You know what surprised me most about this candy? It recognizes that it’s for Easter. There’s only one other product I’ve reviewed (as far as I can tell) in the past two years that actually mentions the Easter holiday on the wrapper. (The bunny is holding a basket that says “Happy Easter”) Strange, isn’t it? Are we all kidding ourselves that all these egg shaped things could easily be for Passover? (Oddly enough, this is Kosher ... though not for Passover since it has corn syrup in it.)

But I guess I digress.

This is the second Cadbury Royal Dark Raspberry Bunny I’ve bought this year. I lost the first one after I took the photo. (So calling out to it does no good ... it’s missing its ears!) It’s probably in the seat cushions in the car or stuck to the bottom of one of my backpacks.

It’s a very pretty bunny. It’s really well made, nice and shiny and with a pleasant chocolate scent. It’s well formed and looks like a bunny, unlike some candies I’ve purchased for Easter. It’s mostly chocolate with only a small reservoir of “Raspberry Creme Center” in it. It’s not very big, so it’s a good chocolate treat that won’t leave you hating yourself.

The only problem is that Raspberry Creme center ... what is it? At first I thought it was a caramel. It’s almost a syrup and certainly not a creme. It’s sticky and drippy and a little tangy. It even tastes a little salty. It doesn’t taste much like raspberry. Smells a little like it, but doesn’t really taste like it.

The chocolate is that Royal Dark chocolate that Cadbury is pushing now (with the Royal Dark Mini Eggs) which is rather palatable. It’s sweet but also has some nice cocoa notes. It lacks a sort of buttery oomph that good dark chocolate can have.

I’m not really that fond of this. It’s fun and of course it’s not terribly big or expensive, so I can’t be that disappointed.

Last year I tried the first expansion in the Cadbury Creme Egg line, the Cadbury Caramel Egg. That one made perfect sense, as Cadbury is known far and wide for their Caramello bar. This year they’ve introduced the Cadbury Orange Creme Egg.

The egg looks the same on the outside, with its classic egg shape and simple star design on the shell. It smells like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Sweet and a little orangy ... but nothing like chocolate.

I was pretty pleased how it looked when I opened it. Both of the eggs I bought had some leakage/gap issues. The one pictured here had a small cavity that made a little portion of the fondant more crumbly than smooth and flowing (you can see it on the larger part of the egg to the left of the yolk. The second egg had a leak in it and was pasted to the foil. I was very careful when picking my eggs at the store, I got them out of the still full display box towards the back of the shelf instead of the one at the edge of the shelf and I made sure the package wasn’t at all sticky or bumpy.

The chocolate is ordinary American Cadbury milk chocolate. A little milky tasting (like powdered milk), very sweet and with a slight grain. The interior looked like the Cadbury Creme Egg is supposed to look in the center - a bright white fondant with a yellow yolk. The fondant has a pleasant light orange taste to it, a little like a Creamsicle - all sweetness and no tang but lacking the zestier elements that orange oils can bring.

Overall, this was more to my liking than the regular Cadbury Creme Egg, but I don’t see myself buying and eating these again. I’m curious to hear what the CCE fans have to say about it though.

See SugarHog.net’s take on the egg as well, she’s a bigger fan than I of the CCEs as a whole.

Related Candies

1. UK vs US Cadbury Dairy Milk
2. Junior Fruit Cremes
3. Cadbury Popping Mini Eggs
4. Cadbury Ornament Creme Egg
5. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
6. Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses
7. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel

The Easter treats were on the shelves before Valentine’s this year (Easter is one week earlier than last year), but now that VDay is out of the way, the Easter candy is really taking over the stores. I saw Cadbury Mini Eggs, Peeps and Creme Eggs at the drug store back in late January. But now everything is out, even though we have about seven weeks to go.

There are quite a few offerings from Cadbury this season, the various Creme Eggs (orange was introduced last year, and I finally found it this year). But this one, the Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs took me by surprise.

The little chalky looking eggs are a smidge darker on the outside, more vibrant than the Cadbury Mini Eggs and don’t have any speckles.
Even though they’re dark chocolate (well, there’s a little milkfat in there) they smell particularly milky to me, or at least freakishly sweet but with a smoky chocolate undertone.

The shell is sweet and rough on the tongue at first, then becomes soft and a little cool on the tongue. Inside is a core of creamy dark chocolate, the chocolate is super smooth and reminds me a bit of Dove. It’s sweet, but not overly and doesn’t have that milky-sticky quality of other Cadbury products.

