Snacks Across the Pond

22nd September 2008

Caramello Koala

Filed under: From Australia, Sweet, Sweets/Candy — Tags: , — Philip @ 9.34 pm

This bag of sweets contains twelve ‘treat size’ koala bear-shaped hollow chocolate snacks, filled with caramel. The sweets are made by Cadbury and so the chocolate is Dairy Milk, which is not my favourite chocolate, as I find it rather more flaky and I prefer a creamy chocolate. The promise of hidden caramel is enticing, though.

Each chocolate snack is separately packaged within the main bag, with the Caramello Koala appearing on the individual wrappers. I’m not entirely sure that koala bears are a reddy-brown colour, understanding them to be more of a grey hue from what I’ve seen on nature documentaries, but a grey mascot is probably not the best colour for a chocolate product.

A Caramello Koala

Examining the package a little I find the standard product information and disclaimers as normal, including the warning that the snack ‘may contain traces of nuts’. I wonder what a koala’s nuts taste like, although it’s reassuring to know that Cadbury has tried to remove them as thoroughly as possible before sale.

Pulling the individual treat’s packaging apart reveals chocolate moulded in to the shape of the Caramello Koala, which probably appeals to The Kids. I chomp in to the chocolate. It tastes like standard Diary Milk, except the caramel inside intrudes upon the flavour like the ten o’clock news intrudes on your favourite film, but in a good way. The caramel is gooey and sweet, a wonderful complement to the chocolate.

By itself the chocolate would be nothing special, but add the caramel and you get a smooth and tasty chocolate treat. This is not the genius of the snack, though. No, what makes this a snack to truly enjoy at a higher level than any other snack I’ve tasted so far in the name of science is the sadistic quality encouraged.

Grab one of the Caramello Koala snacks and tear the top off the packaging. This exposes the head of the cuddly Caramello Koala but keeps its arms restricted to its sides, unable to move or escape from its plastic enclosure. Now you can bite slowly in to the top of the koala’s vulnerable chocolate skull, hearing its ineffective screams of agony as you suck out its caramel brains. The Caramello Koala lasts for quite a long time with its life essence slowly being sucked out, and it is even more tasty because of it.

To maximise your evil potential, once the caramel is all sucked out you can discard the hollow husk of a bear and start on the next one. Maybe you could rip off the top of all the tiny koala bears and let them watch their siblings get their caramel brains sucked out one by one, viewing their own impending fate. Mind you, if you don’t like sweaty chocolate maybe you shouldn’t do this.

I highly recommend the Caramello Koala chocolate snack, both for offering an outlet for torturous tendencies in a safe environment as well as being actually quite tasty.

25th August 2008

Capricorn Australian Soft & Delicious Raspberry Liquorice

Filed under: From Australia, Sweet, Sweets/Candy — Tags: , — Philip @ 4.03 pm

Please welcome to Snacks Across the Pond guest reviewer Melmoth, of Killed in a Smiling Accident.

Playing Watson to Philip’s Holmes, I had been asked to deal with the liquorice menace that had infiltrated SAtP. Philip told me that he wasn’t really a fan of liquorice and that it would perhaps be better reviewed by someone who could keep the stuff in his mouth long enough to taste it; it was because of this that he decided to find a liquorice connoisseur to pass the reviewing duty on to. Unfortunately he couldn’t find one, but he did fine me, and I said I’d eat anything that was free, so I guess that was close enough to a connoisseur to qualify.

It’s a good job he looked for someone with a discerning palette too, because as I excitedly turned the packet over and over in my hands, the promotional blurb caught my eye:

Generations have enjoyed the root of the liquorice plant in its natural form for over 3,000 years. With this in mind and combining our original low fat recipe, this soft eating liquorice has been created to ensure that even connoisseurs of liquorice will be pleased with the quality.

Wow, I didn’t even know there truly were liquorice connoisseurs until now. Apparently there are, and they get displeased with poor quality liquorice often enough that it’s worth putting a bold disclaiming statement on the back of your product. One imagines secret sects of liquorice eaters, charged with guarding the ancient secrets of good liquorice passed down through the generations since the time of Jesus, who will unleash their hidden order of warriors upon anyone who dares to produce an inferior liquorice product. Somewhere there are smoky, dimly lit rooms secreted away in the back of gentlemen’s clubs, where the ability to snort a liquorice bootlace up your nose, pull the snorted end out of our mouth and floss back and forth with it, gains you entry to these private chambers where heavily-whiskered portly gentlemen eat liquorice allsorts off of the bodies of virgins.

