soft Archives - Candyrageous

I wasn’t even sure what to expect from Walnut Whip, a British candy that I hadn’t heard of until I ordered it for this blog. It looks more like an oversized selection from a box of chocolates than like a traditional candy bar, but it’s basically like a Valomilk or a Mallo Cup in a different shape.

It’s pretty simple — it features what the packaging calls a “fondant centre” surrounded by a thick layer of milk chocolate and topped with a walnut.

The fondant is creamy and marshmallow-like (it’s extremely similar to Marshmallow Fluff, though without the vanilla flavour, which I missed), and the milk chocolate is very British; Walnut Whip is a Nestle product, but the chocolate tastes like it’s trying hard to be Dairy Milk.

The walnut, oddly enough, is a bit superfluous; it adds some crunch, but is otherwise lost among the sweet chocolate and even sweeter filling. Still, the whole thing is tasty enough — it’s probably better than Mallo Cup, but not quite as good as Valomilk.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 whip, 30 grams): 148 calories, 7.2 grams of fat (4.2 grams of saturated fat, unknown grams of trans fat), unknown mg of cholesterol, 50 mg of sodium, 19.9 grams of carbohydrates, 0.4 grams of fibre, 18.1 grams of sugar, 1.4 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, dried whole milk, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, lactose and proteins from whey (from milk), whey powder (from milk), vegetable fats (palm, shea, sal, mango kernel), skimmed milk powder, emulsifier (sunflower lecithin)), sugar, walnuts (6%), glucose syrup, glucose-fructose syrup, dried egg white, humectant (glycerol), flavouring, tartaric acid.

If you follow this blog at all, you’ll notice that it’s exceedingly rare that I give anything less than two out of four. I mean, it’s candy. How bad can it be?? Candy bars are like pizza; even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

But there are exceptions, of course. Enter: Pal-O-Mine, an old-timey Canadian chocolate bar (the packaging proudly proclaims that it’s a “Ganong original since 1920”). How it’s managed to stick around for so long is a complete mystery to me.

It’s upsettingly sweet. It hurt my teeth and burned my throat. It gave me a mild pain behind my eyes, which basically never happens. I had to eat a pickle after just to cleanse my palate of the overriding sugariness. It’s sweet.

The wrapper describes it as “fudge & peanuts,” and I guess you can taste a mild peanutty flavour if you really concentrate, but mostly it’s just like eating pure sugar.

The soft fudge is covered in a fairly generous layer of dark chocolate, which you’d think would temper the sweetness a bit and bring the bar a nice chocolatey flavour — but it accomplishes neither of those things. It’s lost in the tidal wave of sweetness.

You know those really bottom-of-the-barrel boxes of chocolate you can get at the dollar store? The kind that makes Pot of Gold look gourmet in comparison? That’s what Pal-O-Mine reminded me of. It’s just soft and sweet and unpleasant. If you’re a real sugar fiend maybe it’ll do something for you, but otherwise there’s a reason you’ve likely never heard of it.

Manufactured by: Ganong
Nutritional info (2 pieces, 55 grams): 210 calories, 6 grams of fat (3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 10 mg of sodium, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fibre, 33 grams of sugar, 1 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, yellow sugar, glucose, lactose), dark chocolate (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanilla flavour), milk ingredients, peanuts, salt, dried egg white (egg white, citric acid, baker’s yeast), natural and artificial flavour.

Tag: soft

Walnut Whip – Chocolatey, Gooey, and Tasty

Pal-O-Mine – An Unpleasant Sugar Overload