An Australian father and son rushed by in a panic, their cart heaped with gifts to take back home. Which one? The company was named for Henry Isaac Rowntree, who bought a small grocery store in York that also operated a cocoa foundry. In the s, the foundry was known for its finely ground rock cocoa, but the business grew quickly into candy- and chocolate-making. The Kit Kat was meant to be plain, unpretentious, cheerful.
The stars of its commercials were often construction workers, cops or commuters taking five hard-earned minutes to enjoy a moment of sweetness in an otherwise bleak day. Since , sales in Japan have increased by about 50 percent. There are three ways for a new Japanese Kit Kat flavor to make its way into the world. The marketing team may also build a partnership with a brand, like Tokyo Banana, the locally famous cream-filled cakes on which the Kit Kat flavor is based, then ask a product-development team to experiment so they can bring a sample bar to the pitch meeting.
Or the product-development teams themselves may feel inspired on a late night in the test kitchen after one too many cups of green tea and vending-machine sweets. Only the fanciest bars are devised by Takagi, made with higher-grade chocolates and other ingredients, like dehydrated seasonal fruits, and sold in Kit Kat Chocolatory stores, the boutique-like shops for luxury versions of the bar.
In some cases, they are decorated like plated desserts at a fine-dining restaurant, the Kit Kat logo entirely hidden by tiny, delicate, colorful crunchies, or individually wrapped like a gift — a single Kit Kat finger in a crinkly plastic wrapper, tucked inside a box.
He wanted, as he put it, to make Kit Kats for grown-ups, like the Chocolatory Sublime Bitter, a long, cigarillo-like bar of 66 percent dark chocolate, packaged in black and gold.
What it found was that the strawberry Kit Kat was especially popular among tourists, both Japanese tourists and those from abroad. Subsequent market tests suggested that Kit Kat had potential not just as a candy but as a kind of Japanese souvenir.
The company looked to Kobe, Tokyo, Kyoto and other cities and wondered how to develop a chocolate for each that consumers might associate with the places themselves. The Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat, which would go on sale in mid-October, would be sold right alongside the real Kikyou shingen mochi at souvenir shops and in service areas along the Chuo Expressway, a major four-lane road more than miles long that passes through the mountainous regions of several prefectures, connecting Tokyo to Nagoya.
With any luck, people would associate the Kit Kat with the traditional sweet and snap it up as a souvenir. But for this to be a success, for Kit Kat to expand into the souvenir market, consumers would have to believe that Kit Kat, originally a British product, was Japanese, and that although it was manufactured in a factory far away, it somehow represented the very essence of a region.
Before I could enter the Kasumigaura factory, northeast of Tokyo, I had to zip up an all-white coverall and place a white plastic skullcap under a hard white helmet, tucking in all of my hair. I had to wrap the exposed skin of my neck in a white scarf. Afterward, side by side, we sticky-rolled our entire bodies for dust and lint and eyelashes and any other invisible debris that might still have been clinging to our clothes, to avoid contaminating the chocolate. It smelled strongly of cocoa and toasted almonds on the other side of the doors.
Iwai assured me that this scent changed daily, often more than once a day, according to what was being made. He also warned me not to run, because I might slip in my new shoes. Wafers were the beginning of the line, the beginning of every single Kit Kat. I stood mesmerized for a few minutes under an archway of uncut wafers, like edible golden window panes, which were being cooled by ambient air before they reached an actual cooler.
I heard almost nothing Iwai said over the sharp clanging and drone of the machinery. The factory is large and open, loud and clean, its production lines totally transparent.
But the wafers had been baked out of sight, most likely between engraved, molded plates. Now they looked like thin, delicate altar breads, floating above us. They formed a continuously moving line, the sheets traveling up and curving toward pumps of cream in the distance. What makes a Kit Kat a Kit Kat? A few people said it was the logo itself, in big blocky letters, embossed on the top of each bar.
Wafers are an art form within the food industry. Not that he knew exactly what it was. The wafer was the corporate secret, the heavily guarded soul of the Kit Kat. But like many lightweight, low-fat industrial wafers, the Kit Kat wafer is, very likely, mostly air and gelatinized wheat flour.