REAL, liquorice lovers will truly appreciate this exceptionally superior product.

Standard defensive disclaimer against those fake liquorice lovers from the orient, sent to infiltrate liquorice lover society and sow seeds of discontent. The capitalisation is their own, by the way.

On to the (potentially slightly over-hyped) liquorice itself, then. A quick grab of the paper bag and tear at the top… and tear at the top… and TEAR at the TOP. Good lord, this has to be the toughest paper known to man, either that or I have just discovered that red liquorice is my kryptonite and I have become desperately weakened. There were a few more frustrated and slightly angry attempts, including one where I sneaked up on the the bag so as to catch it unawares, and another time where I wrestled with it on the floor and tore at it with my teeth. Success! The teeth worked and I was in. Upon closer inspection it appears that the ‘paper’ bag is some devilish foil bag with a faux-paper surface tacked on to the outside, probably to cater to all those liquorice connoisseurs who might be turned off by more modern packaging.

Never mind, however, because the smell that greets me once I’m in to the bag is truly scrumptious! There’s definitely a hint of raspberry, and there’s the liquorice too. Sweet, slightly tangy, and very appealing. Time to get stuck in to one of these little suckers. I say little, but each sweet is over an inch long and perhaps half a centimetre or more in diameter (if you’ll pardon the mixed measurements), and as such they’re quite the mouthful if attempted in one go.

First chomp and I know I’m going to enjoy them. The texture is interesting, softer than the wine gums that we get here in the UK, but still quite chewy, enough to get stuck in one’s teeth a bit. It’s a good sort of gooey. The flavour is certainly interesting and had me wracking my puny brain for several days after first tasting because I new I’d experienced it before, some dim and distant memory from my childhood, one of those annoying memories that tugs at the corner of your mind but never comes into focus. To describe the taste accurately is tricky, there’s definitely raspberry there, not true raspberry but that jelly raspberry flavouring one expects when a sweet says ‘raspberry’ on it, pleasant nevertheless. There’s a hint of liquorice in there, it takes a bit of chewing and tasting to get it, but it’s definitely there, but to be honest I think even a non-liquorice lover would be able to enjoy these without too much trouble. I’m sure the secret sect of liquorice lovers has dispatched their elite agents to assassinate me even as I write this heresy.

They’re exceedingly addictive, and I easily managed four or five before I knew what was happening. They are also quite sickly once you’ve had four or five. I think the bag, 275g in size, lasted the best part of a week, with my chomping one or two a day when they took my fancy; they’re the sort of sweet that works well when you just want something to nibble on and leave yourself satisfied and not needing those heavier fattier snacks. It does take some restraint to only have a couple though, and there was at least one other occasion where I had enough to turn my dreams slightly raspberry that night.

Overall I enjoyed the connoisseurs’ liquorice, it’s not something I would normally think to buy for myself, but if I ever see anything approximating this antipodean treat here in the UK I’ll be sure to pick up a pack.

I did eventually remember where I’d tasted that flavour before, it was from a time when I was curiously addicted to candy cigarettes. I’m not sure if they have these across the Pond or down in Oz, they certainly seem to be banned in the US; the standard sugar version has the flavour I was thinking of, but the chocolate ones are also a lot of fun. Perhaps another snack to review at another time.

Anyway, it seems that the liquorice connoisseurs have broken down my door and have reached the bedroom where I barricaded myself in with this laptop. I shall send this review on to Philip before I meet my doom. Remember me fellow snack eaters, my reviewing was short but sweet, with a low fat liquorice extract flavouring.

30th July 2008

Nestlé Chokito

Filed under: From Australia, Sweet, Sweets/Candy — Tags: , , , , , — Philip @ 10.01 pm

On the back of the packet of Chokito is a message from Nestlé, stating that ‘Nestlé believes that proper nutrition and physical activity are important in maintaining a good health.’ That’s all well and dandy, but note that they make no statement about the sweetie bar itself promoting these values. It could be like an car company printing ‘we believe in renewable fuel sources and sustainable climatic conditions’ on brochures for SUVs. Still, I am not eating a chocolatey snack for proper nutrition. This is SCIENCE.

