ZOMG, Candy!

I bought these Bai Nuo chocolate bars while I was in China last fall. Bai Nuo Foods is located in Shanghai… and that’s about all that I know about them.

The picture of the treat on the wrapper is absolutely luscious: a dripping liquid chocolate center surrounded by a crispy cookie/wafer roll, all covered in chocolate with rice crisps and/or peanuts.

The reality? Well, see for yourself:

Not quite as appetizing as the wrapper photo but still not bad. My chocolate center had solidified and the roll of cookie wafer wasn’t as visible, but the rice crisp-studded chocolate shell looked good.

The roll had a great crunch when bitten into. It was dry and crispy with an undertone of nutty peanut butter toastiness.

The chocolate flavor was understated throughout. I think this confection was all about the crisp and crunch. I enjoyed it, though it was a tad too dry for my taste. An OM.

I found these Pumpkin Pocky at my the local Asian grocery store in Austin, Texas. I’m a sucker for all things pumpkin, so I just had to try these.

If you’re unfamiliar with Pocky, they’re thin biscuit sticks mostly covered with a layer of chocolate or other frosting-like coating. These Pumpkin Pocky were coated with orange frosting.

The biscuit had a crisp crunch and a light buttery toastiness but was otherwise rather bland. The orange coating had the muted taste of pure pumpkin with a creamy undertone and a very mild – so mild I maybe imagined it? – tinge of cinnamon.

I really enjoyed the understated tastiness of this treat and its mix of creamy and crunchy. But again, I’m a sucker for all things pumpkin! An OM.

As promised, here’s my review of the Wasabi flavored Japanese Kit Kat from my globetrotting friends Nana and Justin. My review of the Sweet Potato version that they also sent along posted on Wednesday.

These also came individually wrapped, two to a package, and were a pale green. The famous Kit Kat wafers were dry and crispy and covered in wasabi tinted white chocolate. They smelled neutrally sweet.

The chocolate tasted first of sweet, milky cream. Then a light horseradish kick came through. All of that kick was totally through the olfactory system – when I pinched my nose, it wasn’t noticeable.

There wasn’t any noticeable chocolate flavor, just creaminess with a slight spiciness. It had just the right amount of kick to make it weirdly addictive and intriguing. Any more would have been overwhelming, while any less couldn’t have been noticed.

I give this an OM. It earned the extra M through sheer novelty, but I truly enjoyed the confection. Nana was less of a fan.

I have about a half dozen of each weird flavor to give away. My way of passing on Nana and Justin’s generosity! For a chance to win some Wasabi and Sweet Potato Kit Kats of your own, leave a comment on the ZOMG, Candy!’s Facebook discussion page for a chance to win at least one of each. I’ll randomly select three winners on February 11th, midnight EST, so get your comments in before then!

My friends Nana and Justin have been living and blogging abroad for the last few years. They’ve been a generous source of awesome foreign candy.

Their latest gift was several Japanese Kit Kats in Wasabi and Sweet Potato flavor. I’ll cover Sweet Potato today; Wasabi will be reviewed on Friday. And stay tuned for giveaway news, as Nana and Justin sent me more than I could ever eat!

I love how the tear-away notch on the right of the wrapper is mirrored by an extra triangle on the left. Each individually wrapped package had two prettily pale yellow fingers that had to be characteristically snapped apart.

I was both excited and nervous about trying these. Excited because I love sweet potatoes in just about any form (steamed, roasted, french fried, etc). Nervous because the sweet potato and sesame version that I tried a couple of years ago wasn’t great, though that also didn’t taste much like sweet potato.

Lack of sweet potato flavor was definitely not an issue with this Kit Kat. The flavor was totally spot on – starchy and sweet, with some root vegetable earthiness. It tasted just like a real sweet potato.

Unfortunately, though the flavor was exact, it was really off-putting when combined with the dairy, buttery creaminess of the Kit Kat chocolate. I got totally weirded out and couldn’t handle it. A –.

Come back Friday for the wasabi-flavored Kit Kat review and details on how you can try to win some Japanese Kit Kats for yourself! And you can find Nana and Justin’s take on their website.

Today’s review is of chocolate mushroom cookies that I picked up in China. The brand name literally translates to “Good Friend”, but I labeled them “Little Friend’s Chocolate Mushrooms” when I uploaded the photos, so I’m not sure which is technically correct.

