Candy Review: Cadbury Crunchie

Friday, July 11, 2008 - by Laurie

I live in Canada, where it’s a fact of life that many aspects of our culture are borrowed from our neighbors to the South – our TV shows, our chain restaurants, our food brands. And for the most part, we’re cool with that. The only problem is, we don’t get all of those things – just whatever sells well enough in the United States to be worth importing. (Vanilla Coke, Wild Cherry Pepsi, I miss you guys! Come back!)

So, when I got into this whole Internet candy thing a year or two ago, I was surprised to learn that many of my childhood candy staples like Coffee Crisp and Aero are not sold in the United States and, what’s more, they have legions of rabid American fans exchanging the addresses of obscure import grocery stores that carry the elusive candies – candies that are available at any gas station here in Canada. I’m too polite to say “Turnabout is fair play” – I am Canadian, after all – so instead, I’ll get right to today’s candy: the Cadbury Crunchie bar.

The Crunchie bar is technically of British origin, but it’s widely available here in Canada. (In the States, not so much.) Behind its extremely generic name, the Crunchie is actually pretty unique. It’s based on a traditional candy called sponge toffee, honeycomb, or cinder toffee, which is made by adding baking soda to molten sugar, causing the sugar to expand in a froth of bubbles. Once cooled, the foam becomes a light, airy, crunchy treat. It can be eaten plain or, as is the case with the Crunchie, coated in chocolate.

The Crunchie is a pretty bar, with its glossy brown exterior and a varicolored interior that ranges from pale yellow on the outer edges to a golden caramel-brown in the center. While traditional sponge toffee has a coarse, large-bubbled texture (and a tendency to cut up the inside of your mouth a little if you eat it too fast), the Crunchie’s center is quite dense with very small bubbles. It has a light crispness that provides an excellent contrast to the softness of the chocolate coating. The toffee’s mild burnt sugar and baking soda tang (a lot better than it sounds) is largely masked by the chocolate’s sweetness, but it does add dark, rich, tangy undertones to what would otherwise be a very sweet treat.

If you can’t get Crunchie bars in your area (and that, in my opinion, is a crying shame), you have a few other options. Some boutique candymakers sell sponge toffee, and a bar similar to the Crunchie, the Violet Crumble), is popular in Australia. Or, if you’re handy in the kitchen, you could always try making your own chocolate covered honeycomb). Of course, if you’ve got a spare case of Wild Cherry Pepsi kicking around, I know where you can find a certain Canadian who might just be willing to trade….

• Crunchie website

Buy Crunchie Online:

• at Candy Crate
• at Candy Direct
• at Amazon.com