Christine: March 2010 Archives

Wonka is consistently coming up with the most unique ideas and flavor combos in candy, can always count on them to put something really different out there. A few years ago they had a SweeTarts Rope, which was a cherry licorice tube filled with blue goo that had Nerds in it but it wasn't around too long before Nestlé (which owns Wonka) discontinued it. Obviously they reworked the idea and came out with Kazoozles.

I love how colorful and whimsical Wonka packaging is, makes me that much more excited to eat their candy. Described as Delickoricious, they come in Cherry Punch and Pink Lemonade. I started with Cherry Punch (blue package) and sadly, it was a little underwhelming. The first thing I thought when I bit into a rope was that it tasted like cough syrup, yuck. Candy should not taste medicinal! The medicine taste never went away and eventually it faded to the background a bit. The rope itself had a nice firm chew, firmer than your standard Red Vine and more like those giant red licorice ropes you can get at the ball game. The goo in the middle was yummy, like cotton candy or a Pixy Stix, to me it wasn't very "punch" flavored, just a super sweet vaguely fruity slightly gritty frosting.

The Pink Lemonade was a hair better. As you can see these had big sugar crystals on them, which were a nice texture addition and broke up all the chewiness. The licorice wasn't very lemony, like super watered down Country Time. To combat all the sweetness it would be better if there was some tartness thrown in but the filling is more of the same super sweet variety, dare I say it's the same filling as the Cherry Punch but just in a different color.

I did enjoy these, just not as much as I was hoping and I would probably pick them up again if there wasn't anything more appealing on the shelf though honestly I'd rather just have some Red Vines.

Worst. Blogger. Ever. That must be what I am. Haven't blogged in over a year! Can you (the 3 of you out there that read this) ever forgive me? Let's move on to the candy, shall we?

A long while back I got the original Mo's Bacon Bar, which is the smaller one in the photo above. More recently I got the Dark Bacon Bar and so when I sat down to blog, I decided to do both of them at the same time (that's what she said). Sadly, upon opening, the original bacon bar had bloomed :( That's what I get for waiting so long.

The Dark Bacon Bar is simply gorgeous, a nice sheen and 12 neatly scored squares with embossed images on them (the Vosges logo and what looks to be a girl holding a bag, weird). It smells like smokey chocolate but there was no meaty smell which I think is a good thing because as delicious as bacon is, a chocolate bar should not smell like meat (even if it has meat in it, does that make sense?). It's 62% cacao so it was a nice bitter chocolate with just enough sweet to get it on with the saltiness of the Alder wood smoked salt and the baconyness of the Applewood smoked bacon to result in a ménage à trois in my mouth. Oh yeah, I said it!



The bacon was not overpowering at all, none of the flavor elements were, they truly all worked together in this fantastic bar. It was obvious that the bacon pieces were real pork bits and not just imitation pork product thrown in, it tasted like real bacon not like something disguised to taste like some approximation of bacon.

You should definitely pick up a bar if you should cross its path.