Review: Kit Kat vs. Kit Kat

Ding ding ding! We’ve had ‘Rolo’s, and we’ve had Cadbury ‘Mini Eggs‘…now it’s time for Kit Kat vs. Kit Kat – who does it best? Britain or America? Well, let’s find out…

(top) British Kit Kat (bottom) American Kit Kat

Like with many European-made chocolates, here in the United States Hershey seems to have the monopoly on licencing rights. The Hershey Company produces American-made ‘Rolo‘ (originally made by British ‘Toffee King’ Macintosh in 1937, now produced by Swiss-based Nestlé) and all American-made Cadbury products, including the Easter staple ‘Mini Eggs‘ – both of which I have reviewed side-by-side.

In 1970 Hershey bought the rights to produce the Rowntree ‘Kit Kat‘ (which originated in 1935) for the American market. So lets see how they stack up!

Aesthetics; both wrappers are very similar. Use of red as the main colour (as it always has been, aside from during WWII when British ‘Kit Kat’ wrappers turned blue) similar font, encircled logo and an image of the wafer finger snapped in half. Both even use the memorable tagline ‘Have a break, have a Kit Kat‘ – which was first used in 1957.

Even unwrapped, apart from the British version using the ever cool hashtag motif, the four-fingered chocolate wafers look very similar. The biggest difference is that on the British chocolate the imprinted logo is closed in ‘brackets’, and the US one is not.

The chocolate colour is a little darker on the European bar…but Hershey have produced a pretty slick copy.

Spot the difference…

Where they begin to differ is in the taste!

As I find with most Hershey chocolate products, the initial taste is fairly yummy…but then an ashy taste begins to form in the back of my throat. The cocoa isn’t as chocolatey as Nestle’s Kit Kat, and I don’t feel like the thin, layered wafers have the same snappy crunch.

The British Kit Kat has a noticably sweeter taste over all when eaten next to the US version, and the slightly malty taste of the wafers is much more distinguishable. Hershey’s Kit Kat is more dense, with a heavier mouth feel, but is still provides a good crunch.

Hershey does Kit Kat

Sigh…once again I find myself preferring the chocolate I grew up with. A two-fingered Kit Kat in my packed lunch at school has perhaps screwed my preferences…and that’s ok. My American husband prefers the American Kit Kat all for the same reasons.

Does anyone out there prefer the ‘foreign’ version of a homeland candy? Are you a Brit who prefers Australian Caramilk? Or are you an American who prefers the Nestlé Kit Kat or Rolo?

It looks like I’ll be sticking with the British versions…unless someone can persuade me otherwise!

Review: Crown ‘Couque D’asse’

Time for a upper-class biscuit affair with a sweet cookie from Korea – Crown’s Couque D’asse white torte.

‘Couque D’asse’ means ‘cake from the Asse region’ – referencing a type of hard, finely textured biscuit specific to the region in Belgium. Couque D’Asse has always been very popular as a premium biscuit and the Korean company Crown took inspiration from the delicacy in creating their own version.

Crown’s white torte flavour Couque D’asse

Crown Confectionery was founded in 1947 in Seoul, South Korea following the opening of Mr. Yoon Tae-Hyun’s Youngildang Bakery. It has since established itself as the Korean brand for biscuits, cookies and crackers along side competitors Orion (Choco Pie) and Lotte (Crunky).

Contained in the box are nine prepackaged single biscuits. They are light and delicate with a thin layer of moist mascarpone style cream (based on the white torte dessert) and decorated with a single line of chocolate. The overall biscuit is pleasant and sweet, and oddly moreish as it melts in the mouth, but for me it’s a little boring. It’s plain with vanilla flavouring. Saying that, they would make an excellent accompaniment to a good cup of tea.

Light and moreish – and good with a cuppa

Crown’s Couque D’asse makes for a sophisticated afternoon snack, but doesn’t excite the snacker in me…

Wrapper Wednesday: Asian Biscuits

Phew! It’s too hot for chocolate this week! But not to hot for biscuits (or ‘cookies’)! So please enjoy this little sampler of adorable (and tasty) Asian biscuit snacks.

