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All NaturalFriday, November 19, 2010
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
Red package describes it as crunchy toffee and roasted California almonds, covered in premium dark chocolate. Like the other packages, it includes a couple of properly scaled images of the candies. They’re about the same diameter as a nickel or a quarter (they varied) and were thick. These remind me a lot of Marich Triple Chocolate Toffee, which were a mix of milk, white and dark chocolate covered toffee bits. They remind me so much of them that I’m going to guess that Marich is the maker of all three of these candies. The pieces are lovely. They’re dark and glossy and have a light buttery scent. The chocolate is a little softer than some other panned dark chocolate candies. The chocolate is only 50% cacao and contains some butter so it’s not a very dark chocolate. It’s in the semi sweet range with some nice fruity notes and goes well with the dairy and nutty notes of the toffee. The melt is silky and smooth. The toffee centers are perfect, they’re crunchy and buttery without being sticky or tacky. Sometimes there were little bits of almond in them, but not all the time. The toffee was rather salty and the overall sodium for the package was 170 mg, which is a lot for a candy. But I do have to say that the salt provided a really nice pop to the flavors, it came first then the buttery notes and burnt sugar came forward. The ratios of a panned piece of toffee mean that these had a lot of chocolate. The chocolate was easy to cleave off and eat or allow to melt off to get to the toffee center. Or of course there’s the “crunch it all together” method of consumption. All have merits. If you’ve ever hoped for a more decadent version of Heath Bars or Skor, these may be for you. The package says no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. It’s also gluten free. May contain traces of peanuts and of course has dairy, nuts and soy ingredients. Trader Joe’s has done a nice job with all three of these products. They’ve balanced the portion size (a new area for them) with a product line that uses better ingredients than the products more widely available. I see all three of these as great snacks for watching a movie. They’re large portions at two ounces, but still only $1.49 which is a more than respectable for indulging in the new Harry Potter. They’re not overly packaged, but each is bold and different enough to catch the eye, they’re easy to tear open and did a good job of protecting the product and kept it fresh. If only they also made those Espresso Toffee Pillows in these bags, too. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:05 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Trader Joe's • Chocolate • Nuts • Toffee • 8-Tasty • United States • Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Coronado Paleta de Cajeta
Cajeta is a Mexican specialty usually made with goat’s milk (leche de cabra). It’s slowly simmered with sugar until it forms a syrup so thick that a spoon stands straight up in it. It’s usually served as a spread or filling for other baked goods but sometimes boiled a little longer to create a more solid fudge-like candy. But there are are also other candies that use the caramel-like goo as a base. In the case of these lollipops, the caramel base was used to make a hard toffee type lollipop. Each was nicely mounted on a plastic stick and sealed to keep them fresh. I was attracted to the package mostly because the Coronado logo features a nanny goat picture. Goat’s milk has both a different flavor profile and a slightly different nutritional one from cow’s milk. As someone who is quickly developing a lactose intolerance problem, I’ve been shifting over to goat’s milk products and finding them tasty, nutritious and more digestible. I really didn’t think these were going to be very good, somewhere in the realm of the mediocre Tootsie Caramel Pops. They were far superior. First, there are few ingredients: goat’s milk, sugar, corn syrup, sodium bicarbonate & potassium sorbate. The fact that the milk came before the sugar was encouraging. The look of the candies was great. The mylar wrappers were a pretty mix of brown and maroon and well sealed to protect the pops (and give confidence to parents for Halloween hauls). The candy on the stick looked pretty much pristine. None that I had were chipped or broken or poorly formed. They’re about the size of Chupa Chups, or smaller than a Tootsie Pop but larger than a Dum Dum. The flavor is smooth and creamy. I didn’t have a single void in the half dozen I’ve eaten so far (there were 40 pops in the bag and my mother didn’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters). The flavor is subtle, it’s not gamey or too tangy like some goat’s milk can be, but it’s definitely not the cow’s milk profile either. The caramel notes are true but without any bitterness that some toffee can have. It’s a very subdued sweetness. They were quite dense and lasted a long time. Of course I like to crunch and eventually I would chip away at them with my canines. They’re actually quite crunchy without sticking to my teeth. If you’re a fan of Werther’s Originals, these are very similar though less sweet and a little less oily. The package didn’t say anything about nuts or gluten. It did say that there’s 23% of your calcium in every lollipop, but I think that’s some sort of math error. I’m definitely going to explore the Coronado brand more fully in the future. Sera from The Candy Enthusiast tried a slightly different version of these. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:57 pm All Natural • Candy • Caramel • Hard Candy & Lollipops • Toffee • 8-Tasty • Mexico • Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Mints
