Name: Ritter Sport
Brand: Ritter
Place Purchased: Cost Plus
Price: $3.49
Size: 5.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Type: Chocolate (Various)

Ritter is a German brand of chocolate that offers these squares of chocolate (large and small) in 18 different varieties. I picked up this mini-assortment at Cost Plus because I haven’t been able to find some of the more obscure ones in the 100 gram size.

The little bars are about 1 1/2 inches square and sectioned into quarters. Overall, their chocolate is smooth, milky without tasting too much like powdered milk and the quality of the ingredients it top notch. They’re mass production candy, not frou-frou high-end stuff, but they offer some good variety to their line.

Here’s what I tried:

Marzipan - well, it’s sad that out of the 10 bars in the box, two of them were marzipan. I’m not fond of marzipan, but the texture was good and the almond paste fresh. The chocolate wasn’t the light dairy milk, but a mild semi-sweet. 6 out of 10

Jogurt - the other sad thing was there were two of these as well. Covered in the dairy milk chocolate, the center was a dense yogurt cream. A little sour, a little odd. Not unpleasant, but not really my thing. 6 out of 10

Knusperflakes - a corn flake crunch in milk chocolate. This is super, I will definitely buy this one again if I see it by itself. Better than a crisped rice bar because the corn actually has its own flavor to add. Rocks my world. You get the picture. 8 out of 10

Vollmilch - milk chocolate, rich, sticky and dairy-rich taste. Sweet and smooth. 7 out of 10.

Knusperkeks - a butter biscuit covered in chocolate. Simplicity. The biscuit is soft and crumbly, but not grainy like a graham cracker. Buttery undertones and lightly crumbly, it works well with the chocolate. 7 out of 10

Nugat - not really nougat in the sense of a whipped sugar, but more of a hazelnut paste. Sweet and very nutty. Not as smooth as a Baci. 7 out of 10.

Haselnuss - crushed hazelnuts in milk chocolate. Sweet dairy milk chocolate with good nutty crunch and flavor. 7 out of 10.

A fun thing to share with people. Each little bar is a nice snack, not as big as a whole candy bar and easy to section and share.

Rating - 7 out of 10 for whole package.

Name: Munchies
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market
Price: $1.29
Size: 1.83 ounces
Calories per ounce: 137
Type: Chocolate/Caramel

I’d never seen these before, but the package seemed happy so I bought it. Unfortunately the import label that was applied to it covered up half of the original label but I took it off and founds that it says “Share me Munchies.” Okay.

Munchies are a little ball of biscuit (cookie) surrounded by flowing caramel and covered in chocolate, shaped like a little cube (okay, not totally cubular, a little shorter than wide).

They’re completely poppable, about the same size as a Rolo and like a tiny little Twix bar. The ratio of chocolate seems greater than a Twix, so if chocolate is your thing and not the cookie so much, this might be a good alternative candy.

They’re cute and very sweet but a little lacking in flavor for me. The biscuit isn’t really crunchy, just crumbly and the caramel is sweet but lacks the carmelized sugar hit that I enjoy.

Rating - 5 out of 10

Name: Almond Joy Cookies
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: 7-11
Price: $1.25
Size: 2 ounces
Calories per ounce: 150
Type: Chocolate/Coconut/Cookie

I know they say they’re cookies, but if something is coated in real chocolate and has a creamy filling, it’s probably a candy. I mean, no one calls Twix a cookie.

I tried the York version of these over the summer and absolutely loved them. They fixed everything that’s wrong with the Girl Scout Thin Mints ... York Peppermint Patty cookies have no trans fats and real chocolate. The Almond Joy cookies aren’t quite as revolutionary, but they’re dang tasty.

It starts with a crisp chocolate cookie on the bottom then is slathered in a lighter coconut cream (not as dense as the center of an Almond Joy) that has some crushed almonds mixed in. The whole thing is dipped in real milk chocolate.

It was very coco-nutty tasting, very smooth. Sweet, but with a lot of different textures including a little hit of salt from the cookie.

They’re really pricey for a cookie, but only slightly more expensive than a regular candy bar. The serving size on the package says all four cookies, but I was pretty satisfied with only two of them.

Related - The Implusive Buy loved the Reese’s cookies (which I haven’t found yet) and Cheap Eats loves them if they’re free.

