I couldn’t resist the look of these tins for Ginger Zingers made by Big Sky Brands. Not only are they a cute format, they also feature one of my favorite flavors: Ginger.

I’ve had quite a few “mints” from Big Sky Brands over the years, and appreciate their approach to their candies even if their flavor combinations don’t align with my tastes. The Ginger Zingers line (called Ginger Delights on their website for some reason) come in four flavors: D’Anjou Pear, Mango, Chai and Blood Orange. I picked up the last two, as they were the most appealing to me.

The back of the tin explains the candy:

We love natural ginger for its distinctive spicy sweetness and invigorating kick.  That’s why our Ginger Zingers candy is packed with genuine ground ginger root & carefully selected natural flavors for a delicious and stimulating on the go treat!

They aren’t kidding when they say it’s packed with ginger. The ingredients list pure cane sugar first, then ground ginger root.

The Blood Orange Ginger Zingers has a very faint orange cast to it but definitely smells like an orange gelatin dessert. The flavor on the tongue is immediately a sweet orange, but a little later this candy gets intense. The ginger is very warm and has a strong black pepper hotness. I found them too intense and the orange didn’t have any zest or tang, just the sweet juice note.

The Chai Ginger Zingers feature a full list of the spices on the package, which I really appreciated. Star anise (pictured on the box), cinnamon, cardamom, clove and black pepper are the chai to go with the ginger. This combination smells like vanilla at first, or more like a poundcake, with a sweet baked sugar note. The ginger is far from the intensity of the Blood Orange variety, but still warming. I caught a note of the anise, black pepper and a little clove, but it was a nice mellow blend. I found these very easy to eat one after another.

Each tin holds about 30 pieces of candy, about 1 ounce total. I picked mine up for $1.99 a package. They’re a bit pricy for mints, especially if I gobble them up. But the flavors were distinct and uncommon enough that I could see getting the Chai again, especially if I were looking for something to help with motion sickness. In the mean time, the tin is the ideal size for stowing my earbuds.

The package specifies that these are made with a vegetarian sourced magnesium stearate, but there’s no notation on whether the sugar is considered vegan. They are kosher and gluten free.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Organic Gingermints
2. Chimes Orange Ginger Chews
3. Tea Forte Minteas Lemongrass Yuzu
4. Maple Ice Mints
5. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
6. VerMints
7. Jones Soda Grape Carbonated Candy

This fall Nestle announced it was launching Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups in January 2014. Butterfinger is an iconic American candy bar, combining peanuts and sugar and chocolate. The bar has been adapted into a half a dozen other formats and confections. There’s were Butterfinger BBs, Butterfinger Crisp, Butterfinger Snackerz, Butterfinger Stixx, Butterfinger Bites, Butterfinger Chocolate Bars and even the caffeinated Butterfinger Buzz.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Nestle decided to take on the cup format and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Nestle plans to go big with their launch of the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, with a full ad campaign including a commercial during the 2014 Superbowl.

There’s a couple of curiosities about these cups. First, they have no paper cups. They are fluted, but there’s no paper liner on the tray in the package.

The second thing is that they’re not round. The circular base is far smaller than the top, which is a rounded square. There’s quite an angle towards the top which means that the ratio of chocolate to filling changes at the perimeter versus the center.

The cups are described simply as Smooth & Crunchy on the package.

The filling is quite salty. There’s a creamy component that is very sweet, then the chunky, crunchy bits of Butterfinger centers. There’s a very strong artificial butter flavor to the whole thing, much stronger than an actual Butterfinger bar.  The chocolate profile itself is overshadowed by the butter flavor of the center, so it’s hard for it to contribute anything other than texture. That said, it’s pretty smooth though sweet. It’s certainly better than the coating on a Butterfinger Bar.

The ingredients are interesting, notably that they’ve removed the artificial colorings from this candy. (Butterfinger Bars have artificial yellow and red food coloring in them.)

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, vanillin), sugar, peanuts, peanut toffee pieces (sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, peanut butter [peanuts, dextrose, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, salt], peanuts, butter, salt, soy lecithin, paprika extract color), fractionated palm kernel oil, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, less than 2% of milk, nonfat milk, salt, cocoa butter, hydrogenated palm oil, natural and artificial flavor, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, soybean oil, TBHQ, annatto and paprika extract color.

