Cadbury Caramello

Product name: Cadbury Caramello
Purchase details: £1.79 for a 45g bar (Mr Simms)
Calories: 220 per bar
Country of origin: USA

I’ve wanted to try the Cadbury Caramello for ages but have never managed to find it. For that reason, when I finally came across it in Mr Simms, I was prepared to pay more for it than I would normally on a bar of this size.

Containing ‘creamy caramel’, I was intrigued to see just how different it was from the Dairy Milk: Caramel, although I was aware that the chocolate itself wasn’t Dairy Milk, despite the almost identical packaging (there was just more emphasis on the purple than the yellow and the name looked like it had been written in caramel)!

The bar was distributed by The Hershey Company and the image on the wrapper looked absolutely delicious. Divided into four chunky, brand-imprinted squares, it had suffered some significant leakage so I quickly discovered just how unbelievably sticky the filling was.

The bar had a sweet and creamy scent which I would have liked to have been stronger but I was much more interested in the flavour...

The amber caramel was so buttery that it was unreal. It was nice and gooey too and really reminded me of the Galaxy Caramel’s (reviewed here here) combination of runny caramel and creamy chocolate. Unfortunately, though, I felt that the Cadbury chocolate used here ruined the experience somewhat. It was quite brittle, didn’t really melt, and was not very flavoursome either. The caramel certainly did lift it but, to be honest, I would have been happy to just eat a pot of it on its own!

All things considered, I think if you put this caramel into a bar of Dairy Milk, you’d be onto one heck of a winner.

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 6.88/10

Reese's Pieces

Product name: Reese’s Pieces
Purchase details: £0.60 for a 43g bag or three for £1.20 (tesco.com)
Calories: 214 per bag
Country of origin: USA

I love Reese’s Pieces but I’d not had them in ages – the last time was as a birthday cake topping over 18 months ago so it was about time I had them again!

The ‘peanut butter candy in a crunchy shell’ used to be quite hard to find in the UK but, thankfully, it’s now a lot more widely available and I quite often see the eye-catching orange bags on shop shelves.

Made by the Hershey Company, these Pieces were a bit like M&M’s but with peanut butter instead of chocolate, and the brown, orange and yellow colours used reflected the branding of the Peanut Butter Cups.

The pale candy centres made up 62% of the product and produced a fairly nutty scent, although this wasn’t pure. They had a lovely peanut butter flavour but, since it had been solidified, it lacked the squidgy texture of ordinary peanut butter.

The shells made up the remainder of the Pieces and these were really sugary – an aspect that was particularly noticeable when sucking. These casings worked really well with the centres, merging crisp and soft textures nicely, although the peanut butter candy didn’t stay in one piece when chewing in the way that chocolate would...it almost had a crumbly feel to it. In terms of taste, though, the Pieces certainly didn’t lack the chocolate, and the flavour was still nice and sweet. In fact, the sweet and salty aspects played off each other perfectly and seemed to create a mini party in my mouth, producing a kind of juiciness too.

I also loved how the bag seemed to last for ages, and that the sweets tasted great individually and in handfuls. They were so addictive that I think I could actually live off them! I definitely need to make them a more regular purchase...

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Reese's Sticks

Product name: Reese’s Sticks
Purchase details: £0.69 for a 42g bar (United States Grocery)
Calories: 220 per bar
Country of origin: USA 

Another product I bought from United States Grocery with my Living Social voucher recently was this pack of Reese’s Sticks. I had tried them before, but only in miniature form, and that bag had to be brought back from Canada for me especially. Oh how glad I am that these foreign products are now so much easier to obtain!

The 42g bar was made by the Hershey Company and divided into two fingers made of chocolate (according to the front of the packaging), peanut butter and ‘crispy wafers’. As usual for Reese’s, the wrapper was a vibrant orange, and it also contained an illustration of the bar.

I was surprised to see that the back of the wrapper gave a slightly different product description with the chocolate now being ‘a milk chocolate flavoured coating’. However, I was delighted to see that a whopping 45% of the product was peanut butter crème whilst only 12% was wafer. On looking inside the bar, it was evident that the peanut butter layers were the thickest, and it did look quite moist next to the thinner wafers. The waxy-feeling chocolatey layer was also quite thin in appearance so I was looking forward to the peanut butter being the star of the show in this full-sized offering.

