Milo is a chocolate malt beverage introduced in Australia in 1934 by Nestle. The powder is mixed with either hot or cold water to make the drink which boasts complex carbohydrates and added nutrients such as calcium, B vitamins and protein. It’s now become popular around the world including Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Of course that kind of popularity means that there will be spin off products.

I’ve never had the Milo drink, but the idea of a malted beverage is right up my alley. When I saw the Nestle Milo Chocolate Bar at Mel & Rose Wine & Liquors recently, I knew I had to try it, even though the thing was nearly $5 for a 2.82 ounce bar. For that kind of coin I could get a really good chocolate bar, not just something from Nestle.

Even though Milo is an Australian drink, this bar was made in South Africa. The bar is thick and in a really easy to spot green thick plastic wrapper. The format reminds me of Cadbury big tablet bars, it’s compact at about 5.5 inches long, only 2 inches wide and thick. There are seven rows of double segments.

Instead of being a malted chocolate flavored bar, this features big chunks of the Milo beverage mix. (I can’t tell if the stuff is also mixed into the chocolate as well.)

The bar smells rich and chocolatey: Sweet, milky and with a touch of malt and coconut. The melt isn’t quite as satisfying, it’s fudgy and rather similar to any cheap chocolate. It’s sweet and has a lot of dairy to it but then the malt notes kick in to mellow out the sugar. The chunks of Milo powder are crunchy and a little gritty, but dissolve quickly with a strong malt flavor with a hint of toffee, molasses and cocoa. However, there’s a lingering bitterness after all this, a little metallic and a lot like B vitamins. It’s not off-putting, just odd for candy.

I would love this bar to have actual good chocolate, stuff that’s creamy and smooth and less sugary. But it’s Nestle, so this is about as good as it gets unless you buy one of their branded names. I don’t think I’ll pick up this bar again, for a malt fix I’ll stick with malted milk balls or seek out the Ovamaltine bar sold in Europe.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Eggs (Plus a Bonus)
2. Nestle Milk Chocolate
3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
4. Cadbury Dairy Milk Whispers
5. Villars Swiss Milk Chocolate
6. Malted Milk

I don’t follow ice cream much, I can’t eat that much dairy and if I’m going to have some I’ll make it cheese. But I have seen a line of low calorie ice cream products called Skinny Cow (this concoction used to be called ice milk, which was an accurate description, but the FDA later caved and allowed it to be called low fat ice cream). Personally I’m put off by the appearance of emaciated & bony cows. It reminds me of images of drought and famine; it’s never something I would think any farmer would cultivate nor something I would associate with a healthy choice. The frozen dairy line is made by Dreyer’s, which is owned by Nestle.

The natural extension of removing calories and virtually all of the actual cream from a product that contains the word cream within its name would be to tackle chocolate. The Skinny Cow confectionery line was introduced a couple of months ago with four products. I’ll tackle their Heavenly Crisp bars today. They look and sound like they might be chocolate, but do not in fact contain any of the stuff. They come in two flavors, Milk Chocolate Flavor and Peanut Butter Flavor. I was given a sample of the milk chocolate version a few months back was honestly wasn’t that interested based on the packaging. But then I saw the whole line at the grocery store last weekend, especially the Peanut Butter Flavor and thought I’d give it a try.

The Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp Peanut Butter looks more like a nutrition bar than a candy bar (though there isn’t much nutrition in there either). The package itself is small, thin and light. The bar is only .77 ounces and the package says that it’s only 110 calories. There’s an accurate depiction of a cross section of the bar and lots of female friendly swoops and curves along with pink accents.

The bar is 4.5” long and 1” wide. It’s also quite thin, at less than a half an inch.

The bar smells good, like peanut butter and sugar, a little like the center of a Butterfinger bar. The bite is crisp and crunchy, the wafers are flavorless, but light and dissolve quickly. The cream between the layers is a salty and smooth peanut butter concoction. The chocolate coating, well, that’s a chocolate flavored coating along with a few ribbons of something yellow that I’m guessing is actually made with peanut butter. The coating melts quickly and has very little flavor that’s able to shine above the peanut butter. It’s sweeter than the peanut butter center, and of course the lighter, creamy texture provides a nice blanket to the rest of the elements.