Contains milk, soy and peanuts, may contain nuts. No mention of gluten.

The package has the Cocoa Plan logo on the front. This is Nestle’s new initiative to bring sustainable practices to their cocoa growers through education programs. The programs are to help growers use better practices to increase yields, reduce losses as well as creating schools for the children in their communities. It’s an internal program that Nestle operates that does not, as far as I know, have any external audits or benchmarks, though they do also buy from Fairtrade and UTZ certified sources in quantities to match certain products so that they can bear their logo.

There are a lot of similarities between the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s probably not a coincidence. Each cup is .75 ounces, with the package holding two totaling 1.5 ounces.

From the above you can see the long and complicated ingredient list for the Butterfinger Cups. The Reese’s cups are far simpler.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, TBHQ.

Simpler does not necessarily mean better. Both cups have TBHQ in them, which is a preservative (keeps the peanut oil from getting rancid). But both are rather small in mass for a candy bar these days. A Snickers Bar or Butterfinger Bar is over 2 ounces. These cups are kind of puny.

But in the ingredients list, you’ll notice that the Reese’s have no added oils, no fractionated palm kernel oil or hydrogenated rapeseed oil. But I’ve got to admire the bang for the buck I get with the Butterfinger, it has 20 more calories from fat than the Reese’s. Here’s the comparison of the nutritional panels for both cups:

So, the Butterfinger is less salty and just slightly fattier - some of the protein grams of the Reese’s are fat grams in the Butterfinger. This is an odd observation, since the Reese’s Cups I know and love usually have a soft, greasy spot in the center of the chocolate on each cup where the peanut oils have migrated from the peanut butter into the chocolate. As far as I can tell, the Butterfinger Cups are far more stable and consistent.

They’re different candies. They share some of their format and the basic flavors but the textural experience is different. I still prefer the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but that’s probably because I’ve grown up with it. I don’t care for the fake, overly sweet butter flavor of the Butterfinger Bar or these Cups. But I do appreciate the variation in the textures. Overall, I usually go for the smaller ingredients list and I prefer my candy to have the innate oils from the flavor ingredients, not added ones. But it’s a good candy and I think they’ll probably last longer than Butterfinger Stixx.

Related Candies

1. UNREAL #77 Peanut Butter Cups
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
3. RM Palmer Giant 1/4 Lb. Peanut Butter Cup
4. Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
5. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
6. Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz
7. Head to Head: Clark, Butterfinger & 5th Avenue
8. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line

A favorite candy in the United States are the Swedish Fish. Today they’re made by Cadbury Adams in Canada. Though they come in multiple flavors, the favorite is the red lingonberry flavored fish with the word Swedish embossed on the side.

The original, however, is still made in Sweden by the Malaco company under the name of Malaco Pastellfiskar. (Malaco is now owned by the Cloetta company, which also makes Fazer chocolates.) They’re actually quite different from the North American variety.

They do come in four flavors: lemon, orange, pear and berry. They are also a winegum-style of jelly candy, not a gummi. The Swedish version has a different texture and recipe. This assortment was sent to me by Swede Sweets, but I’ve also seen them for sale at Sugarfina and Sockerbit.

Glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, cornstarch, water, acid (E330 - citric acid), vegetable oil, acidity regulator (E52 - sodium hydroxide), flavorings, glazing agents (E901 - beeswax), colors (E141 - natural green, E160a - carotene, E160e - apocarotenal).

The fish are thick and fresh, soft but a little stiffer chew than the Cadbury Adams version. The texture is more like Dots. They’re a smooth chew with a vibrant flavor profile but they do stick in the teeth.

Yellow is Lemon has a wonderful note of the lemon rind along with a sort of marmalade or honey syrup note to the lemon juice flavors.

Orange is Orange and quite zesty. It’s tangy and juicy but mostly it’s truly like a fresh peeled orange.

Green may be Pear or Green Apple, though I thought it tasted a lot like pineapple, but green wouldn’t make much sense for that. It’s tangy and floral and sweet, it was actually my favorite of the assortment. (Which is weird because I’m not much of a fan of pear or apple flavored things.)

