With the outrageous amount of junk food consumed by me, my roommates, my suitemates and, judging by the constant half-empty state of the rack of candy in the dining hall, the rest of the students living on campus during this past week, finals week should probably be renamed "gain-five-pounds" week to reflect the inevitable realities resulting from our sudden change in diet.
During what other time of the year would it be acceptable to eat chocolate covered shortbread cookies at two-thirty in the morning? Or have microwaveable mac and cheese for dinner with a hearty helping of chocolate, candy, and Candy Cane Joe-Joes for dinner every night for five nights in a row?
The tendency to stress-binge on junk foods was not helped by the fact that Brownie Day, Pastry Day, and Decorate-Your-Own-Cupcake Day were all celebrated consecutively in the dining halls this week either.
While my horrible eating habits will undoubtedly catch up with me before long, the bright side of having the stress of studying for finals to use as constant justification for some not-so-great food choices I have been making lately is that I have been able to experiment and try some pretty interesting variations of my favorite junk foods that I probably would never have picked up otherwise.
The people at the dining hall must have been able to read my mind because right after I mentally chose Reese's Peanut Butter Cup-related candies as my junk food theme for the week, I began to see at least one new variation in the candy racks every day. Way to encourage the candy consumption, Summit!
After the disappointing experience with the "NEW!" Reese's Whipps bar, I wasn't sure how much I would like the three other variations of one of my favorite classic candies that I picked up from the dining hall over the course of the week.
The first bar I picked up was the Reese's "NutRageous" bar:
The name of the bar was pretty corny, but I had fun using the expression, "THAT'S NUTRAGEOUS!" for days after I bought and consumed the bar, so the name rates pretty highly on the awesome-o-meter.
The bar itself received mixed reactions from me. I really liked the contrast of the hard peanuts and the soft peanut butter center in the bar, but the chocolately coating on the bar reminded me of the sub-par "artificial" chocolate taste of the coating on the Whipps bar and kind of ruined the awesomeness of the peanut buttery experience for me.
I also thought that the bar was too crumbly and all the bits of the chocolatey coating, specks of the peanut butter filling, and at times, even entire peanut halves, that fell onto my desk in between bites really annoyed me; eating a chocolate bar at midnight while pretending to go over notes about the similarities and differences of the American and French Revolutions was still a shameful thing to do, even during finals week, and hard evidence of the act was not appreciated by me.
Next on my list was the Kit-Kat look-a-like, ReeseSticks:
While I have never been a big fan of Kit-Kats, I have always loved the dark chocolate covered Kit-Kat-like wafer stubs in the assorted boxes of Belgian chocolate covered cookies that always seem to be lying around my house during the holiday season.
The combination of dry wafers and grainy chocolate that make up a Kit-Kat bar has never been very appetizing to me, though watching the 90's commercials for Kit-Kats with the catchy jingle always used to make me smile.
Since I expected the ReeseSticks to be just like Kit-Kats, but with the addition of a thin layer of peanut butter in between a few of the wafers, I did not have high expectations for the bar.
When I opened the package, however, I was pleasantly surprised by the two, rather large, unconnected chocolate covered wafer sticks sitting neatly in the cardboard box waiting for me.
One of the most annoying things about Kit-Kats, in my opinion, is having to break the thin wafer sticks apart by hand; the heat of my hands always ends up melting some of the cheap chocolate and the mess it creates is annoying when there isn't a sink with soap for clean-up nearby.
The next surprise came when I bit into one of the wafer sticks; instead of the dry, tasteless wafers waiting inside every Kit-Kat bar, the moist combination of sweet peanut butter went perfectly with the crisp, thin wafers in the ReeseStick and the layer of chocolate (that actually tasted like chocolate!) completed the taste experience and made the perfect, crunchy combo even better.
I ended up really liking the bar and when I was finished with the package, I found myself wishing that there were more than two sticks in each pack. The only complaint I had about ReeseSticks was that the chocolate coating felt kind of greasy, but I would take greasy-feeling chocolate over artificial-tasting chocolate any day.
The last variation of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup that I picked up from the dining hall (before my conscience started screaming at me and forcing me toward the salad bar) was the Resse's FastBreak bar:
The wrapper said that the bar was a combination of nougat and Reese's peanut butter covered in chocolate, so I expected the bar to taste a little something like a Milky Way bar with peanut butter inside.
When I opened the wrapper, I thought that the bar looked a little like a Milky Way bar, but when I bit into it, I realized that the FastBreak bar tasted
just like a Snickers bar, minus the caramel (which I wouldn't miss) and the crunchy chew of the peanut halves; since Snickers rank pretty highly on my list of favorite candy bars of all time, I absolutely loved the FastBreak bar.
Out of all of the variations of the classic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup that I have tried recently, the FastBreak bar is probably the only one that I would realistically consider reaching for in the candy rack of a convenience store when the "must-have-chocolate-and-peanut-butter" craving hits; of course, the classic peanut butter cups would always be my first choice!
