Snickers Limited Edition Almond

Here I am, running behind again! I originally announced the 2014 Snickers limited edition back in June last year (has it really been that long?). Contrary to my note in the Gossip post, Australia has actually seen Snickers Almond on its shelves before - it was released back in 2011. Mars and other confectionery companies do like to repeat their most popular limited editions, often as a part of market research that could see the flavour introduced to the regular line-up.

Epic and Epic Nuts Bars

Part bargain bin delight and part oddment, these Epic bars were released by BP petrol stations a few months ago, selling for the hugely expensive price of $1 each. Given those facts and the lack of a brand name, I'm starting to have my doubts on the awesomeness of these bars.

Lindt HELLO Crunchy Nougat

To wrap up my reviews of the Lindt 'HELLO My Name Is' range, let's take a look at the Crunchy Nougat 39g bar.

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Nestle Wonka Nutty Crunchalicious

The final part of the Wonka story is in the Nutty Crunchalicious block. The set of four (including Chocolate Tales, Triple Chocolate Whipple and Caramel Hat Trick) were released in August last year, and appear to have been selling well in stores. The Australian-made blocks might be a competitor to Cadbury's Marvellous Creations, but they are still pretty interesting on their own, too.

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Cadbury Boost Nuts

The newest seasonal version of the Cadbury Boost bar is simply called 'Nuts' , though it would be better of called 'Peanuts' those are the only nuts in use here. The milk chocolate bar has a soft choc centre stuffed with peanuts, and then a layer of caramel is added before the final enrobing of Cadbury milk chocolate.

 
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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.