American Candy Taste Test

Last weekend I decided to do a bit of a candy taste test. It was basically an excuse to binge on sugary treats. I was a bit limited to what I could buy because A) I decided to do this a bit last minute and B) the one brand that is widely available in UK shops is Hershey and I don’t eat that. Eventually I found most of the candy from Tesco express and B&M.

First up was Wonka Nerds. Most people have tried these before but there’s loads of flavours to choose from so we thought we’d give them another go. We picked up a packet of lemonade wild cherry and apple watermelon ‘Double Dipped Nerds’ from Tesco express for £1 (and then later discovered the bigger fruity flavour pack for the same price in B&M). They’re basically sugar coated sugar and the jury was split. Three of my willing volunteers, Billy and two of his brothers, really liked them whereas his parents and I weren’t too keen. They were a bit too sweet and sour for me however I’m not as much of a sweets fan than I am a chocolate lover so maybe that’s why.

Overall score of 5/10. Individual scores ranged from 1 – 10 out of ten.

These Butterfinger bites also come in cups, bars and miniature bars and are chocolate covered peanut and cornflake candy. This big box cost £2.50. We expected the filling to be soft like peanut butter but it was crunchy and more like peanut brittle. No one except me really liked these much because they’re not really peanut fans (which meant I got to finish them off!) although I was worried a tooth might come out while crunching through them.

4/10 with a high score of 7 and a low of 1

I’ve seen Tootsie Rolls before and have wanted to try them for a while. The only clue to as to what is inside is the description on the wrapper ‘chewy candy bar’. Even after eating it I’m not entirely sure how to describe it.

First impressions are that it doesn’t look very appetising. It’s kind of marked into squares but the squares don’t separate easily so you just have to sink your teeth or a sharp knife into it. It’s kind of a toffee texture and it’s got a taste that we couldn’t describe. Looking at the ingredients we thought it could be the condensed milk or the small amount of cocoa but we’re not really sure. In my opinion it was OK but I couldn’t imagine popping to the corner shop with my pocket money to buy one of these after school. This bar cost us 85p.

Tootsie Roll got an overall score of 4/10

Flipz. The snack that restored my faith in this experiment. They are pretzels covered in ‘white fudge’ which tastes a bit like the inside of a kinder bueno. These cost £2.30 from Tesco express and come in a nice resealable bag just incase you don’t scoff the lot in one go. I’m not usually a fan of salty sweet things but I loved these. I could easily eat a whole bag in one go and it’s probably the only thing I’d choose to buy again out of all the products we tested. It wasn’t just me they were popular with. They were five out of six peoples favourite item.

7/10. They didn’t score higher was because one person doesn’t like white chocolate.

This is the one candy bar I found in B&M (89p) that they didn’t have at Tesco. This ‘Simply Caramel Mars’ is just filled with caramel. We thought it tasted a bit like a giant caramel Quality Street. It was OK but it wasn’t anything special. I think the problem is that it wasn’t as nice as a Cadbury or Galaxy Caramel.

It scored 4.5/10

Last of all is the very popular Pop Tart! You can get these in the UK in pretty ‘normal’ flavours like frosted strawberry, chocolate and apple. In the American section of Tesco you can find more interesting flavours like this S’mores one for £1.

When we opened up the packet we were slightly underwhelmed. After hearing so much about these the biscuity square covered in crusty icing was slightly disappointing. It kind of smelled like those microwave suet puddings but once we popped it in the toaster it started to smell slightly caramelly. We did try the microwave first but the instructions said to microwave it for 3 seconds. It came out cold so we decided either Americans have REALLY strong microwaves or it was a misprint.

The filling was nice. It tasted like a pot of chocolate pudding you get with sauce but I can imagine if you had one of the more ‘normal’ flavours like strawberry it would be a bit boring because the pastry is just bland.

6.5/10 They’re a good idea and the flavour we chose was nice. 

So there we have my candy taste test! The highest scoring treat was the Flipz white fudge covered pretzels. I think it’s just a matter of what you’ve grown up eating. Apart from the Flipz I’d probably prefer a nice Cadbury Whole Nut or a Galaxy cookie crumble.

I hope to do a bit more taste testing in the future (for experimental purposes only of course). If you have any suggestions then please get in touch and I’ll see what I can do!