Rating - 8 out of 10

Name: KitKat Coffee
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: 7-11 (Hollywood)
Price: $.85
Size: 1.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 147
Type: Chocolate/Crisp

I know Marvo already covered KitKat Coffee this week, but if I don’t review it, I don’t get to eat it. I’d been looking for this bar for a few weeks when I finally saw it at the 7-11 I pass on my way home. There are a few 7-11s that I go to, but this one, on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Virgil seems to stock the best candy. The store is clean and the candy fresh. Though a little pricier than a lot of other places I shop, I’m willing to pay an extra 10 cents for something that I haven’t found elsewhere.

I was so excited by this bar that I bought two, one to eat when I got home and one to review, so by the time I took the photos, I knew that this was a good bar.

Upon opening the bar, the coffee scent is quite powerful and mixed with a sugary sweet smell. Where the Nestle Coffee Crisp bar smells like a creamy coffee concoction with toffee, the KitKat Coffee smells like a fresh brewed cup of black coffee. As with the Nestle KitKat Orange, the coffee flavor is actually in the chocolate (and maybe in the creamy filling of the crisps). It makes me wish that Hershey would release Coffee Kisses.

The bar is very simple and benefits from the addition of the coffee flavoring. It’s pretty amazing how the KitKat can be so good with so many other flavor iterations (Orange, Green Tea, Dark Chocolate, Melon, White Chocolate) but I think that shows that it’s a really well-engineered bar. The blank slate of the crisps and the vaguely vanilla cream can stand on its own or get a boost from another flavor.

I have my doubts that this will be added to the permanent KitKat repertoire (but they did add white chocolate, so who knows) but I’ll enjoy it while it’s around.

Rating - 9 out of 10

UPDATE: I neglected a link to the first place I saw this!

Name: Kinder Bueno
Brand: Kinder
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 43 grams
Calories per package: 240
Type: Nut Cream

I’m a little confused by the name of this bar. Maybe my language skills aren’t that good, but I’ve had a dabbling of German and took five years of Spanish. Kinder, as far as I know is Children in German. Bueno means good in Spanish. The package for this particular treat was in English and French.

All that linguistic stuff aside, candy is good in all languages. What we have here is a crisp shell filled with a hazelnut cream and covered in a very thin shell of milk chocolate. As with most candies, two pieces are better than one, so Kinder Bueno gives you two fingers. Each is further sealed inside a clear plastic sleeve to protect the crispy wafers from getting stale. The candy is basically a formed, crisp shell filled with a creamy, milky hazelnut paste and covered in a sweet and melty milk chocolate.

I know that all of the stuff in here is probably horrible for me, reading the ingredients in either language reveals copious amounts of palm kernel oil and 30% of my daily RDA of saturated fats (oddly enough no cholesterol). No matter, it’s really good. Hazelnut is such a wonderful complement to milk chocolate and the tasteless wafers, I’d probably accept a hit of 100% of my saturated fat.

It’s rich and creamy and the roasted flavor of the hazelnuts lingers. They were wonderful with my morning coffee. Even though they’re sweet the fatty texture spreads the goodness all over allowing all the notes of the nuts to come out. The filling is a little sticky, so keep some milk or coffee nearby to cut it. I would probably buy these again if I were to take a long flight or something where I really wanted an indulgence to go with bad airplane coffee. Even though they’re double packaged, these candies don’t travel well, so don’t throw an apple on top of them in your purse. I’m also eager to find some Kinder Eggs to try out sometime soon.

Rating - 7 out of 10

I know it seems strange to do a head-to-head tasting of the same candy bar, but there are rather interesting differences between the KitKat sold in the United States and the one sold in the rest of the world.

A little history: KitKat was first introduced in 1935 by London candymaker Rowntree under the name Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp. A couple of years later they settled on the name KitKat Chocolate Crisp. The bar has always been the familiar four finger design and was an immediate big-seller for the company. It was briefly produced as a dark chocolate bar during the war because of dairy shortages, but returned to its familiar sweet milk chocolate recipe in 1947. In 1969 the American owned Hershey Corp bought the rights to manufacture and sell KitKat bars in the United States. I don’t think you will find American KitKats sold anywhere else in the world, probably part of the agreement. Rowntree was later purchased by Nestle in 1988 but the KitKat remains the same. The KitKat bar is pretty much the best-selling bar in the world.