It is crisp but not brittle. Crunchy but not dense. It is fragile but still satisfying to bite into. It is totally and alarmingly dry to the touch, like packing material. Plain, the wafer is almost but not entirely tasteless.
It has a very gentle sort of toastiness, barely there, but with an almost bready flavor. A sort of toast ghost. Not that it matters. The company recycles these substandard wafers as local animal feed. The good wafers — smooth, intact, deeply and evenly embossed — move along the line.
They are covered with cream, then sandwiched with another wafer and more cream. The arms of a huge, gentle machine with extraordinary fine-tuned motor functions do all the work of building the Kit Kat, smoothing the cream and pressing the wafer on top of it, then pass the large, sheet-cake-size sandwiches along a slow conveyor belt through a massive cooler. On the molding line, the chocolate depositor fills empty Kit Kat molds with tempered chocolate, and the fingers are dropped in and covered with more chocolate.
A scraper removes excess chocolate and smooths the surface. When the chocolate is cooled, the bars are popped out and whipped through a wrapping machine. The production line was a barely interrupted blur of white, like dotted lines rushing by on the highway, becoming indistinguishable from one another.
I learned that Kit Kats were slightly, subtly different all over the world. In the United States, Hershey uses nonfat milk and milk fat, while in Japan, the factories work with whole-milk powder.
Almost everything changes, but the wafers? The wafers never change. The wafers have a fixed standard that needs to be maintained, and deviations are not acceptable. Standing beneath the fresh, moving wafers, I asked Iwai if I could hold one, as if it were a newborn, and I did not expect him to let me. But he reached into the line and pulled one out, passing it toward me with two hands.
All I knew was that the wafer was huge, golden, marked with square cups and totally weightless. That if this was the soul of a Kit Kat, then holding the soul of a Kit Kat was like holding nothing at all. Kikyouya, originally a small, family-run sweet shop that specialized in kintsuba , a Japanese sweet filled with red-bean paste, has been making shingen mochi since the late s. Before I knew this, I ate shingen mochi in my hotel room, as Tokyo was being soaked by the outermost edges of a passing typhoon.
With my first bite, I sent a little cloud of roasted soybean powder into the air and coughed with surprise. The rice cakes were soft, chewy, delicious. And where the brown-sugar syrup trapped the powder, it turned into a gorgeous caramel sludge. Tomoko Ohashi was the lead developer on the Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat. It was more like a real pastry kitchen, full of dehydrated fruit powders and matcha organized in tubs, chocolate molds and serrated knives and a marble counter for tempering chocolate.
The challenge with shingen mochi, Ohashi said, was finding the balance between the soybean powder and the syrup. Because the sweet is so adaptable, everyone who eats it calibrates it obsessively, adjusting the ingredients so it tastes the way they like.
Ohashi started work on the new flavor last September, and she finished it in May. In tests, she would make about 50 pieces of four to five different versions by hand, tempering chocolate on the marble table, and then taste them side by side, looking for the right balance of soybean powder to sugar syrup. Did the sticky rice in the Kit Kat help to mimic the mochi texture? After all the testing, Ohashi concentrated all the flavorings in the cream filling: the sticky rice as well as soybean powder and brown-sugar syrup.
The bars went on sale on Oct. Standing in the test kitchen, I unwrapped the new flavored Kit Kat and broke into it with a crack. The bar was a mini, two tiny connected ingots. On my way, I stopped for lunch at a small noodle restaurant and sat by the window, eating a pile of salted plums. I could see busloads of tourists filing out in the parking lot, their floppy hats secured with strings, their shirts wet with sweat.
They were fruit hunters. Yamanashi is green, dense with red pine and white oak forest and beautifully kept orchards that cut deep into its slopes.
Fruit hunters pay to eat as much ripe, seasonal fruit as they like in a short span of time. Say, 30 minutes of thin-skinned peaches, or fat pink grapes, or strawberries, warmed from the sun, dipped into pools of sweetened condensed milk.
Fruit hunters travel to eat the fruit on site, right off the trees, in their allotted time. When the concept was explained to me, I thought the time limit seemed embarrassing. It was practical, it was beautiful and it acknowledged that souvenirs were, like memories, at best only approximations of the moments they represented.
