Reese’s Pieces With Pretzel

Reese’s has been experimenting on their tried and tested formula of their cups as well as pieces for a while, but it seems like they’ve caught my eye in more recent years with some interesting (and not so interesting) combinations. Pretzel seems like one of the former, as its not an entirely new concept, but somewhat uncommon to see inside a chocolate candy. Chocolate coated pretzels aren’t quite the same thing either. These seem like something else entirely.

These smell like your typical Reese’s pieces – it’s got that candy peanut butter smell to it. Biting into these, you kind of expect a peanut to be in the centre. Instead, you are met with a pretzel. It’s kind of wacky for the brain, especially since the pretzel has a texture that seems not too far off from a crisp candied peanut. Obviously the big difference here is a pretzel would be hollow whereas the peanut would be solid, but it starts off fooling the brain.

The flavour is the classic Reese’s peanut butter chocolate filling that strikes that perfect balance of sweet, salty and nutty. The pretzel doesn’t add much in the way of flavour which is for the best, since it’s hard to improve on something that’s already so iconic and tasty. It does add a little bit of saltiness to it, but nothing out of the ordinary. The original peanut butter chocolate filling already had a bit of that salt to give it a more rounded flavour, so nothing out of the blue here.

Texture is where things get wild. It takes you for a ride, but a fun ride that doesn’t make you regret taking it by making you all nauseous. The little pieces of pretzels have a crisp crunch and snap to it, but they are hollow. This emulates part of the peanut experience where you get that initial crunch, but where things diverge is the pretzel has a clean snap and finish. So unlike peanuts where there’s a bit of aftertaste and it leaves a bit of mushy mass behind as you keep chewing, the pretzel finishes clean and melts away very quickly, leaving your mouth relatively crisp and wanting more. A random thought popped into my head as I was consuming these – what would it be like to munch on a peanut that was hollowed out? Something tells me it wouldn’t be nearly as tasty as this combination though.

All I can really say is that these are really addictive and I want more. I’m a little surprised how much I like these. And concerned. Surprised and concerned, what a wonderful combination – just like these.