Tag Archives: Kinder

Feb 06 2016
1 Comment
Column, International Bar

Friends and friends and candy bars

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Happy new year, everybody! An entire month and change late!

Apologies for the hiatus; life’s been a bit of a whirlwind lately: I left a job, went on a Christmas vacation to the California coast and a New Year’s vacation to the California mountains, found a Lady Bar, worked at a fashion convention and lost a 1-on-1 basketball game for $100.

As I’ve navigated the highs and lows of the past few months, one of the great constants has been the support of my friends, who, in addition to being overall swell people, have also supplied me with more than my fair share of candy bars to sample.

A very genuine thank you to all of those who sent bars my way, including:

The friend who goes to visit a candy factory and knows you like silly hats

Many thanks to Jacki Bar, who not only sent along some delicious treats from her tour of the Hammond Candies factory in Colorado, but also sent this sweet-ass hat, which I immediately put on, because attention:

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Great hat. Why don’t you see more of these nowadays?

Of course, she also sent some sweets:

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Hammonds Whoopie Pie bar was, well, not exactly a whoopie pie facsimile, but, instead a dark chocolate bar with vanilla creme. It was definitely a tasty chocolate bar, but given the whoopie pie billing, I can’t say it completely lived up to my expectation (me and the whoopies go way back).

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Gimme more of dat creme, yo.

More than anything, the bitterness of the dark chocolate overpowered the gentle vanilla in the creme, and anyone who’s had a whoopie pie knows that the creme is paramount. If Hammonds had adjusted the ratio ever so slightly, this would have been a knockout. Continue reading →

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Jul 09 2015
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International Bar

How Swede It Is

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The international tour continues! [Ed. note: Really sorry about these country puns, guys.]

Nate Bar, my esteemed and cardiovascularly optimized colleague, recently dropped a little bop all over Sweden, romping around at the World Triathlon Championships and spreading positivity and goodwill to all whom he encountered.

He brought that positivity and goodwill back to the office in the form of a monster variety pack of miniatures of Swedish candy bars, pictured above.

I got a crash course in the bars of Sweden. Here are my thoughts:

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Kinder Mini

A delicious, small, Kit Katty-type bar with breakable pieces, a crème filling and puffed rice/oat to add crunch. The puffed whatever-it-was was different than that of a Crunch bar, with a wheatiness to it reminiscent of Smacks. Which was great, because man, I haven’t thought about Smacks in at least a decade.

[Ed. note: What do you think the Smacks Frog is up to these days? He’s definitely not getting into the same clubs as the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee and Tony the Tiger are getting into. I bet you he’s one of Snap, Crackle and Pop’s toadies lackeys.]

Twist Caramel

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Essentially a single cell of a Caramello-type bar, with the runny caramel that tasted like it had juuuuust a tad bit of rum in there. A little bit darker of a chocolate than your typical Euro CDM-style.

Not a bad bar at all.

Twist Golden Toffee

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While the name and wrapper might imply that you’re going to be receiving something similar to a Werther’s Original here, it’s in fact a chocolate-covered caramel nougat bar. Good, if not slightly deceptive.

Twist Chocolate Toffee

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See above, only chocolate caramel nougat. Not mad about it, bro. This reminded me a lot of a Riesen.

Daim

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More like, “Daim, that’s some good-ass toffee!” This one’s a Heath Bar as thin as a Skor. I’m a fool for toffee, so I liked this one a lot, but I’ve also had significantly better toffee. Continue reading →

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Jul 03 2015
1 Comment
International Bar

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.

Continue reading →

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