1. Banana Milk Ginbis ‘Dream Animals’ sweet crackers. An amalgamation of ‘Ginza’, a shopping district in Tokyo, and the word ‘biscuit’, Ginbis have been making sweet and savory snacks since 1930.
2. Cappuccino ‘Koala’s March’ crunchy filled koala-shaped, bite-sized biscuits. Originally launched in 1984 in Japan, these sweets are made by snack giants Lotte (with Cyrillic text).
3. Lotte chocolate-filled ‘Kancho‘ round printed, crunchy snacks. Kancho features a little kawaii Cupid-type mascot on both box and biscuit.
4. Want Want ‘Lovely Puff’ puffed crunch with chocolate-flavour filling.
5. Macha green tea ‘Hello Panda’. These filled biscuit shapes are very similar to Koala’s March, and have been made by Japan’s Meiji since 1979 and can be found in a wide variety of flavours.

Can anyone else recommend to me some tasty biscuit snacks from around the world?

Wrapper Wednesday: Meji Bamboo & Mushrooms

Not one, but two biscuit boxes from Japan feature on this week’s Wrapper Wednesday!

Meiji’s Takenoko no Sato (Bamboo Shoots of the Village) and Kinoko no Yama (Mushroom of the Mountain) are theatre-sized boxes filled with little sweet, crunchy chocolate-coated biscuit snacks designed to represent little bamboo shoots and little mushrooms.

Kinoko no Yama (Mushroom of the Mountain) snacks

These shapes are quite popular in Japanese snack market, but Meiji are perhaps one of the best well-known brands to create such treats (also the makers of Hello Panda and Yan Yan stick dips).

A frequent theme found in Japanese confectionery wrappers are cute, or kawaii, mascots or anthropomorphized versions of the sweets, or ingredients, themselves. On these cookie boxes we can see just that! Little mushroom and bamboo shoot characters taking part in skiiing and ice hockey! Presumably these were promotional packets in preparation for the Winter Olympic Games in 2014 (if someone can translate this and let me know for sure that would be great)!

Takenoko no Sato (Bamboo Shoots of the Village)

Japanese confectionery seems to exude this joyous, childlike enthusiasm on almost every wrapper -something I feel a lot of British and ‘western’ candy has lost over the last decade or so. My inner youth will always smile at these marketing choices. Candy should be fun, and silly, and bright and colourful. I feel these two boxes are prime examples of how candy should make us feel when we look for it, buy it and consume it…happy!

Wrapper Wednesday: Cadbury Animals

We’re going on a biscuit hunt!

Cadbury ‘Animals‘ are a selection of zoo-themed mini biscuits with an underbelly of Cadbury milk chocolate, and have made frequent appearances in packed lunches for a several generations since the 1970’s/80’s -now produced by Burton’s Biscuits (established 1935).

This pin badge, with its somewhat insensitive proposal, would never pass today’s PR and advertising boards, but it did attract my attention and thus has been added to my collection of confectionery clutter. I believe that this particular badge is an early piece of Animals advertising as the design coincides with a similar 1980’s advertisement.

Hunting animals, biscuit or otherwise, is generally frowned upon these days…

Animals that can be ‘hunted down’ in the Cadbury jungle include Leroy the Lion, Rockodile Crocodile, Cheeko the Monkey, Swoop the Parrot and Ella Funky the Elephant along with an assortment of other menagerie friends.

What do you make of this? Is the language too cruel and provocative for today’s market? Did anyone bat an eyelid at this kind of campaign in the ’80’s?

Fact Friday: Wagon Wheels

Did you know that Wagon Wheels have been around in the UK since 1948?

(ok, it’s not technically a sweet…but I watched a program recently where top-end chefs had to replicate them in just one week…and it’s renewed my vigor for them…)

The ‘original’ chocolate flavour Wagon Wheel

Invented by Canadian-born businessman Gary Weston, the popular lunch-box treat is composed of two round, very fine and semi-soft cocoa biscuits, with a stretchy layer of white marshmallow sandwiched in between and gently coated in milk chocolate.

Weston’s father Willard Garfield Weston was in admiration of the quality of British biscuits when on leave during the First World War, and began establishing his own biscuit companies (as well as acquiring many small independent ones) throughout the UK during the early 1930’s.

In just six weeks the biscuit was conceptualized and put into production and has become a firm favourite with children across the commonwealth since their debut eight decades ago!

