I’ve reviewed a couple of the new Ghirardelli panned chocolate items, but up until now they’ve been pretty standard items. I was intrigued enough with the description of the new Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Spiced Almond to pick them up.

The perfect snack to satisfy your craving for crunchy nuts and smooth chocolate ... with a little spice.

I liked the package. It’s very easy to understand, the images on the front and back are appealing, clear and not too fussy. But mostly I appreciated that the nutrition label and ingredients are easy to read. The ingredients list the allergens in bold, as well as noting them at the end of the list and it was all in a typeface that was large enough for me to read without glasses.

The ingredients are pretty clean with no artificial flavors or colors. They even helpfully list out what the spices are: cinnamon, allspice and cayenne. Instead of just mixing the spices into the chocolate to create something slightly gritty, Ghirirdelli instead made a spiced toffee glaze for the almonds before panning them in chocolate.

These remind me of the Lindt Holiday Almonds that come out seasonally, but are also coated with powdered sugar.

The almonds are big and glossy. They don’t smell of spice, just a light sweet dairy note. They have a great crunch if you bite them. The glaze is crispy and the almond are tougher and have a substantial crunch. The chocolate is soft and combines readily with the elements. It’s all a bit sweet, even with the neutral almonds to balance it out. The glaze has a generous touch of the spices, with quite a bit of cayenne that builds up slowly until there’s a light burn after about five or six.

I didn’t care for the how sweet they were, maybe I just wanted a smidge of salt in them or a darker milk chocolate. But they are less sweet than the Lindt sister confection, so I’ll take that as progress. I have to say that if this trend of mixing the textures of a glazed nut with chocolate takes off, there are a lot of variations that could be quite delectable. The best that I’d tried to date would be the Sconza 70% Toffee Almonds.

Ghirardelli is owned by Lindt & Sprungli. They don’t have a lot on their website about the sourcing of their cacao except for a statement that they’re in compliance with the California transparency act and then point you to the Lindt policies. Now that Lindt owns Russell Stover, they’re the third largest chocolate company in the United States, and will probably have a lot more clout when it comes to insisting on transparency and certification within their supply chain for all ingredients.

Related Candies

1. Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Sea Salt Cashew
2. Ovation Mint Filled & Pumpkin Spice Oranges
3. Ritter Sport Winter Edition Caramelised Almonds
4. M&Ms Pumpkin Spice
5. Eclat Chocolate Caramelized Hazelnuts 65%
6. Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond
7. Trader Joe’s Almondictive Bits
8. Ghirardelli Holiday Squares
9. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds

House brands are often cheap knock-offs of well known brands. But every once in a while a house brand has some sort of wizard-visionary behind the scenes ... I think Walgreen’s found one and put them to work on their Good & deLISH line of candies and snacks.

Many of these new candies are on trend with flavors like Red Velvet and Caramel Apple but also do a better job than some of the major brands like Russell Stover and Ghirardelli at creating well-priced candies you’d prefer to not share.

One of the items I found on the shelves kind of hidden in with the nuts were these new snack containers of candy or chocolate covered nuts and fruits. This one is Good and deLISH Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar Dark Chocolate Almonds, a name so long it’s a wonder they fit it on the little wrapper.

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Those of you’ve been reading for a while or have a Trader Joe’s in your area may recognize these, they’re similar to the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almonds. They’re an almond, covered in dark chocolate that’s also studded with small sea salt and raw sugar nuggets.

The package is a squat plastic jar that holds 5 ounces. The wide black cap is to be used as a snack cup, perhaps in the car. The jar is wide mouthed, so you can get your fingers in there, if you’re not using the lid as a dish. The overall look of the packaging is utilitarian but not at all appetizing. It looks like something I’d be more likely to find in use to store bolts and fasteners than candy.

