Name: Snickers Almond
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: 7-11
Price: $.85
Size: 1.76 ounces
Calories per ounce: 136
Type: Chocolate/Caramel/Nuts

Why didn’t someone mention that the Mars bar was quietly replaced with the Snickers Almond bar five years ago? I didn’t notice. Mostly because I was never a Mars bar fan. A Mars bar in the States used to be a nougat bar with almonds and a strip of caramel and covered in milk chocolate. A Mars bar in other parts of the world is like a Milky Way is here in the States: a nougat bar with a stripe of caramel covered in milk chocolate. In the rest of the world a Milky Way is like the American 3 Musketeers. I can go on and on, but suffice to say that Mars has a big old confusing name problem on their hands and all I can do is try to make a grid to display it. (Please correct me if I’ve got them wrong.)

USA….............. contents ..................UK/Canada
Mars .........almond, caramel, nougat…........none
Milky Way…......nougat, caramel…............Mars
3 Musketeers ......fluffy nougat ...............Milky Way
Marathon ........long caramel braid ............Curly Wurly
Snickers…...peanuts, caramel, nougat….......Marathon*
*discontinued

You know, there are a bazillion names for these candy folks to choose from, why do they have to confuse the globe-trotting candy lovers so? For some other attempts at disambiguation, have a look at this page comparing the old Mars and the Canadian Milky Way (with cross sections).

But I digress. I’m supposed to be reviewing the Snickers Almond bar.

But I don’t wanna review this bar because I didn’t like it much and it reminded me why I forgot about the bar entirely. It smells good, which is just a ruse. First, the nougat is nothing more than a flavorless grainy sweet blob. Good nougat has a flavor of some sort, an essence of honey or malt or, well, something. This is just sweet. The caramel is also sweet, but has a touch of salt to it which I fully support. The almonds are nice, but scant. The chocolate is sweet and passable as a chocolate cloak. As a whole combination it just didn’t wow me and didn’t satisfy me. I didn’t finish it.

There are other bars out there that do this better. The See’s Awesome Nut & Nougat Bar is one (but probably not a viable alternative as it’s not that easy to get a hold of). Frankly I prefer the plain old Snickers bar to this. There was a Mars Midnight for a while there in the nineties that I was rather fond of but gone now.

Other Reviews: Writers & Artists Snacking at Work gave it a 9/10, Jim at Phoood wasn’t wowed, Candy Critic gave the original Mars an 11/15

Rating - 5 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Snickers Almond Dark
2. More Satisfying Snickers Almond?

Name: Max Brenner Chocolates: Dark Chicao, Waffle & Milk Chocolate Cubes
Brand: Max Brenner
Place Purchased: candy swap (thanks Michal)
Price: unknown
Size: various
Calories per ounce: 135-160
Type: Chocolate/Coconut/Nuts

Here’s a little Hanukkah treat for everyone, some Israeli chocolates! The Max Brenner package says “Creating a New Chocolate Culture” and I’m inclined to hop on board this philosophy. Michal, a candyblog.net reader, sent me these wonderful treats and I’m very impressed by the combination of flavors, textures, the simplicity of ingredients and most of all, the playfulness of the packages and formats.

Dark Chicao: Dark chocolate thins with Ecuadorian cocoa bits. These are rather similar to the Scharffen Berger Cacao Nibs I tried and loved recently. I was a little scared when I took them out of the tin because they looked a little chalky, but we can chalk that up to their trip half way around the planet to get to me. They were a little bruised but tasted phenomenal. Dark, dark chocolate with crunchy nibs. The chocolate is buttery with a strong woodsy essence and a slight dry finish. Because there’s so much cacao in there and not much sugar they don’t get me hyped up the same way a chocolate bar does. At 75% cacao though, they’re probably giving me some sort of theobromine high.

Waffle: Crispy Belgian waffle in milk chocolate praline. I’ve had many bars like this and they’ve usually ended up being too much cookie and not enough chocolate or too waxy or greasy. Here’s a wonderful balance of chocolate, soft flavors and crispy waffle with a hint of hazelnut. The box is fun (the size of a pencil box with a tray/sleeve to pull out and reveal the candies) and the size of the little drops is just right, two bites for me. The Max Brenner milk chocolate is very rich, with 52% cacao, it’s darker than many consumer dark chocolates.

Milk Chocolate Cubes: Michal was good enough to translate the boxes for these. They’re minitruffles I’m guessing, one set is “Milk Chocolate Cubes filled with Hazelnut Praline and Caramelized Pecan Bits” and the other is Milk Chocolate Cubes filled with “Caramel Hazelnut Praline and Roasted coconut” (well, those are not really cubes, more like spheroids). The hazelnut/pecan one is sweet and toasty, like a hit of toffee only in a milk chocolate with just a few flakes of crispy to it. They’re very rich and sticky and should probably be consumed with some strong coffee. (Or the Dark Chicaos!). The coconuts were amazing fun. Instead of soft coconut like you’d find in a Mounds of Bounty bar, this is crispy coconut that adds a bit of crunch and chew to the sweet milk chocolate. The boxes are cool because they’re designed to be a greeting card or favor of sorts. You can write a little message on the back like those Valentines boxes of candy that we used to exchange in junior high.

