Candy Bar Lab

By themselves, plain old Kit Kats are great. Good caramel is also great. So, wouldn’t it be great if the two were combined? Well not so fast. Candy bars are a delicate balance of flavors and textures. Adding something, even if its tasty on it’s own, might not make the product any better than what you had to begin with. If it were that easy, candy manufacturers would just throw all of the goodies they could round up into a single bar.

So, back to the product at hand - a Caramello stuck to the top of an over-sized Kit Kat stick. Let’s see if this is an improvement over the regular Kit Kats many of us have come to love.

Structure
This is a molded bar with two cavities. The bottom one is filled with a layered wafer and the top one is filled with caramel.

Texture
Biting into Kit Kat Caramel is interesting. Your top teeth will first make their way through the caramel cavity before getting held up by the thick, middle layer of chocolate. Once they’ve broken this barrier, they will proceed easily through the crispy, wafer layer. What you end up with is a “ka-clunk” sound in your head with each bite. I wasn’t a big fan of this. It feels like you’re biting through two separate bars.

Taste
You’ll taste a lot of milk chocolate. The quality of which isn’t bad, but not great either. The wafer is pretty tasteless, but that’s fine. It’s only job was to provide texture. The big disappointment is that you can’t really taste the caramel, which is mild and gets overpowered by the chocolate. Wasn’t the addition of caramel the whole point of making this product? It would have been better if the caramel was saltier.

Verdict
I definitely don’t recommend this bar. The thickness of the middle chocolate layer is the fatal flaw. It ruins the texture and masks the caramel. I’ll be reaching for classic Kit Kats over their caramel cousins every time.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Reese’s. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed their product line expanding on retail shelves. Still, I almost exclusively go for the Cups and Pieces. I have consumed and enjoyed both their Fast Break and Nutrageous bars and so while recently walking through the candy aisle, I decided to pick up two Reese’s bars I hadn’t tried yet - the Crispy Crunchy and Whipps bars. With high expectations, I ripped into the Crispy Crunchy wrapper first. Here are my findings.

Structure
The center’s bottom layer is a Butterfinger-like (i.e. flaky and sugary), peanut buttery confection topped with a layer of creamy peanut butter. The center is surrounded by chopped peanuts and enrobed with milk chocolate.

Texture
The chocolate covering is a little waxy, but the peanuts provide a nice crunch and the creamy peanut butter layer is smooth. Where it got awkward for me was the “Butterfinger” layer. There’s too much juxtaposition between the crispy, crystalline sugar and the creamy peanut butter. This bar needs something to bind it together and give it just a little bit of chewiness. It crumbles too easily and just didn’t feel right.

Taste
Not shockingly, you can taste a lot of peanut butter throughout and the thin layer of chocolate doesn’t bring a lot to the flavor table. Again, the Butterfinger layer stood out with a hint of maple. What didn’t work with this layer though is the addition of unabashed sugary sweetness to the already sweetened Reese’s peanut butter. To provide proper balance, Reese’s would have done better using a peanut filling with less sugar. I expected and wanted this bar to taste like a peanut butter cup, but with different textures. Crispy Crunchy is noticeably sweeter and not in a good way.

Verdict
This bar is a definite pass for me because it’s crumbly and overly sweet. In the end, it’s just not an improvement over the other Reese’s products that I enjoy. Without the Butterfinger layer, this bar could have been pretty good.