The combination is quite tasty. There’s a lot of texture and the thinness of the bar means that there are lots of bites to it. For 110 calories, it feels like there’s more to it than a single finger of a Twix which is about the same calories. But let’s not kid ourselves, there’s not much to this, it’s mostly air. The calories per ounce are on par with any other chocolate candy out there, including most actual chocolate candies like Snickers bars, Twix or just plain chocolate.

The Skinny Cow Milk Chocolate Flavor Heavenly Crisp package looks similar to the peanut butter, naturally. I only had one bar of this to try, as it was a sample that I received before they were on store shelves.

The package describes it as delicate wafers layered with delicious milk chocolate creme. It makes no mention of the outer coating, and why would it, it’s mockolate. The ingredients for this bar are dismal for a diet food:

Sugar, Wheat Flour, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Nonfat Milk, Cocoa Processed With Alkali, High Oleic Canola And/Or Sunflower Oil, Chicory Root Fiber, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Maltodextrin, Milk, And 1.5% Or Less Of: Baking Soda, Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Vegetable Emulsifiers (Soy Lecithin, Sorbitan Tristearate), Salt, Natural and Artificial Flavor, TBHQ to Protect Flavor, Ground Peanuts.

The chocolate coating is a little cool on the tongue and very quick to melt. In fact, the melting was such as problem that it was hard to photograph and even hold in order to eat without becoming a sticky mess. The flavor is like a chocolate pudding, more on the milky side, but still with enough of a cocoa punch to be discernible.

It was less satisfying than the Peanut Butter Flavor for some reason. It might have been that it was more sweet or that it has half of the protein.

I really resent portion control sold for premium prices, especially when the ingredients here are so convoluted from actual wholesome and tasty real ones. There’s really no reason not to use real chocolate here if overall health is the goal. Even though there’s added fiber in these bars (that’s the chicory root fiber that’s also called inulin sometimes), there’s only 1 gram per portion. A portion of 70% dark chocolate with the same number of calories has about the same amount of fiber anyway. And real chocolate is usually only four ingredients and usually half the price of this stuff per pound.

So here’s my suggestion. Eat stuff with better ingredients. Try the Q.Bel Wafer Rolls (they’re actually a little lower in calories per ounce plus all natural, about the same price and actually taste better). Trader Joe’s has some great portion control chocolate (the little Belgian Bars or even a 100 calorie Chocolate bar). Or just buy mini KitKats or Pretzel M&Ms.

Related Candies

1. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
2. Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz
3. Pretzel M&Ms
4. Glutino Gluten Free Dark Chocolate Candy Bar
5. Q.Bel Wafer Rolls
6. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
7. Cookie Dough Bites

3 Musketeers bars were introduced in 1932; at the time the name of the bar made more sense back then, when it was three joined sections, each with a different flavored filling: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. The bar was later simplified in 1945 into three sections that were all chocolate flavored nougat. 3 Musketeers were one of the first candy bars advertised heavily on television. (They had a long-standing sponsorship with the Howdy Doody Show.)

The shape of the bar has also changed a bit along with the packaging, but the frothy soft filling and milk chocolate coating have pretty much remained the same. A couple of months ago Mars announced that one of their oldest bars was going to get an upgrade: Mars has reformulated the classic light and fluffy taste of 3 MUSKETEERS Bar to deliver a richer chocolate experience. Taste is the leading driver of sales for 3 MUSKETEERS Bar, and this new enhancement still satisfies as a lighter candy bar (45 percent less fat) while increasing the chocolate appeal among consumers.