Chokito is a ‘choc coated caramel fudge with crunchy rice crisps’, which seems like an awful lot to cram in to a single bar. So much, I suppose, that Nestlé had to abbreviate ‘chocolate’ in that description. The alternative is that it’s not real chocolate coating, which is a bit worrying. Maybe that’s why the ‘hip’ name has a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’ as well. The wrapper also wants us to believe we are getting a ‘big feed, big taste’, which is impressive for a 60 g bar.

The bar is foil wrapped, such is the trend for freshness these days. I’ll break it open and take my first look. Hey, this could be the Australian version of the Lion bar over here in the UK. It’s nobbly, and the description of the snack fits. I’ve perked up a bit now. Biting in to the snack is quite pleasing, and it reveals the layered approach to its construction. There is a central core of caramel fudge, on top of which is a coating of crispy rice mixed with chocolate, fake or otherwise. The whole bar is not completely mixed together but neatly segregated, differentiating it from the Lion bar. This separation allows for the choco-rice exterior to be bitten away from the fudge core so that the different sections can be enjoyed individually as well as a more traditional full bite encompassing all the flavour and texture.

The fudge core tastes very much like a Finger of Fudge that may or may not still be available in the UK, I really ought to do more research, and the semi-circular rice and chocolate coating is familiar enough to be enjoyable. The chocolate, or otherwise, coating is a little too sweet for my tastes, but overall this is a pretty good snack. The smooth and chewy fudge core complements its crispy surroundings without one overwhelming the other.

I may have mocked the ‘big feed, big taste’ slogan, but one bar feels like enough for now. I’m not convinced by the ‘big taste’ part though, as it’s pretty much sweet chocolate and fudginess, not that that is a bad thing for a chocolate bar. Burrage sent me two bars in the package and I’ll most likely scoff the second one myself, so it looks like Chokito gets the Snacks Across the Pond seal of approval. Maybe Nestlé can add that to the packaging as well.

9th June 2008

Australian Kit Kats

Filed under: Biscuits/Cookies, From Australia, Sweet — Tags: , — Philip @ 6.22 pm

A little while back, after Burrage had scoffed down a Kit Kat or two from the UK, I asked if there was any difference between UK and Australian Kit Kats. Burrage dutifully sent me some of the Australian variety to try out and compare for myself.

To avoid any potential bias against the inferior Australian product, I’ll endeavour to create a blind taste test for myself. Unfortunately, teaching my cat the scientific method has proven to be too difficult in the past, so I am performing the experiment on my own. This has its own complications. I do not have a third-party to trust to offer me the Kit Kat snack without telling me its origin, leading me to create my own method.

I take an Australian Kit Kat and a UK Kit Kat and unwrap them. To prevent accidental bias I throw the wrappers away, put both Kit Kats in a big bag, and twist the bag around several times. Now I take several deeps breaths until I am a little light-headed and can’t quite remember why I was holding a bag, let alone which Kit Kat comes from which country. This is such genius it has to work, there is no potential for any bias here.

Of course, half-way through the second tasty Kit Kat, its crunchy wafers each wrapped in chocolate, and the whole bundle then covered with even more chocolate, split in to several fingers to multiply the delicious snack by four, I realise that if I cannot tell which Kit Kat comes from which country I cannot feasibly compare the two directly. All I can say is one is better than the other, or not. I probably shouldn’t have thrown the wrappers away, and instead placed the snacks on the face-down wrappers and mixed them up a bit.

That’s something to learn for the next time, mostly because I only had the one UK Kit Kat and I can’t be bothered to go and get another one. Luckily, Burrage sent me two Kit Kats, as well as a strawberry Kit Kat! Yum! I’ll just have to make up any differences I perceive and hope I get lucky.

The long preamble should probably highlight that the UK and Australian Kit Kats are identical as far as I can tell, from the colour and shape of the packet to the four fingers inside. The branding on the chocolate-coated wafer fingers also suggests I should go back and edit all of my references to Kit Kats to remove the hyphen, although you won’t notice the change.

Australian Kit Kats are also constructed in a similar fashion to the UK variety, with multiple layers of wafer sandwiched together by chocolate, then the wafer fingers coated with even more chocolate. As for the taste, I don’t think there’s much in it. I think the Australian Kit Kat has sweeter chocolate, or maybe the chocolate has a different texture; maybe both. It’s certainly at least as tasty as a UK Kit Kat, and I certainly wouldn’t feel homesick for these should I ever move to Australia.