(more info here from Nestle and here from Hershey’s)

Just as most folks have a preference for one chocolate brand over another, the differences between the Canadian KitKat (CKK) and the American KitKat (AKK) are pretty noticeable. First, the CKK is larger. Weighing in at a hefty 50 grams (1.75 oz), it beats the AKK which is a dinky 42 grams (1.5 oz). The CKK packs those extra grams into a longer bar. The AKK has a more pyramid shaped finger, with more of an angle to the sides, which means, oddly enough, less crisp because there’s less room for them though it is slightly higher. You can see that in this photo:

The color of the bars is virtually the same, with the CKK slightly darker. As I opened the package, the AKK smelled sweet and chocolatey with a little tint of vanilla. The CKK had an overwhelmingly graham cracker smell, kind of like the Wonka Bar (also made by Nestle). After the graham smell dissipates, there’s far more chocolate smell to the CKK.

It’s been a few months since I’ve had a KitKat, so I tried to experience it fresh. The first one I tried was the AKK. It was immediately sweet but had a good crisp. My usual way of eating a KitKat is to eat off both ends of a finger, then pry off the top layer of crisp & chocolate with my teeth in a single plank, then continue eating the finger from the top down. For this experiment, I’m eating them straight on in order to fully experience the crisp to chocolate ratio (okay, after two fingers of each, I ended up eating the rest of them after the tasting in my normal manner). The AKK was crispy and solid, with perhaps a little more chocolate than I’d like, but it’s the most popular bar in the world, so who am I to tinker with perfection?

The CKK has a lighter crisp. A little foamier, a little airier. It dissipates quickly so that the melting chocolate takes over. The chocolate on the CKK is not quite like a European Nestle nor like the AKK. It’s milky, like a Cadbury, with a very distinct powdered milk taste to it. It’s a taste that took me some years to get used to, but now I rather enjoy it as a contrast to the slightly yogurt notes of a Hershey’s Kiss.

Though the Trolli vs Haribo head-to-head had a winner, I can’t quite say that one of these bars is better than the other. I like the heft and vanilla notes to the CKK, but I also enjoy the dense crunch of the AKK.

All I know is that after eating two KitKat bars for breakfast, I need a cup of coffee.

Ratings - Canadian KitKat - 8 out of 10
American KitKat - 8 out of 10

Name: KitKat Orange
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: 5 for $3.00 (Canadian)
Size: 50 grams
Calories per 50 grams: 260
Type: Chocolate/Crisp

I saw these on a blog a few months ago (StellaBites) ago and I was immediately entranced with the idea. Why aren’t there more essence flavored chocolate bars? (Well, while we’re at it, why isn’t there a coffee bar in the States?)

This is pretty much a regular old KitKat bar with orange in the chocolate covering the crispy wafers. (I was afraid it was going to be white chocolate.) The scent is wonderfully orangey with a lot of vanilla tones that give it a creamy aroma.

The crisp is the same as you’d expect from a KitKat but perhaps a little sweeter. The orange combines will with the chocolate - though I thought it overpowered it slightly. There was an odd tangyness to it as well, but that may be the KitKat chocolate (I haven’t tried the plain one lately).

If you’re a fan of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, this is a really good everyday bar for you. This is a great treat to have with either tea or coffee.

The interesting thing about KitKat is that it was originally a Rowntree product (the predecessor to Nestle) in the UK. The KitKat bar sold in the United States is produced by Hershey’s. Since it’s produced in the states, it tastes slightly different. Next week I’ll do my second head-to-head taste-off of the Hershey KitKat and the UK KitKat. (Holy Moly! I just looked on the Hershey site and they mention a KitKat Coffee Lt. Edition!)

Rating - 7 out of 10

Name: Wonka Bar
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: 99 Cent Only Store (the only place I’ve seen them in person)
Price: $.33
Size: 1.3 oz
Calories per ounce: 138
Type: Chocolate

The first time I ever saw (or even heard of) a Wonka bar was in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (I read the book a few years later). In the movie Charlie wolfs down a husky bar that costs nearly nothing. While this bar might look bulky in the photo, it’s the size of a standard playing card. I think it’s a petite version, as I’ve seen others advertised for sale that are larger than 1.3 ounces. But I couldn’t beat the price of 3 for a dollar at the 99 cent Only Store. Even so, it looks like a Wonka bar should - substantial and slick. I bought two and both came out of the package looking so dang edible.

The bar isn’t even all chocolate. There are graham cracker bits in there and it reminds me of a poor man’s version of those Le Petite Ecolier cookies that are a graham cracker cookie with a molded chocolate top (embossed with a little schoolboy) The cookies smell like graham crackers (vanilla & cinnamon) and chocolate. The graham adds a nice crunch to the bar without too much additional sweetness.

Overall the bar is a little sweet, a little waxy. But cheap and satisfying. There’s something really compelling about the ‘nilla Wafer-like graham.

Interesting fact from package: bar was made in Brazil.

Rating - 6 out of 10