Weston’s Wagon Wheels

Where does the name come from? Well, at the time Western films were a huge cultural hit, and typecast cowboy John Wayne was one of the world’s biggest movie stars; western-mania swept across the globe, and due to the big ‘n’ round shape of Gary Weston’s snack, he used this popular theme to market his new chocolate treat.

Western-themed imagery has always featured in the products wrapper and marketing

Variations (past and present) include original chocolate, fudge, raspberry, jammy, orange, caramel, banoffee and malted…who would love to see some of these flavours back in the UK?

Like the KitKat, it can be argued that the Wagon Wheel treads the fine line between sweet, snack or biscuit. Generations of people will have fond memories of seemingly giant Wagon Wheels in our packed lunches, or enjoying one as an afternoon snack.

Sweet, or biscuit?

Many of us also insist that Wagon Wheels were larger in the past, but current manufacturers Burton’s Biscuits have denied this. Our memories of Wagon Wheels being bigger ‘back in the day’ are apparently down to the perspective of eating them as a small child, when everything seems bigger and more impressive.

How about you? Do you swear that Wagon Wheels were bigger back then?

Wrapper Wednesday: Choco Boy

It’s Wrapper Wednesday! And it’s another one of my favourite foreign snacks up for display this week – Choco Boy, South Korea.

Choco Boy box and inner wrapper

Like most Asian confections, Choco Boy‘s movie-candy style box is full of cuteness and colour! Who else could turn a fungus into an incising and fun confectionery snack? The colours of green, yellow and blue all help to symbolize nature and the ‘goodness’ of the product, while the mascot, an anthropomorphic mushroom-boy, appears quite adorable and innocent. His bowl-style haircut is a representation of the chocolate mushroom top, which helps to tie in all of the individual elements portraying the candy.

In production since 1984, these bite-sized morsels are made up of a sweet biscuit stick capped off with a solid piece of milk chocolate. I hate mushrooms…but these biscuit versions will gladly suffice! They are light, moreish and pretty darn cute.

Choco Boy chocolate mushrooms

For me, the biscuit and chocolate profile remind me of KP Choc Dips (1982) – a typically corner-shop sweet where a plastic cup is split in half, with one side full of short, sweet biscuit sticks, and the other with a smooth milk chocolate (or white chocolate) creamy dip. Perhaps this is why I enjoy Choco Boy so much – the flavours remind me of a favourite childhood snack, while the graphics and format help bring out that inner child in me!

Review: Chocolate & Strawberry Collon

Brr! It sure is turning into a freezing February here in north west England! What better way to lift the spirits, and to think of sunnier times, than eating some global snacks! Up for review are chocolate and strawberry ‘Collon’ filled sweet snacks from Thailand.

Chocolate & Strawberry ‘Collon’

Made by the confectionery powerhouse Glico (Pocky, PRETZ), Glico was established in 1921, Japan, shortly after its founder Mr. Ri-ichi Ezaki conducted research into the use of glycogen and where it could be sourced from, and used in, food. Taking their name from their USP ingredient, Glico launced ‘Glico Caramel’. The heart shaped, chewy caramel was a nourishing and sustaining candy that provided athletes with plentiful energy!

These flavoured Collon treats are composed of a short, round, crunchy wafer roll, packed generously with a smooth flavoured creme filling. Eating these definitely reminds me of summer – the crunchy shell acting as an ice cream cone (it even had a waffle print texture) with the sweet, creamy fillings substituting in for the ice cream itself.

The name ‘Collon’ apparently means a type of dessert or confectionery in Japanese, and for me they’re a bit of a combination of both!

Out of the two, the strawberry has the stronger flavour. It’s instantly recognizable and has a wonderful sweet and slightly tangy finish. The chocolate Collon has a soft cocoa flavour – I would personally like this to be a little fuller, but from my experience of Asian biscuit candy, the flavours and textures do tend to be on the ‘lighter’ side – making these very easy to eat very quickly!

Even the packaging reminds me of summer, with the bright colours and smooth wavy form of the cream pictured on the boxes. All in all, a delightfully cheery snack! Roll on the sunshine!

Wrapper Wednesday: Shiro-Noir Koeda

In honour of Shroves Tuesday (which was yesterday), here is a wrapper that ties in nicely with all things pancake – Shiro-Noir flavoured Koeda sticks by Morinaga.

