Candy Bar Lab

The Chokito immediately reminded me of the Freia Peanøtt Kubbe, except instead of peanuts, this version has rice crisps. Since the Kubbe is one of my favorite candy bars ever, I had high hopes for the Chokito.

Structure
An inner core of caramel fudge surrounded by rice crisps and enrobed in chocolate.

Texture
The caramel fudge center is firm, but soft enough to easily bite through and it doesn’t stick to your teeth. I would compare it most closely to the inside of a 3 Musketeers, except not quite as soft. The relatively large rice crisps provide a nice texture complement and the chocolate binds everything together well. The whole product is perfectly balanced texturally.

Taste
The flavor of the Chokito was a huge letdown. Specifically, the caramel fudge center tasted really artificial. If you’ve ever had the low calorie, Skinny Cow brand caramel ice cream cones, it tasted like the fake caramel in those. Unfortunately, neither the flavorless rice crisps or the sub-par tasting Nestlé chocolate could help make up for the odd flavor of the caramel fudge.

Verdict
The Chokito should be a great candy bar. Texturally, it’s fantastic and all of the ingredients really should taste good together. For some reason though, they don’t.

I’ve had traditional Turkish Delight before and I liked it’s soft consistency and light flavor. So, when I saw Fry’s Turkish Delight, I imagined the candy I had tried covered in chocolate and that seemed like a good thing. It turns out that Fry’s version is very different from what I had imagined.

Structure
Each bar is a thin, rectangle slab of flavored jelly enrobed in milk chocolate.

Texture
Unlike some other chocolate covered jelly products, with Fry’s Turkish Delight, the chocolate shell doesn’t crumble apart. Instead, it sticks to the tightly to the product. The jelly center disintegrates quickly and is not chewy nor sticks to your teeth. Though I’m not usually a fan of jelly filled confections, I liked the overall consistency of this candy bar.

Flavor
There’s something immediately odd about the taste. I couldn’t find anything on the packaging that said what flavor the jelly was, but since it appeared to be dark red/purple, I was expecting raspberry or some other fruit to be the main flavor. That guess was way off. Instead, it tasted like clove and mint mixed with grape jelly. It really had me confused at first, so I Googled it. I couldn’t find an official answer, but over at ChocaBlog, they mention it’s flavored with the essence of rose. Not sure what that’s supposed to taste like, but sounds like a reasonable answer from what I experienced. Anyway, overall, Fry’s Turkish Delight jelly tastes pretty weird. It’s palatable with the chocolate coating, but I didn’t really love it.

Verdict
I’m just not a big fan. It’s unique though and I could see some people being enthusiasts. Maybe if I had grown up with these, I would have learned to love them.

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.