Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Kraft DaimThe Daim bar is a popular crunchy toffee bar covered in chocolate that originated in Sweden. According to Wikipedia, the development tale is rather curious. Marabou, the preeminent Swedish chocolate company, approached Heath Bar back in the early 1950s for permission to license the Heath name and recipe to be produced for the Swedish/Norwegian marketplace. Heath said they couldn’t but did furnish the basic recipe so Marabou created the Daim Bar. The Daim went on to become quite a sensation, so much so that Hershey’s decided it needed its own crunchy toffee bar and copied the Daim in the US and called it Skor (along with the tag line of “The Taste of Sweden” in their launch advertising). The funniest part of the whole thing about Hershey’s marketing a copy of a Swedish candy that was a copy of an American candy was that Hershey’s ended up buying Heath Bar when they acquired Leaf Candy Company in 1996. Marabou, in turn, was bought out by Kraft back in 1993 which distributes the Marabou chocolate products around the world. The easiest place to find Daim bars is at IKEA. The bar does look a lot like the American Skor. It’s a smallish bar, flat and with a crisp buttery toffee center with a few bits of almonds in there. The milk chocolate coating is a little thicker on top with some attractive swirls and waves. At only 28 grams (about .99 ounces) it’s a small bar but provides a lot of crunch. I’ve bought this bar at least three different times for review on Candy Blog and each time I’ve managed to eat it before reviewing. (The photos here are from a 2008 episode where at least the bar made it into the studio for documentation.) While I was in Europe I was pleased to see Daim widely available. Not only does it come in the familiar bar format, the toffee chips are also used in other co-branded confections, like a version of the Milka Bar (Jim’s Chocolate Mission has a review) Since I knew I could find another bar in the States if I wanted it, I picked up this 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bag of Daim. The package says nothing else on the front - no description, no brand name ... just Daim. Not even the fact that this is not a bar but little chocolate covered nuggets. I guess the picture on the front says it all. My guess is since Daim is available in so many countries, it’s just confusing to say things, why not show them? The back of the package features micro-printing to accommodate at least 8 different language versions of the ingredients and still no actual name of the product. So I’m going to call these Daim Nuggets. The little pieces are actually better, in my opinion, than the bar. I loved them. The chocolate is certainly not of excellent quality but good enough for this purpose. It’s milky and sweet and just creamy enough. It seals in the crunchy pieces of toffee to keep them from getting sticky and syrupy. The toffee has a light burnt taste to it, plenty of milk and a touch of salt. It’s crunchy and every once in a while I think I got a little bit of an almond. The toffee is cooked to perfection - it’s crunchy but not too hard (having small pieces helps) and also doesn’t get tacky or stick to my teeth in large clumps. I bet this is great on ice cream or added to cookies, of course it would need to come in larger bags, because this one is empty. Other Daim reviews: Chocablog, Jim’s Chocolate Mission and Candy Addict. Related Candies
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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I’m not certain how “Daim” is pronounced, but I’m hearing it as if someone from the Deep South were saying “damn.” “Day-um Nuggets!”
This again appears to be a copy of a Heath product. I remember selling “Heath Sensations” when I worked at the movie theater from 1994-‘96. One thing that stood out about Sensations is that all of us knew that an entire bag was over 600 calories, and I think it had better than 35 grams of fat, too. Nothing else in the candy case was even close. I don’t think that Sensations are sold anymore.
Ikea sells “Daim Nuggets” too. Or at least they once did.
Thanks for the link Cybele.
The Daim bar is a bit of a cult classic here in the UK. I have tried both the Heath and the SKOR bars aswell and the Heath is definitely the best out of them all in my opinion.
You aren’t wrong about it being great on ice cream. Have you ever tried the Ben & Jerry’s Toffee Crunch flavour? That is one of my favourites.
Johnny - I’m with you, I think I would have pronounced it DAHM. But it appears it was actually marketed as DIME in the UK until a few years ago, so I figure that’s how they want us to pronounce it.
bitguru - I never liked the chocolate on the Heath Sensations, which I haven’t seen in years.
Jim - I’m guessing that this hard, crunchy toffee isn’t as common in Europe as it is here in the States. Seems like every hometown candy shop makes toffee bark.
Origianlly the Daim name was spelled Dajm, which may make it easier to pronounce properky as all of your fine suggstions are oh so wrong Closest would be the Dime version. The reason the name was changed was so it would be easier to market on the foreign markets.
One interesting point, if the Skor bar was marketed as being inspired by the Swedish candy, they really should have thought better about the name of the product as skor in swedish is shoes. The Skor bar is very tasty though.
The Atlanta IKEA is not selling this right now.
Are other IKEA stores ?
If not how do I go about finding to purchase a supply ??
god how i love daim bars! gotta be one of the best bars out there actually but for some stupid reason they stopped selling them in uk ikea stores! my life is over…
Point56
Please can you let me know why you do not make bigger bars if Diam bars as I do enjoy this type of candy bar but would like to see a bigger bar on the market.
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