Red is the famous Swedish Berry or Lingonberry. It’s great to taste this without the distraction of the artificial colors in the North American version. This is a little more tart, a little more fragrant. The berry flavor is the same though, that strange blueberry meets pomegranate meets black currant that is the profile of Lingonberry. It’s great and has a well deserved reputation.

The only thing I don’t like about these is the fact that they stick so much to my teeth. The little nuggets just get stuck in between all of my molars. I found eating some crunchy crackers between helped and then some hot tea. (I suppose actually brushing my teeth would help as well.) They’re worth seeking out, especially if you’ve been looking for a version without artificial colors.

Related Candies

1. Marabou Noblesse Crisps: Original, Dark & Orange
2. Sugarfina: The Gummis
3. Swedish Fish Jelly Beans
4. Sockerbit Swedish Candy Selections
5. All Gummies Gourmet Fruity Fish (Swedish Fish knock-off)
6. Swedish Aqua Life
7. Salted Licorices: Djungelvral and Dubbel Zout

Morinaga’s has created a morsel version of their popular HiCHEW candies. They’re called HiCHEW Mini and feature four flavors to the cute little 1.4 ounce box.

There are four flavors: pineapple, green apple, grape and strawberry. The box is a great design, it’s overwrapped with cellophane to keep the contents fresh, once opened there’s a little perforated tab that opens a dispenser to get one candy at a time. The pieces are chunky, a little larger than Skittles, and kind of drum shaped.

The green apple is like most of the apple candies from Japan. It’s more about the flavor of apple juice than the artificial thing typified by Jolly Ranchers in the United States. These are sweet and tangy, the chew lasts a long time and doesn’t descend into a grainy mess.

The pineapple is the star, partly because there are no regularly found pineapple Skittles. It’s immediately floral and tangy with that deep honey note. It’s quite intense.

The candy shell, though, is lacking something. There’s no crunch, there’s no boost of texture from the shell. Instead the shell becomes tacky and kind of waxy, like it’s just shellac (though it is a little tangy and does seem to have the same flavor as the chew).

The grape is lovely and reminiscent of concord grapes. It has those skin flavors of a concord grape and the green fruity note of the juice.

The strawberry was the least impressive of the set. It’s not floral or jammy, just kind of tangy but lacking any different levels.

I wanted to love these. I wanted them to be everything that Skittles aren’t: naturally flavored, more intense chew with great packaging. Instead they’re expensive and leave a weird waxy residue in my molars. I still might buy them again if I see them in another flavor assortment. I like the assortment notion, as most HiCHEW are single flavor packages (unless you get the bagged candies) and the fact that there’s less packaging overall.

Note: I ordered these from JBox.com (or JList.com, as they’re also known) and found the experience to be unsatisfactory in enough different ways (payment is taken immediately even if the items aren’t shipped for a month, lack of communication via email and their twitter account, slow & conflicting information and unilateral cancellation of one of the items I’d ordered) that I do not plan on shopping with them again.

Related Candies

1. Airheads Bites
2. Starburst Minis (Original)
3. Skittles replace Lime with Green Apple
4. Morinaga HiCHEW Fanta: Grape & Orange plus Cola
5. HiCHEW Japan vs HiCHEW Taiwan
6. HiCHEW World Fruit: Dragonfruit, CamuCamu, Durian & White Peach
7. Festival HiCHEW: Candied Apple & Cotton Candy

The final bar in the trio of seasonal bars from Ritter Sport that I wanted to review is the Winter Edition Coconut Macaroon. As I mentioned in the review of the Caramel-Orange and Caramelised Almonds, the Ritter Sport seasonal editions are becoming much more readily available in the United States now.

I found mine at Cost Plus World Market, they were priced up at $2.99 a bar, instead of the usual $2.49.

I was most interested in how different this bar is from the Ritter Sport Coconut bar that debuted earlier this year. Like many of the Ritter Sport bars, this one is a cream filling, which means the first ingredients are sugar and palm oil. The Coconut Macaroon bar is filled with a milk creme and pieces of coconut macaroons and crispy rice. So the filling is a bit more textured. (I also recognize now that I tried a test market version of this a couple of years ago at the Ritter Sport factory.)

