The Nestle Crunch was introduced in 1938, invented in Nestle’s Fulton, New York factory. The bar combines milk chocolate with crisped rice, which adds a crunch as well as a malted barley flavor to it.

When I was a kid I was a Krackel girl. I don’t know if I preferred the crisped rice and Hershey’s chocolate combination, the color red or simply couldn’t find the Nestle Crunch bar as often.

Later when I moved to the west coast Krackels became pretty much impossible to find, so I sometimes picked up the Nestle Crunch bar.

But then something happened, I’m not sure when, perhaps ten years ago ... the bars were utterly inedible. Bland, tastesless, waxy and too sweet. The crisped rice became less rice shaped and more like little spheres. So I stopped buying those, too. The last time I had a proper Nestle Crunch was about two years ago when I was photographing a bunch of candy bars and I was so underwhelmed I didn’t even bother to finish the bar.

Then in late 2005 or early 2006 the Krackel disappeared and besides the fringe budget candy companies or a sack of Hershey’s Miniatures, Nestle Crunch became the only crisped rice and chocolate combination bar. It is still in the top ten candy bar list, year after year, though it’s been consistently losing traction against the other top brands.

So I was quite happy to see that Nestle may have improved the bar, or perhaps just restored it to its former glory.

Since the new formula just came out, I was able to grab both the old and new versions for a head to head test.

The bars look the same, the molding is identical, the ingredients are even identical.

The Old Crunch bar is slightly darker. It smells like sweet cardboard.

It tastes sweet, but kind of empty. There’s no real chocolate punch, just a hint of it. The crisped rice is great. It’s well dispersed, crunchy and has a slight hint of salt. But it’s not enough to carry the bland chocolate or overcome the lack of creamy texture.

While the bar is attractive with the big words CRUNCH molded into it, I prefer the old bar which was segmented (and I believe slightly thicker to accomodate stacks of crunchies). This can still be simulated with the snack sized bars.

This flipped over bar shows the size of the crunchies. (As a comparison, this bar shows what the old Krackel looked like.)

The Even Richer bar is a bit lighter, kind of counter-intuitive when it comes to selling the whole “richer” thing, but I was actually pleased that something was perceptibly different.

It smells about the same, maybe a little maltier, but I had to allow for the fact that the new bar was, well, newer, so freshness could account for some of the differences.

The texture of the chocolate did actually seem creamier, not quite as sweet and just a bit more chocolatey.

Still, it’s not a great bar, it could be, but Nestle needs to use their premium chocolate that they’re so well known for in Europe to make it outstanding. It’s better but not enough to get me to start buying it, but I’ll certainly take it when offered. 

Related Candies

1. Nestle Crunch Cappuccino Stixx
2. Nestle Crunch Crisp
3. Endangered Species: Peanut Butter Brittle & Rice Crisp
4. Malted Crisped Rice Squares
5. Pocktacular
6. Nestle Crunch with Peanuts

On my way to San Francisco back in April I took a little detour off of 101 North in San Luis Obispo to gather some little organic and fair trade goodies from Sweet Earth Chocolates. They’re sold on the web and at Splash Cafe, which shares space with Sweet Earth’s confectionery kitchen. The two display cases at the cafe were well organized and kept the chocolate at a consistent temperature. (A little cold for immediate indulgence but perfect for storage.)

What attracted me to them is that they make candy not just fine chocolates. My curiosity was mostly about these candy cups that they feature on their website.

The little cups are about 1.25” at the base and 1.5” at the top. They weigh about .8 ounces with the wrapper on. (Bigger than the standard Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Minis.)

Turtle Cluster (the bronze wrapper - pictured unwrapped in the center)

This is the only milk chocolate cup in the bunch (they have other cups, but they have walnuts in them).

The one has a flowing caramel center with crisped rice in the milk chocolate.

The caramel is sweet but a little salty and rather buttery tasting. It’s a good consistency, not too much like syrup, though not chewy.

