I’ve been looking for this kooky little novelty chocolate item for a while. Kinder is a widely distributed confection brand that also makes the intensely addictive Kinder Bueno (which is a must-try for any hazelnut lover).

I found a new candy source in Los Angeles (posting tomorrow about that) called Mel & Rose’s on Melrose Avenue. They have EVERYTHING that you might want from Europe or Australia. It’s not a big shop, but they had an excellent selection and decent prices. In fact, my little Kinder Eggs were less than a dollar each. I was led to believe that these were not permitted to be sold in the US because of the “choking hazard” of the toy surprise inside, but after opening one, I’d have to wonder what child could (or would want to) eat that toy-filled capsule.

Think of these as those toy eggs that you get in the gumball machines at the mega-marts. Except instead of being a plastic egg, it’s a chocolate egg.

The egg is pretty much the size of a regular chicken egg. Inside the white and red foil it’s a rather lack-luster milk chocolate with a distinct seam. I wasn’t quite sure if there was a way to open it, so I just pressed my finger into the top and sort of tore it open. On my second egg I found that if you sqeeze about halfway along the seam the whole thing pops apart rather neatly.

Inside the egg it’s “white chocolate” (I say in quotes because it says on the label that it’s actually a “milky white lining” which doesn’t even sound edible). It smells sweet and rather like powdered milk. Inside the egg is a yellow plastic capsule that contains the Kinder Suprise (kinder means children in German and is pronounced with a short i). The chocolate is passably edible, nothing I’d want to buy by itself.

The yellow capsule holds a little plastic toy (usually one you have to put together). I’m not really sure what the one is in the picture. It’s a little baby in a crow’s nest with a crab crawling up the mast ... I think. There’s a little wheel on the bottom of it and if you roll it around it wiggles the mast and crow’s nest. The second prize (in the other egg) was a little metronome on a wheel with a funny little anthropomorphic musical note riding on it.

As a candy/toy, I find these much more compelling than Pez. I have poked around and have seen that some prizes can be rather sophisticated and you can collect theme prizes. (See other prizes in this flicker kinder pool.)

If you’re traveling someplace where you can pick these up, they’re usually pretty cheap (about 50 cents) and make great little stocking stuffers or gifts. It’s too bad they can’t sell them in the States.

Kinder is part of the Ferrero family of companies/brands. They also make the Ferrero Rocher, Bueno, Mon Cheri, Nutella & Pocket Coffee, among other things.

If you’ve had Kinder Eggs before, what sort of prizes did you get in yours?

I’m not an energy drink person and I’m not one to start popping caffeine pills either. So what am I to do when I need a little pick-me-up?

A friend of ours who travels in Italy every year suggested Pocket Coffee! Basically it’s chocolate-covered Italian coffee. Because the sweet coffee center is concentrated, it only takes three chocolates to equal a single shot of espresso. Our friends like to get them for traveling as it’s more portable that hot coffee but has the same side effect. I’ve heard that it’s very popular with students, truck drivers and folks on night shifts.

Ferrero is a well-known Italian chocolate brand even here in the United States, with the elegant little Rochers and Nutella as their best-known products. In fact, I’ve never seen Pocket Coffee anywhere in the US before, but not for lack of trying. They’re not even made in the summer, so as a seasonal item it’s likely that getting one out of season means that it’s no longer fresh. But a no-so-fresh Pocket Coffee is just a different experience.

The candy is composed of a syrupy espresso center, then a light sugar crystal shell and then the chocolate. As the candies age the sugar shell will actually grow, taking sugar from the espresso syrup center to create a bigger shell. The ones I tried were a little old (purchased last fall) so they had the extra crystallized shell.

The coffee center is very sweet but smooth with a slightly acidic bite to it. The crystals provide a kind of funky crunch to it, but melt easily if you’re inclined that way. The chocolate is not too sweet and gives a good creamy boost to the whole mix. On the whole the candy is very sweet, a little too sweet for my tastes, but then again, it’s coffee candy. I’m not saying that I won’t eat it again ... though they are messy. If you’re driving, you’re obligated to pop the whole thing in your mouth but if you’re not, feel free to experiment with biting off a corner and sucking out the coffee first.

Finding them in the states may mean ordering online. They’re still being stocked at Capriflavors.com.

JoeD at Slashfood beat me to the punch on this review last week and David Lebovitz has a haiku you might enjoy.

If only Cadbury Creme Eggs had a coffee version!

Name: Kinder Bueno
Brand: Kinder
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 43 grams
Calories per package: 240
Type: Nut Cream

I’m a little confused by the name of this bar. Maybe my language skills aren’t that good, but I’ve had a dabbling of German and took five years of Spanish. Kinder, as far as I know is Children in German. Bueno means good in Spanish. The package for this particular treat was in English and French.

All that linguistic stuff aside, candy is good in all languages. What we have here is a crisp shell filled with a hazelnut cream and covered in a very thin shell of milk chocolate. As with most candies, two pieces are better than one, so Kinder Bueno gives you two fingers. Each is further sealed inside a clear plastic sleeve to protect the crispy wafers from getting stale. The candy is basically a formed, crisp shell filled with a creamy, milky hazelnut paste and covered in a sweet and melty milk chocolate.

I know that all of the stuff in here is probably horrible for me, reading the ingredients in either language reveals copious amounts of palm kernel oil and 30% of my daily RDA of saturated fats (oddly enough no cholesterol). No matter, it’s really good. Hazelnut is such a wonderful complement to milk chocolate and the tasteless wafers, I’d probably accept a hit of 100% of my saturated fat.

It’s rich and creamy and the roasted flavor of the hazelnuts lingers. They were wonderful with my morning coffee. Even though they’re sweet the fatty texture spreads the goodness all over allowing all the notes of the nuts to come out. The filling is a little sticky, so keep some milk or coffee nearby to cut it. I would probably buy these again if I were to take a long flight or something where I really wanted an indulgence to go with bad airplane coffee. Even though they’re double packaged, these candies don’t travel well, so don’t throw an apple on top of them in your purse. I’m also eager to find some Kinder Eggs to try out sometime soon.

Rating - 7 out of 10