They were all over the place in Shanghai, so I bet that they may be available in local Asian groceries/Chinatowns.

At any rate, these were definitely a cute confection. They were little mushrooms comprised of a butter cookie stem with a solid, fluted chocolate cap.

The cookie was nicely crunchy and very lightly, neutrally flavored. The cap in the pure chocolate version was milk. The chocolate was snappy with a lightly sweet and mild cocoa flavor, and its melt was creamy but not thick.

(They may look bloomed in the above photo, but they were actually just a little dusty/scratched from being all in a jumble together.)

While these chocolate mushrooms were fine, they were too mildly flavored and boring for me. I think Meiji’s Chocorooms are way better – Meiji’s version’s flavors are more intense, which makes the mushrooms addictive.

I’ve actually bought several boxes of Chocorooms, but I always eat them before I get around to photographing them for review. I was happy to share the remainder of the Little Friend’s Chocolate Mushrooms with friends, who eagerly finished them. They get an O.

Little Friend’s also comes in a Redbean (sic) flavor, where the cap is chocolate plus red beans. I guess because it’s red beans, the mascot is a girl in pink instead of a boy in blue, though the chocolate cap atop her pink curls kind of makes her look like she’s in drag.

In China, red beans and green peas are common dessert additives. I’m not sure why, as I hate their mushy grittiness, and I feel that the vegetal earthy flavors of beans and peas don’t belong in dessert, but it’s just a cultural thing, I guess.

I found the red bean flavored mushrooms to be unpalatable. The caps tasted of the strong, savory earthiness of refried beans plus the blandly sweet cocoa of the chocolate, which to me just does not mix.

But my vegetarian roommate from New Orleans eats a lot of red beans, and she adored the red bean mushrooms, enough to polish off the box. So who knows – you may not feel like these warrant the – that I’m giving them.

This Kit Kat Milk Coffee came courtesy of my roommate’s boyfriend, Steve. I’m not sure how Steve got his hands on it, but I’m so thankful that he thought of sharing it with me!

I can’t read any of the Japanese text on the packaging – if any readers know, feel free to leave a translation in the comments! I think the cherry blossom in the bottom left corner means that it’s a Limited Edition/seasonal flavor.

Like all the Japanese Kit Kats that I’ve had, these came in two individually wrapped sets of two fingers each. More packaging makes it less environmentally friendly, but it does help with portion control.

I probably would’ve eaten my way through all four fingers if they hadn’t come separately packaged (tangent: what a weird sentence out of context). That would’ve been bad, as it would have meant no sharing.

This Kit Kat was made from white chocolate. I’m usually not that big on white chocolate, but this was a pretty tasty white chocolate. It tasted fresh, creamy, and milky.

From the looks and taste of it, the coffee flavor was stashed in the cream that sat within the wafers. It tasted deep and crazy roasty, like a fresh brewed pot of coffee.

There was a light bitterness to coffee, but that only added to the genuine flavor. The coffee taste lingered in the finish, long after the chocolate had melted and the airy, crisp wafers had been crunched away.

I loved this bar, with its great mix of textures and solid coffee flavor. An OMG from me. If you want other takes on it, check out what Jim and Jen had to say!

I got this Twix Java in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press pack. It’s not a new bar; instead, it’s been on and off the market as a limited edition since at least 2007.

I, unfortunately, had never been lucky enough to catch it in the wild in any of its previous incarnations, so this was my first time trying it. My packaging made no mention of limited-edition-ness. Perhaps that means it’s here to stay?

The wrapper describes it as “chocolate cookies bars; coffee caramel; milk chocolate.” The back of the wrapper proudly proclaims it to be made with Mars’s real chocolate.

It’s like a regular Twix bar, only the cookie is chocolate and the caramel is coffee tinged. If you’re not familiar with Twix, they come in “fingers”, with a bottom layer of cookie and a top layer of caramel, with the whole thing covered in milk chocolate.

The caramel was sticky yet smooth with a candied coffee flavor. It had a beautiful pull.

The coffee flavor was dry and roasty, with burnt caramel and cocoa notes. As the flavor progressed, it got darker. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the coffee flavor.

