Candy Blog

Each year the National Confectioners Association hosts the Sweets & Snacks Expo at McCormick Place in Chicago. Confectioners from all over the world exhibit their sweetest wares and many introduce new products at the show. Here are a few previews of candies that you’ll be seeing in stores this year:

Name: Sour Punch PUNCHIES
Brand: American Licorice Company
Description: The sour, chewy, bite-size candy packs the perfect punch of fruity-sweet and sour and each of the five delicious Punchies® flavors is stamped with a whimsical Punchi face!
Introduction Date: 06/01/2013
Notes: I have a package of these and have sampled exactly one so far, mostly because I didn’t know what they meant by a soft shell, it’s kind of like a jelly bean coating with a sour licorice center. I’ll have a review next week.

Name: Lindt EXCELLENCE Diamonds
Brand: Lindt & Sprungli
Description: EXCELLENCE Diamonds individually wrapped chocolate pieces. EXCELLENCE 70%, Sea Salt, Intense Orange and Chili.
Introduction Date: 05/01/2013
Notes: I like smaller bites of chocolate. It could be that I have a short attention span or that I’d like to fill the landfills with wrappers, but an appropriately sized mini portion of chocolate actually feels more decadent sometimes than a full bar. So I’m happy to see that Lindt is working on creating some nice little bites with a bit more design to them. Their Excellence line is quite good, and because it’s Lindt, it’s pretty easy to find.

Name: Smurf Candy
Brand: Haribo USA
Description: In preparation for the highly anticipated Smurfs 2 movie in July, Haribo has released its first licenced product in the U.S.: Haribo Smurfs gummies. Already popular in Germany and France, Haribo Smurfs are strawberry and raspberry-flavored gummi candies in the shape of popular Smurf characters, like Papa Smurf and Smurfette. The gummies are the classic Smurf blue, with different characters wearing red, white and yellow caps. The candies are also gluten and fat free.
Introduction Date: June 2013
Notes: I tried a version of these when I was in Germany and liked them, it’s a good, well rounded raspberry flavor.

Name: Annabelle’s Rocky Road S’MORES
Brand: Annabelle Candy Co Inc
Description: - Handmade Milk Chocolate Coated Marshmallow with Real Graham Cracker and Cashews.
Introduction Date: 01/01/2013
Notes: It’s a natural sort of product extension to make a marshmallow and chocolate bar version with graham crackers. I’m looking forward to finding this, though I know that Annabelle Candies are hard to find when you get east of the Rockies. So not all areas may be able to get a hold of these. 

Name: Cold Stone Creamery Bars
Brand: The Cacao Group, Inc
Description: Five flavors will be available nationwide starting June 1 of this year. They are: Chocolate Devotion, Mmmmmint Chocolate Chip, Cookies & Creamery, Coffee Lovers Only and Cherry Almond Sundae. The chocolate is available in 1.8-oz. bars or 5.4-oz. stand-up bags.
Introduction Date: June 1, 2013
Notes: Cold Stone has done some hard candy and jelly bean varieties to date, so it’s only natural for them to get into chocolate bars. The flavor list sounds like they’re going to make bars in flavor combinations that aren’t usually seen like the Coffee Lovers and Cherry Almond Sundae, so that will set them apart from the already crowded bar field.

All images courtesy of their respective manufacturer

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Bar None, Reed’s and Regal Crown Sours
2. Candy Tease: April 2013
3. Candy Tease: October 2012
4. Candy Tease: August 2012
5. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2012 - Part 3

Next week is the Sweets & Snacks Expo, where confectioners from all over the world descend upon Chicago to show their tastiest candies (and savories).

I’ll have lots to report on new products coming out even though I’m not able to attend this year. Until then, enjoy this selection of Root Beer Barrels.

The new trend is reducing packaging. Well, maybe that’s what the food companies want you to believe. The new line of Unwrapped Bites from Mars means you get lots of little miniature minis without all the wrappers that become evidence of how much you’ve eaten.

Hershey’s launched something similar a couple of years ago, so it’s no wonder that Mars is in on it as well.

The package, with a zipper closure, holds a half pound of teensy Snickers cubes. Easy to dump into a bowl, or just eat out of the bag. They’ll also be available in smaller single serving bags.

Mars is utilizing this new icon system on the front of the package for serving size and calorie counts. The serving here is 8 bites or 41 grams, which comes to 190 calories. (3 grams of protein from the peanuts.) Stacked up, the little cubes are cute and hold their shape pretty well. They do get scuffed up in the bag, so they’re not that glossy, swirled perfection found in the individual wrappers.

I can see these being very useful for recipes ... though kind of expensive at 2.99 for 8 ounces, but no worse than premium chocolate chips.

What they got right here is the ratios. Even though they’re not perfect large Snickers ratios, these strike an extremely pleasing balance of nougat, nuts and chocolate. By far the nuts take center stage. Instead of omitting the nuts or putting teensy crushed ones in there, they’re still big peanut pieces. (Though I did get on that had no nuts.) There’s a hint of salt in the nougat which balances the sweet chocolate and caramel. The caramel really doesn’t do much here, maybe it adds a little chew.

