Candy Blog

Ah, the classic box of chocolates. Each little piece is like a gift unto itself, the chocolate wrapping holds a sweet treasure inside.

These are Thornton’s Classics, a mostly milk chocolate assortment from the United Kingdom. They’re tasty, but sadly the high heat of Southern California has not been kind to them, so I’ll need to get a hold of more someday for a proper review.

Brach’s, which calls itself “America’s Candy Maker” has been busy churning out new varieties of their classic candies as well as their original line of goodies. When I saw all the fun new things they were coming out with, I search and searched my local stores. When I couldn’t find them, CandyWarehouse.com was good enough to help me out by providing some samples for me.

The new Brach’s Triple Fruit Gummies are an interesting take on the divisive seasonal icon. They’re traditional gummis in the classic candy corn shape (as the package notes with a picture to remind me how it looks) and come in three layers of flavor: lemon, orange and cherry.

Brach’s did have what they said were gummi candy corn about 5 years ago, they were really little jelly candies in different fruit flavors. That particular bag of Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn I found was available in trick or treat packaging, but I’m not certain if these Triple Fruit Gummies are available that way.

The size is the same as a standard candy corn kernel. They stand easily, as they don’t have a slight convex base, instead it’s slightly concave and creates a pretty good flat rim. The pieces are layered, just like fondant style candy corn, though these are much more vividly colored. The base is a hot pink (cherry) the middle is orange and the top is yellow (lemon). The layers are pretty diffuse, so it’s a slow mixing of the colors instead of distinct bands. The gummis smell like fruit punch and a little like cherry.

They’re soft, which is a nice texture for a gummi, but odd for these colors because they’re rather fleshy looking because of the opaque quality. The flavor is overall tart with a light fruity note. The cherry permeates the whole thing, though there is a less cherry note on the top layers, I wasn’t getting the citrus that I thought the description promised.

They’re decent, certainly fun looking, but not the flavor of gummis I actually wanted. It’s a good effort on the edge of the candy corn sphere of confections. Brach’s undeniably makes a nice candy corn, but this isn’t candy corn, except in shape. It’s missing all the other qualities in texture, subtlety and divisiveness.

Related Candies

1. Albanese Rainforest Gummi Frog
2. Candy Crush: Mixed Fruit and Sour Gummies
3. Sugarfina: The Gummis
4. Life Savers Gummies Spooky Shapes
5. Trolli Gummi Bear-Rings
6. Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn
7. Disney Pixie Perfect Gummies
8. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
9. Big Bite Gummy Bear

It’s fun to see all the kids candy for Halloween, but sometimes adults want something a little special too. Enter Seattle Chocolates Devil’s Delight Dark Chocolate Truffle Bar with Peanut Butter & Pretzels. It’s described as Salted pretzel pieces and creamy peanut butter in dark chocolate that uses Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa. A devilishly delicious combination!. That definitely sounds right up my alley.

It’s nice to see a seasonal bar using ethically sourced cacao, and in this case, it’s no more expensive than other similar bar on store shelves.

Don’t be disappointed if it’s not your cup of tea, there are two others: Bloody Orange Truffle Bar and Dead Sea Salt Truffle Bar.

The bar is compact and uses the same mold as all the other Seattle Chocolates bars I’ve tried. At 2.5 ounces, it’s a bit too much to eat in one sitting and not quite enough for two portions. Basically, it’s perfect for the stingy sharer ... give one section to another person, eat the rest yourself.

The pieces are thick sections that hold the truffle filling.

The bar smells pleasantly nutty with a woodsy chocolate component. The dark chocolate is bittersweet and has a nice, silky melt. The filling is a little odd. It’s very peanutty, which I enjoyed and had some good salty pops. But the pretzel pieces seemed stale, as can happen when mixing with inclusions. I liked the peanut butter part, very smooth and nutty and offset well by the dark chocolate. I think they mix the peanut butter in with white chocolate, which is genius. Overall, I liked it, though I didn’t finish it in one sitting. One of the things I’ve seen that solves the stale pretzel problem is to give them a quick dip in chocolate before mixing them in.

This bar was sent to me as a sample from Seattle Chocolates, but I did see them for sale at Cost Plus World Market.

Related Candies

1. Revisit Reviews: Pretzel M&Ms, Rally Bar and Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road
2. Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars
3. Russell Stover Kris P. Pretzel Bunny
4. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
5. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
6. Seattle Chocolates Perfect Peanut Butter

I’m always attracted to these beautifully crafted gumballs at the mall in the vending machines. I finally broke down and bought some, just because they’re so pretty. I’m not going to review them because, well, they weren’t good enough to even warrant 300 words.

Necco is an odd company that makes antiquated candies and buys up old candy brands. While the nostalgia is comforting, it’s a little odd when they try to be hip, like when they update their conversation heart mottoes, or came out with a line of Twilight themed candies.

However, for a couple of years they’ve been trying to do more novelty and seasonal candies, many of which I’ve appreciated. They have quite a few zombie themed items and for the first time I was able to find the Necco Skybar Zombie Food. They’re priced well at Cost Plus World Market at 59 cents each, though they were $1.50 across the parking lot at Dylan’s Candy Bar.

I bought two of these, hoping for two different shapes, but ended up with two hearts. The first one I opened was cracked and oozing and sticky. Though that’s probably acceptable to a zombie, I wanted to photograph and eat something a bit more pristine. Luckily #2 was in great shape.

The pieces are exactly one ounce, so it’s a little less than a regular portion and two might be too much.

It’s a striking looking candy. The chocolate mold is well made with an anatomically accurate human heart. My unbroken one looked great, though the packaging does little to protect the candy from getting cracked.

It smelled nice, pleasantly milky and sweet. The chocolate is passable, a little on the grainy side and sweet. The caramel filling is grainy but also not terribly sweet, there’s a cereal flavor to it, not quite a toasted sugar caramel. It’s nicely balanced. Of course the red food coloring left a weird, metallic aftertaste for me, but your mileage may vary.

The whole thing lacks anything else though. For 59 cents it’s passable, but only as a novelty item. If you’re looking for a drug store caramel, opt for the Milky Way Simply Caramel for better chocolate and caramel (though I still wasn’t wild about them either). But if you’re a fan of Cadbury Caramel Eggs, these might be a nice Halloween option. I’d like to say that they’d be great for Halloween trick-or-treat, but I fear that being thrown into a bag with a bunch of other candy is just too rigorous for them, if half of mine were cracked just from the store.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis
2. Original Necco Wafers Return
3. Kraft & Ferrara Pan Caramels
4. Clark Bar Wicked Mix
5. Sky Bar Twilight Saga - Eclipse
6. The Twilight Saga: New Moon Heart’s Desire Sky Bar
7. Mori Ex Cacao Gift Set
8. Necco Hot Stinky Feet