The whole thing was rather sweet and not creamy enough for me, but I have to say that the texture combo was great and really filled any craving I had for a fair trade & organic candy.

Cranberry Ginger

Dark Chocolate. It’s a solid cup with a little decorative flourish of a piece of candied ginger and a dried cranberry on top.

The chocolate is sweet and just a bit grainy from the inclusion of the crystallized ginger. It has a light spicy bite to it. I felt there was more ginger to it than cranberry. In the bites where it was just one of the other, it was fine too.

It was a tasty little piece, and interesting change from barks because it’s so chunky and the inclusions stay moist & chewy.

Toasted Coconut Fondant

Both of the cups that I ate were absolutely gorgeous. The chocolate was shiny and the little flakes of coconut on top told me what was inside.

It smelled only slightly of woodsy, tropical coconut (not like suntan lotion).

The fondant center was both sugary and coconutty. It wasn’t as soft and chewy as a Mounds bar. It was a bit firmer, but not at all gritty. A bit cool on the tongue, it was like a cake of confectioners sugar and coconut bits.

There was a lot of chocolate to it, which kept it from being too sweet, but also drowned out the coconutiness a bit. So consider this a more subtle coconut candy than Bounty or Mounds.

Peppermint Fondant

Dark chocolate. This cup has a natural fondant (not bright white) with a light touch of peppermint. The overall effect is fresh and balances well with the semi-sweet chocolate.

There’s a lot of chocolate on top, maybe more than I’m used to as proportions go with these sorts of things, so don’t think of it as a peppermint pattie.

I liked this one a lot, I know it’s not a hard thing to do well, but they did it.

Roasted Almond

This was probably the most irregular looking of all the cups. The lumpy top hinted at large almond pieces below.

Not only is it loaded with them, they’re not just roasted ... they’re caramelized. Each almond bit has a bit or a crunchy sugar shell and then the chocolate around it.

Crunchy, much less sweet than the others and entirely satisfying.

I also tried a vegan turtle while I was there, made with coconut oil instead of butter. It wasn’t quite a “caramel” in my book as the coconut flavor was detectable ... but it was still very tasty and felt like a no-compromise treat for anyone avoiding dairy. Unfortunately they were out of their peanut butter cups (and they do have a vegan dark chocolate version).

I’m hoping that these candy cups will show up at more cafes and as impulse items at natural stores (heck, any kind of store). With a retail price of about a dollar (they’re much less when you buy a whole box though.), it’s more than most of us spend on a candy bar, but as a fair trade and organic product, this doesn’t have the feel of a charity compromise. All of the dark chocolate offerings are also Vegan. You can buy online (they even do wedding favors) and their website has an up-to-date list of where they’re sold in stores.

Related Candies

1. Crispy Cat
2. Zotter Candy Bars
3. Terra Nostra Pocket Bars
4. Pure Fun & Yummy Earth Organic Hard Candies
5. Endangered Species Chocolate
6. Thompson’s Organic Chocolate

Here are a few items I sampled, I’m probably not going to do a full review of them but I wanted to show them to you:

Chuao Firecracker ChocoPod

The newest addition to the ChocoPod line. I got this one in a simple little cellophane bag, so I didn’t think it was fair to give it the full tilt boogie review without final packaging.

It’s similar to the classic Spicy Maya ChocoPods, just a little cacao pod shaped disk of 60% dark chocolate, weighing in, I guess, at a little over a third of an ounce, it’s about two bites.

The inclusions make it a little bumpy in spots. The chocolate smells more like chili, but a little sweet and smoky. There are a lot of pop rocks in there, they’re completely unflavored, just lightly sweet little sugar bits ... that just so happen to pop. Some of the little bits, however, are salt crunches.

Some bites are pretty poppy, some bites are really hot, others are salty. It’s a noisy bit of chocolate (and even got a few sneezes out of me).