What I really enjoy though is the portioning. I like that I can eat only three or four at a time, then maybe three or four later. A full portion is eight pieces, which is less than a regular Snickers, but feels like a lot. Of course the bag is 8 ounces ... nothing keeping you from eating the whole thing in one sitting. These are pretty much the antithesis of the Snickers Slice n’ Share 1 Pound bar ... and actually a better value since a full pound of the Bites retails for $6 instead of $10.

Snickers are made with peanuts, dairy, soy and eggs. They’re also processed in a facility with almonds and I cannot find anything that says that they’re gluten free. Mars has not rolled over to sustainable, ethical sourcing for their ingredients, though they’re on track for 2020.

Related Candies

1. Rolo Minis
2. Snickers Peanut Butter Squared
3. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
4. Snickers Charged
5. Snickers Dark

When I was in Germany a couple of years ago, I picked up a bag of a new Haribo variety of gummi bears called Saft Baeren. They were made with real fruit juice and had a much softer, juicier texture than the traditional Haribo Gold Bears.

Well, Haribo has decided to sell a version of those bears in the United States as Haribo Juicy Gold-Bears. They’re coming out now and feature more than 20% fruit juice and no artificial colors.

They’re a little different from the bears that I tried. First, the version I tried was made in Germany, and as I found out from my taste test, the German Haribo products are usually the ones I prefer because they’re more intense and have a better texture. This bag was made in Turkey. Second, the flavor variety is a little different. The original version had five flavors, this one has six. The flavors are black currant, pear, lime, apple, raspberry and peach. No orange, lemon, pineapple or strawberry.

Black Currant (Purple) is deep and jammy, slightly bitter, in an authentic way with a dry note to it.

Apple (dull green) is very, well, green tasting. It’s an authentic apple flavor, like juice, but it’s also very green, like someone threw a dash of wheatgrass in there or something.

Peach (orange) is fascinating. It’s more apricot if you ask me, and that’s probably a good thing. It’s quite tangy and has a lot of that balsam note that gives peach their fuzzy flavor. It’s a dense and nuanced flavor, done very well, far better than any other peach candy I’ve had.

Raspberry (red) is a great bear. It’s tart and juicy and has a light tannic quality that’s kind of jammy and lightly floral.

Pear (clear) is tangy and a little bland compared to the others. It’s like a baked pear.

Lime (yellow) is actually pretty boring. It’s not as vibrant as the citrus flavors in the original Gold bears.

Overall, the flavors are good, even great, but the actual flavor variety is a little weird. I’m all for not using mainstream flavors, but this mix is just a little too strange for me. There were only two that I liked, and I found myself picking them out of the mix, which is something I never do with the standard Gold Bears. I think the fact that they’re using natural colors and lots of real juice is great and I hope that trend continues ... now if they could just do an all citrus mix of bears that way. However, I know that these flavors, since they’re so specific and so rare in a mix sold in the US, are going to be someone’s favorite.

Related Candies

1. Haribo Gold Bears from Turkey and Germany
2. Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone Gummis
3. Grether’s Pastilles Blackcurrant
4. Goody Good Stuff Koala Gummy Bears
5. Bissinger’s Pink Grapefruit Gummy Pandas
6. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies

M&Ms are ranked as the #1 candy by companies who track such things. But that popularity has always been limited to the lentil type candies, not other candies branded under M&Ms. As an example, Mars launched the M-Azing bar, a chocolate bar with M&Ms in 2004 but it was discontinued in 2008.

Mars is trying again trying to flatten and solidify the candies with the new Milk Chocolate M&Ms Chocolate Bar. The tagline is chocolate bars are better with M.

The bar, as you can imagine, is a milk chocolate base studded with M&Ms (candy coated milk chocolate pieces). I was curious if the chocolate of the bar was the same as the chocolate inside the M&Ms. Looking at the ingredients list, it appears they are slightly different.

The embedded candies are the mini sized M&Ms, not the full sized. (As you can imagine, the bar would need to be pretty thick to full encapsulate them.) The minis have a much thinner shell, so less of a sharp crispness.

The bar is cute to look at. It’s nicely segmented and molded and breaks apart easily with a good snap. The scent is sweet and a little on the sugary side; it didn’t smell rich and reminded me of R.M. Palmer. The melt is pretty smooth overall, but there’s a slight cereal flavor to it, which I’m guessing is from the candy shells. It’s also has a slight sharpness to it, almost verging on a Hershey’s taste. On the whole, I was unimpressed.

The candy pieces inside gave a little crisp crunch to it and added sweetness. There was little difference in the flavor when it came to the centers of the M&Ms when eaten in the context of the bar. Overall ... the chocolate itself was never the strong suit of M&Ms, it’s always been the munchable, colorful portability of them.

If you’ve been looking for a milk chocolate bar with more artificial ingredients, this might be just the thing. Not only do you get the artificial colors on the actual M&Ms, there’s also the added bonus of PGPR,

Related Candies

1. Dove Cookies and Creme + Ghirardelli Cookies Jubilee
2. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
3. Crispy M&Ms
4. UK vs US Cadbury Dairy Milk
5. Hershey’s Miniatures
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. M&Ms Line