Candy Bar Lab

A few months ago, while preparing for a big Oktoberfest party, my mom picked this candy bar up at a local German grocery store along with some beer and brats. Immediately, I remembered the last German candy bar I tried - the Storz Nougat Praliné. Both have gold packaging, are made of a chocolate and hazelnut nougat, and hail from Deutschland. Two things jumped out at me about this Wendler product though. First, the packaging design is superior to the Storz version. It’s crisply folded and has a cool metallic, textured feel to it. Second, I could see from the picture on the front that this product has two distinct layers, one darker (and presumably more chocolately) than the other.

Structure
Two layers of German nougat. The bottom layer is a darker shade of brown than the top.

Texture
The Wendler Nougat bar is soft and dense. It coats your whole mouth as you try to chew it. There isn’t a huge difference in consistency between the two layers, but the top layer is slightly smoother, while the bottom layer is a bit drier.

Flavor
Very surprisingly, there is almost no chocolate flavor. It didn’t taste at all like I was expecting, which was something similar to Nutella. Instead, there’s a distinct roasted hazelnut flavor. Overall, this product is very sweet and unfortunately, without the chocolate present, there’s not much going on to cut into that sweetness. There’s really no discernible difference between the two layers, except the top was maybe a little sweeter.

Verdict
Maybe I’m being overly critical because I was so sure that this bar was going to taste like chocolate and I was horribly let down. It’s very one-dimensional and way too sweet.

I previously reviewed Annabelle’s Rocky Road - an American made candy bar with chocolate, marshmallows and cashews. I was underwhelmed by that product, so I’ve been on the lookout for a great rocky road candy bar since. So, I was really excited when I received this Australian made rocky road bar last week. From the packaging, I could tell it’s different from Annabelle’s. Instead of using a solid slab of marshmallow enrobed in chocolate, this version has big pieces of marshmallow mixed into a slab of chocolate. And instead of cashews, VooDooo’s version has peanuts.

Structure
Whole marshmallows and roasted peanuts in milk chocolate, cut into rectangular slabs.

Texture
This is a very non-uniform product. There are different sized marshmallow and peanut pieces mixed throughout. The chocolate is really thin in some places and really thick in others. Along the outside of the bar, the chocolate barely coats some of the marshmallow pieces. I think VooDooo might be making these by hand, rather than using automatic machinery, but I can’t confirm this.

Taste
The marshmallow and peanuts are fine. The chocolate - a huge disappointment. It’s really sweet and flavorless. It barely tastes like chocolate actually. If I were served this candy bar blindfolded, I would have guessed that it had white chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

Verdict
VooDooo Rocky Road was a big let down. I had high hopes from the packaging and first look that this would be a great candy bar. But immediately upon biting in, it was clear that the chocolate was sub-par and that ultimately killed it’s chances of getting a thumbs up from me.

I like most candy bar packaging. There are plenty of examples of both upscale and common candy bars that have great packaging. The Troika, on the other hand, has terrible packaging design. I think they were trying to make it look upscale, but in failing to do so, created a design that looks cheap and generic. More annoying though, is that the packaging of the Troika fails to convey anything about the product itself. I shouldn’t have to comb through the ingredients in small print on the back to get an idea about what’s in the product.

Structure
The Troika consists of three inner layers enrobed in dark chocolate. From top to bottom, these layers are raspberry jelly, chocolate truffle, and marzipan.

Texture
Upon biting in, the chocolate shell broke off into thin pieces - separating easily from the rest of the bar. The jelly was soft. It reminded me of canned cranberry sauce, though a little firmer. The chocolate truffle layer was lost in the mix between the jelly and the noticeably dry and crumbly marzipan. Overall, kind of an odd combination of textures.

Taste
I’ll start with the good news. The dark chocolate coating is very high quality and tastes great. The bad news… the rest of the flavors aren’t good at all. The raspberry flavor is underwhelming and didn’t work with the marzipan at all. Like the texture, the flavors were an odd combination.

Verdict
This candy bar just isn’t very good. I don’t understand why they tried to put together this combination of ingredients. Marzipan and raspberry jelly? I don’t understand the appeal of that. The one bright spot for this product was the chocolate, but I’m kind of annoyed good chocolate is being wasted producing Troikas.