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

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.”

Hershey's Gold

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.

Hershey's Gold

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.

3 out of 4

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.

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

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.)

Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme

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.

Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme

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.

3 out of 4

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.

Aero Peppermint – It’s Aero, but Minty

Sometimes these candy reviews basically write themselves, and sometimes… they do not.  This one definitely falls into the latter category.

I mean, it’s right there in the name.  It’s minty Aero.  It tastes exactly how you think it’s going to taste.  It’s Aero that’s minty.  The end.

Aero Peppermint

Oh, that’s not enough?  Fine, a bit more.  Here’s the thing: it’s Aero… that’s minty.  What?  Did I say that already?  Fine.

Aero Peppermint

The chocolate is nice and creamy, the bubbles give it that interesting texture that Aero fans know and love, and the whole thing is very, very sweet.  But the strong minty flavour (this is absolutely not a subtle bar) makes the sweetness feel right.  It’s tasty stuff.

3 out of 4

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (9 segments, 40 grams): 210 calories, 12 grams of fat (7 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 10 mg of cholesterol, 35 mg of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 24 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, soy lecithin, polyglycerol polyricinoleate, natural flavour, sodium copper chlorophyllin, turmeric.

Milky Bar – Average White Chocolate

Here’s something odd: the wrapper of the Milky Bar I ate for this review contains two separate lists of ingredients.  One of them is on the wrapper itself, and one is on a sticker, presumably put there by the company that imported the British bar into Canada.

Milky Bar

The lists are surprisingly different.  Most pressingly, the sticker version lists sugar as the first ingredient, directly contradicting the wrapper’s proclamation that “milk is our no. 1 ingredient.”  Is milk the number one ingredient or not?  Who am I supposed to believe??

Anyway, it’s plain white chocolate, so there’s not much to it.  I should note that the sticker on the front of the wrapper is keen to point out that’s it’s actually a “white chocolaty candy bar” rather than a white chocolate candy bar, presumably due to the inclusion of vegetable fat supplementing the cocoa butter.

Milky Bar

It’s tasty enough.  I guess it’s not technically real white chocolate, but it’s fairly creamy.  True to its name, it has a pronounced milky flavour.  It’s not the best white chocolate you’ll ever eat, but it’ll do in a pinch.

2.5 out of 4

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (1 bar, 25 grams): 140 calories, 8 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat), 0 mg of cholesterol, 40 mg of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 14 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients (from the wrapper, not the sticker): Milk powders (whole and skimmed) (37.5%), sugar, cocoa butter, vegetable fats (mango kernel, palm, sal, shea), emulsifier (sunflower lecithin), natural flavouring.

Aero White Chocolate – A Tasty Combo of White and Milk Chocolate

I think it’s clear at this point that combining white chocolate with milk chocolate is the way to go.  Stuff like Kit Kat White & Milk and Kinder Chocolate is proof that it’s a great combo.  I like white chocolate, but in the absence of cocoa solids, its flavour tends to be a bit one-note sweet.  Adding milk chocolate thoroughly solves that problem while still retaining white chocolate’s distinct personality.

Aero White Chocolate

Aero White Chocolate, despite the name, isn’t fully white — it features a milk chocolate exterior with an aerated white chocolate interior.

It’s quite good.  It’s got an interesting texture from the bubbles in the middle, enough milk chocolate to give it a nice punch of cocoa flavour, and a creamy white chocolate base that gives it a pleasant milkiness.  If you’ve ever had Kinder Chocolate, this is the same idea, but with the bubbliness you get from an Aero.

Aero White Chocolate

It’s very sweet — white chocolate does tend to be on the sweeter side — but not overwhelmingly so.  The milk chocolate does a solid job of balancing things out.

3 out of 4

Manufactured by: Nestle
Nutritional info (7 segments, 32 grams): 170 calories, 10 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg of cholesterol, 35 mg of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fibre, 19 grams of sugar, 2 gram of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, modified milk ingredients, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, soy lecithin, polyglycerol polyricinoleate, salt, natural flavour.