Bananas Foster is a New Orleans specialty created by chef Paul Blang?. The dessert consists of vanilla ice cream topped with bananas flambe’d in sauce of butter, dark rum, brown sugar, banana liquor and cinnamon. (I think it makes a great topping for pancakes or crepes.)

Dove has come out with a line of dessert-inspired bites including this one, the Bananas Foster and Tiramisu (made from lady fingers, marscapone and coffee). I picked the Bananas Fosters because I figured that the caramel format fit it really well (where I didn’t think it’d work as well with the Tiramisu in theory).

The little foil wrappers were a rather unsightly yellow color. Vaguely florescent, they don’t remind me of real bananas, it reminds me of Banana Runts. (But be warned as well, I rather like fake banana things, i you don’t that may interfere with your enjoyment.)

The Bananas Foster Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Promises come tightly wrapped in a strange twisted stand up box that didn’t want to stand up for me. (And in my frustration I ended up opening it on the bottom instead of the top and now I’ve completely ruined it.)

Inside the foil is a light milk chocolate disk. It smells nicely of milk chocolate, sugar and green bananas. The bite is soft, but the chocolate snaps nicely, even in this heat. The milk chocolate isn’t particular intense, I think the aspect that Dove chocolate does best is silky smooth and that’s here all right.

The caramel filling is strange but completely consistent with the way that Dove has been making it for their other caramel filled Promises. It’s thick, but not chewy. It’s very smooth, but feels emulsified like pudding instead of like actual caramelized sugar and butter. But hey, caramel banana pudding is good, too. (I like butterscotch pudding with bananas in it.)

The banana flavor isn’t overwhelming, just a light touch. The caramel notes are non-existent, but thankfully the whole thing isn’t too sweet either. I wanted a little touch of rum and a little touch of brown sugar ... but while it wasn’t even close to imitating real Bananas Foster it was still satisfying.

Check out other reviews for the Tiramisu: Chocoflyer tastes both Tiramisu & Bananas Foster, Gigi Reviews, Candy Addict and The Onion’s AV Club.

Related Candies

1. Dove Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Bars
2. Banana n Cream & Red Orange Mentos
3. Zotter Candy Bars
4. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
5. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
6. Chuao ChocoPod Collection
7. Dove Jewels

I found two more flavors of Nips to add to my growing collection.

The series seems to be color coded, peanut butter is accented with orange. I think orange is the universal color for peanut butter (though I could see yellow working too).

The Peanut Butter Parfait Nips didn’t sound that appealing to me. I wasn’t sure what the peanut butter center would be like. The picture on the box makes it appear as though it’s some sort of caramel sauce flavored with peanut butter.

These seemed more regular than the Dulce de Leche ones that I had before, not as much leakage.

After cracking one open (yes, with a nutcracker) I found out why these weren’t leaky. The center isn’t gooey, it’s a dry and crumbly partially defatted peanut butter.

The shell was like the Caramel Nips. Sweet, creamy and toasty tasting.

After a while I got kind of tired waiting for the peanut butter flavor, so I crunched it a bit. The peanut butter innards are very sweet, a little greasy (thank goodness for the defatting) and really peanutty.

The combination is nice, but completely overpowers the caramel at this point. Then the peanut butter dissolves away and I’m left with shards of caramel Nip (well, that’s my fault for crunching). Not really much of a winner for me.

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Butter Rum Nips sport a medium purple banner across the box and on the little wrappers.

Though I enjoy rum as a spirit, I don’t drink it straight and rarely in mixed drinks at all. I think it’s best in sauces and baked goods, so putting it in a candy seems like a pretty good idea to me.

They don’t smell like much in the box. Kind of like box.

If you’ve ever wanted Butter Rum LifeSavers to be more creamy, and I mean actually have milk in them instead of being milk flavored, this is the stuff.

The caramelized flavors, the smooth texture and the oh, so fake rum flavor all combines to make a really satisfying treat. I was dubious, but these won me over on the second piece.

Related Candies

1. Nips: Caramel & Dulce de Leche
2. Coffee Nips
3. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
4. Goodbye Reed’s

Since we now have officially nominated presidential candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties, I thought it was time for another election-themed candy review.