It’s a fun little diversion. I appreciate that it’s a small piece, not a huge bar, but I don’t think I’d want more.

Rating: 7 out of 10

PEZ Chocolate Candy

First, you’ll probably note that I don’t mention PEZ much on Candy Blog. I don’t like it. The candy just isn’t very good and the idea of collecting the little dispensers never thrilled me. But I fully applaud those who get into it.

PEZ has brought out a few other flavors of their candy tablets. Last year it was Cola and they have a Sugar Free version as well. This year they’re highlighting the Chocolate version.

As you can tell from the photo, they’re very light in color, which should give you an indication of the depth of the flavor. It tastes like I’ve inhaled some Cocoa Pebbles. Not actually eat then, just, you know, been near the Cocoa Pebbles dust. They’re sweet but have just a slight cocoa note.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Organic Confections Raspberry & Cream Bar

It’s an organic twist on classic tastes.

So just looking at it, with only the name to go off of, I thought, “this is a white chocolate bar with dried raspberry bits in it.” Which sounded pretty good in my head, kind of like the Hershey’s Limited Edition one a couple of years back ... but organic!

Hmm, somewhere I led myself astray. It’s not white chocolate, it’s a non-colored confection made of organic sugar, organic whole milk powder and organic fractionated palm kernel oil. And it’s crunchy. Those presumed raspberry bits are actually crushed raspberry flavored hard candy.

It took me a while to get used to the texture, but it wasn’t creamy enough for me.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Albanese Confectionery Cappuccino Biscotti

These little milk chocolate covered nuggets smell sweet and like a light coffee drink. They’re about the size of a garbanzo bean, though some are twinned (not that it keeps me from eating them). The nugget inside isn’t quite as hard and crunchy as a biscotti, but they’re plenty crunchy. They’re almost like graham cracker nuggets.

The combo is quite nice, easy to eat and keep munching.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Albanese Confectionery Dark Chocolate Cranberries

It’s not an illusion in the photo, these are very dark, like clumps of tar. The chocolate covered dried cranberries are not as flavorful as I’d hoped. Honestly, I’ve tried a few products over the years and none of them have really satisfied me. The cranberries, while soft and chewy, they’re just not tangy or flavorful. The chocolate is sweet, but not dark and flavorful enough ... though the texture combo of the creamy melt and moist chew is good.

They’re probably jam packed with antioxidants, but I’ll probably stick with chocolate covered raisins, if only because they’re cheaper and provide pretty much the same experience.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
2. Short & Sweet: Fancy Food Bites
3. Cookie Dough Bites
4. Java Twix
5. Best Regards: Craves

KitKat in Japan has been hard at work churning out new limited edition and seasonal flavors. I’ve been kind of picky about which ones I want to buy and review, so here was one that I was particularly interested in: KitKat Vanilla Beans.

As with all of the premium limited edition KitKats in the single serve size, this comes in a box with two individually wrapped finger pairs.

It’s basically a white chocolate KitKat. I picked it up because the ingredients listed real cocoa butter, so this is true white chocolate instead of some partially hydrogenated/tropical oil mess.

It features real flecks of vanilla beans in the coating as well, which I’d hoped would be like the rich bourbon flavors of the Green & Black’s White Chocolate bar.

It smells quite milky and sweet, almost cloyingly so. The melt is nice, it does have a good dairy flavor and it’s not as sweet as I’d feared. The vanilla flavor is true and well rounded (not single-noted like the nature-identical vanillin).

The wafers balance it all out ... but I think I could have used a little bit of salt in the cream or something to keep it from being throat burningly sugary.

It’s not spectacularly better than a regular US white chocolate KitKat, certainly not for the price. In fact for the price per ounce the Green & Black’s is a better deal and ethically traded (but you’ll have to add your own crispy element). Rating: 6 out of 10

Like the KitKat, Nestle goes through a lot of different limited editions of their popular Aero Bar for Japan. Aeros are available in the UK, Canada and Australia but for some reason have never been introduced in the US. (There was a Nestle chocolate bar called the Choco-Lite back in the 70s-early 80s.)