That it was, in fact, completely impossible to remove a taste from its origin without changing it in the process. The Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat was smooth to the touch, shiny. It had a brilliant, crumbless snap, which gave way to a pure white chocolate and caramel flavor and a lightly savory note. It was sweet, it was good. It was in balance. And it recalled fresh Kikyou shingen mochi, vaguely, like a memory gone soft around the edges.
She has won two James Beard Foundation awards for restaurant criticism. Not the boutiques or cosmetics counters, no duty-free sunglasses and designer perfumes for me. No, the pressing calculus as I make my way to baggage claim is driven by drugstores, kiosks, supermarkets and vending machines.
As with breakfast foods, I believe candy is often tastier the less expensive it is. I like my confections approachable. Shot through with a skosh of hoi polloi-ishness. Wrappers with cartoon mascots are promising. So is branding that testifies to soccer hooliganism as a respectable pastime.
If a wan man in a toque has ever loomed over the thing with tweezers, no matter how storied its provenance, I would enjoy its bootleg cousin more. Russian bulk-candy bins are feasts for the eyes, with trillions of variations on the individually wrapped chocolate bonbon.
The art direction on each tiny canvas is a marvel, featuring oil-painted landscapes, shiny-eyed squirrels, polar bears and swans — even the occasional camel. The thumb-size rectangular one, featuring a startled-looking infant in a babushka, is my favorite. British Smarties beat American Smarties, because candy-coated chocolate buttons are superior to chalky pressed pills; of the former, the orange taste delicious.
Any flavor of Ritter Sport is crucial whenever you can find one milk-chocolate cornflake in particular. The green Haribo gummy frog is peach not apple common misconception ; clear gummy bears are the best bears. Hi-Chews lay waste to any other fruit taffy experience.
Milkita melon is a singular delight — creamy honeydew drops — while Kasugai gummies in mango, muscat grape, lychee and yuzu in that order are a necessary part of any convenience-store run in Tokyo. When it comes to the United States, my opinions are more calcified. Red Vines over Twizzlers. Hands down. Milk chocolate over dark; white is not right, and the only correct way to eat a Kit Kat is to nibble off the enrobed edges and pry the wafer layers apart.
Fight me. Candy is controversial. As with a beloved sports team, your affinities and fealties have been ingrained since your prelinguistic days. Such innate belief systems defy reasoning.
How else could you explain how Circus Peanuts are still a going concern? Or those gnarly monstrous mint-leaf gel slices, the dial-up internet of candy? But no matter your brand, it will always deliver similar things: the rose-tinted pleasure of nostalgia, a brief respite from adulthood and, well, whatever else it is that sugar does for morale.
Despite all our differences, candy speaks to a fundamentally shared humanity; we like a lot of the same stuff. Most of us have some version of Fun Dip. Or Pop Rocks. Fruit leather. Bodegas, newsstands, dagashiyas and tuck shops rarely require selfie sticks. That in and of itself should inspire fondness and warmth. As a Korean kid who grew up in a former British colony, I might not ever be able to go home.
Mary H. As she passed out paper bowls, Beth Kimmerle smiled broadly at the dozen or so employees of Long Grove Confectionery Company seated around the conference table. Each bowl contained a slightly misshapen caramel of unknown origin. What do you notice about its appearance? She turned to a graphic designer. It was, in fact, caramel-colored, but Kimmerle, a year-old native Chicagoan who has written four books on candy and helps companies develop new recipes, was after something more specific.
Other suggestions included buttery, burnt, caramel — language that Kimmerle approved. Now she was ready to move on to flavor. She told everyone to write down any words that came to mind, whether they were one of the five basic tastes or any of the trillions of aromas the nose can detect.
Everything else is a texture or an aroma, a volatile, airborne scent. The folks at Long Grove were tasting the candy, but now their task was to describe its flavor, which exists at the intersection of taste, aroma and even feeling like the burning heat of a chile or the icy chill of menthol. Confusion radiated from their faces.
The tasters began taking tiny bites and closing their eyes, chewing intently and rolling the caramel around on their tongues. Just swish with water and try again. Someone let out an audible sound of delight. Everyone in the room laughed uncomfortably. Yet it did make a certain amount of sense.