These are from Moonstruck Chocolate Co. in Portland, Oregon. They’re called the Election Collection composed of two truffle shapes, in the shape of an Elephant, the mascot of the Republicans and in the shape of a Donkey, the mascot of the Democrats.

I picked these up at Chocolate Maya in Santa Barbara over the weekend. They weren’t cheap, I paid $3.50 each. On the Moonstruck website they’re going for $15 for a set of four. This is how they describe them:

The Donkey Truffle features Moonstruck Chocolatier’s Mayan Ganache (milk chocolate, cinnamon and crushed almonds), while the Elephant Truffle features a dark chocolate Extra-Bittersweet Ganache.

(Honestly, I didn’t know they were different until after I bit into them ... cuz I didn’t get any literature with them and just assumed that political truffles, like Americans, were all the same on the inside.)

The elephant was quite cute and survived the trip home very well. I was afraid an ear or his trunk would break, but he did really well. They’re pretty big pieces, larger than a walnut.

The shell is a white confection, perhaps white chocolate, colored a pale gray. The detail is quite nice (though mine was missing an eye ... or maybe it was closed and winking at me).

I was curious what was inside his ears (LA Burdick does little mice that have almond slices for ears), so I snapped one off. Inside is a piece of chocolate.

The inside of the Republican is pure darkness. The truffle ganache is a frothy but melt-in-your-mouth-good bittersweetness. What surprised me most after that first bite shown was what was inside the elephant’s head. I expected truffle all the way through, instead he has a white chocolate ganache brain. While I think it’s a cute idea and perhaps a wry political comment (I won’t go into all possible interpretations) I found it watered down the chocolate punch of the body.

My little donkey looked kind of sad, like Eeyore. I was a little more disturbed by his lack of legs than the elephant’s, but of course that meant more ganache!

This filling is sweeter, it’s a milk chocolate cream with crushed almonds and a little spice of cinnamon. It’s not quite a gianduia type nut and chocolate confections, more like an almond butter mixed with milk chocolate. Smooth, but slightly textured. At first it was a little coconutty to me, but that could have been the gray confection shell or just the way the milky chocolate reacted wtih the almonds. As a sweeter confection overall, I wasn’t as thrilled with it as the elephant’s dark ganache, but the donkey had nothing in his head but the milk ganache, so at least he was consistent.

The pieces are quite nice to look at and good quality and distinctive flavors. I would have preferred that they were both just bittersweet through and through (and perhaps a real dark chocolate shell under the gray coating). It’s nice that they’re more than a novelty item; they have as much substance as style ... how often does that happen in partisan politics?

Related Candies

1. Kai’s Candy Campaign 2008 Candies
2. The Politics of the Candy Jar at Work
3. Regennas Clear Toys
4. Endangered Species: Peanut Butter Brittle & Rice Crisp

Some of the earliest candies recorded are sugar coated nuts and fruits. So the Jordan Almond goes back perhaps thousands of years, though not quite in its current format.

There are literally hundreds of makers of candied almonds, also known as confetti or dragees, around the world. But the candy is pretty much the same everywhere, a single almond coated with a hard sugar shell. Some are colored and tumbled to a bright sheen, still others have a soft and smooth matte surface.

The process is rather simple though time consuming. Nuts are tumbled in a large rotating drum as sugar syrup is slowly added and allowed to dry, then added again until a thick shell is built up.

Sconza started in 1939 in the Bay Area and has been making distinctive panned candies since 1948. The company is expanding rapidly now, poised to take over the former Hershey’s Chocolate facility in Oakdale California later this year.

I was eyeing some of their Jordanettes a while back, but figured they were just Jordan Almonds and everyone pretty much knows what they are. Well, they just came out with their fall version and I simply couldn’t resist. Even though they came in a two pound bag.

The colors and matte shell was just so festive - it says harvest but it wasn’t all dark colors. Instead they’re pretty muted pastels in peach, yellow, green and terra cotta.

They looked pretty big too, but as is often the case with candy coated almonds, I didn’t know if it was that the almonds were big or that the candy shell was thick.