The three new items are somewhere in between. Yesterday I covered the Dark Chocolate Tahitian Caramels. Today I have the Dark Chocolate Mints. (Later this week will be the Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee.) If this looks a little familiar to you as a Trader Joe’s shopper, you may have tried the previous incarnation of the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Mints which were sold in a little tin. I can’t say that my feelings on these have changed at all. They’re a firm, crumbly fondant center flavored with peppermint, then coated in a thin shell of dark (50%) chocolate with a crunchy candy shell to seal it all up. The mint is mild and goes well with the sweet fondant and crackly shell. The chocolate isn’t a powerful element, but still it’s a good semisweet variety that sadly has butter in it otherwise this would be vegan. I could eat oodles of these. This tin used to cost $2.99 and held 2.45 ounces. The new bag isn’t quite as cute or appropriate as a stocking stuffer, but it’s a far better deal at only $1.49 for 2 ounces. (And if you still have that tin, you can refill.) The Dark Chocolate Caramels I reviewed yesterday were interesting because they filled a hole in the world. We really needed something that’s better quality than Milk Duds or Junior Caramels. But Dutch Mints aren’t that hard to find and I can’t say these are much better (or a better value) than Junior Mints or York Peppermint Patties. Still, sometimes I really want this kind of mint and for a Holland Mint (or whatever the generic name of this style of mint is) and being able to pick them up in a single portion size is something new. The package says no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. It’s also gluten free. May contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts (and of course has dairy and soy ingredients). Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:16 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Trader Joe's • Chocolate • Mints • 8-Tasty • United States • Monday, November 15, 2010
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
The little bite sized caramels come in a two ounce bag. I appreciate Trader Joe’s making more small single-serving packages available. The little tubs of candy are often a good value, but tough to portion. This one is a medium lavender and a simple design featuring a very accurate depiction of the candies on the front. The package describes them as Creamy vanilla caramels covered with premium dark chocolate. The ingredients appear to be all natural, though I never know quite what to think about “fractionated palm kernel oil” except that I’d probably like it better if it was spelled “butter.” The ingredients also list two different kinds of vanilla, the advertised Tahitian Vanilla (Vanilla tahitensis) and Bourbon Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia). Both have different flavor profiles. The pieces are about the size of a shelled hazelnut. The chocolate isn’t particularly dark, in fact when I was eating them during the photo shoot I thought they were milk chocolate because of the dairy flavors of the caramel. The chocolate shell is nicely panned, thick and glossy with a snap upon biting. The caramel center is chewy and soft without being gooey. It has a good pull to it, which is the way I prefer my caramel, just slightly stiff. It’s a smooth chew, especially when combined with the creamy chocolate. The caramel has a lot of buttery notes to it along with a strong vanilla flavor, sometimes I even detected vanilla seeds in there. It’s a well rounded vanilla flavor, sometimes with extract notes (a bit alcoholic) and sometimes more on the raisin and banana side. The chocolate is very sweet but has an excellent slick melt. Overall the texture combination is great and they look fantastic. The light salty hit and complex flavors aren’t quite enough to offset the overt sweetness of both the caramel and the chocolate. I found eating these slowly and with other items like nuts or pretzels was the way to go. If you’ve ever hoped for a more decadent version of Milk Duds, these may be for you. The package says no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. It’s also gluten free. May contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts (and of course has dairy and soy ingredients). Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:43 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Trader Joe's • Caramel • Chocolate • 7-Worth It • United States • Monday, November 8, 2010
Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt
The Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt is a modest bar, sporting only 55% cacao content, it’s not extraordinarily dark and has more of a candy bar flair to it with bits of salty toffee. The bar is wrapped simply in a burnt orange and brown wrapper that goes with the color coding Equal Exchange has going on for their line. The bar is inside a thin white plastic sleeve which is easy to open and slip the bar back into. The bar looks great, it has a reddish hue to it and the inclusions of toffee bits are visible within the chocolate mass. The bar has a distinct and bright snap. Breaking the bar reveals a plethora of big crunchy toffee bits (made with just four ingredients: cream, sugar, vanilla and sea salt). The chocolate itself smells like coffee and has a light acidic bite to it. It’s sweet, but not sticky and has a well rounded woodsy chocolate flavor. The toffee bits are crunchy and buttery with a strong salty note. They go exceptionally well with the chocolate and complement the smooth melt of the chocolate with the hard burnt sugar notes and the dash of sea salt. This bar straddles the world of easy to eat candy and decadent treat. The chocolate isn’t as nuanced as the darker single origin bars, but it’s also more accessible. It’s one of my favorite toffee chocolate bars now. (It still prefer the slightly more candy-ish Green & Black’s Peanut Bar, but that’s milk chocolate and I’ve had more of those bars than the Equal Exchange.) It’s fair trade, organic and Kosher. It’s made in a facility that processes tree nuts and peanuts and of course isn’t vegan because of the milk in the toffee. UPDATE 11/16/2010: I transcribed the ingredients incorrectly in an earlier version of this review. There is no corn syrup in this bar. The only sweetener is organic unrefined and/or raw cane sugar. I’ve revised the review to reflect the accurate ingredients. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:06 pm All Natural • Candy • Equal Exchange • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Kosher • Organic • Toffee • 9-Yummy • Switzerland • Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Mentos Jam Filled
They’re made in China and sold in Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands. I got this package from Santos of Scent of Green Bananas after two failed efforts to buy them on eBay from a Thai seller. They’re double packaged (like the Sour Mentos often are.) There’s a main package of stiff, thick foil backed paper which is then encased in a plastic sleeve. Inside the inner package are 8 soft candies. The most noticeable difference is that they don’t have a crunchy shell. They’re a little glossy and might have a bit of wax but are basically shell-less. They’re soft enough that they don’t really have a native shape, they’re a little flat on the sides where they meet and sometimes stick together a bit. They seem a bit bigger than a traditional Mentos. They’re also more fragrant, authentically strawberry scented. The outer layer of chew is soft and has a good pliable taffy texture and tangy/sweet strawberry flavor. The inner jam is not very complex, more like a lemon flavored syrup, more like a reduction of lemon drink than lemon marmalade. It’s not as tart as I would have liked and lacked a lot of lemon essence. The texture is sticky but not at all grainy. It didn’t do much for me. The difference in the flavors wasn’t strong enough to be called complementary and wasn’t close enough to match. I’m not sure why they did this. It’s a lot of packaging and not a lot of excitement inside. I might have felt differently if it were a uniquely named and branded item, but coming to me with a Mentos logo on it, I expected more authentic flavors and for it to, well, be a fresh take on the goo filled candy field. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:06 pm All Natural • Candy • Mentos • Perfetti van Melle • Chews • 6-Tempting • 7-11 • Monday, November 1, 2010
Life Savers Pep-O-Mint & Wint-O-Green
Within a could of years Crane sold the company and rights to Life Savers to Edward John Noble who saw the great potential of the candy. They were sold in little cardboard tubes, he streamlined things and packaged them like they’re sold today, in a roll wrapped in waxed paper and foil with a little paper label. Noble was an excellent salesman and introduced techniques to his clients, such as telling them to make sure that customers always had at least one nickel in their change and to display the rolls on the counter by the cash register. Life Savers were positioned as an impulse buy. Early packages were all one flavor and consisted of the standard mints (wintergreen & spearmint), cinnamon, violet and even licorice. It wasn’t until 1935 that Life Savers in the Five Flavor roll came out. In the late 1968s Noble sold the company to E.R. Squibb Corporation (yes, the drug people that later became Bristol-Meyers Squibb who make Plavix and Coumadin) and then they sold to Nabisco Brands Inc in 1981. Nabisco in turn was taken over by Kraft in 2000 and Kraft sold their candy interests including Life Savers off to Wrigley’s in 2004. Wrigley’s was acquired by Mars in 2008. Life Savers Pep-O-Mint themselves are simple. A little loop of compressed sugar with some strong peppermint flavoring. It’s all held together with a dash of stearic acid. There are 14 in the standard rolls these days. Instead of the smoothness of a boiled candy mint, these have a little bit of a chalky texture to them. They’re not as grainy as Altoids (and not as strong) but they’re not as airy and melt-in-your-mouth as Buttermints or After Dinner Mints. It’s quite a simple little candy. I like to crunch them, but they also dissolve slowly if you’re patient. I’m not patient and can crunch through a whole roll on a drive home from work.