Mars sent me a couple of preview bars, but I’ve already seen them on store shelves (Walgreen’s). I also picked up a classic formula bar for comparison. The new richer chocolate is on the left and the classic (still quite fresh) is on the right. The size and weight of the bars is identical, as is the nutritional panel. I also could not find any differences in the ingredients, which means that they made this a richer chocolate experience without altering the predominance of any item to the point that the label would need to be changed.

The filling is a nougat and is made of sugar, corn syrup, hydrogenated palm kernel and/or palm oil and then less than 2% of cocoa powder processed with alkali, salt, egg whites, artificial and natural flavors. So a smidge more cocoa that doesn’t exceed the amount of hydrogenated palm kernel oil and there’s no need to change the label ... unless it’s to sell consumers on the new richer chocolate experience.

The look of the bars on the outside is the same. The little swirls of the milk chocolate coating on the classic recipe were a little deeper, but that could simply be a difference attributed to a particular machine. When I bit into them though, I could see a difference in color. The new Richer Chocolate Taste does look a little more cocoa colored. The classic looks, well, colorless and a bit desaturated.

The bar feels light but still quite bulky. The scent is sweet but with a creamy cocoa note to it that’s quite inviting. The chocolate shell is okay, it’s not creamy or richly chocolate, more of a functional container for the foamy nougat inside. The center is soft and fluffy and I noticed that it wasn’t at all grainy. The nougat has a light salty note to it, not overly salty, just a different sort of tone from the chocolate coating. The cocoa flavor was so very light, but at least it wasn’t as throat-searingly sweet as I expected.

Upon comparing it to the classic formula, it is most definitely more chocolatey. But if I’d not tasted the original, I can’t say that this would turn me into a 3 Musketeers consumer.

The bar is quite big. Two ounces is a lot of candy, especially when it’s one that’s so monotonous. I got through half the bar but then had to put it down.

The candy bars are currently marketed to women and folks who are looking for lighter candy. It’s true that its caloric density is less than many other nutty and chocolatey-er candies. But it’s also bigger. So a full 3 Musketeers bar may have 45% less fat than “the average of the leading brands”, but that doesn’t take into account the portion size. In the end, calories are calories and this bar has 260 of them - more of them are empty, unsatisfying sugar that lacks a true chocolate punch with all of its fatty, melty notes. Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky (well, getting old, I’ve always been cranky) but I’m starting to come around to the whole idea that fewer ingredients make for a better flavor and texture experience. Real chocolate has rich chocolate taste. You want a real chocolate taste experience? Have some real chocolate. It’s probably better for you than the empty calories and hopped up hydrogenated de-rainforesting palm oils.

If you love 3 Musketeers, chances are you’re going to be keen on the slight improvements here. But if you love chocolate, stick to real chocolate. I’d say half the portion of actual real chocolate is more fulfilling than this empty thing. But if you love texture, then maybe the tweaked bar is your new best friend forever.

Update 10/29/2012: According to Mars they’re going back to the original formula. So look for packages that don’t say “richer chocolate taste” for the classic version.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition 3 Musketeers Marshmallow
2. Fling: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut
3. 3 Musketeers Mini Mix
4. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
5. Valerie Lemon Hazelnut Nougat

P-Nuttles are a pure comfort candy. I associate them with vending machines and truck stops, and I can see why they’d be a favorite snack for both situations. They’re loaded with satisfying protein from the peanuts and a sweet crunch from the toffee coating. Throw in a little salt and it’s has a bit of a savory kick that makes it as much a snack food as a candy.

Peanuts that are individually covered in toffee are far easier to eat then barks or brittles, so I also congratulate Adams & Brooks on solving that dispensing issue.

I saw this new flavor announced last year at the Sweets and Snacks Expo and finally found it at my neighborhood Walgreen’s: P-Nuttles plus Coconut.

The concept is pretty simple, fresh roasted peanuts are coated in a coconut toffee. In addition to the toffee peanuts, a few coconut jelly beans are also thrown into the mix.

