Aerated Chocolate Bars | August 29th, 2011

Posted by Angelene

The trend around the world of aerated chocolate has finally reached America with Hershey’s Air Delight Bar! It’s supposed to be Hershey’s biggest launch in 10 years.
This put it in direct competition with UK’s Aero bar and UK’s Wispa bar.

The first aerated bars hit store shelves in 1935, when Rowntree, (later acquired by Nestle) launched Aero. In 1937, Nestle started selling aerated chocolate under its Cailler brand. Later in the 1930s Rowntree sold aeration machines to rivals such as Lindt & Sprüngli and Van Houten, and in the 1980s confectioners in the Soviet Union started making aerated bars.

Chocolate density can be cut by as much as half by using carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide to make bubbles. If you aerate it tends to be creamier. It’s density is so low it melts very easily, and has a light taste. Because of the added air there is actually less calories per bar, but you still feel like you are getting the entire candy bar experience.

So we thought we better see if our American version could stand up to UK’s Cadbury Wispa and the famous Nestle Aero Bar.

The Hershey package says “The Hershey’s milk chocolate you love gently blended for a light, airy texture that melts effortlessly in your mouth.” If you like the taste of a classic Hershey bar, you will like this bar. It weighs 1.44 ounces as opposed to 1.55 ounces of a normal Hershey chocolate bar—so you are paying for the added air. However, it actually seems like MORE chocolate than the normal bar. You can see the tiny air bubbles when you break it open. It’s softer and it does seem to melt faster than a normal bar.

The same qualities go for the other two bars from the UK, the Nestle Aero and the Cadbury Wispa. We here at Ida Red decided to have a little tasting party – obviously this was completely necessary, so that we can properly advise our customers on these products… (yes, we have the best job in the world.) The main difference we noticed was that the UK bars contained no preservatives or artificial flavors and the Hershey bar could not claim the same. While all 3 bars were good in their own way, the Wispa bar was our favorite out of the 3. The milk chocolate taste in the Wispa made it the winner although the Aero was a close second with the best texture and the biggest size of bar. The Hershey bar was good, but more waxy and more of an unnaturally sweet flavor than their UK competitors.

Of course, you can get all 3 of these bars at Ida Red. Those were our thoughts, but you should come in to Ida Red and have a taste test of your own!

Posted in Aerated, Aero, Air Delight, chocolate, Hershey, Wispa,

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2011 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Blog, Candy Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.