There’s something peculiar on the packaging, called the Nutritional Compass, which is trademarked. The Nestlé website does it more credit than I would give it on the Kit Kat packaging, as the compass doesn’t appear to point to any nutritional information at all, just some blurb about believing in balance. That is, it doesn’t point at nutritional information if you have split the packet along the length of its spine and laid it flat on a desk.

The Kit Kat expanded wrapper, showing the Nutritional Compass(TM)

With the packet whole one point of the compass does indeed point towards the ingredients and nutrition information.

The Kit Kat expanded wrapper, showing a more sensible Nutritional Compass(TM)

There’s not much more to say about the packaging, apart from the little man encouraging proper disposal of the Kit Kat wrapper is a Kit Kat ‘K’, which is a nice touch.

I mentioned above that Burrage sent me a strawberry flavoured Kit Kat too, which is something I haven’t seen over here in the UK! It has ‘NEW’ emblazoned on the pink packaging, which suggests it is not something Australia has had for long, as well as reassuring me that it’s not here yet as I probably would have spotted something so pink sitting on the shelf.

The packaging shows the normal Kit Kat single wafer being broken in two, but with a pink filling that is more suggestive of Turkish Delight than a strawberry wafer. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. And before I tuck in to some strawberry chocolate, there is a Nutritional Compass(TM) on the back of this packaging too, except this time there really is no arrow pointing towards the nutritional information below it!

The Strawberry Kit Kat, showing the Nutritional Compass(TM) lacking a south

I would be surprised if someone managed to delete the arrow when they just needed to flick the switch from ‘red’ to ‘pink’, although it would be fun to think that the exploded packaging on the CAD screen led someone else to think that the arrow was pointing in to thin air, much as I did, and that’s why it got deleted. Heads will roll!

Opening the packet brings a satisfying smell of fake-strawberry flavour to my nostrils. There is not much of a hint of pink yet, just the normal brown chocolate staring back at me, tempting me to bite in to it. Which I shall do!

Well, what do you know, it’s just like a normal Kit Kat but with a hint of strawberry mixed in with the chocolatey goodness, and a stronger aftertaste of strawberry. This is good, but not a particularly exciting difference overall. The wafers are indeed coloured pink, but not terribly noticeable for it, and I would be more inclined to choose this Kit Kat over the regular version were the chocolate itself pink. I suppose the pink packaging is enough of a difference for the Nestlé boffins. I would be happy only to have normal Kit Kats, although this pink strawberry one would make a change every now and again.

In conclusion, Kit Kats are good on at least two continents. Yum!

10th May 2008

Twisties Cheese

Filed under: Crisps/Chips, From Australia, Savoury — Philip @ 7.30 pm

‘Life’s pretty straight without… Twisties cheese’. Ooh, get her. Maybe my life isn’t as straight as whoever wrote the slogan assumes. Or maybe these Twisties really will make me feel too straight once I’ve finished the bag. There’s only one way to find out.

But first, is there a possessive apostrophe missing from ‘Twisties Cheese’, and this is a bag of cheese made by Twistie? I’m supposing there isn’t and that there are other varieties of Twisties other than cheese, but I can’t be bothered to search the web to find out what other varieties are out there, mostly because I have an unopened bag of snacks in front of me. I’m not totally convinced that this a cheese-flavoured snack though, what with ‘100gNET flavoured snack’ printed on the bottom of the bag. It could be a computer error and ‘100gNET’ wasn’t meant to be printed there, or I could be in for a tasty new flavour experience. Or it could just be cheese and I’m being too literal again. The list of ingredients contains cheese powder, after all. Oh, and above the list of ingredients it states ‘cheese flavoured snacks. I am now curious as to what cheese powder actually is. Perhaps it’s the dust-like residue that is left around cheese factories, and it is swept up and used to flavour cheesy products. I’d better start tasting the snack, because I can’t wait to get to the Potassium goodness.

Opening the pack I am greeted with a cheesy snack food smell. Hey, why is it that so many crisps are cheese flavoured? Is there something special about the combination of cheese and crisps, or are people demanding cheese is packaged in a less severe bulkness? People around the world have cried out their love of cheese but a simultaneous dislike of eating it in chunks. We don’t want to have to buy and break out both cheese and crackers each time we want a snack, we want a single bag of cracker-like bite-sized chunks with the cheese already applied? Yes, that’s probably it.