They’re kind of homely little nuggets. It’s a crunchy roasted almond covered in semi-sweet chocolate (I’d guess about 50% cacao) with a little dash of salt or sugar sometimes ... then there’s a slight dusting of cocoa on the outside. The chocolate is sweet, not exceptionally smooth and boosted a little bit by some extra butterfat (not a vegan product, sorry). The nuts are crunchy and well roasted, with skins on. This leads to a lingering fiber to the chew. The chocolate has a light bitter note towards the end as well, but the beginning and middle is quite sweet for a dark chocolate item.

The thing is, I didn’t love these the first time I had them at Trader Joe’s, I don’t love them now, though on paper they seem to have all the right qualities. I want to know more about the chocolate in them and I want a little more consistency with the sugar and salt on top. While I found the Trader Joe’s batch I had too salty, these were merely too sweet ... even before the sugar crystals kicked in. I’ll see what else this line has to offer when they’re on sale ... I do like the concept of the package and would probably find this great for car or plane trips. The Walgreen’s site also shows this in an 11 ounce size, which is likely to be a better value.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Royals: Caramel Apple and Sea Salt Caramel
2. Good and DeLISH Morning Rush Coffee Bites
3. Walgreen’s Good and Delish Milk Chocolate Cornflake Clusters
4. Theo Salted Almond Dark Chocolate
5. Pearson’s Sea Salt Caramel Nut Goodies
6. Starbucks Salted Almond Chocolate Bites
7. Gardini Bitter Chocolate and Gianduia with Sea Salt
8. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Sea Salt Butterscotch Caramels
9. Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt

Haribo makes the number one selling gummi bear in the United States, the Haribo Gold Bear. But Haribo makes a wide variety of other gummi candy, including sours. This year Haribo introduced the Haribo Sour Gold Bears which brings together their assortment of five flavors with a sour sand coating.

This new product follows the trend where the sour version of an established candy gets a sour sanding. This has happened with Skittles, Sour Patch Kids (original candy was Swedish Fish) and Sour Punch Straws (Red Vines). I’m not sure why the sour can’t just be in the candy, though I appreciate the texture change.

Right now they’re available in stores in the regular peg bags and in bulk, but I expect they’ll come in other variety packages soon. I picked mine up at Cost Plus World Market, but I know that they’re in pretty wide release. I’m a little irritated at the size of the bag. The bag is the same size it’s always been, but it seems like there’s less and less candy in them. This bag holds 4.5 ounces, but years ago it was 6 ounces.

The back of the package helpfully lists all the flavors with their colors: pineapple, raspberry, strawberry, lemon and orange. Though some of the Haribo gummis use real fruit juice and natural colorings, these use a blend of natural and artificial flavors and artificial colors.

Raspberry (red) - this is one of those bears that make me love Haribo. Their red is raspberry, not cherry. The flavor is more on the tart side of the berry flavors, more like an actual raspberry than a raspberry jam. There are seed notes, but less of the flowery perfume that the standard bear delivers.

Orange is fun. The outside starts nicely tart, but not too puckery ... it’s just enough to give my jaw a little tingle. The sour flavor continues with the gummi itself, though not every flavorful in its own right. It’s missing a lot of the orange peel notes that are usually in a Haribo Bear, but this is still fun.

Pineapple (pale) - this has always been my favorite flavor in Haribo bears, and this one is no different. The first touch to my tongue reveals that this is not ordinary sour sanding on the bears ... there’s actual flavor. The pineapple is floral and tangy and zippy, more like fresh pineapple than the canned stuff.

Lemon (yellow) - this is sharp but with a lot of zest and juice notes. It’s not quite as sour as I’d hope a sour bear should be, but it still holds up well as the chew goes along. This one definitely showed that the centers are not just the same Haribo Bears with a sour coating, they’re actually more sour on the inside.

Strawberry (green) - yes, the package confirms that green is strawberry - it’s not lime and it’s not apple. This one is a little disappointing, the sour levels seem uneven and less on the berry spectrum and kind of veers off into watermelon. However, it goes well with all the other bears even if it’s not as intensely flavored.

