What’s truly baffling in the whole confectionery world is that most sweets are made from the same ingredients. Yet the processes applied to them and the combinations can yield vastly different results. The Bunny Basket Eggs reviewed last week are an excellent example of sugar done wrong.

Konpeito (or Kompeito) is just sugar, and done so well. These little rocks, about the size of a pea and simply rock sugar with a little food coloring. And when you compare iit to those awful marshmallow Easter eggs, it makes no sense.

If you ever saw Spirited Away, you may have seen this candy. They’re little multi-faceted sugar crystal lumps that look like three dimensional stars.

There’s not much else to say about them except that they’re sweet and cute. If you’re looking for a special little something exotic for an Easter basket, these might fit the bill, the packaging is pink and pretty and of course the little pastel morsels of sugar are, well, rock candy. And rock candy rocks. You can even pick up a package and use it when you serve tea or coffee as a cuter version of the old sugar cubes.

See also: CandyAddict.com review, JunkFoodBlog has more on the cultural significance and limited edition versions and Wikipedia has a full entry including the references to Kompeito in media.

One of the candies of Easter that has always scared me has been the Russell Stover Cream Egg. Of course this all goes back to traumatic childhood experiences where I would get excited when my mother or grandmother would allow me a piece of candy from their fancy box of chocolates. I was allowed to pick only one, of course, and I always picked the foulest things (to my young palate). The Cream Eggs looked like a huge tease - all flash and style and no substance. I didn’t realize until I took this assignment that I was very wrong.

The unlikely first candidate was the Strawberry Cream Egg. It’s a milk chocolate egg with a frothy strawberry cream with real strawberry seeds! Kind of latexy looking filling, but it smells nice. Sweet, but with a nice smooth and fluffy consistency. The chocolate is good quality and not too sweet for the filling. The center is rather bland, I wasn’t detecting a lot of “strawberry” flavor to it. For my first try, this wasn’t bad. I think I’d prefer it with dark chocolate.

Next was the Coconut Cream Egg, which I expected this to be much too sweet. Just looking at it, it seemed to be more froth than coconut substance. I’m a huge fan of Mounds bars, and this is no Mounds bar. But putting aside the comparisons, it’s not too sweet, it’s fluffy and has really good coconut flavor without being oily. The dark chocolate provides the proper bittersweet balance to the whole thing. There were ample coconut bits in there, but not dense enough to make it chewy. These were pretty cheap when I picked them up, so if they’re even MORE on sale after the holiday, I might lay in a stock of them.

(Note: my camera ceased to function during this photoshoot, so you’ll just have to imagine a picture of a dark chocolate cream egg with a beige cream filling in this position.)

Finally there was the Maple Cream Egg, which is a dark chocolate egg with a whipped maple cream center. No maple trees were harmed in the creation of this treat as no maple ingredients were mentioned on the label. The maple flavor actually had a good woodsy quality to it, not just the high sweet notes. It reminded me more of pecan, but that’s a good flavor, too! Sweet, mellow and creamy, this is much better than I expected it to be. The understated bitterness of the dark chocolate really held this one together.

I have to thank the readers for suggesting these, I had no idea they were so fresh tasting. I was expecting a solid and bland fondant but instead it was quite a treat. Given a choice, I think I’ll always go for the dark chocolate ones. There are a few I didn’t try ... and now I’m looking forward to finding the coconut nests. There’s a huge assortment of flavors too, I didn’t see them all at the Rite Aid where I picked these up, but they also have a large number of “sugar free” varieties as well ... I’m not willing to try them myself, but if someone else can chime in on whether or not their good, they might make a nice treat for diabetic or dieting friends.

They’re also pretty satisfying as a single treat goes and because they’re mostly fluffed sugar, they’re much lower in calories than an all-chocolate candy, ranging from 130 to 150 calories for a single egg. If they don’t sell them near you, the web price for these nuggets by the case is pretty good, only $.49 cents per egg. I wish they sold a sampler case that had two of each in it. I’d really like to try the Pecan/Caramel one.

Cotton Candy is an elusive sort of candy, you really can’t buy it prepacked and you certainly can’t make it at home (unless you buy or rent a cotton candy machine). If you live in a big metropolitan area you probably see it for sale by street vendors but most of us associate it with fairs and amusement parks. Dubble Bubble Fluff, I think, is trying to capture a bit of that special treat feeling, but they’ve got an added proposition ... it’s cotton candy and then it’s gum just like their cousin Razzles (also made by the same uber-corp, Tootsie).

This looks and feels just like cotton candy and smells like sweet strawberries and, of course, sugar. The texture is a little less airy than cotton candy, but then again, this is packaged stuff, not the “fresh from the carnival midway” candy floss.