The peanuts are not large, but most are fresh and tasty. I ate about half of the bag and found only one bad nut. (It’s never fun, but this is the hazard with using natural ingredients.) The toffee coating varies, some had barely a sheen on them, but others a hefty shell. The flavor is sweet with a light touch of butter. The saltiness varies widely, as does the coconut flavor. Some were quite tropical tasting and others were very salty. I rather liked the variation. The jelly beans are small and pack a pretty good coconut zap. They’re sweet and chewy, though not terribly soft.

I didn’t get any coconut texture in any of this, which I quite enjoy. But the tropical coconut notes were a welcome addition to a rather comforting but bland peanut and toffee experience. I didn’t think I’d care of mixing jelly beans, a decidedly non-organic sort of texture product, with the more artisan peanuts covered in toffee. However, it worked very well. The smooth and consistent flavor of the jelly beans was a welcome sort of dependability when contrasting the varying peanuts and their cloaks of toffee.

Adams Brooks will be introducing more twists on the classic P-Nuttles later this year: P-Nuttles Peanuts Smokey Style and P-Nuttles Peanuts Chili*Lime.

The jelly beans contain confectioners glaze, so this combination is not vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
2. Old Dominion Brittle
3. Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
4. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
5. P-Nuttles
6. Zagnut
7. Chick-o-Stick

Milka is a chocolate confection brand that originated in Switzerland and is now made by Kraft at several factories in Europe. Since Kraft is a global food giant, it makes sense that they’re going to make as many of their brands global as well.

You might notice that I said chocolate confection brand. The reason Milka doesn’t qualify as actual chocolate is a little complicated. In the United States (and many other countries), chocolate can only contain cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar and milk (the standards of identity). If there are any other vegetable oils or solids in there (aside from inclusions like almonds or crisped rice), then it has to be called chocolate flavored or a confection. Milka contains both hazelnut paste (that’s certainly not a bad thing, but there’s not enough to kick it into giauduia territory) and whey, which is a milk protein. I like Milka. As a confection alternative to pure chocolate, I prefer the addition of nut paste and a milk sugar/protein elixir instead of partially hydrogenated palm oil.

Kraft doesn’t seem at all concerned about the technicalities of Milka, it’s spreading the bars and candies worldwide on the strength of the milk part of the product, not the cocoa. In the past five years I’ve seen them in stores in the United States quite a bit more, not just at import themed stores like Cost Plus World Market, but also at big box retailers like Target. I found this little Easter treat called Milka L’il Scoops at my local grocery store, Ralph’s.

The candies are described as Milk chocolate confections with creamy mousse filling.

The packaging is precious. It’s a real egg carton, in the sense that it’s made from recycled pulp though it’s bright purple instead of a muted color. The carton has four little sections that hold the foil wrapped egg confections. At the center of the package is a little stack of two purple spoons for eating the filling. Yes, it’s a lot of purple. (Kind of confusing, as many Cadbury items are also identified with purple which is also owned by Kraft.)

The eggs themselves are actually egg sized. I threw a Grade A Large Egg in there for comparison. I’d call these medium eggs, they’re about 2.3 inches high and 1.2 ounces though a little lighter than an actual chicken egg which are about 1.5 ounces.

The foil is thin but not wrapped so tight that it’s hard to get off, like I sometimes find with Cadbury Creme Eggs. The egg inside the wrapper is scored with a thinner shell at the top.

The eggs are to be eaten like a soft boiled egg. The top of the egg shell (chocolate confection) is removed and the little spoon is used to scoop out the filling. This actually works just as advertised. It was easy for me to either bite it off cleanly, or pinch the top gently and pull it off. (I suppose the spoon may be a useful tool as well, since the shell is quite soft and who cares if you get a little chocolate in the filling like you would with a real egg.)

The Milka chocolate confection is sweet and a little nutty, it’s soft and has a good fudgy melt. The cream center is frothy and buttery, almost like a buttercream frosting or whipped topping. It’s made of sugar and fractionated palm kernel oil so it’s a little oily on the tongue.