I’ve reviewed the Mint and Milk Chocolate Aero before and have a Caramel Aero in my review queue. The UK also has a version of little spheres (about the size of malted milk balls) called Aero Bubbles. I find the UK Aeros at import shops including Cost Plus World Market pretty regularly.

It’s the Japanese Aeros that are so fun though, especially since they have these cute little individually wrapped nuggets in the Limited Edition versions. I found these at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Little Tokyo but they’re also available online through eBay and JBox. This one is called Aero Bitter Orange and has a companion KitKat bar that came out last year as well. (I tried them but didn’t review them. Pretty tasty milk chocolate with a mellow orange cream filling between the wafers.)

I opened the package and sniffed it and thought, “mmm, chocolate and baby aspirin.” Yes, it’s true. Orange baby aspirin is also bitter.

It lives up to the Aero name. It is a fluffed bite of chocolate. The orange topping is orangy, not in the least tangy or complexly zesty but slightly bitter as promised.

The bubbles in Aero give it an interesting texture, more fudgy than chocolatey, it’s still a nice confectionery experience. The box makes them seem like a nicer candy treat than perhaps they actually are, as does the price ($1.99 for 1.76 ounces.) Rating: 7 out of 10

Related Candies

1. KitKat Red Bean & Fruit Parfait
2. KitKat Bitter & White
3. KitKat Cappuccino
4. Hanahiyori - Green Tea White Chocolates
5. KitKat Tsubu Ichigo and Hershey’s Strawberries ‘n’ Creme
6. Mint Aero
7. Aero

Sometimes it seems like gummis are the only candies that imitate other food products. (There are gummi pizza slices, gummi fries, gummi fried eggs and of course gummi burgers.)

It’s fun to see some more inventive materials used. Every Burger (or maybe it’s all one word, Everyburger) is two little sesame cookies with a dollop of chocolate to simulate the burger and a dollop of white confection to simulate the cheese.

I’m not sure if they count as candy or if they’re just cookies sold in the candy aisle.

The box has two indivdually wrapped trays, eight little burgers in each. Each little burger is about as big around as a quarter.

The cookies are very sesame. Probably too much for me. I love halvah and those sesame snaps, but I just don’t like the darker taste of toasted sesame, and these have that.

But how can I not love the little detail of the seeds on the bun?

The chocolate is sweet and less than chocolatey - mostly it just has a cool and buttery feeling on the tongue. The cookie isn’t very sweet, it’s kind of like a sesame animal cracker.

Overall, it’s a fun little treat, in a convenient package (about 1.2 ounces per tray and 182 calories per tray).

They’re the perfect size for a large scale doll like Barbie (yeah, like she’d eat an Everyburger) or GI Joe.

They’re kind of like Pocky. Just a bland cookie and some chocolate. But in this case, it’s a really fun bit of tromp l’oeil.

There is (or was) a Bitter version and Caramel and if you’re looking for them, the packaging can vary depending on the size. Here’s an earlier version of the package from Robyn in 2005 and really old school and a current single-serve version.

For those looking for something at the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the almost life-sized Giant Size Mallow Burger that clocks in at 412 calories. (See Candy Addict review.)

Bourbon, the Japanese manufacturer of EveryBurger also makes the wildly popular CubyRop. 

Related Candies

1. Wheat Chocolate
2. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
3. Almond Crush Pocky
4. Pocky Kurogoma (Black Sesame)
5. Men’s Pocky
6. Gummi Sushi

Mars has a series of candies coming out with a marketing tie-in to the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie. (Which is set to premiere in the US on May 22nd.) This is rather similar to the stunt last year with Shrek the Third and the Pirates of the Caribbean movie the year before.

