I picked up the Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Silky Smooth Promises about a month ago at Target. At the moment they’re a Target exclusive flavor, though I understand that when the flavors are popular they go into wider distribution.

The blue and white and brown package is summery and bright and caught my attention right away. But I was curious how different the flavor would be from the regular dark chocolate with caramel that Dove already makes.

The chocolates are expensive, at $4 for just a little over a half a pound. Mars is * still not using certified sustainable or ethically sourced chocolate for the vast majority of their products, this price premium at least prompts me to expect high quality ingredients, not things like hydrogenated palm kernel oil and potassium sorbate.

The Dove dark chocolate is quite smooth and has an interesting flavor profile. It’s quite woodsy and a little on the dry side. But the melt is quick and slick on the tongue, so the dry finish keeps it from feeling to sweet or sticky. The flavor overall reminds me of chocolate sauce, not quite buttery but still silky.

The caramel filling is like most of the other Dove caramels I’ve had. It’s thick and almost like a sauce or syrup without a chewy component. I’d call it a pudding or custard. (Or perhaps German Chocolate Cake frosting without the coconut.) It has the advertised touch of salt to it and a smooth slightly toffee note to it. It’s not as rich or butterscotchy as some others I’ve had from artisan styled companies like Fran’s, but still a nice desserty flavored chocolate.

They felt less sweet than the regular Dove Caramel Promises, though it’s not like they had a lot of salt, there’s only 30 mg per 5 pieces. Because I picked up Hershey’s Simple Pleasures on the same trip, I have to say that I preferred these by quite a large margin. They’re less caloric than a solid chocolate bar, but still more than the Simple Pleasures or a Peppermint Pattie. Dove is still not my go-to premium chocolate. I’ll eat them if they’re sitting around, but when I want a chocolate treat I find myself shopping for things like Green & Black’s (which I wish came in little bite sized pieces) or something like Trader Joe’s which have more intense or vibrant flavors and better ingredients.

* UPDATE 7/18/2012: A rep from Dove Chocolate called me to let me know that Dove is switching to Rainforest Alliance Certified cocoa. This particular product is not Rainforest Alliance Certified, and still has unverified palm oil in it and preservatives. You can read more on their website, but the fact remains that Mars, the company that owns Dove, is far from converting their entire line of chocolate products to certified sustainable and ethical sources, but at least have a plan and are hitting targets. At this time they are sourcing only 20% of their cocoa from certified cocoa.

Related Candies

1. Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree
2. Trader Joe’s 70% Dark with Caramel and Black Sea Salt
3. Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt
4. Milky Way Simply Caramel
5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels
6. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
7. Dove Caramels & Chocolate Covered Almonds

I reviewed the Sunkist Fruit Gems when they were made by a Los Angeles company called Ben Meyerson. Shortly after that, in 2006 Jelly Belly bought the rights to the candy and changed the flavor set. (Review of both versions here) Here it is, 6 years later and Jelly Belly has relaunched the Sunkist line using all natural ingredients (natural flavors including juices and natural colors).

While I like fruit jellies, I pretty much stick to orange slices or spearmint leaves (I know, not a fruit). The original flavor set was orange, lemon, lime, cherry, raspberry and grapefruit. Then the revamped flavor set (at the same price point but fewer candies in a package) was orange, lemon, lime and raspberry.

Neither thrilled me. Neither really lived up to the name of Sunkist, the citrus growers. Still, when visiting trade shows where Jelly Belly had samples, I always picked up a few of the citrus ones. I really wanted to like them more.

The new flavors are: lemon, orange, grapefruit, raspberry and blueberry. The colors, though natural, are still easy to discern and attractive.

The pieces are the same size as the previous versions, disks of soft jelly covered with large granulated sugar to keep them from sticking together. The sugar coating is just enough to keep them from binding, but not so much that there’s a lot of extra sugar in the bottom of the package. They really look like they should be sticky, but they’re not.

The pieces are flexible and soft, and made with pectin and starch to thicken them. Basically, it’s a vegan product, all vegetable products in there and nothing animal derived.

The new version is an improvement. The flavors are zesty and fresh without any weird aftertastes from artificial colors.

I particularly enjoyed the citrus flavors, they’re distinct and have a lot of citrus peel notes, even if it does make them slightly bitter. The raspberry is quite floral and has a strong boiled jam flavor to it. The blueberry was probably the most disappointing for me, but I really only like fresh blueberries. It was sweet with a little tannic note like iced tea but not much else going on with it.

