d.i.y.-ing Smash!

The great Smash! experiment is over and here are the results. I tried plain CCs (corn, salt, oil) and Nacho Cheese CCs (corn, salt, oil + optional extras), with regular Cadbury milk chocolate and Lindt 70% dark chocolate. In the picture, the bottom row is plain chips with milk chocolate, the next row up is plain chips with dark chocolate, the next row is Nacho Cheese with milk chocolate and the top row is Nacho Cheese with dark chocolate.

I was fully expecting the plain chips with the dark chocolate to come out miles in front, but actually it was miles behind. The salty chips accentuated the bitterness of the chocolate and the overall effect was just nasty. The Nacho Cheese with milk chocolate was the clear winner - it seems the extra salt balances out the extra sugar and vice versa. The milk chocolate on the plain chips was an ok combo, but the chocolate kind of dominated. One problem that I encountered was that the chocolate took quite a long time to dry, and the chips went slightly soft. Then again, that could just be that it's about 300% humidity here today.

Funnily enough, the Nacho Cheese with the milk chocolate suffered the same problem that the real Smash! did - the taste was good but somewhat overwhelming, and I found I just couldn't eat many of them at once. Then again, I could say the same about Mars bars - maybe home-made Smash! just need a mega tv advertising campaign to convince us to ignore our feelings of nausea and keep on eating! Which would explain why the Norwegians love them. In any case, I would say if you can't get the real thing, the homemade variety are a surprisingly good approximation of the real Smash!, and worth trying (in small quantities) if you're stuck inside on a rainy day in the middle of an Australian summer.

Who would've thunk it? Cornchips. Coming to a fondue party near you.