Trick OR Treat: A Review of London's Candy Aisle

Two posts in one week – this is madness!  All jokes aside, I have actually been saving up to write this post and with Halloween just behind us there seems to be no better time for me to review the tricks and treats of British Candy.  One of my guilty pleasures is binge watching taste tests on YouTube, so logically I thought I would do my own version of a review typically titled “American’s Try British Sweets for the First Time.”

Over the last few months I have only eaten candy that cannot be found, to my knowledge, in the United States.  I did not save them up to eat all at one time like most of these taste testers do or I would be in a sugar coma, instead I have kept detailed notes from week to week.  So indulge me if you will as I warm up a nice cup’a tea, open this new pack of Jammie Dodgers^TM and review the best and the worst of the United Kingdoms junk food!

                                                      After Eight^® – Possibly the best candy I have 

tried here and one of the first, After Eight^® mints 

are Britain’s answer to the peppermint patty.  These thin pieces of mint fondant coated in rich dark chocolate melt in your mouth and are perfect for a dinner party or scarfing down by yourself late at night so no one can judge you…  Although a little weird to talk about with food, their packaging is adorable.  Inside the midnight green box, each mint is slipped into it’s own individual sleeve emblazoned with a gold logo and makes what could be an average candy fit for afternoon tea at the Ritz. 

I give After Eight^® 5/5 Princes named George

Aero^® Bubbly Bar – This chocolate bar was not at all what I expected in good, can imagine eating this in the future, space travel sort of way.  From the packaging, I assumed each chocolate bubble would be filled with a mousse like mint filling that 

                                                     would burst when I took a bite.  When I bit into 

the bar though, I discovered the porous interior to be about the same consistency as the rest of the chocolate bar.  The mint portion did melt a bit like space ice cream…explaining my reaction – you’re welcome!  If you can imagine those butter mints you get at weddings or next to the deserts at the end of a Chinese buffet, dip them in chocolate and that is almost exactly what this bar was like.

I give the Aero^® Bubbly Bar 3/5 Double Decker Buses

Crunchie Bar – For me this was the most highly anticipated and thus the biggest let down in my candy tasting adventures.  I know I may make some enemies by this review because Crunchie seems to be the favorite of many of my friends here, but it was not that good.  Let’s begins with false advertisement: The bar claims to be 

                                                     chocolate covered honeycomb – a delicious 

combination!  However, in reality this just a honeycomb-textured bit of corn syrup based crunch coated in overly sweet Cadbury^TM Milk chocolate.  When I got over the initial disappointment of a real honeycomb or at least honey flavored center, I could not really even enjoy the candy for what it was because it was just too sweet. 

I give Crunchie 1.5/5 Metro Papers on the Tube Floor

Doritos^© Cool Original – These tortilla chips are sad.  Not as much of a let down as the previous candy, but definitely not an item I would eat again…unless I was really hungry at 2:00am because I forgot to eat dinner before a boat party and the only place still open is a Subway when you really wanted McDonalds but you didn’t stop at the McDonalds that was still open because you thought you could miraculously get home from across London in an hour by tube when the tube closed a half hour into that time which would have been fine except for the fact you had to transfer lines so you ended up in the middle of central London in the middle of the night at a 

                                                      closed bus station and have to find a different 

bus to take a really, really long ride to said Subway…but I obviously had these chips under different circumstances?  All of that said, these chips needed a little salt.  I would probably have liked them better had I not expected a certain flavor before tasting them but from my perspective they tasted like someone took American Cool Ranch Doritos^©, licked off most of the seasoning and decided to package them back up and sell them to clueless Brits. 

I give Doritos^© Cool Original 1/5 Tourists on the Left Side of the Escalator

Bounty – Compared with the other snacks on this list Bounty is not that unique because it is very similar to candy bars we have in the United States.  Bounty is more or less a heartier version of an Almond Joy without Almonds or a Milk Chocolate Mounds bar.  This British version is much higher quality though and has a thicker chocolate coat that I really enjoyed.  If you do not like coconut this should be avoided, but if you do Bounty will not let you down.

I give Bounty 4/5 London Tower Bridges

McVitie’s^® Digestives – A British classic through and through, these cookies are a bit of an acquired taste if you are used to very sugary sweets.  My personal favorites
                                                      are the Dark Chocolate covered biscuits that
may have sufficed as dinner once or twice (but we won’t talk about that).  They have more of a brown bread taste than chocolate so it is believable they could live up to their name by helping you digest with more fiber, but over all a very good treat.  They fill you up and though they might not be the most delicious sweet on this list they definitely get bonus points for creating the most adorable advertisement to ever exist – watch it HERE!

I give Digestives 3.5/5 Corgi Puppies

Jammie Dodgers^TM – Another classic biscuit that unfortunately has a better American alternative, these jam filled cookies are not bad.  I seem to remember a similar cookie though from my years as a munchkin that had a more chewy texture
                                                      and possible cream filling with the jam.  I
cannot recall the name of those cookies to save my life (so let me know if you do…they were tasty).  In comparison though, Jammie Dodgers^TM have way to much cookie in the cookie to filling ratio so they taste a little more like a mouthful of saw dust than a sweet treat.  Any of these cookies are improved with tea, but for me these were not a home run on their own…*teehee* Get it?  The Dodgers?  Okay, I’ll stop…

I give Jammie Dodgers^TM 2/5 Dr. Who References

Toffee Crip^® – Last but most definitely not least is my favorite candy bar in the UK that I am actually very disappointed is not an American staple.  It may not have anything more than chocolate, toffee and crisps, but this chocolate covered
                                                      combination of goodies makes has the

perfect balance of crunchy and chewy, salty and sweet.  Though that description sounds a bit like a Snickers^® bar, the flavor is much more like that of a Twix where the hard cookie in the middle is filled instead with puffed rice like you would find in a crunch bar.  Thankfully I can only find them in packs of four so I still buy other groceries.

I give Toffee Crisp^® 5/5 Crown Jewels

I hope that you enjoyed this post almost as much as I enjoyed making it.  Until next time!