Overall, I preferred breaking the chocolate up and eating it with the creamy center instead of eating the center straight. Maybe if it was flavored, like a frothy hazelnut paste cream I’d be happier to eat it straight.

I liked this far better than I thought. I was fully expecting them to be another version of Cadbury Creme Eggs. Instead I found that the quality of the shell was better and the creme was actually not so sweet.

These are super calorie & fat bombs. Each one has 190 calories (158 per ounce) which is far more than a CCE. They’re really overpackaged, but at least everything is recyclable. (Well, maybe not the spoons, but I plan on reusing those for quite some time.) They’re expensive, at least twice the price of most other holiday eggs, so make it special. These are also called Milka Loeffel Chocolate Filled Eggs and sell for about $8.00 online, so I was fortunate to get mine for only $4.99. For that price I’d prefer something with a little bit better quality ingredients. However, if this is a favorite of someone you love, then it’s all worth it.

Related Candies

1. Milka NAPS Mix (Assortment)
2. Real Eggshell filled with Hazelnut Chocolate Truffle
3. House Brand Creme Eggs
4. Laica & Caffarel Chocolate Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs
6. Melster Marshmallow Eggs

I went all the way to Germany to buy a Canadian candy bar.

I picked up the Cadbury Wunderbar at a grocery store. I’ve actually seen them in the United States, heck, I’ve even bought them before, but they were always kind of melted and broken. This one looked lovely and in good condition. Wunderbar is a great name for a candy bar, it works on a couple of levels. First, it’s unique and a bit of a play on words because it sounds like Wonder Bar. But the German word Wunderbar (pronounce that w like a v) means Marvelous!

The front of the package doesn’t do much to illuminate what’s inside though. It just calls it A peanut butter caramel experience. The back, in teensy print, says crispy peanut bar with caramel and cocoa containing coating. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a bar with a less appealing description, probably because it ends with some sort of comedic euphemism for mockolate (because of the alliteration of the K sounds).

I don’t want to think too much about this bar. It’s a candy bar and it’s supposed to be transiently pleasing. So I’m prepared for just that.

The coating was pretty good for mockolate, a little soft but not at all waxy. Smooth enough to not be grainy but not so great at the melt in your mouth creaminess. The flavor was okay, more milky than chocolatey but mostly it tasted like peanuts.

The center of the bar was like someone had chopped up the center of Butterfinger bar and mixed it in with some Chex cereal then reformed it into a log and coated it. That’s really not a bad idea and it does work. There’s a bit of a softer caramel in there as well, that keeps it all soft and crumbly. There are little shards of peanut butter toffee stuff, too.

I wanted more peanut flavor, but it wasn’t overly sweet and had a little hint of salt as well.

Really it just left me wanting a Clark Bar. But I admire it for not being another Clark/Butterfinger/Fifth Avenue knock-off. It’s more munchable and certainly less messy. It’s also huge, at 1.9 ounces and about six inches long. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it marvelous, since it would be better with real chocolate. So I’ll just call it Tempting (6 out of 10).

Some other views: Exquisite Candy and Jim’s Chocolate Mission.

One of the classic elements of Easter candy is the fact that it’s egg shaped and isn’t usually individually wrapped. This nestling quality applies to jelly beans and marshmallow eggs (the candy shell version).

Back in 2007 I reviewed the pastel version of Brach’s Fiesta Eggs. The only difference between the original review and this one is that these are white with speckles and those were pastels. What prompted me to pick them up again is the fact that so many readers were commenting on the original review because Brach’s seems to have changed their formula.

When I first reviewed the eggs Brach’s was owned by Barry Callebaut, a global chocolate giant based in Switzerland. In late 2007, Callebaut sold the American candy company to Farley’s & Sathers of Minnesota. In the Callebaut days I was hoping that they’d make the chocolate products from Brach’s better. In the Farley’s & Sathers days, I’m just hoping that the chocolate products stay real chocolate instead of going to some mockolate substitute like they did with the bulk malted milk balls. (Supposedly they went back to the real chocolate coating, but I have yet to find them in stores, they angered so many people I’m guessing the buyers for the chain stores are afraid of them.)

