Working with the Kit Kat Caramel

Good evening, foodies. Tonight I'm here to help you in the critical Sunday evening hours when you plan out your food for the upcoming workweek. Let's skip the sandwich fodder and head straight to the good stuff known as dessert.

Lunchbox desserts have to be two things: portable and quick to eat. The portability is a no-brainer. You can't take a meringue pie because of all the jostling it will encounter on your way to the office -- or because of the jostling at the office, if you happen to have excessively nosy coworkers. The quick-to-eat factor is important because you need something that can be scarfed down if you dawdled too long during the main course, leaving you with only minutes to finish your meal before punching back on the clock.

So tonight we'll talk about candy bars, one of my favorite subjects. Frequent readers know I love to review candy. You'll also note that I have a soft spot for looking at new twists on classic chocolate concoctions. Hence tonight's review of the Kit Kat Caramel.

Let me tell you up front that you won't have to give anyone a break of your Kit Kat Caramel. I've always shied away from bringing Kit Kats to work because of the old TV commercials that showed construction workers sharing their candy. It might be selfish of me, but I don't want to give coworkers my dessert. It's nothing personal -- I'll gladly lend part of my sandwich if someone forgot his or her own. I just think a person should be able to enjoy the entirety of his or her dessert without someone singing an admittedly catchy jingle as a means of begging for sugar.

Those of you who think like me will be glad to find out that the Kit Kat Caramel is one not-easily-broken jumbo-sized Kit Kat piece much like the "Big Kat" bar that graces many gas stations. It's easy to unwrap and easy to eat, but it does lack some of the piece-by-piece interactiveness of the original.

The new bar is essentially a magnified Kit Kat with one caveat: A layer of caramel sits in a chocolate-walled chamber above the ever-present crispy wafer. Graphics on the bar's wrapper show this caramel to be present in epic quantities. In reality it's more like a novella.

That's no bad thing, though. The sweet caramel could easily overpower the classic wafer crunch and creamy chocolate of the Kit Kat if it were more prevalent. The current level of caramel is just about right, adding a refreshing new twist to an old favorite.

One thing that bears mentioning about the "Big Kat" size versus the traditional Kit Kat is that the large version seems to contain extra milk chocolate. It doesn't upset the all-important flavor scales, but it is noticeable. I rather like it, in fact.

In the end I'd say the Kit Kat Caramel is aptly named -- the "caramel" definitely takes a back seat to the "Kit Kat." It doesn't alchemize an entirely new candy, instead adding a new spin to an old favorite. Four out of five sporks. It works for me.

Hopefully it will work for you this week while you're at work.