As children, we learn the names of all sorts of shapes, colors and sounds. But when it comes to the way things smell or taste, the only language we ever hear is qualitative — good and bad, yummy and yucky, delicious and disgusting. And in adulthood, we learn that taking the time to describe the things we eat and drink is the pretentious domain of foodies and wine snobs going on and on about flavor profiles and horse-sweat bouquets.
Once you start trying, you notice how difficult it is to assign language to taste and smell. The sense of taste is simultaneously public, because we come together to eat; and private, because we must put food inside our bodies in order to taste it. This paradox creates tension. Your experience of flavor is unique and unspoken; the mere act of describing it entails exposing something incredibly intimate.
What if you share a bar of chocolate with a loved one and describe how it tastes, only to discover your companion disagrees? I struggled to assign her much credibility. I learned to taste from chefs who trained in the finest restaurants in France and Italy. Kimmerle received her Sensory Expert certification after taking an online course from the Institute of Food Technologists.
Could she really know more about how to taste than I did? It makes sense that, within an industrial setting, the primary value of sensory evaluation is consistency.
But why should nonprofessional tasters care about slowing down to describe the experience of eating candy? Come back and tell me about it tomorrow. They just drink and eat. So they learn, and they learn to appreciate. The point of candy is joy — pure, unadulterated joy. In fact, matters of taste are highly personal, and often colored by past experience. Both genetics and childhood exposure shape our earliest culinary preferences. And for adults, nostalgia — a literal longing for home — can also affect the flavors toward which we orient ourselves.
Practically all I do professionally, in either capacity, is describe the experience of preparing and eating food. I tend to rely on metaphor — fireworks in my mouth! But sort of like my therapist does, Kimmerle, who was mentored by Fossum, had me set aside what I thought and narrow in on what I felt.
The sensory practice became almost meditative, offering me an entirely new way to experience taste. I wanted to keep practicing.
The next day, Kimmerle suggested we try more varied sweets. We headed out on a tour of international markets near her home north of Chicago. Twenty-five years later, I still had no idea what it might possibly taste like.
We sorted through everything and decided on a tasting order. Just as in a wine or cheese tasting, we wanted to save the strongest-flavored candies until the end to keep our palates from being overwhelmed. We agreed that the aflatoon , probably on the milder side, was a good place to begin. First, we noted the appearance: a speckled slice the color of brown sugar.
Next, we sniffed. Like brown fruit? Or baked notes? Was she posturing? Even once we had tasted the aflatoon , I felt at a loss for words. It could be wheat flour, or almonds. And I still really get the brown fruit. It could be date, date syrup. We tasted the aflatoon again.
I took another bite, this time noticing a gritty texture and the slightest tang as the aflatoon melted away. I started to feel impatient. It tasted like pure citric acid and salt. I looked at the ingredients, surprised to find sugar and a host of artificial colors listed. Neither of us could have identified the presence of either until I rolled another pinch of the powder around on my tongue, searching for a grain of sugar. Each taste was so unbelievably salty that it made me wince with something between discomfort and pain.
Yet my mouth kept watering. Or smiling. Eventually it was time for Pelon Pelo Rico. Pushing up on the base of the tube made the paste move through the holes at the top like noodles. The paste was glossy and brownish-red. We agreed that it smelled like some sort of fruit leather and tasted sweet, salty, with tamarind and chile and a little grit to the texture.
She was right — every single taste bud in my mouth was firing simultaneously. The sensation was utterly delightful. As we made our way through the massive pile of candy, I started to feel more confident about my ability to notice nuances.
We started to move through each evaluation more quickly, easily arriving at consensus. At one point I even wondered, Is this what it feels like to be good at meditation?
Days later, I found myself thinking of that aflatoon again. I looked up recipes for it. Nearly every one called for semolina flour and raisins. Back home in California, I found myself craving tamarind candy, so I went to my own Mexican grocery in search of several varieties, including my new favorite, Pulparindo. On the front of its package was what looked to be a cartoon-character version of the candy: a bar of tamarind paste with a jolly face and a tongue sticking out of its seemingly salivating mouth.
Acid corrodes the enamel on our teeth, so we only need to think about eating something acidic and our mouths will begin to produce saliva to neutralize the acid. Clearly, the Pulparindo guy knows that sour things make our mouths water.
