Ferrero Archives - Page 2 of 2

October 14, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Butterfinger – Nobody Better Lay a Finger…

Candy Bars

Butterfinger, along with Crunch, was recently bought out by Ferrero, who took it off the shelves to reformulate it. In the case of Crunch, this resulted in a noticeably inferior product. So how about Butterfinger?

I’m not sure. I’ll admit that it’s been years since I’ve had a Butterfinger, so it’s hard to say. I think it’s inferior? Maybe?

(This review is going really well so far, obviously.)

The bar is pretty simple — it’s just crispy, toffee-like peanut butter coated in mockolate (and the mockolate predates the Ferrero acquisition, so you can’t blame that one on them).

The peanut butter taste is surprisingly subtle, which is partially what makes me suspect that the bar has gone downhill. I remember it having a really satisfying peanutty flavour, but that isn’t the case here. It’s very sweet, with a somewhat bitter, burnt toffee flavour. The mild bitterness is actually kinda interesting, and helps to cut the sweetness of the bar a bit. But in the absence of peanut butteriness, something is missing.

As for the mockolate, it’s inoffensive enough. The bar is so crispy and sweet that you can barely even tell it’s there.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Nutritional info (1 bar, 53.8 grams): 250 calories, 10 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 0 mg cholesterol, 160 mg sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 21 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 5 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Corn syrup, sugar, peanuts, vegetable oil (palm kernel and palm oil), peanut flour, nonfat milk, less than 2% of cocoa, milk, salt, soy lecithin, natural flavor, annatto color.

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).

March 25, 2009January 10, 2021 Michael

Kinder Chocolate – Like the Egg, But Without the Toy

Candy Bars

Kinder Chocolate is pretty easy to describe: it’s essentially just a Kinder Surprise in bar form. It is perhaps a tad creamier than a Kinder egg, but otherwise the taste is pretty much identical.

Kinder Chocolate is a smaller-than-average bar (it’s about half the size of a typical candy bar), so it’s pretty good if you’re looking for something that isn’t too heavy. It’s really creamy and sweet, and the quality of the chocolate is fairly decent. As you can see from the picture, the proportion of white chocolate to milk chocolate is higher here than in a Kinder Surprise, which contributes to the added creaminess of this candy. It also makes it slighter sweeter than a Kinder egg, but that is fairly negligible.

I liked this, but since I like Kinder Surprises, that really isn’t much of a… surprise (oh man, I’m terrible). These are a lot easier to eat than one of the eggs, so if you don’t really care about the toy, then this is probably the way to go.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Calories (21 g bar): 120

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

October 23, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Kinder Surprise – A Tasty Chocolate Egg with a Toy Inside

Easter Candy

I recently found out that Kinder Surprise isn’t available in the U.S. thanks to a rule about food items containing non-food items inside of them.This strikes me as kind of sad. Growing up, Kinder Surprises were always the thing that I looked forward to the most every Easter. My parents would always get my brother and I about a dozen eggs each. Eating the chocolate eggs while assembling all the little toys was an Easter morning tradition I always treasured.

The nice thing about Kinder Surprise – aside from the toy inside – is that the chocolate egg is actually good. This may seem obvious, but considering the questionable quality of most of the ubiquitous chocolate bunnies you see around the holiday, it’s not exactly a given as far as Easter candy is concerned. However, Kinder Surprise is manufactured by Ferrero, makers of quality stuff like Ferrero Rocher and Nutella – so it’s no surprise that it’s tasty.

Kinder Surprise is basically just a chocolate egg, featuring milk chocolate lined with white chocolate. It’s sweet without being too sweet, and is really creamy with a fairly pronounced milky taste. If you’re normally on the fence about white chocolate then this is probably the treat for you, as it tastes mildly of white chocolate while still maintaining its milk chocolate taste.

As you can see here, every Kinder Surprise comes with a toy, this one being some kind of strange alien creature inside of a saxophone. I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, if anything. That’s the exciting thing about the toy inside a Kinder Surprise; you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it’s good, but then sometimes… it’s a weird creature inside a saxaphone. It’s a crapshoot. It’s fun.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Calories (20 g egg): 110