As is often the case with Jordan Almonds, I never know how thick the shell will be and sometimes I secretly suspect that there won’t even be a nut at the center - that it might be a rock.

Happily every single one I’ve eaten so far has had a fresh almond in the middle.

The bag smelled like vanilla pudding. Soft and sweet with just a hint of vanilla (fake vanilla actually).

The dragees are soft and smooth and after in the mouth for a moment they’re pleasantly slippery and fun to chase around with my tongue.

There’s not much flavor, just sugar-sweetness.

After a while I usually crunch. I find the best way to crush the shell is to put the candy between my rear molars and gently bite down on one of flatter sides. If it doesn’t yield, I try do dissolve a bit more and try again.

Jordan Almonds aren’t like M&Ms, unless you have some sort of super-strong teeth and fearless disposition, there’s no popping them in your mouth and chewing. Of course I never see them served that way and I honestly never see people simply eating them. (I know they’re a popular wedding favor, but I never recall getting any at a wedding either.)

The almond on the inside is soft and not as sweet as the sugar-shell, but still pretty sweet (not a crisp toasted almond either, they appear to be raw or merely blanched). These had only a hint of almond flavor. Mostly the whole thing was fresh-tasting.

I can’t say that I’d just buy Jordanettes again for munching, but I do foresee finishing the bag ... and when I say finishing, I mean I’ve already eaten a half a pound. These are certainly a good deal, high quality and beautiful to look at.

Related Candies

1. Boston Baked Beans
2. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
3. Romanego Dragees, Cordials & Fondants
4. Confetti & Agrumetti
5. Anis de Flavigny

Back in May I got a fabulous box of goodies from All Candy Expo that included this package of Darrell Lea Soft Eating Liquorice. I dutifully took photos of it.

And then ate it all. And promptly forgot what it was like so I couldn’t review it.

So today I went out and bought a new bag, just so I could finish up this review. (My office is dangerously close to a Cost Plus World Market now.)

When I opened it up I remember why I didn’t review it.

I cut the bag open and stuck my nose in there to get a good lung-full of the scent and there it was ... it smells like curry. Not in a bad way, by any means, but that’s why I didn’t review the first bag ... I wasn’t sure if that’s the way it was supposed to be.

So here I am with a second bag and I’m gonna have to say, “hey folks, this stuff really smells like and Indian spice shop!” It makes my mouth water, it’s a mix of curry, coriander, anise and black tea.

The pieces are kind of awkward - they’re long fingers. Thick and soft, they’re about three inches long and a matte black.

The flavor is dark and smoky. The molasses is pronounced but has a great mellow licorice mixed with a little hint of those spices I mentioned earlier. The chew is soft without being too sticky like Dots can be. Not too sweet and really munchable but satisfying.

Pretty good overall and certainly distinctive enough that I think I could tell this apart from most of the other Aussie style licorices I’ve had over the years. And I plan on finishing this package pretty soon as well.

Rating: 8 out of 10

There are a lot of different licorice twist flavors out there, but most of them are fruity. So I was pretty excited to find this Soft Eating Ginger Liquorice at Cost Plus World Market (I bought these a couple of days ago and then realized I should review the black stuff, too, and went back.) If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Australia through candy, it’s that Australians make good licorice and ginger products.

Like the rest of their line, it comes in a kraft paper looking package, mellow and muted and boldly stating that it’s flavored naturally. The ingredients bear that out: Raw sugar, wheat glucose syrup, wheat flour, cane sugar, ginger puree (4%), water, modified food starch, palm oil, natural flavor, mono & di-glycerides, salt, citric acid, malic acid, spinach extract (color), liquorice extract, sodium bicarbonate, beta carotene (color) and sulphur dioxide (preservative).

This one didn’t smell quite as appealing. Like the Buderim Ginger Gummi Bears, I found that this bag smelled a bit like Elmer’s Glue.

But I got over it.

The little fingers in this version are a little shorter at about 2 1/2 inches each but a little bigger around. The texture is different as well, though still soft they’re not as pliable and just a bit drier on the outside. But singly they smell less like wood glue and more like ginger tea.