The standard Milk Chocolate & Peanut M&Ms got a new skin: a fun shift in their colors and little Indiana Jones inspired icons on some of them. Then, of course, to really excite candy fans they’ve done something completely new, the Limited Edition Mint Crisp M&Ms.

It’s not like they’re completely new though, there were once Crispy M&Ms in the United States (go to Australia if you miss them) and the seasonal Mint M&Ms.

The package is one of the busiest known, rivaled perhaps only Pirate Pearls. There are lots of leaves all over the front, which at first I thought were mint, but turned out to be various palm and jungle-y things (I haven’t the foggiest what’s going on with Indy’s arm and that big palm leaf though). We’re encouraged to “Dig New Mint Crisp M&Ms” in the top left of the package and down in the lower right we’re told to “Get M before they’re Lost”.

The Green M&M wearing a pith helmet is looking admiringly at Indy saying, “Treasure is a girl’s best friend.” At first I thought it was a little creepy that Green has the hots for Indy, then I realized that the Green M&M is actually a year older than Harrison Ford. (M&Ms were introduced in 1941, Harrison Ford in 1942.)

There’s only 1.4 ounces in the bag, but that little bit of air inside each center does wonders to bulk them up.

I was really looking forward to these, though it’s interesting to note that George Lucas has cautioned fans of the Indiana Jones movies not to build up their hopes to unreasonable levels. (And I think I know a bit about how much Lucas can let fans of a franchise down.)

They don’t look so great, some are horribly bumpy and the size variations are pretty extreme, from rather sphere-like ones smaller than a regular M&M all the way up to large ones that could be mistaken for Almond M&Ms.

The little icons are themed shapes that include the letter M. There are pyramids, masks, a compass ordinal and even a hat like Indiana Jones wears. They’re rather irregular as well, but more obvious on the themed Milk Chocolate M&Ms:

But shape and color aside, it’s what’s inside that counts, right?

The crispy shell gives one kind of crunch, then a layer of mostly semisweet chocolate strongly flavored with mint and then a bland crispy center that has a light kick of salt to it.

They’re really easy to keep crunching away at ... a little chocolate, a little mint, a little crisped rice. Kind of like a Girl Scout Thin Mint.

I’d be happy to see these as a seasonal item, though I doubt I’d eat them as often as the Almond M&Ms. I suspect they’ll be a huge hit.

Rebecca already got a hold of these and has a review of the Adventure Bar, too. I’ll have the Snickers Adventure bar review soon. Thanks to Define23 for helping me to find them here in Los Angeles.

UPDATE: Sera at Candy Addict also has a review now & I have the Snickers Adventure Bar. These are also available as a limited edition in Japan, here’s a photo I found by CindyC81 (you too can share photos in the Candy Blog Flickr Photo Pool). 

Related Candies

1. Skittles Chocolate Mix
2. M&Ms Razzberry - Limited Edition
3. Cherry Almondine M&Ms
4. M&Ms Line
5. M&M Pirate Pearls
6. Darth M&Ms

Ferrero always does a nice job of packaging their chocolates. They’re best known for their clear plastic boxes, which show off the lovely foil wrappings of their spheres of Rocher, Rondnoir and now the Ferrero Garden.

While most of what you’re paying for in these boxes is the box itself, for drug store or discounter fare, the Ferrero line is dependable and unique enough in its offerings that I’m often drawn to it.

Ferrero sent me a box of one of their special packages for Easter. This one is the Prestige assortment, which includes their trio of favorites weighing 4.8 ounces and shaped like an egg. There are five Rochers, four Rondnoir and four Garden (13 pieces total, I don’t know if that’s a comment on the Last Supper or not ... I’m doubting it).

I’ve reviewed the Rafaello and the Mon Cheri, but not the Garden. Honestly, I thought it was the Rafaello, just thrown inside some silver foil and given a new name. And it pretty much is.

There seems to be a lighter coconut coating, and instead of being completely spherical, these have a little flat bottom. The top has a little dollop & drizzle of a white confection (they call it meringue, but really it’s more like a white chocolate).

