Snacks Across the Pond

5th February 2009

New Zealand Kiwi Eggs

Filed under: From New Zealand, Sweet, Sweets/Candy — Tags: , , — Philip @ 2.34 pm

THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS

How right the warning is. Despite this snack coming from New Zealand I actually found John’s fingerprints all over it, traces of nuts indeed. In a sterling effort to bring strange foodstuffs to my attention his recent visit to the land of Kiwis results in a package of NZ sweets delivered to my country. The first one to catch my eye is the NZ Kiwi Eggs.

I thought it might have been something of a risk John was taking when smuggling the kiwi eggs through customs, even concealed in a box of sweets, assuming there to be strict control on the export of bird eggs. But these come foil wrapped. There must be more to these than meets the eye and perhaps the chocolate coloured painting on the front of the wrapper is not just a poor reproduction of a kiwi’s egg but actually representative of a sugary treat. Nuts, and I’ve already started cooking the bacon to go with the eggs.

The foil wrapper does not defeat me! I rip the top off easily enough, as designed, noting that the top also forms a resealable bag, which should let me savour these snacks over a period of days. Of course, I’ll eat them all in one sitting but having the option to save some in a sealed bag gives a good excuse to get the snack in the first place. It’s more difficult to lie about not eating them all in one go if you know they’ll go stale otherwise.

Dammit, the outer foil wrapping gives way to an internal bag. I’ve never going to get at these sweets. Oh, wait, I just need to open a second bag. They smell good already, too. These Kiwi Eggs, or Chocolate Covered Hokey Pokey, give me a first impression of Maltesers, or indeed USA’s Whoppers. Little chunks of honeycomb surrounded by milk chocolate.

Oh, but no! The chocolate is strangely sweet again, quite unlike British chocolate, yet it tastes darker than milk chocolate generally does. It’s quite nice, though. The centre, whilst honeycomb, is nothing like Maltesers or Whoppers, it is a mini-Crunchie! The centre is rock-hard and awfully sweet, refusing to melt in the mouth and demanding to be crunched in to and chewed. If only I had kept a Violet Crumble from earlier I could have compared the NZ honeycomb to its Australian variant. As it is, I can only declare that Kiwi Eggs are bite-sized chunks of Crunchie goodness. nom nom nom

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.

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.

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