Nestlé Kit Kat: Chunky (mint)

Product name: Nestlé Kit Kat: Chunky (mint)
Purchase details: £0.19 for a 48g bar (Home Bargains)
Calories: 246 per bar 

The Nestlé Kit Kat: Chunky has been a favourite of mine for a long time so I can’t quite believe that this is my first one since I started my blog nearly six months ago! The peanut butter and white chocolate varieties are, probably unsurprisingly, my absolute favourites, but I couldn’t turn down the bargain price that this mint one was on sale for. (In fact, they’re currently three for £0.50 in Home Bargains, but I decided my snack stash was big enough without buying extras!)

Although I’m very used to mint-flavoured Kit Kats, having been an offering of the two-finger variety for a long time, I’ve only had this Chunky form a handful of occasions. It was the winner of the most recent ‘Chunky Champion’ contest and, as enjoyable as I’ve found it, I have previously felt that the extent of the minty flavour in this larger bar bordered on becoming sickly towards the end.

It is the thick chocolate layer that the Chunky bars are famous for that makes me love them so much. As a teenager, I regularly bit off all of the chocolate before proceeding to eat the wafer on its own – a bit messy but worth it! These days, I tend to alternate between eating these bars in a ‘normal’ way, and nibbling off some chocolate and eating that section of wafer before moving down the rest of the bar in the same manner.

The familiar red wrapper didn’t specify where this ‘crispy wafer finger covered with mint flavoured milk chocolate’ had originated from but the only contact details provided were for the UK and Ireland so it didn’t appear to have travelled far. I liked the freshness of the green section on the packaging, and I also thought the unusual choice of an image depicting actual mint leaves was a nice touch, rather than making me think that the product might not be very sweet.

The angular bar was divided into three sections which each featured the Kit Kat logo. The chocolate coating looked and felt lovely and smooth and it also produced a beautiful minty smell without being too strong. I was excited to see that this chocolate accounted for a whopping 67% of the bar, although also surprised that it didn’t look quite as thick as the chocolate on the Milka Leo. However, I do tend to find that the chunkiest bits of chocolate on these bars are at the two ends.

Although difficult to make out on my picture, the standard Kit Kat-style wafer consisted of five very thin layers interspersed with four sections of some kind of chocolatey crème. The resulting sweet finger was incredibly crispy whilst avoiding the trap of being dry.

As for the infused chocolate, this had an incredibly fresh flavour with only a slight bitterness, and I’m very grateful that Nestlé chose to use milk chocolate, rather than dark, for this reason.

There’s no denying that the concept of the Kit Kat: Chunky is a simple one but, when the resulting product is so tasty, who cares?! In this case, the mint flavour was delicious, and I also found that, despite my previous experiences, it wasn’t sickly on this larger scale. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.88/10

Hershey's Candy Cane

Product name: Hershey’s Candy Cane
Purchase details: £1.50 for a 43g bar (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 220 per bar
Country of origin: USA 

In honour of Christmas, I thought I’d post my review of Hershey’s Candy Cane today. Firstly, though, I’d like to thank the kind staff at A Quarter of Sweets who provided me with a discount on my last visit.

Described as ‘mint candy with candy bits’, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this bar – I hoped for white chocolate or something similar, but this phrase wasn’t used anywhere on the wrapper! However, it did contain cocoa butter which I took to be a good thing.

This Christmas product certainly looked festive since it was presented in fresh white packaging with red stripy tips to reflect the candy cane flavour. In addition to this, there were images of candy canes and the product itself. The inner bar was even more attractive, though, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it before! The main substance certainly looked like white chocolate but it was crammed-full of (artificially coloured) red candy pieces.

I was slightly apprehensive about trying this product since I love white chocolate and mint-flavoured chocolate, but I’m not a massive fan of candy canes and other mint sweets. As a result, I thought this bar may be more miss than hit with me. The aroma didn’t do much to alleviate my fears either since, whilst it had a strong mint smell, it wasn’t very sweet, and it did smell just like candy cane rather than something a bit different.

With my first bite, the bar was creamy but there was no mistaking mint as the main flavour (even though it only contained 2% peppermint oil!). It did initially taste more like a sweet than a chocolate but I quickly became accustomed to the flavours and found it began to taste nicer and creamier. Better still, I really enjoyed it, and it did taste like white chocolate with an added mint flavour!

I wasn’t sure if the tiny red balls were actual bits of candy cane (I suspect not) or just random candy pieces, but they were very crispy which provided a nice texture. In fact, even when these were left behind after allowing pieces of the bar to melt, it was still a pleasant experience.

There’s no denying it – this bar of Hershey’s Candy Cane was far nicer than I thought it would be and I’m hoping I don’t have to wait until next Christmas to have another! 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.75/10

M&M's Mint

Product name: M&M’s Mint
Purchase details: £1.35 for a 42.5g bag (United States Grocery)
Calories: 210 per bag
Country of origin: USA 

I seemed to really get my money’s worth with my Living Social voucher since this bag of M&M’s Mint was another purchase I made on the same trip to United States Grocery.

When I was about 10, I absolutely adored mint-flavoured chocolate, with the peppermint Nestlé Aero bar being my absolute favourite. For some reason, as I’ve got older, mint has been a variety of chocolate I’ve been less inclined to choose, despite still liking it. I think this may partly be down to most mint products using dark chocolate rather than milk but, even then, I still find the combination enjoyable!

Made by Mars, these ‘chocolate candies’ were made with ‘real’ dark chocolate (milk chocolate and semisweet chocolate were mentioned on the ingredients list) and came in a wrapper that was a lovely shade of mid-green that was like spearmint and, therefore, very fitting for the flavour on offer.

The M&M’s themselves came in two different shades of green shells and they looked really attractive – the only downside was that the paler green made the white letter ‘M’ on each candy harder to see. This was obviously only a minor detail, though, and I loved how the sweets were pretty big, containing a lot of deep-coloured chocolate, whilst maintaining a relatively thick shell.

The aroma from this product was incredibly strong and minty but there was a sweetness to it too which differentiated it from, say, the freshness associated with chewing gum. It was quite a standard scent for mint chocolate but that didn’t take away from its pleasantness or strength – it made me want to tuck in!

The mint flavour was located in the chocolate itself and tasted just as powerful as it smelt, to the extent that it made my tongue tingle a little bit, and there was also a slight bitterness from the chocolate. The crispy shells added a little bit of sweetness but, if I’m honest, not quite enough for me as I found the mint a little bit too strong. However, the taste was very similar to after-dinner mints, so it certainly wasn’t unpleasant.

As an alternative, it was also possible to suck on the sweets, resulting in a creamier-tasting chocolate. When eaten this way, the cooling mint element gradually got stronger as I got deeper into each lump of slightly rough chocolate. Personally, though, I found it more enjoyable to crunch on a handful at a time.

These weren’t my favourite variety of M&M’s but they weren’t short of flavour and they were very moreish. There were quite a lot in the pack but I can’t say they lasted long!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.63/10