Apart from being not very twisty at all, and nobbly instead, these little Twisties look awfully familiar. They are Wotsits created in a vacuum, removing any trace of fluffiness from their being. So Nik-Naks, really. But cheese-flavoured. Like Wotsits, the cheesy ones at least. In fact, I think I have something rather similar from the US that I have yet to feast on, a few bags of Cheetos. This seems to be a universal snack that is produced by each nation at one point or another, the demand for instant cheese and crackers being a defining point of a culture’s growth.

Mmm, this is quite a nice cheese powder sprinkled on the faux-crackers, and there is a satisfying crunch to the snack. It’s interesting, for the crunchiness almost hints at a grit-like texture yet without any sense of a grit-like substance being tasted on the tongue or left in the mouth. It’s quite curious, and creates a lovely crunch probably even long after the snack has gone stale. These are really tasty. The cheese isn’t overwhelming, they don’t taste too sweet or salty, and they are not too dry. On top of that, the cheese powder residue left on the fingers is neither a garish colour nor difficult to quickly brush off, which is almost essential for keyboard cleanliness when blogging about snacks. With these Twisties Cheese ‘made with Australian grown corn and rice’ I hope that Mr Burrage is rightfully proud of this purely Australian snack food, and it is a treat to sample them here in the UK. The American Cheetos snack has quite a lot to live up to now. Mr Burrage, what other flavours of Twisties are there?

To end, I’ll note that at the bottom of the rear of the pack is what I assume to be a common slogan on Australian snack foods, ‘Enjoy the snack, then dispose of the pack, thoughtfully!’ The pack’s punctuation, not my own. Personally, when I was chomping away on my bag of Twisties Cheese I was considering the effect of the division of labour on the happiness of the lower- and middle-classes and whether the availability of cheaper goods and more free time is adequate compensation for an overall feeling of dissatisfaction for most of the working week. I hope that was thoughtful enough, because it’s rather more demanding of a snack food than I am used to.

11th February 2008

Violet Crumble

Filed under: From Australia, Sweet, Sweets/Candy — Philip @ 8.11 am

A new package has arrived from Australia! Inside are some interesting looking snacks, and the one that I am trying out first is called Violet Crumble. I have heard that it is a bit like the Crunchie bar that is available here in the UK. The name doesn’t grab me, though. The colour ‘violet’ evokes in me an idea of some scented oil, which doesn’t sound particularly tasty when mixed with chocolate. In fact, I wonder if the colour is linked to the snack at all, but checking the ingredients doesn’t give any clue as to colouring agents. This suggests either that there are no colouring agents in the snack or that Australia has less strict laws about listing ingredients in foods. I may find out soon enough. But maybe not.

The packaging has a slogan on it that is deterring me a little from trying it. ‘It’s the way it shatters that matters’ is catchy enough from an rhyming angle, but I’m not endeared towards eating something that is likely, or almost guaranteed, to ’shatter’. I am concerned that I’ll be picking shards out of my cheeks with tweezers after the first bite. But I’m doing this for SCIENCE, so I’ll open the package up and give it a taste.

Erk. This ‘delicious shattering choc coated honeycomb’ is perhaps more volatile than it first makes out. On opening the package and pulling out the chocolate bar I am presented with only a fraction of the bar. It has been pre-shattered, either in transit or part of its shattering half-life. I’d better start eating it before it spontaneously shatters some more. It smells awfully sweet, and the honeycomb isn’t quite as golden as a Crunchie. The good news is that the ‘violet’ description seems to be misplaced, as neither the chocolate nor the honeycomb are the wrong colour. Maybe that means the marketing men also lied through their teeth about its shattering nature too.

Num num num. Eating a Voilet Crumble is quite a pleasant experience. The chocolate is a bit different to what I am used to, but it’s nice enough. The honeycomb is sweet and crumbly, not shattering at all. It almost promises to melt in the mouth, but actually requires light chewing to achieve smooth passage down the throat. It’s a bit of a tease in a way, tempting you to leave the honeycomb in your mouth to dissolve, and even though you know you must chew it it still seems a cheat to start chewing.

The Violet Crumble is a tasty little chocolate bar. I’m not sure quite how it compares to a Crunchie, they seem pretty similar to me and I don’t have one to hand to make a direct comparison, but it certainly stands quite well on its own. To end, I’ll just point out that I got confused by the ‘best before’ date, wondering what ‘15 10 20 08′ could possibly mean before realising that it was referring to the year ‘2008′ but with ambiguous font spacing.

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