The bite is a smidge less smooth, but boy howdy is it spicy. Right away there’s the woodsy peppery taste of ginger and then a throat warming burn. It’s not very sweet at all, much less than the other ginger chews that I like so much from Chimes and the Ginger People.

The wheat base of the chew makes it a little starchy in a way, but it also makes them rather filling and I think cuts through what might be a very spicy affair. It would be cool if they actually used molasses in these, they’d be like gingerbread (without the extra spices). But for ginger fans, this is a great new way to enjoy it. It’s a good munching food for movies, especially mixed with something salty like popcorn (I tried it with pretzels and it went well).

Rating: 7 out of 10

Darrell Lea has a pretty big range, I saw the Green Apple and Strawberry versions at Cost Plus as well. There is another version that are chocolate covered smaller nibs but their Australian website shows a much larger range of products (most of which sound fabulous). They’re Kosher and have no artificial colors or flavors.

Related Candies

1. Young & Smylie Traditional Licorice
2. Kookaburra Licorice
3. Organic Finnska Soft Licorice
4. Kenny’s Licorice Pastels & Root Beer Twists
5. Altoids Chocolate Dipped Ginger Mints
6. Dutch Licorice
7. Chimes Ginger Chews

I was surprised at readers’ passion for Nips, so I thought I’d try a few more varieties.

I found Nips Caramel and Nips Dulce de Leche at the Rite Aid for only 99 cents (same price as the 99 Cent Only Store, see you don’t have to look far for a bargain).

Though the candy is described as rich & creamy hard candy on the front of the box, I don’t think it quite qualifies as hard since it’s not crunchable. It’s also not a caramel, because it’s not chewable. It’s just a Nip, I guess.

Caramel Nips look pretty similar to Coffee Nips, but just a smidge lighter in color. They have the same ultra smooth texture, light burnt sugar flavors and slow dissolve.

They’re creamy and milky without being cloying or sticky. They fit well in the mouth, too.

It’s taken me a while to retrain myself when eating Nips that they’re not like Werther’s Originals, I can’t crunch them, instead I’d end up cementing my teeth together.

Overall, not quite as good as the Coffee ones, but that’s a personal preference thing, these are still quite tasty and an excellent candy that belongs in everyone’s candy dish. (Except in really humid climates.)

Readers were lamenting that they thought that the Dulce de Leche Nips were possibly discontinued. I was quite happy to see a large inventory of them at Rite Aid, so I’m just guessing that they focus on regions where dulce de leche is a more recognizable. (Large Latino populations - I’m guessing because the packages for both of these are in both English and Spanish.)

I was a little nervous about these, I do remember having the chocolate parfait ones years ago and not caring much for the grainy and flavorless filling (but that could have been a bad or old batch). There’s no real description on the box either, just the banner that says dulce de leche (which means milk candy and is usually made from sweetened condensed milk boiled slowly to caramelize both the sugar and the milk sugars and served either as a sauce or fudge).

In this case it’s a shell like the Caramel Nip but inside is a layer of a sort of creme like the filling of an Oreo, a little grainy, sweet and chalky.

The overall flavor here is not really caramelized milk to me, instead it’s maple or pecan. It’s woodsy and sweet and nice, but doesn’t really enter into the dulce de leche zone for me. So if they’re looking for a way to make these appealing to other regions, maybe in New England they’d call it Country Maple and in the South they’d call it Toasted Pecan.

The cream made the candy disappear much faster, which wasn’t as fun either. They weren’t as consistent, some had a little cream sticking out of the sides. I’ll stick with the solid ones.

The other flavors still out there: Butter Rum, Chocolate Parfait, Peanut Butter Parfait and Mocha.

Related Candies

1. Crown Nuggets Borrachitos
2. Caramilk Maple
3. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
4. Nestle Turtles

When I was a teenager I discovered Pearson Coffee Nips. Like my other favorite at the time, Andes Mints, they represented a sophisticated taste in an easy to share individually wrapped portion. I’d buy them by the box, usually for about a dollar and they’d last forever.

I wasn’t quite developed enough at the time to drink coffee straight, about all I could stand was coffee floats (hot coffee with vanilla ice cream in it) but I loved the taste of the stuff.