The milk chocolate is soft and the bar is easy to break. The coconut scent really permeates the whole thing, giving it a tropical note. The chocolate is smooth and creamy and milky. It might have been fun to see a dark chocolate used on this one to differentiate it from the Coconut bar.

The filling is light and has lots of crispy coconut bits and little rice flakes. The rice gives it a malty note, which balances out the sweetness a bit.

Overall, the cream bars are not a huge favorite of mine, they’re not greasy or heavy, but not really satisfying for some reason. The balance here is good, but I’d like to see Ritter Sport go for some more dark chocolate options for their seasonal bars going forward.

Related Candies

1. Ritter Sport Coconut
2. Nestle Crunch Girl Scout Cookie Candy Bars: Peanut Butter & Caramel and Coconut
3. Ritter Sport 100th Anniversary Edel-Nuss Mix + Bonus Previews
4. Dove Milk Chocolate Coconut Creme Eggs
5. Ritter Sport Sommer-Genuss 2010 Limited Editions
6. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
7. Russell Stover Coconut Wreath

SweetWorks, which makes many flavors of the break apart chocolate orange and Sixlets, also makes a wide variety of foil wrapped chocolate pieces and figures for all occasions.

Their holiday range is quite diverse, featuring chocolate balls, disks and semi-solid figures. The company sent me a huge box filled with confections to sample before Thanksgiving, and I’ve finally made it through all of the items before Christmas.

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Ornaments are one of the classics. They’re just a little solid chocolate sphere wrapped in foil.

Foil Colors: Solid Hunter Green, Solid Red, Diamon Silver, Diamond Blue, Diamond Red.

Taste: The milky chocolate is very smooth and has a lot of dairy notes to it. It’s on the sweet side but also has a lot of vanilla notes to it.

Verdict: Very nice, easily munchable. This sort of piece will appeal to kids and adults.

Rating: 8 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Crisp Balls

Foil Colors: Hunter Green, Silver & Red

Taste: The milky chocolate has a nice ratio of crisped rice. It’s creamy, a little softer than the solid chocolate bars but not quite as sweet.

Verdict: This is what I want from my candy in my stocking. It’s comforting and filling but still attractive.

Rating: 8 out of 10

SweetWorks Dark Chocolate Balls

Foil Colors: Hunter Green, Gold & Red

Taste: These are extremely dark looking, almost black. I checked and noticed the ingredients list: sugar, chocolate, chocolate processed with alkali, cocoa butter, butterfat (milk), soy lecithin, and vanilla. So this chocolate contains alkalized cocoa, which makes it darker. It also has butterfat in it, so it’s not vegan, which is too bad, because it’s hard to find vegan holiday treats. The flavor profile is a little odd. It’s definitely not overly sweet, but the particle size of the chocolate gives it a slight grain and a dry finish.

Verdict: I liked them well enough to pick them out as something to eat in combination with other things, like nuts, but I didn’t like the dry afterbite.

Rating: 7 out of 10

SweetWorks Solid Milk Chocolate Bells

Foil Colors: Hunter Green, Silver & Red

Taste: These are a bigger bite than the balls, about 2/3 bigger, so it’s a lot more chocolate at once. I noticed the smoothness of the melt much more in this shape.

Verdict: These are easier to peel and eat, though one piece is a little bigger than I prefer a bit of chocolate to be. But they don’t roll around, so that’s a plus.

Rating: 7 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Bells

Foil Colors: Green with Silver Trees & Red with Silver Trees

Taste: These didn’t smell like much in the package, but once unwrapped there was a nice fresh peanut scent. The milky chocolate is really smooth and the peanut center was part meltaway, part peanut butter.

Verdict: They’re not the same texture or peanut flavor profile as Reese’s, so as long as you’re okay with that, these are very satisfying.

Rating: 8 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Medallions

Foil Colors: White Snowman, Blue Santa, Green Teddy Bear & Red Reindeer

Taste: Milky, sweet and creamy.

Verdict: This was the most disappointing design as far as I was concerned. They seemed dated and missed an opportunity for something a little more splashy. A simple patterned foil or perhaps better artwork for the illustrations would have put these over the top. I like the format of the disks, as they’re easier to bite than bells and something that can be used in S’mores very easily.