Overall, an excellent revamp for a classic line of candies. They’re pricey for fruit jellies, but much cheaper than classic artisan pate de fruit. So think of them as an in-between product.

They’re available in a few packaging formats. This particular box is nearly a pound and just had loose candies inside two separate trays. Just keeping the box closed kept them pretty fresh, even with our higher than normal humidity in Southern California lately. They also come in an individually wrapped version which is better for a candy dish. They’re gluten free and peanut free.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Jelly Beans & Citrus Gum Drops
2. Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Grapefruit, Goji Berry & Red Apple
3. Starbucks Assorted Gum Drops
4. Gourmet Gumdrops
5. Jelly Belly Sunkist Citrus Mix
6. Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers Almond
7. Sunkist Fruit Gems

Rowntree’s Tooty Frooties were introduced by the UK confectioner in 1963. They’re little rounded squares of tangy chews covered in a light candy shell. The standard flavor mix includes lemon, apple, orange, blackcurrant and strawberry. They’re made with real fruit juice and no artificial colors.

Rowntree’s was founded in 1862 and introduced some of the most popular confectionery brands in the world, like KitKat, Aero, Smarties and Fruit Pastilles. They were taken over by Nestle in 1988, which has only increased their international reach. But some of the candies they make are still just locally available in the United Kingdom. A coworker picked up this bag in Amsterdam (for 2.50 Euro).

It’s interesting to note that these came out a full decade before Skittles and though they do resemble them in concept, they’re not quite the same.

The pieces are a bit rustic, like artisan chiclets. Most are about a half an inch in diameter, though some are a bit smaller or a bit flatter. They’re softly rounded and have a rather thin shell with a slightly uneven looking colored coating.

They also stick together. The shell isn’t quite as thick or crispy as Skittles or Mentos, so sometimes they get chipped, then the center gets soft and oozes a little. I sense that they don’t travel as well as Skittles either.

The flavors are nice, though not as intense or distinctive as Skittles.

Red is apple, which is all about the sweet apple juice and very little artificial green apple flavor to it.

Purple  is currant. I didn’t seem to get many of these. Again, very sweet at first and later a little bit of tartness, like black raspberry.

Yellow  is lemon. They’re softly lemony, not quite zesty.

Orange is orange. Like the lemon, more about the juice and less about the orange peel.

Pink is strawberry. It’s summery and sweet, less floral than I’d hoped but also a little on the creamy sweet side.

The flavor variety was completely standard and classic. On the whole, a great candy. This particular bag though was messy as pieces were stuck together. I liked that there were no artificial colors, however, carminic acid was listed so strict vegetarians will have to strike these from their lists.

Like Trader Joe’s, Aldi has been stocking more licorice in their American stores lately. I picked up this package of Grandessa Orginal Soft Licorice made in Australia.

I’ve tried a few items in the Grandessa line from Aldi over the years and found them to be passable, but not their highest quality brand.

It’s a simple package, a matte plastic bag, rather small but dense. At only 7.5 inches by 4.5 inches it holds nearly a half a pound of soft licorice twists.

The licorice fingers are pretty big, they’re about 1.5 to 1.75 inches long (just a little shy of the size of my pinky finger, but I have very small pinkies).

They’re soft and a bit sticky on the outside. The chewy is doughy and soft and does get stuck on the teeth. The flavor profile is overwhelmingly earthy. There’s a lot of molasses and dark sugars (treacle, brown sugar and molasses are all ingredients). The flavor notes are anise, a light tangy note as some molasses can have, sweet licorice, black pepper, beets, pipe tobacco and coriander. The thick chew is less appealing to me though, because it does have a note of raw wheat flour.

Compared to Panda, it’s has more mineral and earthy flavors. It reminds me a lot of Kookabura Australian Liquorice, and may well be made under contract for Aldi’s Grandessa house brand by Kookabura. The ingredients are similar, though not exactly the same.

They’re made in Australia in a facility that processes peanuts and tree nuts. The ingredients list mono and diglycerides, so I can’t say that these are vegan.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Allsorts -a- Licorice
2. 12 European Licorices
3. Panda Soft Herb Licorice and Licorice Cremes
4. Eat with your Eyes: Grandessa Signature Single Origin
5. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
6. Kookaburra Licorice
7. Organic Finnska Soft Licorice
8. Panda Bars

I first review the revived Flicks chocolate candy about two years ago. (Read that here.) But when I saw this new version called Flicks | Cacao at the drug store last week, I stopped to read the label before I dismissed them.