En route home with my haul, I bumped into a couple of friends. I excitedly doled out Pulparindo, certain they would love the salty, spicy, sour, sweet treat as much as I did. They were both suspicious. One carefully opened the wrapper, sniffed the bar and took a minuscule bite before recoiling. He might have even grimaced. Pulparindo bears a striking resemblance to it.
I love biting through the crunchy coating of sugar and citric acid on the way to the gummy center. I love the almost punishing wave of sourness that lingers for a second too long on my tongue.
And yet I remember being a young cook in a fancy restaurant, where admitting that my sweet of choice was chock-full of corn syrup and artificial colors and flavors felt potentially disastrous. The chefs I worked for instructed me to slow down and think about everything I ate, even when it was just a deli sandwich or a slice of pizza or a scoop of ice cream. A version of sensory, though no one would have called it that.
Dutiful young student that I was, I took the time to thoughtfully taste even my secret gummy candy, and for the first time I noticed that the sourness was only on the surface. I realized it was the same granulated white powder I used to can tomatoes: citric acid. What if, I wondered, I added citric acid to the sugar in my next batch? I could make my own natural sour gummy candy! And I did. Recently, I bought a bag of candy — Haribo sour gummy bears, of course — and brought them to my desk to conduct a quick, informal sensory evaluation.
I pulled out one bear of each color: red, clear, yellow, orange and green. Clear, my childhood favorite, was pineapple, tangy and tropical. Yellow was lemon; orange orange. Red was some sort of generic artificial berry.
I fished a second green bear out of the bag. Then a third. I put them in my mouth and let the sour coating dissolve away. Then I chewed. Worldwide, nearly 70 percent of cocoa beans come from Africa, and Ghana is the second-largest producer in the world, with a G.
Even so, Ghana has few producers of actual confections. Cocoa Processing Company Limited in Tema is one of them. Every year, the company says it processes 65, metric tons of cocoa beans, but it also has a line of chocolates and candy bars, including its lemon-flavored Akuafo Bar. Of all the candies in the world, Chupa Chups might have the most famous designer.
Today, the best-selling flavors are strawberry and cola, which happen to be two of the original five, along with mint, lemon and orange. In , a married candy maker named Luisa Spagnoli decided she needed to do something with the leftover nuts at her chocolate factory.
She put a whole hazelnut atop some milk chocolate whipped with chopped nuts and covered it in dark chocolate. The result looked like a fist, so she gave it the name cazzotto, or punch. The two renamed it bacio, or kiss, in Since the s, each piece has come wrapped in words from artists, writers and philosophers, supposedly a nod to the notes the two lovers would secretly pass each other.
These chocolate-covered caramels get their name from the celebrity trivia on their wrappers — quite literally, fan tales. Lokum picked up the nickname Turkish delight when it reached Britain in the middle of the 19th century and, years later, made a cameo in the C.
Though the candies have been a big seller since they were introduced in , even reportedly tying a sales record Coke set when it introduced Coke Zero to the Indian market, the treat might have a harder time in the United States. While the hard-candy exterior has a sweet flavor, the bomb has a sulfur taste that may be a bit too close to rotten eggs for the American palate.
In its year history, the candy has become popular around the world. In , when an incident involving melamine-tainted milk shook China, production shut down for several months to ensure the candy was safe to eat, though in Singapore, consumers were told they could eat 47 pieces daily before experiencing ill effects.
Ten years later, the company makes the candies with only imported milk powder from New Zealand. Born in a San Francisco licorice factory in the s, the twists have been the favorite of moviegoers and kids who like to bite off the ends and make a straw for more than half a century.
The brigadeiro, a fudge truffle, is a classic in Brazil and frequently served at parties. The story goes that the treat gets its name from Brig. Eduardo Gomes, a candidate in the presidential election.
To create your own, make fudge balls by combining sweetened cocoa powder, condensed milk and butter, then top with sugar or sprinkles. Or take inspiration from the hipster versions you can find from New York to Brazil that include pistachios, coconut or matcha.
Back in , a Milwaukee man named John Flaig created a petition asking the company to bring the candy bar to the United States. Savoy, the original candy company behind Cri Cri, was founded by four immigrants in a Caracas garage in One of them, John Miller, had brought a chocolate-making machine with him from Scotland, and they used it to create the Savoy chocolate bar.