I was afraid it would be sticky and heavy on the tongue, but it dissolves rather like regular cotton candy and then towards the end, instead of melting away completely it has a transitional period where it’s just a rather odd blob, but if you chew it, it turns out as gum!

That wad of fluff there that I took out for the photo (about a quarter of the bag) turns out to make a reasonable size piece of bubble gum. It looses its flavor and sweetness rather quickly, but the novelty factor and overall success of the transition from sugar floss to gum is pretty incredible. It’s not my chosen way to enjoy bubble gum, but they really achieved the cotton candy end of the proposition, so they get high marks for that. The gum part is a little disappointing, but then again, when I’m chewing Dubble Bubble, I usually just chew the sugar out and pop another piece.

Airheads also makes a similar product and Candy Addict reviewed the Japanese version called Wata Gum.

It’s coffee day here at CandyBlog.net. Yes, I’ve got jetlag and I need lots and lots of caffeine. So in between sips of the regular liquid kind and some Black Black gum, I thought I’d review some coffee flavored chocolate candies.

I found this bar at the checkout counter at Target. There are a few varieties of the new Mauna Loa foray into consumer chocolate, but I thought that they knew their macadamias and of course Kona is known for their coffee. How could I go wrong?

This is a smooth and sweet dark chocolate bar with macadamia nuts and coffee. The bar has four domed segments each with some nice small bits of macadamias scattered evenly on the bottom of the bar. In this form I get the macadamia taste, but the texture is more like coconut. That’s not a bad thing. Then the coffee kick comes in. It’s mostly a chocolate flavor, but when you hit the coffee grounds, it’s definitely a good mellow coffee flavor.

But here’s the thing, and I mentioned it yesterday when reviewing the Dolfin cafe tasting squares ... I don’t want the coffee grounds. I don’t put up with coffee grounds in my actual coffee, why do I want them in my chocolate? Well, they do add fiber. This bar has 3 grams of fiber. (It also has 9 grams of saturated fat.)

Overall, it’s too sweet for me. I want a little darker, richer chocolate with my coffee essences. The macadamias add a great nutty flavor and texture to it, and though I’d never drink a macadamia/chocolate flavored coffee, I will eat a macadamia and coffee studded chocolate. I’m vaguely curious about their milk chocolate and might pick that bar up at some future visit to Target. I do actually appreciate Target’s wide selection of candies at the check out that include more than the standard fare of Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle and at 99 cents, it’s only slightly more expensive than the regular bars.

I haven’t the foggiest on the name on this one, so I’m gonna call these Chestnut Pocky and if anyone else knows what those alternating Japanese and French words add up to, please let me know. (I know that Mont Blanc means white mountain, but that’s not a flavor!)

This is Super Thick Pocky. There are two coatings, the bottom coat is a milky sweet, kinda caramelly coating. The zig-zaggy top coat is similar, but has more of a nutty taste to it, which I’m guessing is where the chestnut comes in. But after tasting it (well, by that I mean eating half the box) I checked with JBox which always has nice descriptions:

Here is the latest treat from the Glico people, a fresh new style of Pocky that is out of this world. The delicious crispy pretzel snack wrapped in milk chocolate and then decorated in gummy style chestnut-flavored chocolate, for a taste based on the French treat popular in Japan called Mont Blanc!

It’s been years since I’ve had chestnuts but I remember them being rather sweet and chewy, unlike other nuts.

These are rich and sweet and not as addictively snackable as many of the other Pocky that I’ve had. They’re nice and all, and maybe in a Pocky mix I’d find them a nice change, but I can’t give them the highest marks as a snack. But I can confirm that there are no hydrogenated fish oils in this ingredients list, so that’s a bonus.

(Sorry for any feed duplication today, I’ve been traveling and I scheduled these reviews to launch but something went screwy.)

I was on a kick to find the Dolfin Peppercorn bar and stopped at the same liquor store that my husband bought the previous assortment. No luck. But they did have this assortment of tasting squares that I picked up.

There are 24 squares in the package, 12 flavors.

