Passing the Taste Test!

Having been in the States now for almost 2 years we've often been asked by UK and US friends alike how the chocolate/candy bar selection compares. In the interest of celebrating cultural differences and for a fun way to spend yesterday evening while Mark's sister, Amy is visiting, we thought we would investigate further!!

Being true Brits and knowing that we couldn't be convinced otherwise we steered clear of any kind of chocolate bar that was just Hershey's (sorry to our American friends ... it was just never going to make it an enjoyable evening for us if they'd been included!!). However while standing at the cash register in Walmart yesterday morning we still managed to pick up quite a selection!

As you can see above, once Abigail was asleep, Mark was all ready to go!! We decided to score each bar according to 4 criteria; quality of the chocolate, texture, presentation and overall. All three of us rated each of these from 1-3; 1=yuck, 2=ok, 3=yum ... and then we worked out final calculations which gave each bar an overall score out of a maximum of 9 points!! (You can see we took this process very seriously!)

A small piece of each one was given to each 'judge' and where necessary Mark did the honours chopping them into bite-sized pieces! We also had an independent adjudicator, Naomi, to check the quality of what we were eating and that it was a fair test ;o) (She was independent given that she was unable to try any herself just yet!!)

Some of the bars had different variations ... for example we tried Snickers, Snickers Almond and Snickers Peanut Butter and others we tried as we hadn't hear of that flavour before, like the Coconut M and M's! There were lots that were completely new to us like the two Jenny is holding below ... a 'Thingamajig' and a 'Whatchamacallit'!

We definitely had some favourites and some we REALLY didn't like ... I think the faces below say it all!! ... along with the a few bits of leftover chocolate, that after one bite were just too much!!

There were chocolate bars that are supposedly the same ... Twix, Snickers and Kitkat which taste very different from one side of the pond to the other (It's all about the chocolate unfortunately!) ... and the US Milky Way tastes like a UK Mars and the UK Milky Way tastes like a US 3 Musketeers! It certainly was an interesting taste experience and after about an hour the final one had been tasted and the scores were in ...

We tried 17 in all and for those of you who know what we're talking about here they are, in reverse order (of course!!) ... the maximum score was 9 ...

• Coconut M and M's - 3.75
• Butterfinger - 4
• Snickers Almond - 4.25
• 3 Musketeer Truffle Crisp - 4.5
• Kitkat - 4.75
• Thingymajig - 4.75
• Twix - 5
• Almond Joy - 5.5
• Snickers - 5.5
• 3 Musketeers - 5.5
• Reeses Mini PB Cups - 5.75
• Turtles - 6
• Snickers Peanut Butter - 6.25
• Milky Way - 6.5
• Whatchamacallit - 6.75
• York - 8.25
• Payday - 8.33

The top two were clear winners over the rest of the selection ... in fact Jenny and Amy were later found fighting over the remaining bites of Payday, the winning bar!!

The remaining pile of wrappers and uneaten goodies tell the tale of a very amusing evening!! If you're living in a different country from 'home' and things like these are all new and a little strange ... we can recommend putting them through the taste test as a good evenings entertainment!!