I’m digging Mr. Brenner’s new chocolate culture. Their packaging is interesting and not overdone. The little mylar packs kept everything fresh and the design on them is really inventive, slightly self-deprecating and sets it apart from a lot of other candy that I’ve seen that positions itself in this part of the upscale market.

Rating - 9 out of 10 (now I just need to find a source in the States)

Departures, the American Express magazine, has an incredible list of The Only 149 Chocolates You Need to Know About.  Well, I didn’t count 149 manufacturers on Christine Muhlke’s list, but there’s some good stuff there, not just what to eat, but where to go on vacation for full immersion.

There are also some great quotes from other foodies and this was my favorite:

Alan Richman | food writer
“I like See’s Candies [from San Francisco]. They’re huge—not little wussy designer chocolates. It’s a great middle-class product. I also like chocolate that’s sold in any crumbling store run by old ladies. You know it’s fresh and they’re making it.”

I happen to love See’s because it’s so dependably fresh and tasty and I don’t need hand painting on something that’s going in my tummy. Of course I’ll have to work my way through the list to see if they stay at the top!

(Link found via Roboppy - thanks!)

Now that we’re through Christmas and the stockings and desserts, there’s New Year’s to consider.

It’s not a very candy holiday, but you can make it that way if you want. I found two great lists of candy cocktails:

Chocktails - 10 recipes for chocolate cocktails including Raspberry Truffle and what I think sounds good, Italian Licorice. (Link found via Chocolate Obsession - thanks!)

And the Candy Addict has a roundup of 15 recipes as well for all sorts of candy oriented cocktails including a Tootsie Roll and Peanut Butter Cup. The SweetTart sounds pretty good to me, although I’ve never been particularly fond of sweet drinks (I pretty much drink water, unsweetened tea and milk though I will indulge in hot chocolate from time to time).

This leads me to a recipe The Man and I formulated this summer for a Lemon Martini:

1 part fresh lemon juice
1 part limoncello
1 part lemon vodka

Shake with ice, serve in a chilled martini glass, rub the rim with lemon rind or if you want a festive look, try yellow sugar or cocktail sugars. You might also want to drop a lemon drop in there or if you can find one of those lemon stripe candy sticks, that’d be pretty cool as a stirrer. The drink is VERY zesty, as it has a lot of lemon in it. We make our own lemon vodka by simply taking a lemon and using a peeler to get just the best yellow zest off of it, placing the strips in a jar and covering with good vodka. Stick in the fridge until insanely yellow and the zest strips star to curl. If it’s too lemony (is that possible?) dilute with plain vodka.

Of course always be safe - it’s easy to over-imbibe when the drinks are sweet and tasty. I want everyone around for the New Year!

Stockings are one of my favorite traditions of Christmas. I’ve written before about my love of the stockings Santa brought us as children. They were eclectic mixes of little gifts, novelties, traditional American chocolates, gelt and international confections. These were candies that we didn’t get any other time of the year, not in Easter baskets and certainly not in Halloween trick-or-treat bags.

For the past few years I’ve also continued this tradition with my friends when I’m in town for the holidays. We often host a Christmas Eve dinner for friends and I give out a version of these stockings to my guests.

Our family tradition is that everyone has a stocking and it must be at my mother’s house in order for Santa to find it and fill it. Instead for my guests I put their goodies in fabric wine gift bags. They’re pretty and because they’re reusable they’re a gift as well. I found this excellent assortment in Chinatown much less expensive than at the wine store or Cost Plus. As this year was an all-couple affair, each couple got a stocking.

The cornerstone of a stocking is candy. The Santa of my childhood seemed to favor a mix of nuts in the shell (which were obviously pretty but were also intended to minimize the actual candy content). Those nuts were immediately sorted out of the candy mix and placed in a bowl on the kitchen table. My stockings skip right to the punch - chocolate. This year we picked up a mix of chocolate coins, Hershey’s Kisses (plain, thank you), Hershey’s Mint Miniatures Mix & Butterfinger Jingles, Brachs hard candy/toffees and the Trader Joe’s Torrones.

A stocking wouldn’t be much fun without some sassy little toys and additional candy. So I assembled a bunch of stuff, some from the 99 Cent Store, others I picked up here and there. Everyone gets a special big candy, usually just for their tastes: Toblerone bar, Jelly Belly Assortments, Bazooka bubble gum, mints (those round things are mints that look like roller blade wheels) and some grapefruit pastilles. The things that look like ice cream cones are scented bubbles (non toxic for those folks who have pets who like to play with bubbles like we do).

The gelt is more fun when packaged up. I got some cute little coin bags and pencil keepers in Chinatown as well that are even better stuffed with candy.

And there it is, all stuffed to the seams! (Okay, I have a problem with trying to stuff too much into them.)

Everyone goes home happy and if they have a long way to travel they’ve got a snack along the way. Of course you can scale up or down for finances and it’s always a good idea to keep your eye out year round to find the stuffers. Things like little notebooks, lip balm, ornaments or even CDs are good fun things to add.

(click on any photo for larger, yummier goodness)