I’m so glad I did, because these are quite different from the original Flicks, which are tubes of mockolate chips wrapped in foil. The Flicks Cacao are disks of Premium Dark Chocolate. It’s premium West African Cacao, made in a recipe with five simple and tasty ingredients: Cocoa Liquor, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Lecithin, & Vanilla.. They even say that they’re GMO free (I’m guessing that’s the lecithin. In Europe many chocolate companies are replacing soy lecithin with sunflower lecithin, which is not only GMO free, it’s also soy free. I don’t know which kind of lecithin they’re using in Flicks.)

The pieces are more consistent than the standard Flicks, each is about 1 inch round. They’re still a bit scuffed up, but well protected in the package. As I noted in my first review, the packaging was changing. The foil wrapped tube holds a little mylar pouch instead of the chocolate rattling around inside the untreated cardboard tube.

Though the ingredients list is short and possibly vegan, the package says they may contain traces of milk (but nothing about gluten or nuts.)

The disks are perfectly sized for a single bite of chocolate. They fit in the mouth, with a good rounded shape so that they melt easily and mold to the roof of my mouth. The melt is decent, not buttery but at least smooth though a little on the firm and sweet side. The flavor is mild, it’s not intense dark chocolate, it’s light and approachable, hints of oak and vanilla. It’s like brownies.

I enjoyed it well enough and found the package simple, charming and fun. I would prefer a still darker version, but this is a huge step in the right direction for the product line to offer something that isn’t filled with tropical oils. I’d like to know the ethical sourcing of the cacao.

Related Candies

1. Six Kilos of Felchlin Arriba 72% Chocolate
2. Sweet Earth Bittersweet Chocolate Drops & Coffee Caramels
3. Four 99%-100% Chocolate
4. Ghirardelli Intense Dark
5. Guittard Akoma Fair Trade Chocolate Chips

Trader Joe’s often has wonderful finds where they package up a candy that’s hard to find. In this case it’s their newly introduced Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Honey Mints.

Sure they’re peppermint patties, so you’re wondering what’s so special about that? They have three ingredients in them. Just three: honey, chocolate liquor and oil of peppermint. The center is creamed honey (it just means whipped, there’s no additional dairy) and some peppermint to flavor it. The dark chocolate coating is just cacao, there’s no sugar in it. All the sweetness comes from the whipped honey center.

As far as I can tell, they’re made by Honey Acres of Wisconsin. I first tried them at the Fancy Food Show in 2008 (brief review here) and could only find them online for a while at Natural Candy Store (I’m hesitant to order chocolate candy because of melting problems with deliveries). The first time I tried them, I thought they were good, but not fantastic. But the memory of them stuck with me, so I was glad to see that I could pick them up again. (Update on that, it’s possible they’re made by Heavenly Organics.)

They’re gluten free, contain no artificial colors or flavors and no preservatives.

The honey is creamed by adding special seed honey and a hint of peppermint oil to create a smooth and refreshing center, which is then covered in a rich, dark chocolate.

The patties are 1.5 inches in diameter and wrapped tightly in an aqua colored aluminum foil.

While the ingredients are good and considered pure, this is by no means a low calorie product. There’s more chocolate on them than a York Peppermint Pattie, so don’t expect them to be extremely low calorie. York Patties are about 102 calories per ounce, so almost pure sugar, very little fat. Dark Chocolate Honey Mints are 127 calories per ounce, so less than a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup or something similarly fatty.

The dark chocolate is thick and densely dark. It’s all chocolate, so it’s intense. Just eating the chocolate is tough, because it’s unsweetened. But there’s plenty of cocoa butter, so it may be a little bitter but it does have a smooth and silky melt. The element here that surprised me, and remember, I’ve had these before, was the creamy honey center. The mints I had four years ago must have been a little bit older, because these are fresh and exquisitely textured. The honey center is smooth and buttery but not greasy, the dissolve is cool on the tongue. It’s sweet and has that musky honey note to it, but also a refreshing and crisp peppermint note. It’s not too strong, not too sugary.

Taken together, the bitterness of the unsweetened chocolate is offset perfectly.

