Candy Bar Lab

This candy bar was purchased in Qatar. From reading this Wikipedia entry, it seems the name is derived from a unit of weight measurement used for gold and silver bullion in South Asia. The things you’ll learn reading this blog are astounding!

Structure
Three layers of caramel-separated biscuits enrobed in milk chocolate.

Texture
For me, the caramel was too thick and chewy. It got caught in my teeth and didn’t meld well with the biscuit layers. I think I would have liked it better without the caramel.

Taste
I’m not a huge fan of Nestlé chocolate, but I can overlook that for some products if there are some other interesting tastes or textures going on. This unfortunately, is not one of those products. The caramel is pretty bland and does make up for the sub-par chocolate.

Verdict
Meh, a very mediocre product. It’s pretty much the offspring of a Kit Kat and a Twix, but not nearly as good as either.

One of my coworkers was nice enough to bring this back from a recent trip to Qatar. The manufacturer, Gandour, started out in Lebanon, but I think most of their products are made in China and Malaysia at this point. At least that’s what I gathered from 3 minutes of internet research.

Structure
From the packaging, this is a “Wafer, Caramel and Cereal Centre in a Milky Chocolate Sensation.” I’m guessing that “Milky Chocolate Sensation” is marketing speak for “Fake Milk Chocolate”…

Texture
There’s a nice crunch from the cereal and wafer with some chewiness from the caramel. Overall, it’s a nice balance of textures, though the chocolate is a bit waxy.

Taste
Really bland. There’s absolutely no chocolate or caramel flavor. All I could taste was sugar and vanilla.

Verdict
This should be a good candy bar. It has really nice texture and a classic flavor combination, but it just doesn’t have quality ingredients.

In the US, the only Cadbury candy bars I ever see are the solid, molded variety with nuts and dried fruits mixed in. These bars are actually produced by Hershey’s under a license agreement. In the rest of the world though, there’s a big variety of Cadbury enrobed products like the Cadbury Boost. I suppose the Hershey’s licensing agreement might prohibit Cadbury from exporting these candy bars to the US.

Structure
The inner core is a chocolate ganache-like filling, where the bottom half has small, round bits of biscuits (cookies) mixed in. This is surrounded by a thin layer of caramel. The whole bar is enrobed in milk chocolate.

Texture
The chocolate filling isn’t as soft as I was expecting or would have liked. It’s slightly softer than the pure chocolate coating, but not much. The biscuit pieces are perfectly crunchy, but there aren’t enough of them. I would have liked the whole center, not just the bottom half, to include biscuits pieces. The way the caramel is layered so thin, it’s not noticeable at first. But since it’s so chewy, it lasts longer than the other components, so you end up with some caramel in your mouth after everything else is gone.

Taste
The milk chocolate, both the coating and the filling, taste good. The caramel is slightly salty, which complements the overall sweetness of the product.

Verdict
The Cadbury Boost is a reconstructed Twix bar, though it’s not quite as good. Twix has a higher proportion of caramel and it’s solid cookie bar provides more crunch than Boost’s small, round bits of cookie. That said, it’s still pretty darn good and Cadbury chocolate is tasty.