Inside is a milky tasting cream and a little sliver of almond. It’s all very sweet but has a nice touch of coconut and the crisp of the wafer cookie sphere balances it all well.

The assortment here has a good balance between the very sweet, mild & nutty and dark intense chocolate. The plastic tray can be popped out and the domed egg container can be reused. (There are no stickers to take off or anything.) The only drawback is that the plastic box doesn’t stay closed very well when tipped up on its side, so it’s more of a display box than a utility one.

They also come in other shapes, like bunnies and a stand-up egg. These should retail for about $5.50. (The non-holiday version of this is $6.99 on the Walgreen’s website for 5.5 ounces.)

Related Candies

1. Kisses Coconut Creme
2. Godiva Easter Eggs
3. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
4. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs

It’s funny how many different interpretations there are in the confectionery world for the word “creme”. In the case of Cadbury Creme Eggs, it’s simply a runny fondant. In the case of many of the Hershey’s Kisses it’s a firmer fat based ganache style and in Starbursts it’s just a flavor.

In the case of Nestle, it means “something softer than chocolate”. I picked up their Nestle Crunch Creme Egg with Caramel and Butterfinger Creme Egg at the drug store to complete my All Egg Week.

At 1.1 ounces, the Nestle Crunch Creme Egg with Caramel is virtually the same weight as a Cadbury Creme Egg, but slightly narrower and denser.

The outer shell looks almost like dark chocolate. It has a pleasant little squiggly design and the name Nestle on both sides of the egg.

It’s easy to bite without any mess. The chocolate shell is pretty thick and contains the fillings well (no sticky eggs for me). The base of each half of the hemispheres is filled with a firm and lightly salty chocolate creme studded with crisped rice. Each side is a little shy of full and that reservoir holds a scant bit of flowing caramel along with a rather large void.

The caramel is a bit salty, not very caramel flavored, but I don’t expect that from Nestle. The chocolate creme is still chocolatey without any greasiness or sticky-milk qualities. I wanted more crunches though, I really like crisped rice and think this would benefit from more of it.

It’s a very dense egg, I think I might prefer it in a slightly smaller form (maybe a half an ounce like the Canadian Cadbury Eggs I tried last year) but it’s a rare egg these days in the drug store that’s just going for chocolate (with that little bit of caramel & crunchies).

I give it a 7 out of 10.

Nestle also makes the Wonka Golden Creme Eggs, which are pretty much the same thing except there are graham cracker flavored bits in there instead of crisped rice.

The Butterfinger Creme Egg says it’s 1.15 ounces but I have my doubts with that huge void there. At first I thought it was just that one that was a little underfilled, but the second one (still wrapped in the photo) had a similar large cavern of nothingness.

It smells sweet chocolatey with a good roasted peanut butter undertone.

My major complaint with Butterfinger bars is that they don’t use real chocolate on the outside. In the case of these (and the Butterfinger Jingles), it’s real Nestle Milk Chocolate (which still isn’t spectacular) ... well, that’s what the foil says, “Butterfinger Pieces & Peanut Butter Creme in a Milk Chocolate Shell” but I’m kind of unclear when I read the ingredients that featured the second ingredient as “confectionery coating” but that may be a mock white chocolate base of the creme filling.

All that aside, it’s an enjoyable egg. The center has all the flavor of a Butterfinger. That buttery flavor with the little crunchy bits of peanut butter brittle (that don’t stick to your teeth!) a little bit of salt to even out the very sweet chocolate shell. It’s nothing like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg, but that’s okay, they’re both pretty inexpensive, get both.

A solid 7 out of 10 for this one as well. 

Related Candies

1. Godiva Easter Eggs
2. Palmer Nest Eggs
3. Melster Marshmallow Eggs
4. See’s Scotchmallow Eggs
5. Dove Truffle and Snickers Eggs
6. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs
7. Hershey Eggs