Cafe Noir - dark chocolate with coffee bean bits. I’m kind of tired of the whole idea of throwing something that I generally regard as garbage in my chocolate. There are ways of getting coffee flavor into my chocolate without putting the actual beans in there.
Cafe Lait - sweet and milky but not a lot of coffee flavor to it, more cinnamon than I would have liked.
Au Lait - Nice, milky and sweet but lacking a real chocolate punch.
Lait Cannelle - milk chocolate with real cinnamon in it. Lots and lots of real cinnamon chips. The whole chips give a good sweet and spicy feel to the chocolate, but it all seems just a tad sweet. The scent, however, is absolutely mouthwateringly good and I’d like a perfume made of it.
Noir 88% - beautiful snap and creamy mouth feel without being chalky. Light and smoky with a good bitter and dry finish.
Noir 70% - sweeter and more buttery than the 88%, good chocolate kick, less dry but still nicely astringent.
Noir 52% - mellow and smoky with a really creamy base to it. Not bitter but not as smooth as it could be. When tasting their pure chocolate, I’ve come to believe that it’s just not as smooth as some of the other Belgian and European varieties I’ve tried.
Noir Nougatine (shown above unwrapped) - dark chocolate with hard nougat pieces (like a Toblerone). The dark chocolate is sweet and smooth and the nougat bits provide a nice little honey sweet break in the chocolate.
Lait Nougatine - very sweet, which keeps the nougat bits from popping out as well as they do on the Noir.
Orange - wonderful, great buttery chocolate with a good aromatic hit of orange, probably my favorite in this batch.
Citron - dark chocolate with the slightest hint of sweet lemon. It’s not zesty, just a pleasant aromatic feel to the chocolate.
Earl Grey - dark chocolate with black tea and bergamot. I didn’t really get a strong sense of the flavor here, just a black tea earthy flavor. There was a little grit because of the real tea leaves.

I think I prefer chocolate that comes in a slightly thicker piece. These very thin tasting wafers seem just slightly chalky to me and I’d prefer something with a bit more tooth to it.

I’m still looking forward to the Pink Peppercorn and Anise bars (which I ordered from Chocosphere) but I think I may prefer Dagoba and Lake Champlain as an overall brand to Dolfin.

Jolly Rancher hard candies were quite revolutionary when I first had them as a kid. They were full of flavor and came in varieties that other candies just didn’t have. Watermelon and green apple were the absolute best.

It’s about time Jolly Ranchers went chewy. I mean, Starbursts are good and have occupied their fruit flavored niche for years, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve a few options in the candy genre. Okay, these have been out for about five years and I’m a little late in trying them, but Starburst have been around for at least 30.

The good thing about Jolly Ranchers Fruit Chews is that they stuck with what they do best. They didn’t go all orange, lemon and strawberry on us. They went with their strong suit - green apple, watermelon and cherry.

These chews are slightly different from Starbursts. First, they’re larger. Not by much, but a little bigger in each dimension. Second, they’re a different chew. It’s hard to describe, but they’re chewy and have a soft give to them, but there’s a latex quality to them that allows you to chew and chew, almost like they’re gum and they give off lots of flavor, but they don’t seem to get any smaller. Starbursts tend to end up in a little bit of a grainy ball towards the end, these just melt away smoothly. This is a cool feature.

The other great thing about them is that the flavor is there all the way. You keep chewing and chewing and it doesn’t end up as a sweet blob, it ends up as a smaller piece of the same gland tingling flavor that you started with. They’re soft and easy on the teeth.

As an adult I’m less fond of watermelon and green apple than I used to be (and regular readers know I’m not a cherry fan). I don’t know if it’s because they’re a little chemical tasting or I probably used too many Bonne Bell Lipsmackers. I just associate the flavor with being a bumbling pre-adult, hanging out at the pool in the summertime with my bony knees and freckles, perhaps trying to cover up the fact that I always smelled like a mix of chlorine and salami (I worked in a pizza place).

My favorite flavor of Jolly Rancher was the Fire Stix - they were awesome - powerfully strong cinnamon in a smooth, sweet hard candy, and every once in a while you’d hit a fire pocket and get a little jolt. I wish they’d make some chews that tasted like that.

Note: this candy was manufactured in Canada and are not Kosher (those thoughts are not related).

There are a couple of other iterations of the famous red foil Rocky Road. One is Mint, which I found only recently but was in such bad condition, I could hardly give it a fair review. The second is this one, which I found at the Rite-Aid which is Dark Chocolate.

This bar comes in a pleasant, lightly gold-tinted wrapper. I’ve decided that all Rocky Road bars are dented and cracked as a consequence of the scant packaging. No matter, it doesn’t seem to affect the taste at all. This bar doesn’t smell quite as chocolately as the milk chocolate one does, but does have a very sweet aroma.

The marshmallow is thick and foamy, but not very moist. It has some good give to it without being too rubbery and a not-too-fake vanilla taste to it. There’s very little contribution from the cashews in the chocolate coating except for some texture. I think the bar might be better served without them, but then I’d probably notice that the quality of the coating chocolate isn’t really that good.

Overall, I liked it quite a bit better than the traditional milk Rocky Road, but its rarity is an impediment to purchasing it again. I’ve been in plenty of Rite-Aids in Los Angeles and this is the first time I’ve seen this there and it’s not good enough for me to keep going back to that particular Rite-Aid (Santa Monica Blvd. & La Brea).