I prefer the white eggs because they have less of the artificial colorings on the shell. Those can sometimes interfere with the desirable flavors. (Red is a problem for me often.)

The eggs are large. Some are over an inch tall though others are as small as 2/3 of an inch. They sound substantial and clack and clunk together well. All were nicely shaped and had no cracks or broken spots. The shells are thick and crunchy but the chocolate layer beneath is rather thin and unremarkable. The chocolate is sweet and doesn’t taste like much at all, probably more like malt than chocolate. It’s a little grainy and fudgy so it’s hard to say that it’s real except for the fact that the label tells me it is.

The center is what I’m after though, the crisp malted milk center. It’s a fine malt, not terribly grain with a moderate level of malty-ness. It’s not overly sweet or salty ... it could use just a little more punch for me, especially since the shell is so sweet.

I can’t argue with the construction, my only real complaint is that the chocolate is so lackluster, and perhaps even out of balance. With better chocolate that layer could be thicker.

As far as widely available Malted Milk Eggs for Easter, these beat out the Necco Mighty Malts and Whoppers Robin’s Eggs in my book. But that’s not much of a recommendation.

I’m picky about my malted milk balls in the sense that I want specific ratios, texture of the center and high density of malt, but I’m not so picky that I won’t finish any malted milk ball placed in front of me.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Eggs (Plus a Bonus)
2. Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
3. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
4. Whoppers Sno-Balls
5. Brach’s Fiesta Eggs
6. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
7. Mighty Malts
8. Bulk Balls

For the past few years Mars has been trotting out their seasonal flavors of 3 Musketeers. This year they have a new one, Limited Edition 3 Musketeers Marshmallow for Easter.

The banner across the bottom of the logo says that this is Whipped Up, Fluffy Chocolate with Marshmallow Taste.

I don’t think they come in a full bar format, just this package of Minis. The bag weighs 9 ounces, but looks like it has a lot in it, probably because of all the teensy wrappers.

Mars thinks it can get into the marshmallow game. Actually, they’re not getting into the marshmallow game, they’re getting into the marshmallow flavored game. The one thing these have going for them is that they’re safe for vegetarians. There are egg whites in there, so it’d have to be lacto/ovo vegetarians. And those vegetarians would probably be better off never having tried a real marshmallow, so they won’t be quite as disappointed.

The pieces are tiny squares (almost cubes) - about three quarters of an inch at the base and a little over a half an inch high. They’re milk chocolate, though the chocolate coating is so thin it’s translucent in spots. The center is light and fluffy, though not quite foamy like marshmallow. The over-riding flavor is salty for me. There’s no malt to it and really no vanilla, so I was left with something that was trying to be less sweet but not quite succeeding. Though the salt covers up the sweetness on the tongue, it doesn’t disguise it in the back of my throat where it burns.

Plain marshmallows are airy and not quite sweet and are usually a generic vanilla flavor. These are just sugar flavored, I got no vanilla notes in there, and no toasted notes either.

Personally, a regular 3 Musketeers bar needs more flavor to please me. I even rechecked my 3 Musketeers opinion by eating some Minis side by side with the marshmallow version - there’s not enough cocoa or malt flavor and the texture is just too underwhelming. If you’re the kind of person who thought the classic needed less flavor, this is the candy for you.

The packaging says that 1 mini has only 25 calories, so it’s pretty easy to parcel out a portion of 100 calories. It also says that there’s 45% less fat than leading chocolate brands. Well, the calories per ounce are 124 by my calculation, so that’s more than a York Peppermint Pattie (113 per ounce) but less than a Twix (140 per ounce). I prefer both when it comes to taste.

Related Candies

1. HiCHEW Japan vs HiCHEW Taiwan
2. Peeps Peepsters (Milk & Dark Chocolate)
3. Campfire Mini Marshmallows
4. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
5. 3 Musketeers Mini Mix
6. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
7. See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar