ZOMG, Candy!

The remaining 6 of my Nestle Quality Street reviews, continued from Friday. In case you don’t want to click back, “Nestle’s Quality Street is a variety pack of cheapo chocolates that’s pretty ubiquitous in the UK.” Onward!

Orange Chocolate Crunch (bottom left) is a flat disk of orange flavored chocolate with little crunchy bits throughout. A poor knockoff of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange Segsation, if you will. Orange chocolate can go well when it’s made with care and decent ingredients. This has neither.

The Purple One (first row, 3rd from left) is unlabeled to create a sense of mystery, though an asterisk does warn that it may contain nuts. It turned out to be a milk chocolate shell containing a flowing, nearly liquid caramel and a hazelnutty paste. Creative in composition, at least comparatively, but meh with Quality Street’s cost-cutting execution.

At first thought, Vanilla Fudge (top right corner) sounds oxymoronic, but a quick googling reminds me that fudge need not be chocolate flavored. This piece tasted neither of vanilla nor of chocolate fudge. No good.

The Toffee Finger (second row, far left) is the same sticky, jaw-achingly chewy toffee of the toffee penny, just in stick form and covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate. The finger shape does make eating it a bit more manageable, so points for that, but it loses all of those points because of the terrible, barely-even-qualifies-as-chocolate-ness of the coating.

Toffee Deluxe was highlighted on the box as being new. It’s slightly darker than the other toffees and a bit more buttery, more like the Brach’s Milk Maid style of caramels we’re used to in the states.

And finally, the Orange Creme. Oh the orange cream – a bitter dark chocoalte coating over a white, grainy paste that’s “orange” flavored – never again, the orange cream.

It’s laughable how this assortment has the word “quality” in its name, as it’s anything but. It’s not horrible, spit-it-out chocolate, but it is bad, take-one-bite-and-you’re-done chocolate. The chocolate base of everything is just blah and blech. Save your money and go elsewhere. Nestle’s Quality Street has the dubious distinction of earning my very first – rating. Congratulations!

Jim from The Chocolate Mission, on the other hand, rather enjoyed these. Maybe it’s a British thing, as there must be a reason why they’re practically in institution there?

Nestle’s Quality Street is a variety pack of cheapo chocolates that’s pretty ubiquitous in the UK. There are 12 different kinds. The back of the box lists them all and asks, “What’s your favourite?” I only have notes on 9 of them (shrug), so we’ll do 3 today and 6 on Monday.

The Toffee Penny (2nd row, furthest right) is a flat, round piece of toffee in a copper wrapper (hence the penny moniker). It’s super sticky, jaw-achingly chewy, and not that exciting, flavorwise. Good toffee, like Walkers, has flavor nuance and complexity. This guy, not so much.

The Caramel Swirl (bottom row, 3rd from left) is a gooey, flowy caramel covered in blah chocolate. I wonder if its nubby shape is meant to evoke a Rollo. I don’t like Rollos much, and I didn’t care for this guy either.

Strawberry Delight (bottom right corner) is a dark chocolate with a terribly artificial cherry flavor. Even though I’m pretty bad at distinguishing between artificial red fruit flavors, I get more cherry medicine bite from this.

So there’s a start. We’ll do the other 6 that I have notes on tomorrow: toffee finger, the purple one (that’s actually what it’s called), orange chocolate crunch, orange creme, toffee deluxe, and vanilla fudge. No rating yet, as I want to keep you in suspense until Monday, but I think you can guess where this is going.

I’m sure I left y’all on the edge of your computer chairs last Friday when I promised weird Japanese Kit Kat reviews. Here are the remaining three in order of escalating weirdness.

Apple and chocolate aren’t an unheard of combination, but I’ve not enjoyed it in the past. In the Kit Kat iteration, it’s less bad, but it’s still not good.

Visually, it seems just like a normal Kit Kat. Though it smells strongly of Fuji apples, it initially tastes mostly of chocolate. Then the apple comes in. It’s weird and unpleasant and kind of earthy, more like an apple core than an apple. A –.

Next up, Muscat grape. Or, more specifically, Muscat of Alexandria. I don’t really know if a Muscat grape is any more special than the white seedless grapes you’d pick up at your local supermarket, and I also don’t know what makes Muscat of Alexandria special enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry. Or its own Kit Kat flavor.

I also don’t know why people thought grape flavored chocolate would be worth making. This bar is white chocolate with a pale green tinge, at once pretty and alien. I think it smells more like lychee than grape, but the taste is white grape all the way through. Would you want to eat grapes and white chocolate in the same bite? I wouldn’t, but I did try this bar, and I didn’t like it. Another –.

Finally, the mystery flavored Kit Kat. I don’t know Japanese, but I know some Chinese, and there’s a lot of character overlap. I could make out the characters for “university” on here, which didn’t help at all. I guessed that it was candied sweet potato with black sesame seeds. Cassie had no clue, and my boyfriend thought it may be tofu. We consulted my friend Michael, who lives in Kobe. Turns out I was sort of right; it is sweet potato and sesame.

The “university” part was to signal that it was a limited edition bar, released for exam session when Japanese students test to get into universities. Just goes to show you how candy can teach you about other cultures. Can you imagine an SAT Kit Kat being sold in the U.S.?

This was another white chocolate bar, tinged pale yellow. It was slightly nutty with toastiness that may have come from the wafers. I don’t really get sweet potato, exactly. The white chocolate is the most prominent flavor. Another –.

Thanks for the flavor adventure, Cassie! I enjoyed tasting them, even if the flavors weren’t that enjoyable. Guess there’s a reason they’re not widely available outside of Japan. Now, if only I could find a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat…

When my friend Cassie went to Japan for a fun trip with her boyfriend (so jealous, by the way), she offered to bring me back candy. I eagerly requested Kit Kats. Why Kit Kats, a run-of-the-mill candy that’s all over the U.S.? Because the Japanese make about a zillion Kit Kats in strange flavors, and I wanted in. Cassie obliged, for which I am grateful. I’ll review the two normal ones today and make y’all wait until Monday for the weird ones.

Based on the packaging, this bar was either strawberry or strawberries and cream flavored, both pretty standard flavor combinations that go well with chocolate. I’m guessing that it’s strawberries and cream, based on the bar’s lovely, creamy shade of pink. All the boxed Kit Kats Cassie bought came in packs of four fingers separated into two individually sealed packs of pairs. Good for freshness; bad for the environment.

Like all Kit Kats, this was chocolate over crisp wafers. The strawberry was white chocolate that smelled lovely and floral. The strawberry flavor was sweet and genuine, which I appreciated, even though I found it overly sweet. An O from me, but I think others would like it more.

The Kit Kat Cookies that Cassie brought me was just one long, slightly larger finger. After I tasted it, I wished that I had a four pack of them. It was my favorite of the bunch, basically a normal Kit Kat with an extra layer of chocolate cookie.

The milk chocolate was nice and dusky, making me think that Nestle treats the Japanese better by selling them nicer chocolate. While the cookie layer doesn’t add much to the texture, it really deepens the cocoa flavor of the bar. Highly enjoyable and OMG-worthy.

Have a nice weekend, and come back on Monday for the weird flavors!

Nestle had quite the coup when they enlisted Bart Simpson (and the rest of the Simpsons) to shill their Butterfingers. Everyone knows that nobody better lay a finger on Bart’s Butterfinger. I find that to be a shame, as that’s helped Butterfinger overshadow the similar, but better, 5th Avenue bar (review of that to come on Wednesday).

The Butterfinger’s tagline promises that it is crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery! I actually don’t think the filling tastes much of peanut butter. It’s more of a butterscotch, with a buttery sweetness to it. And while it is crunchy when you bite into it, it’s also quite crumbly. The layers don’t hold up too well, and they get stuck in the nooks of your teeth, where they then harden and become a social faux pas in the making.

The worst part of the Butterfinger was the fake chocolate coating. It was way too sweet, had no cocoa flavor whatsoever, and completely ruined what was already a mediocre bar. An O. And yet, the Butterfinger seems to be doing well enough to have inspired many spin-offs.

PS: Happy birthday, Dad!

The Baby Ruth is one of those unexceptional bars that are always around but rarely noticed. So unexceptional, in fact, that reviews of it are rare in the candy blogosphere. Jim’s got one up on Chocolate Mission, but he’s a UK reviewer and probably doesn’t really know the cultural impact – or lack thereof – of the Baby Ruth in the US.

So why review the bar if it’s so inconsequential? Because with this review, I can fill a need. I’m sure many of you, while browsing the candy aisle or waiting at the checkout counter, would see a Baby Ruth and think, “Gee, I haven’t had one of those in ages. I can’t even remember how they taste. Maybe I should pick one up!” After this review, dear readers, you will know better. You’re not missing anything.

The outer coating of the Baby Ruth is a thin layer of a bland, unexceptional chocolate. I think it’s actually chocolate, but I could be wrong. It doesn’t taste like much at all.

Inside the chocolate is a mix of a bland, caramel-nougat type thing that is heavily studded with whole and half peanuts. The caramel-nougat type thing, like the chocolate, is bland. The peanuts have a good crunch, at least, but not much flavor.

Overall, the Baby Ruth just needs a big dose of oomph in the form of more flavor. More saltiness from the peanuts, more sweetness and burnt sugar notes from the caramel-nougat, and more chocolate taste from the chocolate. As it is, it gets a big goose egg of an O for being so boring.

I’d read about Nestle Smarties on candy blogs before (Cybele has a nice Smarties v. M&Ms post, and Candy Addict wrote about them as well), and I’d even eaten a few in lab (before the days of M&Ms colorworks, Smarties were apparently better suited as food rewards), but it wasn’t until I got to England that I finally got to have the full Smarties experience.

If you haven’t realized by now, UK Smarties are a far cry from the Smarties you can buy in the US, which can lead to confusion in candy novices. While US Smarties are compressed sugar candies (I’ve previously reviewed the Giant version), UK Smarties are chocolate candies in a panned sugar shell, like M&Ms.

