Hershey Archives - Page 3 of 9

February 10, 2021 Michael

Hershey’s Gold – Kinda Tastes like a Reese’s Pieces Bar

Candy Bars, Chocolate

Like a lot of Hershey products, the word “chocolate” is conspicuously absent from the packaging of Hershey’s Gold. The reason for that is pretty simple — chocolate (even white chocolate) has to have a certain percentage of cocoa butter to legally use that name, and if you look at the ingredients here, you’ll notice a couple of types of oil, but zero cocoa butter.

Which means that while the base of this bar is theoretically caramelized white chocolate (a type of white chocolate that’s roasted to give it a deeper flavour), the stuff here is actually “caramelized creme.”

It also has peanuts and pretzels, and it’s actually pretty good. No, it’s not real chocolate. Yes, it’s a bit waxy, as you’d expect from the fake stuff. But it’s tasty enough.

The bar is so thoroughly suffused with little crispy and crunchy bits that the mockolate’s lack of creaminess is never all that obvious; the peanuts and pretzels add enough texture to (mostly) hide the mockolate’s faults.

It actually reminded me quite a bit of the filling of Reese’s Pieces; there’s no peanut butter in here, but the peanut bits are so generous that it definitely has that flavour.

As for the pretzel, it’s mostly just there for crispiness and for a mild hit of salt; the pieces are too tiny to particularly stand out.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 39 grams): 210 calories, 13 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.2 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 85 mg of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 19 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), milk ingredients, peanuts, wheat flour, lactose, lecithin (soy), salt, malt, soybean oil, yeast.

January 27, 2021January 30, 2021 Michael

Hershey’s Cookies ‘N’ Creme – An Oreo Transformed into a Candy Bar

Candy Bars

Do you like Oreo cookies? If you do, you’re almost certainly going to like Hershey’s Cookies ‘N’ Creme; it’s basically an Oreo in candy bar form.

(And if you don’t, what is wrong with you?? Go jump into a volcano so you don’t inflict your weird defective taste buds onto the next generation.)

The bar features something resembling white chocolate that’s studded with a whole bunch of chocolate cookie pieces. Sadly, it’s not actually white chocolate — a quick perusal of the ingredients reveals a whole bunch of oil and zero cocoa butter. But in the context of this particular bar, it doesn’t really matter. There are so many cookie pieces here that the fake chocolate’s lack of creaminess never particularly feels like an issue. The chocolate is almost just there to bind the cookie bits together.

It’s quite tasty. It’s very, very sweet, but like with an Oreo, the pronounced cocoa flavour helps to balance out the sweetness — and because there are so many cookie pieces, that’s the primary flavour. The white mockolate basically tastes like a slightly more solid version of the creme in an Oreo cookie. It’s a delightful combo.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 43 grams): 220 calories, 11 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 100 mg of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 20 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), modified palm kernel oil, modified milk ingredients, corn syrup solids, wheat flour, lactose, cocoa powder, lecithin (soy), high fructose corn syrup, unsweetened chocolate, baking soda, salt, natural and artificial flavours, polyglycerol polyricinoleate.

January 3, 2021January 10, 2021 Michael

Reese Sticks – Familiar Reese Flavour with Bonus Crispiness

Candy Bars

Reese Sticks is one of those things that’s so obviously appealing, you pretty much don’t even need to eat it to know that it’s going to be good. It’s crispy wafers, creamy peanut butter, and milk chocolate. You’d have to work pretty hard to mess that up.

And hey, what do you know, it’s really good. Shocker.

Like with most Reese stuff, it’s a bit too sweet, and I wish the chocolate coating were more generous (the chocolate flavour is somewhat lost among the PB and the wafers). But other than that, this is exactly what you want it to be, with the saltiness of the peanut butter doing a great job of at least partially smoothing out the intense sweetness. It’s crispy, peanut buttery, chocolatey, and delicious.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (2 sticks, 42 grams): 210 calories, 13 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 135 mg of sodium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fibre, 18 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, milk ingredients, unsweetened chocolate, lactose, lecithin (soy), salt, polyglycerol polyricinoleate), peanuts, sugar, wheat flour, dextrose, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, hydrogenated palm oil, palm kernel oil, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), modified palm kernel oil, cocoa butter, salt, modified milk ingredients, unsweetened chocolate, corn starch, lecithin (soy), baking soda, TBHQ, artificial flavour, citric acid.

December 20, 2020January 10, 2021 Michael

Eat-More – It Tastes Better than it Looks

Candy Bars

Eat-More is, on a surface level at least, one of the more unappealing candy bars you can find. Between the frumpy retro packaging and the appearance of the bar itself (I’m too classy to say that it looks like nutty poop, but I think we all have eyeballs and can see what it clearly looks like), the makers of Eat-More seem to have no interest in making you want to eat their candy bar.

The wrapper calls it a “dark toffee peanut chew.” I’ve always been under the impression that it had zero chocolate, though a quick perusal of the ingredients reveals unsweetened chocolate right near the top. I guess they melt it right into the toffee, and now that I know that, yeah, I can kind of taste it in the background.

I haven’t had an Eat-More in years, and I actually think it’s slightly better than I remembered. It’s chewy, peanutty, and satisfying. The sweetness level is surprisingly restrained, with a slightly bitter flavour that has way more going on than the one-note sugariness of so many candy bars. There’s no molasses in the ingredients, but it definitely has that flavour, with a nice roastiness from the peanuts and a subtle chocolately kick.

As for the texture, it’s chewy but soft; it definitely doesn’t have the intense sticks-to-your-teeth level of chewiness of something like a Tootsie Roll. It’s quite different from pretty much any other candy bar, but I guess that’s part of the appeal.

Manufactured by: Hershey
Nutritional info (1 bar, 52 grams): 240 calories, 14 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 65 mg sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fibre, 5 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, unsweetened chocolate, modified palm kernel oil, high fructose corn syrup, modified palm oil and modified vegetable oil (shea, sunflower and/or safflower), modified milk ingredients, dextrose, high maltose corn syrup*, corn starch, salt, sorbitol, mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin, artificial flavour, invertase*, sulphites, disodium phosphate*, TBHQ*, citric acid, colour. *may not always be present.

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.