Kit Kat Chunky 3 Choc Mint

This new arrival made it by the skin of its, er, wrapper. My last day for me at the local convenience store was a Friday a couple of weeks ago, and it was made extra special by discovering a new release had sneaked in to our Accredited order this week. As I haven't seen my Nestle rep for a little while, I had no idea a new KitKat Chunky 3 was on the horizon - but here it is!

In the past I've reviewed the Chunky 3 Cookies & Dream (and it got a positive review from me), and the Chunky 3 Chocolate is a bar I pick up sometimes as well, so I have high hopes for the Choc Mint. Like the other releases, it contains three different textures, shown on the wrapped with a cross-section illustration.

The 'smooth' mint fudge is green, while the centre section contains the 'crunchy' biscuit pieces in white mint fudge, and the final piece contains 'gooey' choc-mint sauce. The entire bar is covered in milk chocolate, and of course there is a strip of the classic KitKat wafer along the bottom of the bar as well.

The 65g bar is very well moulded, with sharply-defined edges and the Kit Kat logo across the centre of each piece. There's a faint semi-gloss to the milk chocolate coating, but what is most outstanding is the strong mint scent. Even though the chocolate is unflavoured (I think), the smell is evident as soon as I opened the wrapper. It's a scent reminiscent of Nestle's Mint Crisp (another favourite of mine): sweet and chocolately, but not altogether true to a real peppermint scent. It does, however, want to make me chow down on the bar right away!

The first section I bit into contained the green mint fudge. Thankfully not as bright green as on the wrapper, the fudge is quite firm (a little firmer than the chocolate), and when eaten by itself, very mild in taste. When eaten with the wafer and chocolate, it adds a soft, creamy texture to the piece, unfortunately bogging down the crispy wafer a little. I enjoyed the taste when eaten as a whole piece (which was stronger in the mint flavour, so I strongly suspect the chocolate is mint flavoured), but the texture could be improved.

In the middle we have the crunchy biscuit (not cookie) pieces in 'white mint fudge'. This fudge is interesting. It reminds me a lot of the fudge used in the Chunky 3 Cookies & Cream, in that it tastes like sweet white chocolate and not a whole lot else. I certainly didn't get any mint notes out of it! The biscuit pieces, when I encountered any, were small and insignificant. The wafer added more crunchy to the piece than the biscuit pieces. This was the most disappointing section of the bar.

Our final piece is the one I've been most looking forward to: the choc-mint sauce, and it doesn't disappoint. More chocolately than minty, the sauce is gooey and thick (but not runny or an escape artist in disguise), and compliements the crunchy wafer nicely. The mint flavour does linger a little afterwards, a mild flavour to remind you of the awesomeness you've just consumed. If they made an entire bar just of the choc mint sauce, I would so be all over it.

(For what it's worth, the nutritional panel advices that one 'square', not the entire bar, is one serving. That's a sneaky way to bring those figures on the 'Be treatwise' info panel down!)

(Apologies for the terrible photos; my usual camera was already packed away for the move at the time of review.)

Cadbury Flake Snow

Those with a sharp memory may remember spotting the Cadbury Flake Snow out on Australian shelves a few years ago. At the time it was the second seasonal Flake (that I can remember), and was available everywhere. I spotted this Flake Snow at Coles not long ago, alongside a sign that indicated it was exclusive to Coles supermarkets.

The product doesn't seem to have changed at all (made in Australia so not imported stock), and is a 'crumby Dream white chocolate Flake covered in Cadbury Dairy Milk milk chooclate.' Pretty simple, really! I have noticed that the enrobed Flakes tend to have more chocolate in the centre - but that might just be me. I do like looking at the patterns inside!

Broken down, the bar is quite simple - white chocolate and milk chocolate. Cadbury's Bubbly White is basically the same thing - the only real difference is the appearance and maybe a minor texture change at first bite. My bar was lovely and pristine: a squarish log 12cm , enrobed in milk chocolate with faint ripples over the top. My bar was not fully covered, through; some of the bottom had holes where the base did not meet the sides. Lucky for me, no white chocolate crumbs escaped and my bar was glossy and ripe for eating.

Interestingly, it doesn't smell as sweet as a block of regular Dairy Milk. There's more of a milky note there, and it's a little bit buttery too. Thankfully, the taste is exactly as you would expect - white and milk chooclate. The bar is sweeter than its scent suggests, but not so much to make my teeth hurt. I did feel a wee bit sick afterwards.

While eating this bar, I discovered that if you bite both ends off the bar, you could effectively use it like a straw due to the ripples of the Flake causing small spaces inside. So it was obvious what my next thought was - the infamous Tim Tam Slam (the art of drinking a beverage through a Tim Tam).

Readers, please go out and buy a Flake Snow, perform a Tim Tam Slam, and report back. I imagine it would be sickly sweet and therefore delicious!

Cadbury Flake Snow contains milk and soy. It make contain traces of peanuts and tree nuts.

Nutffles Red Velvet

Nutffles first arrived on the Australian confectionery scene a couple of years ago. The USA-made little bite-size pieces of chocolate were vaguely similar to the ubiquitous Ferrero Rocher - a shell of chocolate, a soft creamy chocolate centre, and a whole nut in the middle. While Ferrero Rocher contains a hazelnut in the centre, and a crushed nut exterior, Nutffles are enrobed in a thin layer of chocolate. The two original flavours were Almond and Hazelnut.

Originally, Nutffles came with three pieces in a pack. At some point, this changed to four bite-sized pieces.

I picked up this Red Velvet flavoured pack of Nutffles at Target not long ago. I don't know how new they are to the market, but as I hadn't spotted them before, I picked them up for review.

Red velvet cake is, I assume, huge in America. For those unfamiliar, it's a cake that is dyed red (sometimes chocolate flavoured), and served with cream cheese icing. It's not something I had heard of in Australia. Since the recipe doesn't contain nuts (according to Wikipedia), I was very interested to see how a nut-based truffle would work with this flavouring. And no, I've never tried red velvet cake before.

The Nutffles packing is easily recognisable. They truffles are packed in a clear plastic tray inside a thick foil package. The outer colouring of the packaging changes depending on the flavour, but the packs are very recognisable. A pack of four truffles weighs 34g.

Straight away, the first difference between the Red Velvet truffles and the other Nutffles flavours is that the outer layer of chocolate is white, rather than milk. The pieces are small, about the size of a Ferrero Rocher cut in half, and they have a flat bottom. The white chocolate is slightly bumpy from the ingredients underneath, and the bottom has a few small areas where the chocolate doesn't quite cover.

Underneath the white chocolate is a thin curved layer of chocolate wafer, and then inside that is a vaguely red-looking firm centre. It's definitely not the prettiest thing to look at - but given their small size, I suspect most consumers would pop the whole thing into their mouths.

The taste is interesting. Somewhere in there is a vague hint of cream cheese, but there's not a whole lot of flavour until you reach the whole almond inside. There's very little actual chocolate flavour in the bite. It's rather bland and unexciting for a truffle. The texture combination is nice - creamy milk chocolate, the hard nut, the slightly crunchy wafer. My truffles felt very fresh.

Although I finished mine, I wondered why anyone would waste money on these. I wouldn't even consider these nice - they were much more along the lines of 'meh'.

The Belgian white chocolate layer is actual chocolate (with cocoa butter as the second ingredient), and the whole 34g pack is one serve. They contain milk, wheat and soy products, and almonds. Traces of peanuts and other nuts may be present.