Candy Blog

I knew the Roca Buttercrunch Thins were coming out, but I still haven’t seen them in stores. There are four varieties, milk chocolate, 60% dark, dark truffle & caramel truffle. Luckily I got this sample box of the 60% Cacao Roca Buttercrunch Thins from All Candy Expo (the one that I was most interested in!). 

While I love the toffee center of Almond Roca (and the Mocha Roca), I’m not fond of the greasy mockolate coating and messy crushed almonds. (Yes, I sometimes scrape them off and just eat the center.) Isn’t it nice that Brown & Haley finally recognized that they can use better ingredients.

The 2.8 ounce box holds 8 pieces, each in their own little slot in a divided tray. It’s about the size of a VHS box (maybe a little thinner), but it seems like a lot of packaging and protection for what are probably pretty durable little candies.

The initial description of them as Thins was intriguing, I was picturing little toffee tiles like Valerie Confections sells. Instead I saw a post on Chocolate Traveler that showed that these are little sticks, which is fine with me.

The smell like toasted nuts, burnt sugar and dark chocolate. The dark chocolate coating, in my case, was slightly bloomed (and I blame myself for that, as it started to get absurdly hot in Los Angeles and didn’t follow my own precautions). The texture was just fine though. (And the last two got really bloomed, so I know what bloomed chocolate is in this case.)

I love the Roca toffee, it’s crispy and buttery at the same time. It has wonderfully complex burnt sugar flavors and the added nutty bits of almonds. The dark chocolate was also a smooth and creamy, adding a little more dimension with its own dark palate of flavors.

While I consider this a very successful confection, I find the packaging a little overdone. Does it really need to have both the fold over flap (hand purse style) box, plus the tray? The whole thing is then overwrapped in cellophane.

The price point, as far as I can tell from the Brown & Haley website is $3.95 a box, which puts it at over $22 per pound. For that price I’d either go up a notch and have some Carey’s of Oregon, Poco Dolce or Valerie Confections, or go down a notch and have a Heath Bar (why oh, why won’t they make them in dark chocolate?).

Related Candies

1. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
2. Shaymee’s Toffee
3. Valerie Toffees & Nougats
4. Enstrom’s Toffee
5. The Rocas

Jelly Belly is always coming up with new flavors and themes. This spring it’s their new Ice Cream Parlor Mix inspired by Cold Stone Creamery. Cold Stone is known for their freezing plank of granite where they scoop & mix your custom mix of ingredients (or you can pick from their standard menu). An appropriate tie in with Jelly Belly that already produces an extensive list of “recipes” for combing beans.

As a mix, the list of flavors here is pretty short:

As a child (and young adult) I was known for being indecisive. So when presented with too many choices, I usually froze up and often opted for nothing at all, or worse, panicked and made a bad choice. I never had this problem at Baskin-Robbins, probably because even my less successful choices were still treats. (I think the worst flavor I ever had there was bubble gum, probably because frozen gum isn’t much fun ... and I ended up swallowing some.)

My favorite flavor was always Mint Chocolate Chip. The cool mint goes well with the smooth & chilly dairy fat and the little wafer bits of dark chocolate gave it an air of elegance. (My second favorite was Peanut Butter & Chocolate.)

While Baskin-Robbins has had a line of Smooth & Creamy Hard Candy made by Best Sweet for a while, I wasn’t terribly interested in some hard candies that approximated ice cream flavors, after all, there were very good candies that actually were many of those flavors. (A little too self-referential.) Enter their Soft Candy line.

The first thing that struck me when I opened the candy was how, well, packaged it was. Each end of the box has a “tamper evident” plastic seal.

Inside is a pink mylar pouch that holds the candy.

Inside that are the pieces, which are individually wrapped in folk.

I’m pretty sure one or more of those layers could be eliminated and still have a safe & fresh product.

The ingredients are pretty understandable: Sucrose, Corn Syrup, Coconut Oil, Corn Syrup Solids, Non-Dairy Dried Milk Powder, Glycerine, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Gum Arabic, Soy Lecithin, Flour, Salt, Blue #1 & Yellow #5.

The only curiosity on the list was Non-Dairy Dried Milk Powder and had to look it up ... it’s actually not milk, it’s some sort of other product, perhaps potato, perhaps rice, maybe soy. I’m guessing soy.