After writing last week about candy being “unjunked” from artificial ingredients, here’s a candy that takes the confection back to its barest basics ... and then leaves it there. No nutritional fillers ... just pure ingredients, each with a job to do.

Update 3/7/2013: I bought another bag of these recently and noticed that they’ve changed their production style. They’re now a molded candy instead of enrobed, so the shells are very consistent and shiny. The flavor profile is the same, though perhaps a little more chocolate now.

Related Candies

1. Zachary Thin Mints & Raspberry Thin Mints
2. RM Palmer Peppermint Patties
3. Sunspire Peppermint Pattie
4. Candy Bites: The Sweet, Crunchy & Creamy
5. Junior Mints Deluxe
6. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
7. York Pinkermint Patties

Candy coated chocolates are so simple, yet so many folks find many of the commercial ingredients objectionable. It seems like it would be easy to make a good chocolate lentil with all natural, wholesome ingredient. Yet, here we are in 2012, and I can’t say that I like any of the alternatives to M&Ms very much.

You can imagine that I greeted the new UNREAL candy line with a bit of trepidation and suspicion. After all, if it could be done, why isn’t it done? (Try Sundrops.)

The UNREAL line uses all natural ingredients, specifically no artificial colors, no preservatives, no GMOs and no hydrogenated oils. The two elements that are interest in the instance of M&Ms would be artificial colors (which can make some colors taste bad to some consumers and have been linked with hyperactivity and other sensitivities with some kids) and genetically modified organism.

M&Ms Milk Chocolate Ingredients: Milk Chocolate (sugar, chocolate, skim milk, cocoa butter, lactose, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors), sugar, cornstarch, less than 1% corn syrup, gum acacia, coloring (includes Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6, Red 40, Blue 2 Lake, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2), Dextrin.

Part of what irritates me is their positioning of this candy on their website. They compare the candy to M&Ms and to a fresh peach. The listing of qualities below the specs for #41 Candy Coated Chocolates is:
No Corn Syrup
No Partially Hydrogenated Oil
No Artificial Ingredients
No GMOs
No Preservatives

Okay, that’s great. But to be fair, M&Ms do not have any partially hydrogenated oils and no preservatives. And a peach also has none of those (though I’d say that somewhere out there, there are GMO peaches, I don’t think they’re commercial at this time.) The comparisons are also a little skewed by the portion sizes. M&Ms are sold in bags of 1.69 ounces (47.9 grams) and UNREAL #41 are 1.5 ounces (42 grams). So the grid is not converted to a one to one comparison.

The little candies are pretty, and I appreciate that they don’t look as unnatural as I ofter regard M&Ms to be (the blue and red ones, especially). However, the colors are a little on the dark and morose side. Honestly, I don’t know why they have to be so dark, why couldn’t it just be a touch of color, instead of some sort of thick slathering of turmeric extract?

The lentils are slightly smaller than M&Ms but consistent for the most part and well made. The package protects them, they weren’t crushed or cracked.

The flavor is interesting and far different from the wide appeal of M&Ms. They’re creamy and smooth, the melt is great and only slightly sticky. The crunchy shell is crisp and has a great dissolve, depending on your eating style. But the chocolate is where these little lentils are completely different from M&Ms or any other chocolate candy lentils.

The chocolate is smoky, rather dark and has a toffee and charcoal note from both the cocoa and milk. I get a lot of bitterness from it, something I noticed in the peanut butter cups, but it was well moderated by the peanut butter center. Here, it’s just the chocolate and the candy shell. I didn’t care for the intensity, however, I recognize that not all people detect bitterness in the same way. So some folks may find these delightful, I found they required a little more effort on my part to appreciate.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The UNREAL #54 Candy Coated Chocolates with Peanuts have a consistent package with the rest of the UNREAL line, this one with a neon or highlighter green and yellow logo and little candies scattered across the front of the package.

This packet also holds 1.5 ounces with the same sticker price as the non-natural M&Ms which are 1.74 ounces.

I’ve often found that Peanut M&Ms, though good, are not my favorite when given a choice. In this case, I preferred the UNREAL #54 to the UNREAL #41. The nuts were fresh, big and not roasted too dark. The bitterness of the chocolate was still there, but moderated by the savory characteristics of the peanuts.