Rating: 6 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Santas

Foil Colors: Dominantly Red with Green & Yellow Accents - 4 designs

Taste: Thin and long, it’s an easy two bite piece. They were exceptionally shiny.

Verdict: Like the medallions, the design of the Santa foil is a little dated. But in the case I found it utterly charming, especially since I could walk them around on my desk and set them up in little tableaus as if they were interacting. The bonus here is that the Santa is molded with quite a bit of detail, so even unwrapped they’re beguiling.

Rating: 7 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Santas

Foil Colors: Dominantly Red with Blue & Bronze Accents - 4 designs

Taste: This has a similar light peanutty flavor to the Bells. It’s not a deep roasted flavor, it seemed a bit saltier and a little thick/stickier in the melt.

Verdict: I didn’t like the ratios as much as the Bells, but I have to appreciate the cute little Santa expressions.

Rating: 7 out of 10

SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Hollow Foil comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. They have Turkeys in full feather, Santas, Nutcrackers and a Rocking Horse. (I think they also do a Teddy Bear.) These are very sturdy, the foil is thick and well designed. Instead of a bit piece that wraps around to the back, these are crimped. This means that there’s a full front and back design with a large seam where the two sides are pinched together.

The sizes vary, as you can tell from the photos. As an example, the SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Santa is a little shy of 6 inches and weighs 70 grams (2.5 ounces). The base of the Santa is thick, which makes it very stable when standing. They’re all very attractive designs and would be good as either stocking stuffers or as decorations on a cookie plate or as place settings at a table.

The SweetWorks Hollow Chocolate Rocking Horse is 3.5 ounces, so the same as a standard tablet bar, only in a fancier format. SweetWorks uses all natural milk chocolate for their hollow molded figures. The ingredients list only: sugar, cocoa butter, milk, chocolate, soy lecithin and vanilla. They’re also kosher and gluten-free though processed in a facility with tree nuts and peanuts. The SweetWorks Hollow Chocolate Nutcracker is the largest of the pieces they make for Christmas, at 4.5 ounces and is nearly 7 inches tall.

The SweetWorks Milk Chocolate Turkey is only 1 ounce, but seems like a far larger portion. The base, like the others, is mostly solid which keeps the figure upright whether it’s wrapped or not. The chocolate tastes milkier and smoother than the foil covered balls. (My guess is that the formulation is just a little different for the molded chocolate because of the production demands of filling the intricate molds.)

Rating: 8 out of 10

Like the others, the molding details are great, it really is a nicely sculpted turkey and completely recognizable when it’s unwrapped. I liked these much better than the Hershey’s or Dove versions found at Easter, but they’re not quite as rich as the Lindt foil figures. I really liked the Rocking Horse though, I thought its design set it apart from the other offerings on the store shelves. I saw the Turkeys at Dylan’s Candy Bar, and I think they were $2.99 but online they’re a bit less. I just wish they were easier to find. For Easter they make a 3.5 ounce Yellow Chick and 3 ounce sitting Rabbit. It makes me wonder if there are figures that could be more “year round” or generic for parties and decorations since the Teddy Bear seems like a natural item for a baby shower.

SweetWorks can be found in the bulk bins at Dylan’s Candy Bar (and probably other places). Their foil balls actually come in a dozen colors and are also available as hearts year round in a wide color and texture palette. You’re more likely to find these online (you can buy direct from SweetWorks.net) and usually for a pretty decent price for all natural chocolate that isn’t Hershey’s Kisses.

Related Candies

1. Madelaine’s Foiled Milk Chocolate
2. Riegelein Confiserie Hollow Chocolate
3. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
4. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny
5. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)
6. Caffarel Figs & Chestnuts (Fico & Castagna)
7. Palmer Milk Chocolate Balls
8. Thompson All Natural Milk Chocolate Crisp
9. Short & Sweet: Butterfinger Jingles and Mint Miniatures

I saw that DeMet’s had some holiday themed Flipz (coated pretzels) but I skipped right over the peppermint white confection version in order to pick up Flipz Gingerbread Flavor Covered Pretzels.