Almost 30 years later, the company created a puffed-rice version. In , that candy bar got its own name, Cri Cri, thanks to a formula the founders picked up by talking to friends, neighbors and kids: The name needed to be short and easy to pronounce.
Today Savoy is one of the leading candy companies in Venezuela, and its products are often given in December during Amigo Secreto, which is essentially the Venezuelan version of Secret Santa. Confiteca, the Ecuadorean company behind it, designed it for the extreme palates of Gen Z candy lovers.
The S. What Zuckerlwerkstatt calls rock candy is about as far from the American version as it gets. The round, smooth confections look more like millefiori glass designs from Venice than something you should eat: They include beautiful, tiny sugar depictions of everything from fruit to slogans to company logos.
An Austrian couple, Maria Scholz and Chris Mayer, were on vacation in Sweden when they stumbled on a candy factory and fell in love with candy making. Back home, they sought out artisans who knew the old Austrian way of making hard candy by hand.
In , the couple opened a manufacturing facility in Vienna, producing beautiful candies with as many as 80 layers using only three tools: scissors, spatulas and their bare hands.
A Bon o Bon is a milk-chocolate shell over a crisp wafer filled with a flavored cream. Every day, factories in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil produce 3, of the sweet treats every minute, and 70 percent of production is exported throughout the world. In , the brand helped establish Sweetness Week in Argentina, a clever marketing campaign that encourages candy lovers to exchange confections for kisses. It worked: Candy sales in Argentina rise about 20 percent for a week every July.
Pastillas are popular milk-based candies, originally from San Miguel in the Philippines. In the Bulacan region, the wrappers, called pabalat, have become a bit of an art form with cut-paper designs.
Pastillas are a celebratory candy and are often given for birthdays and weddings. If biting the head off a gummy bear is an odd sensation, consider the act of sinking your teeth into the gummy, powdered, sugarcoated jelly baby, a wee candy shaped like an infant.
According to lore, what a 19th-century candy maker meant to be a jelly bean ended up looking more like a baby, so a confectioner called them unclaimed babies — like the ones frequently left on church steps in the era.
Edinburgh Rock, a confection that looks like a stick of chalk, was invented by a Scotsman known as Sweetie Sandy in the 19th century, when, as the myth goes, he found that old trays of candy developed a pleasingly crumbly texture. But a local businessman named James Anderson stepped in, and Edinburgh Rock is still manufactured in Scotland.
Flavors include peppermint, raspberry, orange, lemon and vanilla. Cadbury has produced the candy in Lagos since Cadbury reigns over the chocolate market in Pakistan; in , Mondelez, its parent company, accounted for 66 percent of sales, in part because of the ultrapopular Dairy Milk chocolate bar. But CandyLand, the biggest candy company in the country, owns half the market for other confections. An animated commercial for the candy has real-life kids swirling animated clouds and rainbows to create the pastel-colored sweet.
The traditional version of gaz, a Persian nougat studded with nuts, gets its sweetness from the excretions of a bug called the tamarisk manna scale, which is found on tamarisk trees in central Iran. Originally, people believed the excretions to be sap because they dried on tree branches. Not so. The candy comes from Isfahan and is made by combining the aforementioned excretions with starch, egg whites and sugar, heating it until it becomes the texture of paste and then stirring in pistachios.
You might not love this Japanese creation but there's a good chance that your mind will be blown. The differences compared to most Kit Kat flavors are numerous. Firstly, instead of finding multiple bars inside of a package, you'll find one big bar.
Secondly, you'll notice almond chunks and cranberry pieces that have been baked into the candy bar. Thirdly, the wafers are made with dark chocolate. That said, at the very worst, you can tell all of your family and friends about the time you tried a luxurious Kit Kat that was unlike any Kit Kat bar that can be found in America.
Raspberry Kit Kat is so marvelous that it's sure to enter your snack rotation. These bars are coated with raspberry chocolate, and to add even more raspberry-powered authenticity, raspberry flecks are added to the mix.
Each fleck represents a burst of honest-to-goodness raspberry flavor. Instead of being sweet like most raspberry candy, Raspberry Kit Kat is a blend of sweet, tart, and bitter — just like real raspberries. It's most widely available around Valentine's Day but you can find it any time of year if you look hard enough. Compared to its Japanese counterpart, the American version is a bit of a letdown; raspberry Creme Kit Kat is too sweet and there are no raspberry flecks.
