creamy Archives - Page 8 of 8

July 19, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough – A Downgrade From the Original

Candy Bars

Everyone loves cookie dough. It’s delicious. That’s just a scientific fact. And Kit Kat Chunky? Also objectively delicious. So then Kit Kat Chunky: Cookie Dough must also be delicious. Okay, well, that was a short review — see you next week.

Wait, what’s that? It’s not delicious? Well then. I guess a bit more of a review is necessary.

The biggest problem here is the so-called cookie dough; it does a fairly abysmal job of recapturing that particular taste. If you close your eyes and really use your imagination you might be able to conjure up vague whiffs of cookie dough flavour, but mostly, it just tastes like an overly sweet, sugary paste. If this had been a blind taste test, I’m not sure that I ever would have figured out what it was supposed to be.

That’s an issue, because:

A) If I buy something that says cookie dough on the packaging, I kinda want it to taste like cookie dough. I feel like that’s not unreasonable?

B) It throws off the balance of the Kit Kat Chunky. The wafer here is reduced by about 50 percent to accommodate the layer of “cookie dough.” In a normal Kit Kat, the wafer does a great job of balancing out the bar’s sweetness, but the thinner one here is a bit overwhelmed.

The whole thing is still decent enough, but it’s clearly inferior to a regular Kit Kat Chunky in every regard. If you really need Kit Kat + cookie dough in your life, just buy a standard Kit Kat Chunky and a package of cookie dough and eat them together. Problem solved.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 bar, 52 grams): 280 calories, 16 grams of fat (9 grams of saturated fat, 0.2 grams of trans fat), 15 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 26 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre.
Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, glucose), modified milk ingredients, modified palm oil, cocoa butter, wheat flour, unsweetened chocolate, palm and vegetable oils, soy and sunflower lecithin, cocoa powder, natural and artificial flavours, polyglycerol polynoleate, salt, baking soda, yeast, calcium sulphate, ammonium carbonate, citric acid, protease, xylanase, ascorbic acid, potassium carbonate, sodium phosonate.

July 15, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Crunch – New and Not-So-Improved

Candy Bars, Chocolate

You may not realize this, but you couldn’t buy Crunch for a little while; in 2018, Nestle sold Crunch to Ferrero, who pulled it off the shelves so that they could “reformulate” it.

Well, it’s back, and either I’m remembering Crunch being better than it was, or it’s gone down in quality. Which is weird; you’d think the jump from Nestle to Ferrero (the makers of Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, and many other delicious things) would be a clear upgrade. Alas.

Still, it’s not bad. It’s also not “good” per se; the chocolate is fairly bottom-of-the-barrel, with a generic sweetness and not a whole lot going on in the flavour department, and even the crispy rice is a bit more anemic than you’d expect (it’s mildly crispy, but the texture isn’t quite there).

Also, this is purely psychological, but I miss the old design of the bar, with the big embossed “Crunch” lettering. The new segmented bar is boring in comparison.

And yet… I mostly enjoyed it. The chocolate has a nice creaminess, and while the rice doesn’t bring the assertive crunch you’re looking for in a bar called Crunch, it still has enough of that creamy/crispy contrast to be satisfying. If I didn’t have nostalgia for the old Crunch bar my opinion on this would probably be a bit lower, but I do, so here we are. I didn’t particularly like it at first, but it (mostly) grew on me.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Nutritional info (1 bar, 43.9 grams): 230 calories, 12 grams of fat (8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 60 mg of sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 24 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, natural flavour), crisped rice (rice flour, sugar, barley malt, salt).

June 14, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Ritter Sport: Butter Biscuit and Chocolate Creme – Tasty Cookie, Mediocre Chocolate

Chocolate

I recently reviewed the coconut variety of Ritter Sport, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was under the impression that Ritter Sport had gone downhill, but eating that made me question myself. Maybe I’m wrong about Ritter Sport, and by extension, my entire life??

I figured I should probably try a different flavour to figure out what’s what.

Thankfully, it looks like my existential panic can stop (for now), because the Butter Biscuit and Chocolate Creme variety was okay at best.

The main issue is the chocolate itself. I noted in the coconut review that the chocolate flavour was a bit too mild, and that issue is even worse here. The flavour is all generic sweetness. It’s not outright unpleasant, but it’s nothing anyone is going to get too excited about.

The cookie is nice. It’s got a good amount of crunch and a decent buttery flavour. But it doesn’t go all the way to the edges of the bar. Which means that while the middle pieces — which feature cookie all the way through — have a good balance of creamy and crunchy, the edge pieces are a bit overwhelmed by the middling chocolate.

Manufactured by: Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG
Nutritional info (6 pieces, 38 grams): 210 calories, 13 grams of fat (8 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 50 mg of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 18 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: sugar, palm fat, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, wheat flour, lactose, whole milk powder (6%), skim milk powder, cream powder, butter fat, butter (1%), soy lecithin, wheat starch, glucose-fructose, salt, whey powder.

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.

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