I liked or loved every bear in this assortment. They’re tried and true classics with a little bit more intensity than the standard Gold Bear. They’re sour, but it took most of the bag over three days to finally burn a hole in my tongue. I’m sad that these didn’t come out 30 years ago, but I’m glad they’re here now.

Related Candies

1. Haribo Juicy Gold Bears
2. Haribo Gold Bears from Turkey and Germany
3. Gimbal’s Sour Lovers
4. Candy Source: Albanese Candy Factory
5. Goody Good Stuff Sour Mix & Match
6. Haribo Saure Dinosaurier
7. Katjes Saure Ananas (Sour Pineapple)
8. Sour Gummi Bears
9. Haribo Fizzy Cola

Ritter Sport has been releasing seasonal variations on their popular square bars for the past few years. Only in the past few years have they appeared reliably on US shelves, and usually for the Winter Editions.

The new Ritter Sport Coffee & Hazelnuts is a new bar, though it combines elements from other existing bars. I found my bar at Cost Plus World Market with the Christmas candies, they had all three varieties for this season, including the return of the Caramelized Almond and the also new Vanilla Crescents. It’s nice to see new bars in the mix, but disappointing that they’re all milk chocolate. This bar was $2.99, a smidge higher than the regulars, which sell for $2.49.

The bar looks like all the other Ritter Sport bars ... a 4x4 grid of sections, each with the Ritter Sport logo on top. This is a filled bar, a coffee cream studded with crushed hazelnuts. It’s a simple concept and rather baffling that no one has been doing this all along.

The ingredients, however, were not promising when it comes to cocoa content:

Ingredients: sugar, palm fat, milk, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, lactose, milk, hazelnuts, skim milk, butterfat, hazelnut paste, coffee powder, soy lecithin, natural flavor, natural coffee flavor.

I’m not against fat, I love the stuff. All that fat made this bar pretty high on the calorie count, 172 calories per ounce ... that’s 600 for the whole bar (for reference the whole hazelnut dark bar has 550 calories for the whole bar). Ritter Sport has been pretty good about the sourcing of its cacao, but they’re not forthcoming about their palm oil. For that reason and others mostly of taste preferences, when buying their bars for just eating, I usually stick to the solid chocolate varieties (or marzipan).

It looks great, smells mildly like coffee and cocoa but mostly sweet. The bite is soft, as most of the milk chocolate Ritter Sports are. The cream center has a cool melt and a vague coffee note to it, but it’s not as strong as the Espresso Bar, which is disappointing. The cream center is a little slick and thin, ultimately. The bar is extremely sweet for something that’s supposed to be coffee and hazelnuts. There are some hazelnuts, enough for a crunch and a touch of gianduia in the center. I really wanted a deep roasted experience ... the mix of the hazelnuts and coffee were promising, but ultimately not as deep as I’d hoped. But if you like Ice Cubes, you’ll appreciate the decadence of this bar. Dark chocolate would improve this bar immensely.

It’s not a bad bar, but like many of the bars that Ritter Sport has been making, especially the filled ones, they’re sweet and too oily without enough flavor. I want more dark chocolate options.

Related Candies

1. Good and DeLISH Morning Rush Coffee Bites
2. Dove Hazelnut Crisp Dark Chocolate Promises
3. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles
4. Mast Brothers Stumptown Coffee
5. Ritter Sport Espresso
6. Meiji Corot & CoffeeBeat
7. Choceur Coffee & Cream
8. Short & Sweet: Hazelnut Bites

Listen in with my candy blogging buddies Maria from Sometimes Foodie and Lauren from Candy Bar Reviews on our second episode of Candyology 101. Our topic is Peanut Butter.

You can download the file directly, subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher.

We also have some great show notes up on the Candyology 101 website, if you want to track down anything we were talking about.  Enjoy!