Additionally, it's tartness level is also lacking. It's not a terrible flavor, mind you, but it's a far cry from the Raspberry Kit Kat bars from Japan. As the name suggests, these Kit Kat bars have been doused with a huge helping of syrup made from brown sugar. Your sweet tooth will instantaneously approve, even if the rest of your mouth is unsure of what to make of it.
The key is the aftertaste. Brown Sugar Syrup Kit Kat has an aftertaste that's reminiscent of tapioca pudding , which offers a helpful reprieve from what would otherwise be a flavor that is too, too sweet.
If you miss the tapioca pudding that your grandmother used to make , buy Brown Sugar Syrup Kit Kat and prepare to be flooded with fond memories of yesteryear.
On the other hand, if you don't like tapioca pudding and you don't have a sweet tooth, move on to another Kit Kat flavor that is higher on this list. Matcha Tiramisu Kit Kat bars are sure to be an adventure for your taste buds. This treat tastes somewhat similar to tiramisu , the extremely popular dessert that has Italian roots. However, there are some important differences between the tiramisu you'll find in America and in Italy and this tiramisu-powered candy bar that was created in Japan.
The most prominent difference is that the coffee in traditional tiramisu has been traded out in favor of green tea. That may sound like a major downgrade but it actually tastes surprisingly good. These Kit Kat bars also feature a mascarpone cream that has a stronger flavor than the mascarpone found in traditional tiramisu.
Despite the differences, all it will take is one bite for you to taste the tiramisu influence. It may not taste just like the tiramisu that you can get at your local family-owned Italian restaurant but it's close enough for you to thoroughly enjoy every last crumb. Many Kit Kat bars don't taste like you might imagine when you first see the name, but that's not a problem with Strawberry Cheesecake Kit Kat.
From the first second you open the wrapper, the aroma of strawberry cheesecake will fill the room. When you put the bar to your lips, you will first taste fresh strawberries. Soon, a cheesecake aftertaste will join the festivities.
By the time you finish this snack, you'll be convinced that you ate a slice of real, genuine strawberry cheesecake. It's basically the same concept except that the bars were made to be kept cool in a refrigerator. Either one you pick, you can't go wrong. That said, if you fail to keep Chilled Strawberry Cheesecake Kit Kat in the fridge, the outer coating will totally melt.
For that reason, the Strawberry Cheesecake Kit Kat is a safer bet. If the thought of chocolate covered bananas is enough to make you drool, hurry up and order Banana Caramel Kit Kat from Japan.
This treat is even better than it sounds: Imagine perfectly ripe bananas topped with rich caramel, lined with crispy wafers, and then covered with a thick layer of semi-sweet chocolate. It's truly a magical combination. How does this candy taste so much like banana and caramel? Well, for starters, the wafers in these Kit Kat bars are flavored with both banana and caramel.
Then, between the wafers, there's a layer of chocolate that has also been infused with banana and caramel. The only thing that isn't blessed with banana and caramel is the chocolate on the outside of the Kit Kat bar. Banana Caramel Kit Kat is the best tropical flavor of them all. Even if you think most banana-flavored candy is disgusting, give this Kit Kat flavor a try and you'll be beyond pleased with your decision.
Dark Chocolate Kit Kat is an optimal choice for picky snackers who crave richness instead of sweetness. To be fair, these bars have some sweetness, but only enough to counterbalance the natural bitterness of the dark chocolate. Even if you shy away from most dark chocolate candy because you're scared of it being too bitter, buy these Kit Kat bars with confidence.
Yes, there is some bitterness at play but it's not harsh at all. In fact, compared to other flavors, you'll be impressed by the creaminess of the chocolate. You need to be aware that Japan also makes a version of Kit Kat that's coated with dark chocolate. It has a similar name and it looks the same but these are not the bars that you want. They're so brutally bitter that you may be forced to dip each bar into a glass of milk to be able to eat it without gagging.