To be honest, it sounds terrible, in part because I didn’t know there was something known as Gingerbread Flavor Cover in the confectionery world ... and then I probably wouldn’t have dreamed that the appropriate place to put that would be on top of pretzels. So curiosity trumped revulsion.

The DeMet’s copywriters don’t help the situation either, here’s the marketing passage from the back of the bag:

Whenever hunger strikes, make sure you’ve got FLIPZ nearby! FLIPZ are the most flippin’ awesome winter snack ever!
That’s because they combine crunchy, salty pretzels with rich and warm gingerbread for an outrageous anytime snack. Anytime is the right time for a Flippin’ Awesome snack!

They’re standard mini pretzels with big salt crystals on them. Then they’re coated in this weird, artificially colored confection that’s supposed to look like chocolate. It’s made with sugar, palm oil and dried milk but natural flavors. The texture is pretty good - it’s creamy and kind of cool on the tongue without getting too grainy or greasy. It’s not chocolate-like, but still pleasant. The flavoring is interesting. If you gave it to me without the gingerbread description, I would have called this orange spice. I don’t know why, but I was getting a light and appealing orange zest note to it the whole time. There’s a gentle spice to it, maybe a bit of ginger but nothing too biting like cinnamon or clove. The salty crunch of the fresh pretzels keeps it all from getting too sweet.

I like them. I ate them. I wouldn’t have believed it if it didn’t happen to me.

Other reviews: The Impulsive Buy found them in a tub & gave them a 7 out of 10, Metal Misfit reviewed them before Halloween.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Santas: Gingerbread, Peppermint and Maple
2. Twix Gingerbread
3. Sanders Chocolate Covered Gretzels
4. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
5. Pretzel M&Ms
6. DeMet’s Turtles: Pecan & Cashew
7. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites

The Ritter Sport Winter Editions are more prevalent in the United States than they used to be. Webstores like German Deli and Chocosphere have been stocking them and I even found the complete set of the three special bars at Cost Plus World Market.

They’re $2.99 each, instead of the $2.00 or so that the regular non-seasonal bars go for. The Ritter Sport Winter Edition Caramel-Orange is a milk chocolate bar is filled with an orange cream. Like most other Ritter Sport bars, it’s 100 grams or 3.5 ounces and formed as a square with 16 individual sections.

Even though the bars travel pretty far and are packaged minimally, they’re always in great shape. I enjoy the format of the bar, as I like a thick piece, because of how long the melt may take, but I appreciate the deep trough sections that allow them to be broken into easy to eat pieces.

The milk chocolate in the bar is 30% cacao and 18% milk, so it’s a very milky but kind of chocolatey bar. The cream center is made of palm oil, sugar, milk products and actual orange powder (a mix of orange juice and orange pulp). It sounds kind of weird, but this also means that it’s different enough for all the other pumpkin spice and peppermint bar versions on the market right now.

The cream center is a bit darker and though not quite smooth or light enough to be a cream, it’s not grainy enough to be a fudge either. It’s orange, it tastes like orange juice - a little tart note now and then - and a bit like orange zest. There’s a slight grain to it, but it has enough fat in it to have a good mouthfeel without a greasy cling. The milk chocolate is robust enough to give it a cocoa note.

I’m finding that the more I have these cream filled bars, the less I like them. I love nuts and nut butters; I love crunchies and cereal bits; but emulsified palm oil and flavors just isn’t doing it for me any longer. These come in at 164 calories per ounce, which is a lot when those calories are not coming from cocoa butter, but from palm oil. Half a bar has 50% of my daily saturated fat intake. I think I’ll stick to the solid bars or the ones with nuts, but it’s nice to see oranges in a winter confection every once in a while. I’d like to see them do more with their marzipan bars, I liked the orange version they did as a winter edition and think that merits a revival.

Related Candies

1. Ritter Sport Winter Edition Caramelised Almonds
2. Limited Edition Ritter Sport Amarena Cherry
3. Limited Edition Ritter Sport Winter Kreation + Factory Store
4. Divine 70% Ginger & Orange Dark Chocolate
5. Choceur After Dinner Mints: Orange & Peppermint
6. Ritter Sport Peppermint
7. Niederegger Marzipan Orange