The little rectangles are wrapped in heavy foil. They’re about half the size of a Starburst fruit chew.

They smell like, well, creme de menthe soaked cardboard. It’s not that it’s an unappealing smell, though maybe I make it sound that way, it’s just that sometimes cocoa can smell a little musty.

The chew is soft, not terribly grainy but not as smooth as some others. It reminds me of Rolaids Soft Chews. The mint flavor is pretty strong, though lacking the creamy promise of ice cream. The cocoa comes in a bit later, and there are little bits in there, but it’s not quite the chocolate chips as promised. It starts to taste like stale cookies (Hydrox, not Oreos).

They’re not stellar. I don’t expect to finish the package. I’m still curious about the other flavor available - Strawberry, so I might pick those up when I see them in stores. I don’t know the retail price, but I’m guessing it won’t be more than $1.50. (The hard candies are often sold at dollar stores so these may end up there as well.)

Related Candies

1. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
2. Mentos Xtrm: Mint & Spearmint
3. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
4. Skittles Fresh Mint
5. Necco Mint Julep
6. Chimes Ginger Chews

One of the more timely items I got from the All Candy Expo folks is this box of Crackheads candy. It’s been around for at least a year, but I haven’t seen it in stores.

I first saw them on ThinkGeek and reviewed on CandyAddict. I wasn’t terribly interested in them, after all, they’re just chocolate covered coffee beans, not exactly an innovative new product. The unique selling proposition in this case is that they’re in “single serve” boxes and come as a mix of both white chocolate and dark chocolate coatings.

The boxes look similar to Lemonheads or Boston Baked Beans. Easily portable and resealable.

They’re really nicely panned coffee beans. Though they’re not all consistent in size, the panning is excellent with shiny coats and well-tempered chocolate. The white chocolate is real white chocolate made with cocoa butter. The mellow malty milky flavors go really well with the coffee bean. This was the first time I’d had a white chocolate coated one, and it’s a natural match - the fatty sweetness with the dairy flavors are pretty much a dense version of a latte.

The dark verison are not nearly as sweet, but still provides a nice counterpoint to the dark and lightly bitter beans. The beans are crunchy without being fiberous or too burnt tasting. My box had a bit more white chocolate to it, but I was okay with that.

The “creator” of Crackheads, John Osmanski, was on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch last night on CNBC. The segment was One Minute to Millions where they featured a panel of three experts: Kevin Nealon (who was there promoting his book and probably provided the consumer point of view), Pam Macharola of Blair Candy and Brian Pipa of Candy Addict!

The product was introduced with a little pretaped segment. It made no mention of the fact that chocolate covered espresso beans have been around for at least 30 years. They’re pretty widely available, at least in specialty stores or at coffee locations like Starbucks (and of course the new Hershey’s Starbucks chocolates). While the back of the box has a breakdown of caffeine content of other beverages (cocoa, cola, tea, coffee & espresso), it doesn’t exactly spell out the caffeine content of the actual product. However, the Crackheads website pegs it at about 120 mgs (about half of a cup of coffee).

Osmanski introduced the product as a solution to those low caffeine moments, especially for students and academics.

The new tagline “because everyone’s addicted to something” works well with the name. The product packaging has been redesigned since my sample (you can see the new one here). But the general consensus from the panel was that the name would never have the wide appeal that would guarantee it placement on the shelves of stores like Walmart (which might be necessary to make millions off a single $2 product). Instead it would probably stay in places like Think Geek and coffee houses (where it’s currently found).

While I think it’s a good quality product, the packaging feels a bit downscale, not rising to the $2 per package price tag - which translates to over $24 per pound (the Starbucks version is about $12 a pound). The name, which tries to co-opt drug culture fails ... there may be other names that might fit the addiction tag better (but I’m not going to come up with it here, Osmanski has a blog if you want to give him feedback directly). Perhaps coming up with two lines, one under this name and another more mainstream version would be a success story worthy of follow up on Donny Deutsch.

(I suspect that Osmanium doesn’t actually manufacturer these, just repacks them, as they package says that they are made in a facility that processes peanuts & tree nuts. The website also says that they’re Kosher. My prime candidate as the maker of these is Koppers Chocolates.)