While the previously mentioned Hojicha Tea Kit Kat is entirely forgettable, don't let that flavor cause you to give up on all tea-powered Kit Kat bars. Specifically, Matcha Green Tea Kit Kat is spectacular and it's a flavor you will remember for the rest of your days. If green tea is your beverage of choice, you'll be blown away by how amazing this candy bar tastes. This Kit Kat flavor doesn't use just any green tea; matcha is a type of green tea from Japan that's really expensive but you'll find that it's worth every penny.
Once you try matcha, all other green teas will pale in comparison. Matcha Green Tea Kit Kat has white chocolate that has been infused with matcha green tea. The texture of the white chocolate is outstanding and the taste is stunningly authentic.
There's enough sweetness to remind you that you're eating a treat but not so much sweetness that it interferes with the legendary matcha flavor. White Creme Kit Kat doesn't appear to be too exciting at first, but you'd be unwise to judge this book by its cover.
These white bars don't look like much but you'll soon be convinced that they wholeheartedly deserve this lofty spot on this list.
Think of this treat as the white chocolate version of original Kit Kat bars and you'll know basically what to expect. The white chocolate flavor is light yet delicious. The best part, though, is the wafer. White Creme Kit Kat allows the wafer flavor and texture to steal the spotlight and you won't be disappointed with the result. If the wafer is your favorite part of a Kit Kat bar, this is the flavor you should purchase again and again.
Note: This Kit Kat flavor is best served cold so store them in your refrigerator. If you're short on time, pop them in the freezer for a little while before you begin munching. There's a lot to adore about Peach Parfait Kit Kat. In fact, you shouldn't be shocked if this ends up being one of your personal favorite Kit Kat flavors.
First of all, these Kit Kat bars are a beautiful shade of pink. Second of all, even though there are no actual peach pieces in it, the peach flavor is fresh and crisp. Thirdly, there's a yogurt-like flavor that mixes splendidly with the peach flavor and makes it taste like you're really eating a peach parfait. Last but not least, the wafer is extra crunchy. Add it all together and Peach Parfait Kit Kat is a winner. The tanginess from the peach and the sweetness from the yogurt makes this a Kit Kat flavor that you will never grow tired of eating.
The only thing you need to keep in mind is that these bars tend to melt a little faster than other flavors, so don't be bashful about gobbling them down in a hurry. Kit Kat fans clamored for years for a mint-flavored option, as it's a marriage that made way too much sense to not be a thing in real life. Mint-flavored Kit Kat bars were delectable in theory, and in reality, they're even better than you can possibly imagine.
The bottom half of these bars are expertly dipped in dark chocolate that is extra rich. The top half is blessed with a generous amount of mint creme. The dark chocolate has the perfect amount of bitterness to allow the mint flavor to shine.
If you love sour snacks, you owe it to yourself to try Lemon Crisp Kit Kat bars at some point before you're six feet under the dirt.
These things are glorious, and unlike many of the flavors on this list, they're available in the United States. The bars aren't so sour that they'll make your tongue hurt but there's enough sourness to keep you on your toes. To stop the sour flavor from dominating, these Kit Kat bars also feature the right amount of sweetness. That said, if you're worried that they'll be too sour for your delicate palate, go ahead and buy the Lemon Crisp miniatures.
Of all the Kit Kat flavors, this is by far the lightest and the most refreshing. If it's a hot summer afternoon and you just need a little snack to keep you going, reach for a Lemon Crisp Kit Kat bar. Japan has their own lemon-powered Kit Kat that's saltier. It's decent but can't hold a candle to the American version. While the wide array of Kit Kat flavors are a fun and yummy distraction, the original Kit Kat flavor is unquestionably the best of the best. Even if you spend years taste-testing all the flavors of Kit Kat under the sun, you will undoubtedly circle back around to where your journey began.
The original flavor isn't just the best Kit Kat flavor, it's one of the very best candy bars you will ever find. If you've never had the pleasure of eating an original Kit Kat, this sweet treat is basically wafers lovingly wrapped in milk chocolate. Flavor-wise, the scrumptious milk chocolate and the flavorful wafer will win you over in a matter of seconds.
The texture is also worth writing home about, as the crunch you experience when you bite into an original Kit Kat is part of what makes this snack so memorable. Go ahead and try as many Kit Kat flavors as you can get your hands on. However, once your taste buds demand that you locate the best Kit Kat flavor, return to the original where it all started. Wasabi Facebook. Cough Drop Facebook.
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