Nestle Smarties, however, differ from M&Ms in a few key areas. Most importantly, the orange Smarties are lightly flavored. I always save my blue M&Ms for last because they are my favorite, even though I know that M&Ms all taste the same. I just like the blue ones better and have had to defend myself to many a perplexed friend. In the case of Nestle Smarties (which recently brought blue back; they had dropped it when they stopped using artificial coloring but then found a natural blue in cyanobacteria. Yum?), the blue doesn’t actually taste blue. Only the orange one tastes like anything (orange; duh), but at least people can’t say, “But they all taste the same!” about Nestle Smarties.

Nestle Smarties are also thinner, flatter, and more irregularly shaped than M&Ms are. They also have a more muted color scheme, possibly due to their use of natural colorings, and the coloring is less evenly distributed, causing some Smarties to look lightly mottled. Finally, Nestle Smarties have much thicker shells than M&Ms do, which mutes the chocolate flavor a bit.

Smarties, like M&Ms, also come in a mini form. Also like mini M&Ms, they’re a popular ice cream topping. My roommate, who spent her summer in Uganda, brought me a Smarties bar, which is basically the Smarties version of an M-Azing bar – mini-Smarties in Nestle milk chocolate – that was decent for a mass milk bar. Overall, I still prefer M&Ms to chocolate, just because I like the thinner shell, but there was nothing offensive about the Smarties. A solid O.

Nestle Munchies and After 8′s are UK treats that are similar to more well-known and more widely available candies. The ones I bought are unique because they’re cube shaped and come in a roll/log, making them more portable and convenient. They’re great for sharing, for portion control, for stretching out your snacking by forcing you to slow down, and for saving for later.

Munchies are pretty much just like Twix; they’re cookie (biscuit) and caramel all covered in milk chocolate, though in the Munchies the division between the two is vertical rather than horizontal. I thought the Munchies actually surpassed Twix because the Munchies are easily poppable. There’s nothing exceptionally special about any of the ingredients in the Munchies, but then again, there’s nothing that special about the quality of what goes in a Twix either. It’s the perfect combination of salty/sweet/textures that makes Twix so great. I give Munchies an OM. They’re cheap, inelegant, and tasty, and I wish they were available in the U.S.

After Eight mints come in many sizes; the cubes, on the outside, are extremely similar in appearance to the Munchies. See for yourself:

Basically identical on the surface (same ridges, same grain/bloom showing the poor quality of the chocolate), except that After Eights are dark chocolate instead of milk. They’re filled with a creamy, minty fondant thing. Basically, they’re like conveniently sized York Peppermint Patties, only not as refreshingly minty, so I only give them an O. Also like the Munchies, nothing special, but still pretty good.

Here’s a candy that’ll have the 12 year-old boy in you giggling and elbowing your neighbor in the ribs: I found Nestle Nuts in Lidl, this weird discount/grocery store in Southport that had extremely cheap fruits and veg. How cheap? The day I went, they were in the midst of an “All fruits and veg are half off sale.” I had gone into Lidl on a hunt for miniature bags of Haribo, and I left with strawberries and cherries and beets and grapes and carrots. And a five-pack of Nestle Nuts.

I had high hope for the Nuts, which billed itself as milk chocolate (31%) with filling with caramel (22%) and hazelnuts (11%), which is why I chose to buy it even though it only came in a five pack. Well, that and the whole five pack was only a pound. Hooray for cheap presents for friends! As Ferrero’s bottom line has shown, chocolate + hazelnut = deliciousness. Usually, that is. The Nestle Nuts managed to screw up the winning recipe.

The chocolate coating was boring, blah milk chocolate. I’ve found that Nestle’s chocolate, as opposed to Cadbury with its nice dairy milkness, tends to be mediocre at best, and the Nuts was no exception. The not very thoroughly described “filling” was boring, blah nougat that tasted like nothing more than generic sweetness. And the caramel was, you guessed it, boring blah caramel with no notes of anything. It was pretty insipid and wasn’t even sticky.

Every once in a while, I came across a whole hazelnut hidden inside the Nuts. They were nice enough, crunchy and vaguely nutty, but the Nuts in no way, shape, or form took advantage of the full, roasty, nutty goodness that hazelnuts can bring. The sweetness of everything else in the bar overwhelmed any flavor the hazelnut had the potential to add.

For a boring, blah bar, a boring blah O. I’ve managed to get lucky with dollar (pound) store candy finds in the past, but in this case, you get what you pay for.

From the folks at Nestle and Wonka, a Loss for Lyrics contest:

Wonka’s new candy, Giant Chewy Nerds, has the Oompa Loompas so excited they are at a complete loss for words! Willy Wonka has launched a nationwide contest in the search for a new song to describe Giant Chewy Nerds. The Oompa Loompas and Raven Symone have teamed up in Wonka’s Loss for Lyrics contest to help the Oompas regain their rhymes.

Teens can log on to WONKA.com starting July 21st through September 21st and upload videos of themselves and their friends singing witty, whimsical songs about the new Giant Chewy Nerds. The lucky winner of the Loss for Lyrics contest will be flown to Los Angeles to record his or her song with the assistance of Raven Symone!