Candy Blog

Name: Donutz
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: Sav-On
Price: $.69
Size: 1.6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 138
Type: Chocolate

It took me a long time to figure out what a chocolate donut has to do with Wonka (the books or movies), but after mulling it a bit it came to me that there’s a line in Veruca Salt’s song “I Want It Now” in the 1972 version of the movie:

Veruca: I want a bean feast!

Mr. Salt: Oh, one of those

Veruca: Cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts So good you could go nuts.

Yeah, that’s a stretch, but there you have it, the donut Veruca was insisting on.

It’s okay, the Wonka Donutz has as little to do with the bakery donuts as they do the movie. They’re donut shaped. There’s no bready, fried dough in there at all. It’s chocolate, through and through except for the fun little colored nonpareils. But whew, these are chocolatey.

The Donutz is a plump, milk chocolate hoop with a firm, creamy chocolate truffle-like center. The outside chocolate is mild and sweet, like that found in a Nestle Crunch bar. A little on the grainy side, but pleasant. The inside of the candy is a sweet and melty filling of chocolate with a slight rum aroma to it. The sprinkles (half of which are guaranteed to not make it into your mouth) provide a fun little crunch.

I wasn’t really that interseted in this candy until Alexander, a reader, sent me his own review. Overall I was expecting something fudgier and sweeter (which would have been a bad thing). Instead it was just very mildly chocolatey and mildly sweet with some textures to mix it up a bit. I would probably eat it if you put it in front of me, but I don’t see myself buying them unless I’m going for a Wonka theme thing. This candy bar was made in Brazil.

Rating - 6 out of 10

My site designers/programmers Susie & Travis (from Hop Studios) sent me a bag o’ treats a few months ago from their trip to Singapore. I don’t really have any specs on the candies since it was a mix, so here’s a sample of what they looked like:

It took me a while too steel myself for trying so many mysterious things, but I’ve finally plowed through most of the treats. Some were just variations on the candies we have available here, different kinds of mints (chewy, hard, soft), coffee hard toffees, ginger chews (made in Indonesia) and of course fruit hard candies. Some were rather normal, based on the ubiquitous citrus fruits but a good number were curious.

Durian and Tamarind top the list of scary candies. I’ve heard horror stories of Durian, which is rather common throughout Southeast Asia. It’s a sizeable and formidable looking fruit and I’m told an acquired taste for outsiders (and some who’ve grown up there have never been fond of it). It’s a divisive fruit, actually, as so many people can’t stand it because of its rather pungent odor, it’s not allowed on public transportation in many large cities.

The durian hard candy is probably just as much an acquired taste and not one I’m likely to accomplish. This hard candy tastes okay at first, a little sweet, a little tart and then rather like boiled shallots. Yes, onions or garlic or perhaps a little like Slim Jims.

The Tamarind, which I’ve never had and is surprising as I live in Los Angeles and it’s all over the place, was actually nice. It’s a little toasty, rather ordinary after all being so worked up about trying that.

The most curious one was the Creamy Corn. It tasted just like it sounds. Like creamed corn. Only in a hard toffee instead of running on my plate into my fried chicken. I have to say that it was very faithful to the name, and I ate the whole thing and was fascinated by it, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It’s rather like eating the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Bellies. It’s a novelty, not a pleasure. At least not for me.

Mango was actually really nice, better than any other mango candy I’ve had, probably because they did more than make it taste like peaches. There were a few mango flavored ones, but the best overall were the ones branded Lot100 (the Blackcurrant was good, too). It had a nice pine essence to it, which is one of the things that I find so interesting about real mangoes, they have a woodsy flavor to them.

The best one was called Great Monster and I think was simply an orange hard candy. Simple, tart and zesty.

I had high hopes for those labeled barley sugar candies, but they didn’t really taste like the barley sugar I know of here in the states. They were nice, especially the lime torrone one (which was not at all like an Italian Torrone).

There are still a few I haven’t tried, but give me a few more days to get my courage back.

Rating - 6 out of 10 overall (some higher some lower ... it’s an average)

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!)