KitKat Cookies & Cream Big Bar (Product Announcement)

Image from Nestle Japan.

I love the KitKat big bars, but I hate white chocolate and have never been a big fan of cookies & cream as a candy flavor. In fact, I feel that the whole point of the cookies and cream concept is to add textural variation and flavor to ice cream. As a candy bar with cookies that add texture and its own flavor already, it seems silly to add cookies and cream to cookies and white chocolate. OK, perhaps it's not so  much "silly" as quite unimaginative. These big bars are coming to a convenience store in Japan soon and if I was still there, I would not bother to buy one. If you're more open to conventional flavors than me, let me know if you've tried this. I'm guessing that it'll have 5 layers of satisfying crunch surrounded by somewhat too sweet and perhaps even slightly chalky white chocolate infused with just a hint of bitter chocolate cookie and some creamy richness, though not enough of the good stuff to justify the calorie load.

Condensed Milk Strawberry KitKat (product announcement)

Image from Nestle Japan. 

Yesterday, Nestle Japan released a "new" big bar flavor, condensed milk strawberry KitKat.  It was placed on convenience store shelves yesterday, and takes its rightful place among the dozens of strawberry KitKat bar releases which inspire this blogger to yawn in ingratitude. I wouldn't buy this if I saw it, because I'm already sure that it tastes like overly sweet powdered milk with some fairly decent, but unimpressive strawberry flavor. If I'm proven wrong, feel free to say so in comments. I can take it.

I should mention that condensed milk and strawberries are a very popular combo in Japan. When the berries come in season, bins or baskets of toothpaste-tube style condensed milk are usually not far from the tony (read: expensive) homes of the juicy red beauties. The packaging is designed to let you squeeze some disgusting goo on the precious fruit as you eat it. In the U.S., condensed milk is sold in cans because we don't tend to think of it as something we slather on unsuspecting fruit, but rather as something we roll into sugar-laden, hyper-fatty baked goods.

Vanilla KitKat Big Bar

There's a song by Barenaked Ladies which my husband has listened to many times in which about a million lyrics are disgorged in about 3 seconds that has a line which says something about vanilla being the finest of the flavors. As a kid, I would have vehemently disagreed with this, but, as an adult, I'm definitely much closer to agreeing with. I realize that one of the reasons "vanilla" was not good when I was a kid was that most of what was marketed at that time as "vanilla" was simply "absence of chocolate". An ice cream cone from the local "Tastee Freeze" was pretty much milk flavored with some artificial flavoring tossed in. It wasn't even an approximation of vanilla, but rather some sort of flavor that was supposed to enhance the consumption of a cone of white soft serve.

I think that since the days of my ancient childhood (I am all of 47, after all), consumers have gotten more sophisticated about vanilla. The price of vanilla beans would indicate there is some reason to believe that is so. They wouldn't be so expensive if demand were not fairly high. Nestle Japan decided that they were going to go "for real" in this vanilla KitKat bar and the package boasts the inclusion of real vanilla beans and 13% "vanilla paste". I was not sure at all what "vanilla paste" was, but a little research said that it is vanilla beans mixed with a thick sweet syrup made with sugar and a thickener. It's supposed to be good for making ice cream and is used in gourmet cooking. I may be a tad cynical, but I'm guessing this KitKat isn't using the highest quality vanilla bean paste in every bar.

I should note that this purchase was something my husband desired more than me. He's a great fan of white chocolate and I'm decidedly "so-so" on it as I generally find it too sweet. For that reason, I'm going to go with his rating on this bar instead of mine. I will share my impressions, however, since I can't really speak for his taste buds. I can only say that he said, "I really liked it!" I can also say that he ate all but the bite I took for review purposes by himself.

Regarding my feelings, it was, as expected, too sweet. There were nice little black flecks of vanilla beans in the white chocolate and the inner filling was brown (not white) so there wasn't an overload of white chocolate. The wafers were, as always, crispy and satisfying and the extra number of them in a Big Bar were welcome. However, there was a funky flavor to the white chocolate which overpowered any sense of the vanilla beans authenticity. I thought it tasted like chemicals, but it may simply be something about white chocolate that rubbed me the wrong way.

So, for me, this would be an "unhappy sumo" rating as I wouldn't have finished the bar. For my husband, it'd definitely be happy as he ate most of it in one sitting. If you want one, they're at most convenience stores for about 120 yen ($1.44) for now. Fans of really sweet bars should love it. Those like me, perhaps not so much.

KitKat Bitter Strawberry (Big Bar)

When I spied this newest KitKat, I said to myself: "Self, you promised me that you wouldn't buy anymore damn strawberry KitKats because they are, more often than not, cloying and fake... and they aren't really very different. Self, you know that strawberry KitKats are the lazy wankers at Nestle Japan just churning out a minor variation rather than taxing their grey matter." Then, I realize I shouldn't talk to myself so much and buy the damn KitKat anyway because it's only 120 yen ($1.50) and probably won't be in the convenience stores forever. Incidentally, this "conversation" occurred in 7-11, where I bought the bar from an utterly indifferent cashier. The experience nearly brought a tear to my eye. It's  the type of service that one gets back home from teenagers working late shifts.

The first thing I noticed about this big bar was that it has been divided into three sections for better portion control. This made me quite happy since I never eat a whole one at once, and actually tend to eat only one-fourth at a time. This made it easy to divide by snapping it along the pre-scored points. I thought it might break apart in a jagged fashion, but it broke clean. I give Nestle Japan points for good product design.

Unlike some white- and milk-chocolate-based KitKats which are strawberry-flavored, this smells good when you open the package. You get mainly a dark chocolate scent with just a whiff of strawberry as opposed to an overwhelming fake strawberry scent. The truth is that there were two reasons that I gave in on another strawberry version because of the promise of this being dark chocolate and feeling that would cut back on the often overly sweet strawberry flavors. The other reason was that my husband was interested in trying it to so I knew that I wouldn't be responsible for eating it all if it was nasty.

Fortunately, this was a pretty good variant on a KitKat. The Big Bar attributes, like a firm and generous chocolate coating with good snap and plentiful amounts of wafer, were intact and delightful as always. The blend of dark chocolate and strawberry was also well-balanced. So, score a "win" for Nestle in this regard. Note that the dark chocolate is not a high percentage and is more for those who are on the sissy side when it comes to such things. It's not in the least like milk chocolate, but lacks any deep bitterness.

While I can't say that this bar is the end-all and be-all of KitKats, I can say that it quite enjoyable. Dark chocolate lovers who prefer their bitterness on the milder side should give it a shot. I'm not sure that I'd recommend forking over a premium price for this, but I would say it's worth what I paid for it.