The bar smelt pretty much the same as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in that there was a strong peanut buttery aroma that was mixed with some chocolatey scents. The only downside was I found that the wafer added a slightly less pleasant element.

As soon as I took a bite, the peanut butter taste was evident straight away and it was absolutely fanflippingtastic – nutty, sugary, salty and creamy all at once! Whilst it was a crispy bar, it melted well too, with the wafers dissolving into the crème – they didn’t make it dry at all. I did find it slightly strange that the chocolate flavoured coating was barely noticeable since, although I could feel it melt, it didn’t seem to add much flavour, but this may have been a good thing!

I don’t know whether it’s because I’d only ever had Reese’s Sticks: Minis before, or whether my memory just isn’t as good as I thought it was, but I genuinely didn’t remember them being quite this good. I wasn’t expecting the peanut butter taste to be quite so strong so I just loved how much flavour it provided – my idea of Heaven! 

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 9/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 8.13/10

Peter Paul Almond Joy

Product name: Peter Paul Almond Joy
Purchase details: £1.25 for a 45g pack of two pieces (monstersweets.co.uk)
Calories: 220 per pack
Country of origin: USA 

The Almond Joy bar is a concept similar to that of the UK’s Bounty. It was previously made by the Peter Paul Company and, although it is now manufactured by Hershey’s, it still bears the Peter Paul name on the wrapper.

Described as ‘milk chocolate, coconut and almonds’, the only difference between this bar and the Bounty appeared to be the addition of the two almonds that sat on top of each piece’s coconut base and beneath the chocolate coating. Whilst the nuts were a bit lopsided, the product was generally well-presented with a good shade of milk chocolate, and it had a rich coconut aroma that was very similar to Bounty’s.

I was initially disappointed by the coconut as it was quite grey in appearance. However, it provided a delicious flavour with a hint of creaminess. It was also very moist and bitty – like desiccated coconut in paste form. I thought the almonds were a great addition, both for the flavour and the crunch, with a slight woodiness being added to the sweet coconut experience.

Unfortunately, the chocolate couldn’t really be detected when combined with the other ingredients. I did try some on its own and found it didn’t even taste like chocolate and it had a strange, soft and slightly rough texture. However, I’m aware that this may have been a result of its contact with the coconut. 

Since I am a big coconut fan, I did really enjoy this Almond Joy. However, I’m not convinced it was as good as the Bounty due to its barely recognisable chocolate. That said, I felt that the almonds did add that little bit extra to the bar and so the overall experience was still a worthwhile one. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Skor

Product name: Skor
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 39g bar (Bold Street Sweets) 

Calories: 200 per bar
Country of origin: USA
 

On my most recent trip to Bold Street Sweets, I was delighted to see the addition of a ‘reduced’ section, for products that were near their ‘best before’ dates. It was from this section that I purchased my first ever Skor bar – a product that I’d only ever seen online and, whilst slightly intrigued, had never been tempted to purchase at full price.

Distributed by The Hershey Company, this Skor came in an unusually dark and slightly bland wrapper, described as ‘delicious milk chocolate’ and ‘crisp butter toffee’. Whilst I enjoy toffee’s flavour, I’ve never been a big fan of the texture, and this is why I’d chosen not to try this product previously. 

On opening the flat bar, I noticed that the aroma was reminiscent of the toffees that can be found in selection boxes. Whilst I’d been secretly hoping for the toffee that lay beneath the attractively finished milk chocolate to be of the cinder variety, I soon discovered that it was, as suspected, a proper, hard toffee. This, though, did look appetising as it was so glossy it almost looked molten.

It was initially slightly difficult to take each bite of this bar, due to the toffee, and so the thicker top layer of the chocolate tended to come away first, revealing the beautifully smooth toffee layer. I was pleased that whilst the toffee wasn’t soft, it was crunchy enough that it didn’t break my teeth, and it actually tasted really nice. The buttery toffee’s flavour could be detected through the chocolate and there was a slight saltiness too. However, it was still toffee and so it did have a tendency to stick to the teeth and I also found the flavour caught in the back of my throat after a couple of mouthfuls. As for the chocolate, it wasn’t wonderful but it was certainly acceptable.

My overall opinion of this Skor bar was that it tasted better than I thought it would but it didn’t work in such a large quantity as there was too much toffee and not enough chocolate which I found my throat struggled with. However, I think it would work well in smaller, bite-sized pieces that could be enjoyed over several eating occasions. 

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6/10
Overall score: 6.63/10