Related Candies

1. Starbucks Chocolate
2. Snickers Charged
3. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
4. Java Twix
5. Green & Black’s Espresso Chocolate
6. Pocket Coffee

I picked up a short assortment of Lillie Belle Farms chocolates while I was in San Francisco. I got the Cayenne Caramels, Smokey Blue Cheese Truffles, Lavender Caramel & Marzipan Fig. They each came in a set of two, just tucked simply into a cellophane bag, for the rather reasonable price of $4 per pair (except for the Cayenne Caramels, they’re small so there were three of those).

I liked the ability to pick and chose what I was going to get. I’ve see Lillie Belle Farms at Whole Foods, but usually just the blue cheese 5 pieces and for Candy Blog purposes, I really want a variety. But having two of each means I get a pretty strong sense of each chocolate.

Jeff Shepherd runs Lillie Belle Farms, and it’s a real farm in Oregon (not some made up name), certified organic,  where he grows marionberries, raspberries & strawberries. That’s another thing that sets these chocolates apart, they’re not named for the creator, one of the few chocolatiers that’s not. (Exceptions: Godvia, Vosges & Hotel Chocolat.) Well, that’s not quite true, Lillie Belle Farms was named for Jeff’s daughter, Lillie and his wife Belle.

Cayenne Caramels

These are adorable little chocolate buttons. The only molded chocolate in the bunch.

It has to be molded because the caramel filling is downright flowing. It’s smooth, without a hint of grain and with an authentic creamy toasted sugar taste.

And when it says cayenne, it’s not kidding. There’s the initial squeal of hot pepper and then this low lingering burn afterwards. Unfortunately I’m a bit of wuss and thought it was too strong. Perhaps if I was eating them in combination with other chocolates (and the smaller size is welcome in that respect), but as solo pieces I really only think they’re going to be loved by folks who have that iron constitution.

Marzipan Fig

I had no idea what this was, the package simply said Rum & Fig, which sounded like a fabulous combination in my book. Since it was wrapped in foil, I had no idea that it also included nuts. (I didn’t know what kind of nuts and didn’t have the internet handy so I made my husband eat one in order to confirm that it was almonds and not walnuts.)

Once on the internet I found that it’s rum & spice poached black mission fig which is then wrapped in marzipan and then dipped in chocolate & rolled in crushed almonds.

It was like, well, nothing else. It smells drunk, like amaretto and rum. The crunchy almonds are held together by a bit of a chocolate shell. The combination of chocolate and fig is quite difficult, as many of the fig flavors overpower the chocolate. Even though I didn’t catch much chocolate here, all the flavors worked so well together. It didn’t come off as sweet or decadent, but so complex, like hearing a song that will become your favorite for the first time and just wanting to hit replay a few times.

Lavender Fleur du Sel Caramels

A stiff and chewy caramel, very smooth chew with a strong lavender zest to it (or whatever you call the oily essence of lavender). The chocolate and salt complement this well, I’m not sure if the caramel was too hard for me or not, it’s hard to tell when the pieces are a bit below room temperature.

It’s sweet and mellow and really the perfect texture of caramel for me, an ideal combination of sugar and cream that brings out the burnt sugar notes. That darkness combines well with lavender, which I find to be a darker essence like rosemary.

Smokey Blue Truffles

I believe this is what’s known as a signature piece. The ganache is mixed with Rogue Creamery’s Smokey Blue Cheese and then rolled in crushed toasted almonds. It looks kind of like a little cheese ball, and smells a bit like it too.

There is no hint of sweetness here. It’s tangy and smooth and has a bit of biting bitter hint. The nuts are probably the sweetest thing in the mix and provide a great crunch. As a piece of confection, it’s not quite satisfying since it’s rather salty. As something to just ignore labels and eat ... well, now there’s the way to wrap your brain around it. I do wonder how it would taste smeared on a table water cracker.

I’m definitely interested in picking up some more of Shepherd’s pieces, I chose the ones that I thought were most distinctive (that I could get my hands on) but there are far more that seem to be available only through his store, so when the weather cools off, I’ll probably place an order. Or visit his shop in Central Point, Oregon (north of Medford):

Lillie Belle Farms
211 N. Front st.
Central Point, OR
(541)664-2815