A curious item on the nutrition panel says that the Peanut variety has 45% of your daily value of Calcium and the Milk Chocolate one has 50% of your daily value. The full ingredients list shows that it’s not the milk that’s contributing that (M&Ms have about 4% of your DV), it’s Calcium Carbonate. (No source is given for that, is it oyster shell? Egg shells? Bone meal?) Full ingredients:

Ingredients: Milk Chocolate (chocolate, skim milk, cane sugar, cocoa butter, milk powder, organic blue agave inulin, soy lecithin, vanilla extract), Peanuts, Cane Sugar, Calcium Carbonate, Peanut Oil, Colored with (beetroot juice, turmeric root extract, purple cabbage juice), Gum Arabic, Vanilla Extract, Carnauba Wax & Beeswax

So, it still has that inulin stuff in it that I remarked about in the #77 Peanut Butter Cup review. It’s basically a nice, clean candy that has some nutritional fortification. Personally, I’d prefer just clean candy and let me get my nutrition elsewhere.

Rating: 8 out of 10

I like the line. I’m annoyed at the marketing and lack of true information (but they’re new and I’m still waiting for a response to my email on Saturday). But the candy is good, they’re on the right track and I’m excited about it. It would be fun to see where they go with it, if they create a few candies that are vegan as well, or at least dairy free.

UPDATE 9/17/2012: After many months and more than a half a dozen attempts to get answers from UNREAL, I did get a reply. Here is what I can tell you:
UNREAL works closely with a broker to secure cacao from co-ops in Ecuador and Ghana. They said, “Our Brokers on the ground work with them daily to ensure the best quality of product and that people and planet are not being damaged in the process.” There is no third party certification for any of this, so it is not certified fair trade or sustainable but they did say that there is an auditing process by the buyers.
UNREAL sources their milk from California (using no hormones or antibiotics) and the dried milk products from New Zealand.
UNREAL’s chocolate is made in the United States by “a family owned and operated chocolate company.” They declined to give an actual source.
UNREAL defended its use of inulin (which can cause digestive upset in some people and is considered a filler and may actually disqualify their chocolate coating from being called chocolate by FDA standards) saying that it lowers the glycemic load of the product.

Related Candies

1. UNREAL #77 Peanut Butter Cups
2. Nestle Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp
3. NewTree Dark Milk
4. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
5. Hershey-ets
6. Sunspire Coconut Bars
7. UK Smarties (no artificial colors)
8. Best Intentions: Sun Drops
9. Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops

Starburst come in a myriad of flavor packs these days. I picked up a few of the less common flavors at some convenience stores recently. The Starburst Sweet Fiesta has been out for a few years. At first I thought it was a limited edition version, but it appears to be a regular item.

The package contains four different flavors, each is a combo flavor all based on a sort of tropical and sub-tropical flavors. It has Cherry mango, peach guava, strawberry pineapple and melon berry, with three of each flavor in the 2.07 ounce pack.

Strawberry Pineapple is pink and delightful. It’s sweet and tangy with floral notes that are close to honey and then something a little deeper and more heady.

Melon Berry is bright green. It’s quite melon, a cross between watermelon and musk melon, but there’s a strong sort of papaya note to it. It’s too musky for me, to tropical.

Peach Guava is peachy. It smells like coconut and has a peachy, apricot note at first. The guava is not terribly strong, which is fine with me because I’m not that keen on guava, it’s almost like passion fruit.

Cherry Mango is red. It smelled like the regular Cherry Starburst at first, but the flavor is quite a bit better. It’s cherry, with all those woodsy flavors, but there’s a pine and peach note to it that’s quite good. I’m not usually a fan of cherry, but I like how Starburst does them for the most part, and this is a good example.

Overall, this flavor set is different enough from the standard Starbust Fruits but I don’t feel like it completely breaks out of the show of the perfection of the original. If you’re the type of candy fan that hates citrus, this is a good mix, as it has none, which is pretty rare. I love the pineapple, but I’m not big on melon, so I’d probably give this a pass in the future as a whole pack, but if I can just pick out the Strawberry Pineapple and share the rest, it’s all systems go.

Related Candies

1. Starburst Flavor Morph
2. Haribo Maoam Fruit Chews
3. HiCHEW World Fruit: Dragonfruit, CamuCamu, Durian & White Peach
4. Starburst Sour & Sweet
5. Starburst Baja California & Tropical
6. Starburst
7. HiCHEW Assortment
8. Storck Mamba Chews