That’s what attracted me to Coffee Nips. They combine the rich coffee taste with a creamy texture and a long lasting hard candy experience. And they were pretty inexpensive.

Pearson Coffee Nips were known simply as Pearson Nips when they were introduced over 70 years ago. But now they’re made in a wide variety of flavors (and some even have flavored goo centers). The Pearson line of Nips was sold to Nestle back in 1989 and looking closely on the package, they’re not even called Pearson any longer.

Even though they’ve changed hands, they’re the same as they ever were. A lump of hard caramel, made from a combination of sugar, corn syrups and milk products and a few tropical oils ... boiled down with some real coffee to become a slow dissolving bit of concentrated coffee. It’s almost a toffee, but more of a hard caramel.

They’re smooth and creamy and not too sweet (though far sweeter than I like my liquid coffee). They’re impossible to chew, which makes them last a long time (though I caution you to not try to chew them as they will cement your teeth together).

They’re an excellent summer candy because they travel well but provide a rich creamy experience and mimic a hot drink that many of us eschew on hot days. (Okay, I only eschew hot coffee in the middle of the day, I pretty much always drink hot coffee in the morning.)

Refreshing. Classic. I’ve never tried the other flavors which include Butter Rum, Caramel, Chocolate Parfait, Dulce de Leche, Mocha and Peanut Butter Parfait. The coffee suits me just fine.

Related Candies

1. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
2. Cafe Select Chocolate Coffee Trios
3. Walkers Nonsuch Toffee
4. Storck Chocolate Riesen
5. Pocket Coffee
6. Bali’s Best Coffee & United Coffee Candy

I was cruising through the 99 Cent Store and noticed a new line of candies called All Gummies Gourmet. I recognized the actual candies as Albanese Candy Company (and this was confirmed in the small print on the back of the package). So finally Albanese are available at stores without going into the bulk candy aisle.

This bag of Fruity Fish caught my eye. Here was a half a pound of red fish for less than a dollar? Could they be any good? A little further down the aisle and there was the good old, reliable Swedish Fish (made by Cadbury Adams), so I decided to see if this designer impostor could fulfill a penny pinchers craving.

First, the Swedish Fish package had only 4 ounces in it, the Fruity Fish was a full 8 ounces ... twice as much candy for the same price.

The packages are both attractive enough. The Swedish Fish is traditional, pretty much the same package I recognize from ten years ago - yellow with a little scale pattern on it. The All Gummies Gourmet packaging is rather generic - a vibrant blue and bronzy gold. The nice part is that the bottom of the package is clear cellophane and it’s easy to see the candies inside. And they do look fresh, moist and tasty!

The detail on both is nice, they look like fish. The scales, lips and eyes on the Fruity Fish is sharper, but I wouldn’t call one better than the other. So while I consider the appearance of both to be about equal, the comparable-ness ends there.

The fish themselves are about the same size. The Swedish Fish is a bit flatter and therefore weighs a bit less. The Swedish Fish are lighter in color and smell a little like raspberries and cotton candy. The Fruity Fish are a deep red and smell like, well, black cherry flavor with a touch of bitter amaretto. I wasn’t happy about this.

First, Fruity Fish are gummis. That’s right, they’re not jelly candies like the Swedish Fish, they’re full on gelatin-carrying gummis. (I can’t be upset, it does say All Gummies Gourmet right on the front.)

Second, they’re not any kind of berry flavor. Swedish Fish flavor is rather unique, I’ve always considered it lingonberry flavor, though it’s never been officially declared what flavor they are. The Fruity Fish are soft, chewy and have a good mix of tangy and sweet. But the flavor is black cherry, through and through.

So, these are no designer impostor as I suspected. They’re certainly a good deal, as the package heralds Big Value. But they are very jarring if you’re expecting the dulcet berry tones of Swedish Fish. Even though the Swedish Fish cost twice as much, I’ll stick with them ... but only because of the cherry flavor issue with Fruity Fish. They’re still a darn good candy.

Related Candies

1. Wii Candy Dispenser & Nintendo Gummis
2. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
3. Hubba Bubba Sour Gummi Tape
4. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
5. Gummi Clown Fish
6. Fragrant Gummies