ZOMG, Candy!

My friend Leslie was kind enough to mail me a giant box full of Russian candy back in December, and I’ve since been slowly tasting my way through everything. Candy blogging, at least the way I do it, is a Sisyphean task, only I get to eat lots of sweets instead of pushing a boulder around. I know, I know. My life is so hard. Here’s the first of my long overdue, many-part series on Russian candies.

First up, a series of what Leslie calls “the heart and soul of Russian candy, with its fake chocolate glaze and weirdly-folded, artistic wrappers. There are several other varieties… Bizarrely, all of them come from different candy factories all over Russia. The wrappers are always the same color… and the artwork is always similar. Apparently there’s no trademarking going on.”

Red October’s Mishka Kosolapy/Pigeon-toed Mikey (the affectionate name for bear cub) - Dark “chocolate” covered crisp innards topped and bottomed with a stale wafer. I don’t know if they’re usually stale, as they’d been sitting around for a long time before I got to tasting them. The innards were made of a sugary, slightly chocolatey solidified paste of some sort that gave it a sweet finish.

Babaevskii’s Belochka/Squirrel - The same dark “chocolate” shell around a crumbly filling composed of chocolate and hazelnut (I think; it could have been pistachio) bits. Also a sweet finish.

Mikey in the North - The same dark “chocolate” shell and paste of Pigeon-toed Mikey. In this version, the wafers completely box in the filling, so the overall candy is both thicker (in crunch) and airier (in texture).

Overall, I ate one of each all at once, which was a bad idea. They’re super sweet, and the fillings don’t exactly melt away, so I felt ill afterwards. An O, but on the high side because they get bonus points for novelty.

Sunflower Kozinak

Excuse me a second as I try not to drool into my keyboard just reliving what it was like eating this stuff. It’s like peanut brittle but made with sunflower seeds. Lots and lots of sunflower seeds jammed in very little brittle made the thick bars hard to crunch through, but I still powered right through half the package. I wish it came in thin slabs like peanut brittle, if only to slow down my consumption of it. Simple, delicious, and ZOMG! worthy. I wish I had more and miss it so…

Nestle Nesquick Bar

Leslie calls this “a ubiquitous European candy bar marketed towards children.” It’s a sweet milk chocolate coating over a top layer of white, crunchy… something and sweet chocolate nougat. The mysterious top layer tastes like a wafer but doesn’t have the mouthfeel of one, while the nougat layer is like a more dense 3 Musketeers filling. It’s a little sweet for my taste, so I give it an OM.

Here in the U.S., the Kit Kat is manufactured under Hershey’s. Elsewhere in the world, Kit Kat is made by Nestle. My Kit Kat Hazelnut Cream was given to me by my friend Katie, who bought it for me while in Egypt last Christmas, so it’s made by Nestle. And because it’s probably manufactured in the U.K., I’ve filed is as European rather than African.

The Hazelnut Cream is a Kit Kat of the Big Kat (in the U.S.) or Chunky (everywhere else) variety. That is, rather than being four small “fingers,” it’s one giant stick. The chocolate around the wafers is extremely thick. In fact, there’s about as much chocolate as there is wafer. I found the milk chocolate to be creamy and sweet without being cloying, unlike the Hershey’s Kit Kats you can buy here. For mass-produced candy bar chocolate, it was pretty nice.

Despite it’s name, there was little hazelnut or cream to this bar. It had a sweet nutty tinge that’s far from the in-your-face hazelnut approach taken by Ferrerro. The light nuttiness served the bar well, but there was still room for more hazelnut taste to come through.

I personally don’t like the Chunky/Big Kat bars because I think they’re too big and hard to chomp down on. This would be wonderful in the smaller, standard Kit Kat form, I think. The hazelnut flavor could stand up better with less chocolate to overshadow it. An OM from me.

I bought the Toffee Crisp at the same time that I bought the Coffee Crisp, but I tasted them several weeks apart. When I dug the Toffee Crisp out of my drawer and unwrapped it, I misread it as Coffee and wondered why it didn’t taste at all like coffee. Funnily enough, that what I thought about the actual Coffee Crisp.