Japanese-based confectionery giants Morinaga was founded in 1899 by entrepreneur Taichiro Morinaga. At the age of 23 he left his home country to move to the USA where he first experienced candy – a luxury that his family could ill afford during his childhood. After training as a confectioner, he returned to Japan to start his own business making and distributing his hand-made sweets, initially from a push-cart! Today the company is perhaps best known as the manufacturers of Hi-Chew: a deliciously gummy, milky chew made in a wide variety of fruity flavours.

This wrapper is a box of Shiro-Noir flavoured Koeda biscuit sticks. ‘Koeda’ means ‘twigs’ in Japanese, and this is represented by the short, crunchy, knobbly sticks that make up the Koeda line. Inside the box were several handy packets of the coated sticks – perfect for muching on the side with a cup of tea or coffee.

Shiro-Noir flavoured ‘twig’ biscuits by Morinaga

Shiro-Noir is a signature dessert made by the Japanese coffee house Komeda’s Coffee, and is described as a soft and fluffy Danish-style pastry, topped with soft serve vanilla ice cream, and is served warm with a dose of syrup…sounds kinda like a pancake, right? The name is a combination of the words ‘Shiro’, which means ‘white’ in Japanese, and ‘Noir’ meaning ‘black’ in French. These opposing colours represent the light ice cream and dark pastry that make up the sweet dish.

The real deal – a Shiro-Noir pastry

Having never tried a genuine Shiro-Noir I can’t really comment on how these coated biscuit sticks compare to the flavours of the fluffy pancake-style dessert, but from what I remember, they were sweet, slightly buttery with a maple-syrupy taste…but the real deal sure looks tasty! Have you tried one while in Japan? How was it?

Wrapper Wednesday: Ginbis Dream Animals Biscuits

Here’s a super sweet box of animal ‘crackers’ from Japan for this weeks Wrapper Wednesday – coconut flavoured biscuits by Ginbis.

Ginbis (an amalgamation of ‘Ginza’, a shopping district in Tokyo, and the word ‘biscuit’) have been making sweet and savory snacks since 1930.

Ginbis Dream Animals

This ‘Dream Animals’ box is just one of a variety of flavours that the company produce, including vegetable, butter, banana and red bean. Each box is a mini menagerie with sweet, buttery biscuits shaped in the forms of lions, cows, bats, ducks, parrots to name a few, contained inside, with the English spelling of the animals printed on each cookie.

The cookies are very morish and quite light despite the buttery-ness, but what attracted me to these adorable snacks was the box – it’s very kawaii – and just like the product, is really sweet!

I’d love to try the banana ones, so if anyone comes across them do let me know!

Wrapper Wednesday: Barnum’s Animal Crackers

For over a century the National Biscuit Company (better known as NABISCO) has been making animal shaped ‘crackers’ – these sweet, plain biscuits come in a variety of animal shapes, such as lion, elephant, rhino, seal and bear. The iconic circus style graphics first appeared in 1902, but it wasn’t until the 1940’s that the name ‘Barnum’ (as in Barnum & Bailey Circus) were included with the product.

This long established connection with circus imagery was contested in 2018 by the animal welfare group PETA, who argued that the cruel and archaic image of animals in cages – as featured on the Barnum’s Animal Crackers boxes, tins and merchandise – was now outdated and inappropriate. Later that year the boxes were redesigned to feature animals in a natural African setting, and the cages are now resigned to history!

My Barnum’s Animal Crackers box was one of the last to be produced before the ethical change. Of course we no longer accept that caged, wild animals have any part in entertainment, but these iconic graphics still hold a lot of visual appeal, with their bold, circus themed colours and filigree, its portable wagon shaped design, and beautiful exotic animals.

Wrapper Wednesday: Pandaland

This week features the striking and fun looking Pandaland biscuits by Japanese based snack group, Meiji (you might have been their popular Hello Panda biscuits in Asian supermarkets, or Home Bargains and B&M).

Unlike Hello Panda, Pandaland biscuits are not filled, but do have the same light and almost buttery crunch, with assorted images of cute pandas taking part in a range of activities printed on the cookies. I picked these up in a quirky Asian themed knickknack shop in Manchester based on the graphics alone!