The chocolate cookie was soft and dry, and it crumbled rather than crunched. The milk chocolate coating was just so-so, sweet without any distinction.

I give this an OM. I wish the cookie were just a tad crunchier, but otherwise, I thought it was a great mix of flavors and textures. In fact, I like it better than regular Twix, as it’s less sweet and more interesting.

Leave it to the Japanese to decide that Ginger Ale would make a good Kit Kat flavor. I’d read reviews of Ginger Ale Kit Kats on other sites, but it sounded so weird that I still really wanted to try one for myself. Lucky for me, there was one in my free sample box from Tsunami.hk.

The Kit Kat was a yellow-ish white chocolate. It smelled exactly like soda, though I thought the scent was more citrusy than gingery. I’d say more like Sprite or Fresca than ginger ale.

The bars’ outer white chocolate coating was super soft and melted in my fingers. It tasted of overly sweet white chocolate with a hint of citrus.

Most of the “ginger ale” flavor lay in the cream filling sandwiched between the crisp wafers. It tasted weirdly sour and effervescent. Every once in a while, there was a sharply piquant crystal of sour lime flavor.

I wasn’t a fan of the combination of white chocolate and citrus and effervescence. The whole thing had an awful finish that I found off-putting.

Flavor-wise, I thought it merits a –. But I am glad I got to try it. It’s definitely a taste experience!

I have to admit, I had a beef with this bar even before I tasted it. Its name is too darn long – it’s annoying to type out “scrumdiddlyumptious!” So I’m shortening it to WESCB, for Wonka Exceptionals Scrumbdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar.

Wonka Exceptionals is Nestle/Wonka’s new line of higher quality – and higher priced – candy bars. I got mine in my free 16 lb bag of Sweets and Snack Expo preview goodies, courtesy of the NCA.

The WESCB has “bits of scrumptious toffee pieces, crispy cookies and crunchy peanuts wrapped in milk chocolate.” It sounds pretty amazing but busy, which is also how I’d describe the crazy shiny purple packaging.

Inside, the bar was strangely segmented into different-sized pieces (mine came broken along one of the lines), each imprinted with the Wonka W. I actually like the lack of uniformity. Theoretically, you could break off an appetite-appropriate chunk.

The WESCB was packed full of bits and pieces. Peanuts were the most predominant flavor and scent contributor, almost tricking me into thinking that the bar had peanut butter in it. They brought a deep, roasty nuttiness and a lot of crunch.

The crunchy toffee bits cleaved cleanly and added some nice dark caramel notes, while the cookie bits added further crunch.

The milk chocolate bar had a thick melt, but it was so full of stuff that the melt was barely noticeable. On its own, the chocolate was a tad too sweet for my taste, though it was definitely a cut above plain Nestle chocolate.

While I liked the idea of the WESCB, I think it failed me in execution. There was way too much peanut flavor that totally overwhelmed everything else, losing the potential of the other flavor components. An O.

My friend Neil just got back from a trip to the Netherlands and was kind and awesome enough to bring me back a bunch of Dutch chocolates. When he handed me this Kinder Bueno White bar, he noted that I’d reviewed the regular version but not the white one, a blog fact that I didn’t know at the time. November 2007 was a long time ago!

Everything on the wrapper was written in both Dutch and French. My French isn’t that great, but I got that these were made with milk and hazelnuts, and I’d loosely translate the description as “two individually wrapped bars of white chocolate and cocoa meringue bits”.

The underside of the bars were coated with these little crunchy cocoa beads, and each of the four segments wore a stripe of the beads as well. While I think they were called meringues, they tasted like cocoa powder cookies.

The outer shells were airy, crisp wafers that provided structural stability and a pleasant crunch. Each segment pod was filled with an amazingly thick and creamy white chocolate filling.

The tasted strongly of milk and vanilla and was reminiscent of really high quality frosting. I didn’t get any hazelnut flavors, but I didn’t really care.

The filling was quite sweet, but it was nicely tempered by that wafer shell. It’s basically a non-cute version of the biscuit Kinder Happy Hippo, but with chocolate sprinkle/cookie bits.

The Kinder Bueno White was tasty and delicious (thanks, Neil!). I rated it an OM before I reread my old Happy Hippo review and saw that the Hippo version earned my highest rating. Looks like presentation does count for a lot!