Tag Archives: flavour

C’mon, give it a Thai: Candy bars from the Far East

IMG_4237One of the perks of this little adventure I’ve gone on is that my friends seem to love sending me candy bars, especially when they encounter them outside of the borders of the United States of America, be it on a vacation or during a longer-term residence.

One of these friends, Kelly Bar, took a journey to Thailand and sent me a care package with all sorts of fun weird candy, along with an accompanying letter explaining the treasure I had just come upon. Kelly, a comrade from a rival team I raced against during my illustrious collegiate rowing career, is currently working her way through her own food-related adventure (a taco-based endeavor she’s dubbed Tacopalooza2015) and is doing a significantly better job than I am, gaining traction by means of actual, legitimate news outlets.

With these bars, as well as two weird Gift Bars from the first couple of BOaP, Alex and Abby Bar, I figured I’d take a culinary trip to the Orient. Here’s what I tried, with Kelly’s descriptions in italics:

United Almond (pictured above)
“I’m guessing Thai people like nuts incorporated in their chocolate because it’s hard to find any plain chocolate bars. This one also looked fancy.

The United Almond is pretty standard: A Thai version of a Hershey’s with Almonds. In terms of mouthfeel, the chocolate is a little waxier than I’m used to, perhaps underscored by its packaged description of “almond coated with chocolate flavour”, flavour being the operative word. Still, though, a pretty tasty bar.

Green Tea Kit Kat

IMG_4223One of the Alex and Abby gift bars, the Green Tea Kit Kat is from Japan. Upon opening the seemingly standard-sized package, I discovered three fun-sized bars inside. I’m not sure whether this is standard-issue packaging for these bars, and I couldn’t get any clues from the packaging because I can’t read Japanese.

Gimme a break ... gimme a break ... break me off a piece and then do it two more times and then wrap them up and package them together as one greater Kit Kat bar.

Gimme a break … gimme a break … break me off a piece and then do it two more times and then wrap them up and package them together as one greater Kit Kat bar.

As far as how it tasted, the Green Tea Kit Kat very much tasted like eating a Kit Kat made out of sweet plants. I wanted to like it. But I didn’t.

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Brit Week: A Minty Cheerio (Not the cereal. That would be gross.)

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Brit Week came to a lovely little conclusion yesterday evening as I noshed on a Nestle Mint Aero as I watched How To Train Your Dragon 2 get jobbed at the Oscars. [Ed. note: You got the Oscar in my book, Hiccup.]

The Aero was a lot like Hershey’s Air Delights, only the addition of CDM-style chocolate enhanced not only the candy bar’s flavour, but also its consistency: The bubbles were bigger and more pleasant in my mouth. [Ed. note: That sentence felt dirty when I typed it.]

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I can’t, however, say that I enjoyed it: The mint side of the Mint Aero was not a mint that I enjoyed, different than that of a candy cane or Andes candy (though, it may be the exact same as an Andes, just with a greater proportion of mint). I was fine with a few breaks, but a whole bar would have been overkill.

So, after a week of British sweets, my thoughts:

– That’s some good-ass chocolate.
– It’s better when it’s simple. You start throwing too much crap in it, and you lose the appreciation of the more nuanced flavor.
– Give me US chocolate when you’re getting wacky with the ingredients. Give me CDM chocolate when it’s just chocolate.
– In the future, I won’t do theme weeks back-to-back. It was certainly a fun two weeks, but I don’t know if either you nor I appreciated this as much as we could have. Let me know if I’m wrong.
– I do not, in any way, understand why they decided to stop this stuff from being imported. Petty stuff.

Google Search That Brought Traffic to BOaP of the Day

“what happens when you melt a hershey air bar”

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