffee Archives - Candyrageous

March 21, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Duos: Mocha + Chocolate – An Intense Kick of Coffee Flavour

Candy Bars

I’m not a big coffee drinker. And by “not a big coffee drinker,” I mean that I don’t drink coffee at all, so I’m probably not in the target audience for this particular Kit Kat variety. I do, however, enjoy the chocolate/coffee combo.

The wrapper describes this as “Crisp Wafers in mocha creme with coffee bits + chocolate.”

It’s a tasty bar, though I’ll admit that the coffee flavour was a bit too strong for me. I normally enjoy chocolate with a coffee flavour — and it’s not that I didn’t enjoy this (it’s still Kit Kat, which is inherently delicious) — but the balance of flavours is definitely weighted more towards the coffee than the chocolate. It has an admirably restrained sweetness and a mild but distinctive bitterness. I liked it, but if you’re a coffee drinker, I think you might love it.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 package, 42 grams): 210 calories, 12 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 0 mg cholesterol, 20 mg sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 19 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, vegetable oil (palm oil, shea oil, sunflower oil, palm kernel oil, and/or safflower oil), wheat flour, chocolate, skim milk, corn syrup solids, cocoa butter, lactose (milk), cocoa processed with alkali, contains 2% or less of: milk fat, coffee, lecithin (soy), natural & artificial flavor, PGPR, salt, yeast, baking soda, artificial color (yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 lake, red 40 lake, blue 2 lake).

February 28, 2021 Michael

Tim Hortons Double Double Coffee Bar – The Taste of Coffee with the Texture of Chocolate

Candy Bars

I’ll admit that I sometimes feel like I’ll never be a real Canadian. Yes, I was born here, and yes, I’ve lived here all my life. But I don’t like hockey, I don’t drink coffee, and I’m not a fan of pretty much anything on the Tim Hortons menu (the old fashioned and sour cream doughnuts are both decent, but that’s about it).

If Tim Hortons were to bring back the tragically discontinued Walnut Crunch, I might be able to call myself a fan of their establishment, and my Canadianness would be affirmed. Until then: Tim Hortons is bad. Sorry, every other Canadian, but it’s true.

This particular “Coffee Bar” is basically trying to replicate drinking a cup of coffee with a ton of sugar and cream (for the non-Canadians in the room, a double double is a coffee with two sugars and two creams). The odd thing about it is that it looks like chocolate, but isn’t — the main ingredients are cocoa butter and coffee, so it has the texture of chocolate but the flavour of coffee (with a whole bunch of sugar and cream).

It’s decent enough. I’m not a coffee drinker, so I can’t comment on the subtleties of the coffee flavour, but it tasted fine to me. It’s quite sweet, which does a decent job of rounding out the bitterness of the coffee. And the texture is mostly pretty good, with a nice snap and a pleasant creaminess. That creaminess is marred, however, by the presence of tiny little coffee bits that add an unpleasant graininess to the bar.

Manufactured by: The Whole Coffee Company
Nutritional info (1 bar, 38 grams): 220 calories, 16 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 40 mg of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 18 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Whole coffee matter (cocoa butter, Tim Hortons coffee), sugars (cane sugar, lactose), milk, whey, maltodextrin, sunflower lecithin, natural flavour, salt.

January 26, 2009January 10, 2021 Michael

Starbucks: Caramel Macchiato Truffles – Maybe they should stick with Coffee

Truffles

I’m not a big coffee drinker, though I do like the taste of coffee when it’s sweetened or mixed in with other things, like chocolate. I also like Starbucks, though I’m still somewhat bitter over the discontinuation of the Chantico, a chocolate drink which – if you weren’t fortunate enough to try it – was essentially just liquefied dark chocolate. It was pretty great.

So I had somewhat high hopes for this Starbucks-branded chocolate, despite the fact that it is a Hershey product (which isn’t mentioned anywhere on the box). Not that I have anything against Hershey, but the last Hershey-made chocolate truffle I had was pretty mediocre.

The first thing you notice when you eat one of these is the fairly strong coffee flavour. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, given that this has been released by a coffee shop, but I was expecting the coffee taste to be a bit milder. So that was a pleasant surprise. The next thing you notice is how crazy sweet it is; I just reviewed the Cadbury Creme Egg, and I think this might just be equally sweet, which is ridiculous. It also has the same fake-truffle, peanut butter-like consistency as the Cacao Reserve truffles, which is unfortunate.

These Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Truffles are probably slightly better than the Cacao Reserve ones, thanks to the coffee taste – but it definitely seems to me that Hershey should leave truffle-making to other chocolate makers, as they just can’t seem to get it right.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Calories (2 truffles, 23 g): 130

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

October 28, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Coffee Crisp – A Tasty, if Somewhat Boring Candy Bar

Candy Bars

Coffee Crisp is another one of those bars that, though not particularly exciting, certainly has its place. Though I should mention that its motto (“makes a nice light snack”) is a tad misleading – it’s about the same as any other candy bar as far as its fat content and calorie count goes. Not that I particularly care – my philosophy is that generally, if you want something low in fat/calories, you probably shouldn’t be eating candy in the first place. But if you’re buying this because you think it’s somehow less fattening than other candy bars, you are out of luck.

Speaking of misleading, the name Coffee Crisp is probably also a bit of a misnomer. Not that this doesn’t taste of coffee at all, but the coffee taste here is quite subtle. The “crisp” part of the title, however, is right on the money – the bar is filled to the brim with crispy wafers.

Basically, Coffee Crisp consists of several layers of wafer, with a filling that is sweet and slightly crumbly. The whole thing is coated in a somewhat negligible coating of milk chocolate. The aforementioned coffee taste is really more of an aftertaste – the first thing that hits you when you’re eating this bar is the sweetness; the coffee taste takes a while to kick in.

So yes, this is a good bar – even if it doesn’t taste much like coffee.

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