Candy Bar Lab

I was able to find a few British bars at a local candy store, so this will be the first of a few I will soon write about. This candy bar from Cadbury is different from any of the mainstream American bars. It’s mainly comprised of honeycomb; a light, brittle confection. Its made by heating sugar to a hard crack or caramel stage then mixing it with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and acid. This combination releases carbon dioxide (CO²), which forms bubbles. The sugar then hardens as the mixture cools to create the final product.

I first tried this bar on a trip to Bermuda a couple years ago. I’m curious to see how much I like it when I really put it through a taste testing.

Structure
A long, square honeycomb center enrobed in milk chocolate.

Texture
Crunchie is surprisingly easy to bite through; it’s very light and crispy. It breaks apart cleanly as soon as you bite in. The honeycomb melts quickly in your mouth and you can feel it dissolve when your tongue touches it. The negative is that the whole bar, including the chocolate, is really dry - almost powdery. I’m reminded of a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich I ate recently. I really think this needs something liquid (i.e. caramel or honey) or even waxy to counter the dryness.

Taste
You’ll mostly taste milk chocolate. The honeycomb releases an odd burnt flavor into your whole mouth as it breaks apart. I’m not sure if this is from the CO² in the manufacturing process or if it’s burnt sugar. Either way, it didn’t work for me.

Verdict
This is a beautiful looking bar that I appreciate for being different from what I’m used to. Ultimately, the texture is one-dimensional and it doesn’t taste that good. I don’t recommend Crunchie unless you’re curious to try something different.

While scanning the candy assortment at Blockbuster this past weekend, something unusual caught my eye - a Pop Rocks brand chocolate bar. It’s been years since I’ve eaten Pop Rocks, but I think I remember liking them at the time. My first thought was that this is probably a strawberry flavored Pop Rocks center covered in chocolate. I think the red lettering on the wrapper threw me off because upon further investigation of the wrapper, I could not find any indication of a flavor other than chocolate. I’m not convinced that mixing Pop Rocks with chocolate is a good idea, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try this candy bar out.

Structure
To my surprise, this is in fact a molded bar with the carbonated sugar crystals (Pop Rocks) incorporated throughout.

Texture
Overall this is most like a Nestle Crunch. The crystals are small and crunchy. The chocolate is dry and crumbly - pretty terrible. This is really cheap chocolate. It’s probably been sitting on that Blockbuster shelf too long and the carbonation must have decayed the chocolate in the packaging. What’s the half-life of Pop Rocks? Hold on a second… what the hell is this? A few seconds after biting in, I feel what I believe to be an aneurysm. There are bubbles exploding in my brain. And it won’t stop. I experience a full 20 seconds of unpleasant popping in my cerebral cortex before it starts to die down and settle in the back of my throat. That was not cool. I put the bar down and ponder for a moment what just happened. I’m hesitant to go back, but I can’t let one bite suffice. Maybe it just caught me off guard. I prepare myself and take a second, smaller bite. And once again, I’m bombarded with crackling bubbles.

Taste
The little chocolate flavor there is vanishes within seconds. The crystals are completely flavorless, which is what makes the whole thing so weird. With each pop, no flavor is released. There’s no citric acid or anything else to counter the sensation. I imagine this is what Crystal Drano tastes like.

Verdict
This is without a doubt, the worst candy bar I’ve ever had. I couldn’t make it past the second bite. A half hour later I’m still feeling a little sick. Needless to say, I won’t be recommending this bar.

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.