Thankfully, the Toffee Crisp was much better than its coffee counterpart. It’s very sweet milk chocolate with rice crisps and a ribbon of caramel. The chocolate is what I would call the standard British candy bar chocolate that’s sweet and lacking the sour tinge that Hershey’s has. The rice crisps are soft and are lighter and less dense than those of a Crunch bar - they reminded me of actual Rice Krispies in terms of their airiness - and they’re all mixed in with a chocolate cream so that the bar is soft and almost crumbly in a really nice way. This stands in contrast to the 100 Grand and the Nestle Lion, which both just cover their rice crisps in chocolate.

When I think toffee, I first think of the crunchy kind that you’d find in a 5th Avenue or Skor bar. I can accept that English toffee can refer to a soft type of caramel, but then I expect a darker caramel, maybe more molasses-flavored than sugary. The toffee of the Toffee Crisp was pretty standardly unremarkable. It’s nicely sweet but otherwise has no personality.

Overall, I give this bar an OM. It’s good, and I love the soft texture, but I liked the Lion better.

I think it’s time to update my favorite candies page, as I’ve found a wonderful replacement for my 100 Grand love: the Nestle Lion.

I bought the Nestle Lion from The Candy Store in San Francisco. I’ve since seen it in Austin at Central Market (where it cost half as much as it did at The Candy Store, by the way). It caught my eye because it was a chocolate bar in the international section that I had never heard of, and there were no indications on the wrapper as to what it was, exactly. One of the proprietors of The Candy Store was able to tell me what was inside; I don’t remember how she described it, but it was enough for me to want to buy it.

And now to end the suspense of what a Nestle Lion is: A wafer cookie (the kind with layers of thin wafer and cream) covered with caramel and rice crisps, all enrobed in milk chocolate. Or sheer deliciousness in candy bar form.

The thin strip of caramel was sweet and chewy but not sticky, so it didn’t get caught in my teeth. The rice crisps were extra puffy, giving the bar a great lightness that I loved. I thought the Lion was a better version of a 100 Grand because the wafer cookie and the extra puffy crisps make the Lion a less dense and more texturally pleasing bar. I also liked that the Lion had less caramel than the 100 Grand, as I get annoyed when I have to somehow surreptitiously get all that 100 Grand caramel out of the nooks and crannies of my teeth (though I’m sure for some, that’s a selling point).

I really enjoyed the Nestle Lion, even though it was still a little sweet for my taste. It was one of those bars that I had to give away the rest of, lest I ate it all myself. An OMG from me. If the caramel was a little duskier or if it came in dark chocolate, there would be no question that it would earn a ZOMG. But because I could bear to give it away, I knew the Lion fell short of my highest rating.

I thought I’d stumbled across a great candy find when I found this among other international bars at Coco Moka in Houston’s airport. Then I started seeing it everywhere and realized that it wasn’t so special after all. Apparently there was a successful petition to bring them to the US, though I can’t imagine why. I know there are plenty of better tasting UK candy bars out there.

The wrapper describes the Coffee Crisp as “wafers with coffee creme center”. Upon unwrapping the bar, I was inundated by a strong smell of chocolate, bitter coffee, and wafer. The bar itself is humongous. It’s big, thick, and dense.

For all its strong coffee smell, I couldn’t taste any coffee. I pretty much tasted just wafers and poor quality chocolate. There was also a faint lingering bitterness that was very slight. If you’re going to call your bar a Coffee Crisp, shouldn’t it taste like coffee? Instead, this is pretty much all crisp, and greasy, yicky crisp at that. An O.

Cybele and Sera basically agreed with me. I know they didn’t sign that petition.

Why is aerated chocolate so popular in Europe but nearly unheard of in the U.S.? Before trying these Nestle Aero Bubbles (BUY!), I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. Big deal; bubbles in chocolate. How exciting could that be?

Honestly, not that exciting. I could feel the bubbles with my tongue, but they didn’t feel like anything special. It actually felt like more of a large grain than bubbles. You can kind of see the bubbles in the photo below.

It wasn’t until I found myself looking into my suddenly empty bag of these Aero Bubbles that I realized how the aeration made these guys ridiculously addictive. I think the bubbles increase the surface area of chocolate that’s exposed to your tongue, so you get this incredibly smooth, creamy melt that’s wonderful and keeps you reaching for the next textural experience.