I like the classic look of these packages, but really it’s the size and shape that probably compels me. It’s the one consistent item no matter what year it is. Wint-O-Green Life Savers were introduced in 1919. They’re probably best know because of the cool feature that you can create a luminescent spark when crunching a Wint-O-Green Life Saver. (I can’t capture it with a camera, but here’s a guy who has.) The flavor is strong and smells therapeutic, like Ben Gay or denture cream ... not like the milder Teaberry Gum or Canada Mints. They’re smooth but quite aromatic. After eating about half a roll I tend to get a strange numbness, like Cepacol or other topical anesthetics can cause. It’s not all about medicine and therapy though, it reminds me of classic Bazooka Bubble Gum and Root Beer soda. I don’t really like the smell of wintergreen that much, because of some of the more unpleasant associations with pain relieving rubs, but I do like the strange tingly flavor and how different it is from the standard peppermint or spearmint. Both flavors are classics and still made in the classic way, though now in Canada where sugar is cheaper. I’m glad Wrigley’s hasn’t mucked around with anything aside from the packaging. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:31 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Wrigley's • Mints • 7-Worth It • Canada • Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
So could a company known for it’s amazingly fresh tasting peanut butter (and other nut butters) make something like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup even better? The new Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have a lot going for them in their lists of specs. They’re all-natural, organic and gluten-free, they use fair-trade chocolate, contain no preservatives and are packaged in compostable wrappers. They’re also about $2 per package of two cups. Premium has a premium price. But I was on board, I wanted to see if eco-awareness would make the actual candy tastier (and possibly limit my other candy consumption because of the pricetag.) So after I got them home and took a few pictures I turned over the package to see some serious trash talk from Justin himself:
I don’t mind a little puffery in sales copy, but I don’t like it when my preferences are insulted. Why would Justin start out our relationship by exhibiting such contempt for my predilections? (For the record, my problems with Reese’s have never involved the peanut butter, it’s about the lackluster chocolate.) It took me a while to shrug this off, but I think I managed to center myself back to zero on the predisposed opinion scale. Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups There are two cups in the package, which weighs 1.4 ounces (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are 1.5 ounces per two cup package). Each cup is exactly 100 calories. I picked these up at Whole Foods within a week or so of them being placed on store shelves (I frequent the one near my office for lunch and I always cruise by the chocolate shelf). The “best by” date was 5/11, so they’re are definitely fresh. Yet there was a slight bloom on all of the cups. This is the opposite of the issue I usually have with peanut butter cups, which tend to get a greasy sheen as the peanut butter oils migrate into the chocolate. They smell wonderful, mostly like grassy, fresh peanuts but with a light note of milk and cocoa. What I noticed first when biting into the cup was how sandy and dry the center was. Most peanut butter cups will bend first, this crumbled and broke into chunks. Not a bad thing, just different. The chocolate is silky smooth and like a silky not-to-sweet chocolate butter. The peanut butter center is salty and sweet with strong roasted peanut notes. The texture is odd, it’s not pasty or buttery, it’s crumbly. It’s not grainy either, it’s a very fine sort of powdery texture. The chocolate really makes up for a lot of that with its silken texture and consistent melt. The other thing I noticed, as the photo shows is that it’s not a coherent block of peanut butter filling. It has some swirls of milk chocolate in it and a rather thick chocolate reservoir on the top. This was the same with all of the cups that I got (see the dark chocolate one below as well).
The Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are also gluten free, organic, use fair trade chocolate, Kosher and packaged in biodegradable wrappers. They’re also vegan. I consider this a pretty big deal, lots of dark chocolate bars are considered vegan but very few “candy” bars are. (But note that they are processed on shared equipment that has been used for dairy ingredients, so they’re not for folks with dairy allergies.) Many all natural products have brief ingredients lists, but Justin’s is quite elaborate, mostly because each ingredient needs a qualification:
* denotes Rainforest Alliance Certified products I don’t know what the status of Palm Fruit Oil is on the list of palm oils these days. Palm plantations displace rainforest, but then again this is organic. Maybe some free range, wild-foraged palm fruit oil would be preferable. The chocolate is silky smooth, just as the milk chocolate version was, but much more intense. In this case the chocolate flavors overpower the peanut butter flavors in many bites (mostly because of the inconsistent distribution of the chocolate, both of my cups had a full chocolate center). The cocoa flavors are woodsy with a slight acidic burn and tannic, bitter bite. It balanced well with the lightly sweet peanut butter center. I liked the chocolate but I bought these because I thought they were peanut butter cups. Where’s my peanut butter! I like that the peanut butter is less sweet than many other peanut butter confections, but I wanted it to be more buttery, it was like they used peanut flour instead of actual ground peanuts with all their glorious native oils. For this price I need a cup that delivers consistent ratios of peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a new product and maybe they don’t have things worked out, but the fact that the same swirling and high chocolate ratio occurred in both versions leads me to believe that this is either intended or permitted. Some folks might prefer it that way, so there’s a unique selling proposition for Justin’s. But it doesn’t rise to the level of Peanut Butter Cup Perfection. Justin’s Nut Butters makes a variety of nut butters, like Honey Almond (which I love) and also a Hazelnut Chocolate (which I haven’t tried yet) ... so once they get their inconsistencies settled, I think that should be their next product developed. An Organic, Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Cup. Then we’ll talk about chocolate nut cup perfection. UPDATE 3/14/2011 I picked up some new samples of Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups at ExpoWest. They were given to me directly by Justin himself. The packaging is identical, but the cups are greatly improved. My main complaints about the cups were that the peanut butter was too dry and there was too much chocolate. New versions hitting store shelves addressed this. As you can see from the photo above, the peanut butter is more consistently distributed in the center and appears less crumbly and dry. The chocolate shell still has a crisp, well tempered bite to it, but the peanut butter portion is well defined and flavorful. It tastes like a little darker roast as well and perhaps even a little saltier. On the milk chocolate version I have to update my rating to 9 out of 10. Justin really did rise up to the challenge he made on the wrapper, this is better than a Reese’s. The dark chocolate version also gets an upgrade, but only to 8 out of 10. It’s vegan, so that’s a huge thing, but the chocolate is still bitter and has a strong olive and grassy taste to it that overpowers the peanut flavors. The textures were excellent and the ratios dead on perfect. My last hesitation on this product line is still the price though, but they’re definitely worth it now. I was a bit overwhelmed when talking to Justin that I forgot to mention my desire for the Hazelnut Cup (though he said he’d read the review). Instead of pitching that I told him I wanted someone to make an all-natural peanut butter that had an additional bit of cocoa butter in it instead of hydrogenated tropical oils to keep it emulsified. The cocoa butter would keep it from separating but also add that inimitable texture, (and if you used un-deodorized) a light malty taste and keep it spreadable. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:57 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Justin's Nut Butter • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Kosher • Organic • Peanuts • 8-Tasty • 9-Yummy • United States • Whole Foods •
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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