The chocolate itself didn’t taste spectacularly special, but it was good enough. The Nestle chocolate wasn’t too sweet, and there was just a hint of mintiness in the green half of the ball. As far as I could tell, the green mint chocolate was just a shell, the the innards of the chocolate ball didn’t have any extra flavoring.

I bought these at Economy Candy. The bag was $1.25, I believe. If they were cheaper, I’d give them an OMG. For what I paid, the cost/yumminess ratio brings them down to an OM.

The Violet Crumble is a chocolate bar from Australia. This was in the bunch of candy that Cassie gave me, and I finished it pretty quickly. I also saw it on sale at Economy Candy, where a woman had about a dozen in her basket. I commented on how tasty it was, and she and her male companion both enthusiastically agreed with me.

The Violet Crumble bills itself as crisp golden honeycomb covered in milk chocolate. “It’s the way it shatters that matters,” says the wrapper. These are apparently very popular in Australia, which is probably why it’s possible to find them in the U.S.

The milk chocolate that covers the Violet Crumble is sweet without inducing a gag reflex. The inside is a dense looking crisp that’s actually light and airy, which, true to saying, shatters (cleaves) in a way that’s pretty neat. The texture reminded me of the inside of a malted milk ball, but it dissolves much slower than malt, and when you chew it, it doesn’t completely shatter and disintegrate. Instead, it almost feels like a little will get stuck in your molars. In fact, I learned if you chew a big enough chunk, a little bit of actually does, though it melts away quickly.

The flavor of the “honeycomb” is super super sweet, with a tinge of burnt sugar taste. I usually dislike candy bars that are as sweet as the Violet Crumble, but I found that I could enjoy it a few bites at a time. It’s so unique that it’s worth a try.

If you do choose to save some of your opened Violet Crumble for later, I recommend sticking it in an airtight container or something. My piece picked up a little moisture, which altered the perfect crisp dryness of the crumble, though it was still tasty. The Wikipedia article on the Violet Crumble goes into great detail about how the packaging keeps the bars dry.

I found a similar candy called the Dark Sponge at Economy Candy that’s much, much better than the Violet Crumble. You shall see why in tomorrow’s post.

As a kid, I loved Crunch bars (BUY), with their perfect blend of sweet milk chocolate and crispy rice bits. When I got older, they became a bit too sweet for my liking, but I still enjoy the occasional miniature Crunch bar. Recently, I had the opportunity to try one of the new Crunch Crisp bars in miniature form. Yum!

According the wrapper, this bar is made from crispy wafers and chocolate creme. I only tasted sweet Nestle chocolate and didn’t notice any difference in texture to make it a creme, but it doesn’t matter. On its own, the chocolate would be a touch on the sweet side, but the toasty, crisp wafers balance the chocolate sweetness quite nicely.

I would definitely buy this again in a full-sized bar (and I’d try to get a better cross-section shot). I think it’s even better than the original Crunch bar because the extra wafers further mitigate the sweetness of the chocolate. I only wish I could taste the rice crisp bits on top too; they just blend in with the rest of the bar.

SweeTarts are one of my favorite candies, and Nestle/Wonka has added to the SweeTarts line (BUY) with Chewy SweeTarts (giant and mini), Sour SweeTarts, Giant Color Changing SweeTarts, SweeTarts Gummy Bugs, SweeTarts Rope, and finally, SweeTarts Squeez in Green Apple and Wild Cherry. Phew! Way to brand ‘em, Mr. Wonka.

I’d seen the SweeTarts Squeez near the cash registers in grocery stores before, but I’d never dared to purchase them. When my friend Cassie saw them offered as prizes at Dave & Buster’s, she “bought” a tube out of curiosity and was generous enough to give it to me after she had a taste. And by generous, I mean she realized that SweeTarts Squeez gel is like delicious sugared crack and threw me to the addiction sharks in order to save herself.

As far as candy goes, this stuff is neither complex nor refined. It’s just pure sugar in gel form with a sweet, tangy, and tart green apple aftertaste that, surprisingly enough, tastes just like a green SweeTart. The gel is fairly fluid (slightly runnier than toothpaste) and is chock full of sugar grains.

This stuff is addictively good. I’ve been eating it slowly by squeezing tiny dabs onto my fingertip instead of just squeezing it straight onto my tongue. It’s good enough to buy again, but too dangerous to buy often.