It’s kind of weird, but they remind me more of a good cup of hot chocolate than candy. They’re definitely growing on me.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
2. Hiding Eggs
3. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
4. Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs
5. Peeps
6. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel
7. Hershey Eggs
8. Cadbury Mini Eggs

Hershey’s introduced a product line around the turn of the century called Bites. I rather liked some of the products. One of them was the York Bites. They were tiny little York Peppermint baubles: a little gumdrop shape of firm fondant covered in glossy dark chocolate.

They were sold in a variety of bags, some for 99 Cents (I bought them for 50 cents at the 99 Cent Only Store last night). The cool thing about the size of the pieces was that you could take them to the movies or share them more easily.

Flash forward a couple of years and Hershey quietly discontinues Bites and introduces this sexy new product, the York Mints ... they shrink the little mints a bit and then coat them in a light candy shell and put them in a little retro tin. Pretty clever, huh?

These mints suffer from the same problem that the Bites did ... inconsistent consistency. Some of the mints have a crumbly center, a little firmer than a regular York Peppermint pattie. But others are pretty freakin’ hard.

What’s nice in this version of the mint though is that the white candy coating is also minted. It provides a couple of different options for eating. You can suck on it and take off the coating to get to the chocolate (which is rather minimal) or just chew the whole thing up. Both are good options. They’re not quite strong enough to be a breath mint and not satisfying enough to be a candy. However, each little mint is only 4 calories, so if you’re looking for something that you can use to control your portions (via your pocketbook), hey, maybe this will work for you.

The tin is certainly cool, but I don’t think I need more than one. (Junk Food Blog announced these late last year, you can find a list in the comments of where people have been finding them.)

I picked up some more of the Cacao Reserve line at the 7-11. I figured it would be interesting to give them a try after my chocolate overload at the Fancy Food Show (and fancy should not always be confused with gourmet or even good).

I’ve already tried two of the Cacao Reserve bars, the Hazelnut in Milk Chocolate and 65% Dark Nibby Bar. And they were pretty good. I know that there are some folks who turn up their nose at Hershey’s attempt at upscale chocolate, but I don’t call this upscale ... it’s simply better quality. If I’m stuck making a chocolate choice at 7-11, I’m going to go for the Cacao Reserve Nibby bar over the waxy Ghirardelli every time.

The little tin is quite fun. It’s the same size as an Altoids tin. Yes, there are eight truffles in that wee little box. You know how they fit them in there? They’re wee truffles!

They look all homespun and enrobed/dipped but don’t be fooled, these are molded truffles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Appearance accounts for a lot in candy and these are nice looking little chocolates.

Each is an easy single bite or two very small bites. The chocolate coating is a bit sweet and has a light acidic tang to it. It’s not terribly complex in the flavor area, just smooth and a bit on the smoky side with a mild dry finish. The truffle filling is rather bland, not as creamy as I would like but has a light salt hit in it that sets it apart from the shell.

The tin is a nice idea, an easy way to carry the little truffles without smashing them in some sort of wonky plastic tray. The price was a little steep, however. At $2.99 for the little tin that holds 1.8 ounces, that means a full pound purchased this way is $26.58. (Compare that with See’s selling a little 4 ounce Valentine’s heart for $5.25 a box which would mean the chocolate is going for $21 a pound.) Of course I wouldn’t go into 7-11 and buy things for the price, I’m sure these are available for quite a bit less at drug stores or mega-marts.

Overall, I wasn’t that impressed with this effort into high end chocolates. The centers were not smooth and creamy enough for my tastes when it comes to a truffle indulgence. However, this has not put me off from my curiosity about the other bars in the Cacao Reserve line.

Another Limited Edition item from Reese’s and again playing around with similar ingredients. This time they’ve taken the Big Cup with Nuts (which was also a limited edition item - review here) and added some caramel to the bottom of the cup.

I don’t have a cross section of the actual cup because I kind of trashed it taking it out of the package and though it was certainly edible, it was not photogenic. So have a look at the Big Cup with Peanuts (click to get a pop up photo) and imagine a smidge of caramel at the bottom there.

The cup itself is nice and meaty, with lots of room to explore the nuts and peanut butter and a good balance of chocolate. The center is a bit salty which is good because the milk chocolate is a bit sweet and kind of greasy (I know that’s the hazard with chocolate and peanut butter). The caramel blends in well, it has its own salty kick but it doesn’t detract from the crunchy nuts or add too much sweetness. I’d prefer a chewier caramel like you find in a Snickers, but that’s not Hershey’s way.

I actually liked this one a bit better than the Reese’s with Caramel, the caramel was distinctive and the roominess of the peanut butter/peanut stack let it all breathe.

Just to give you a sense, here are the previous Reese’s reviews: Reese’s Bites (soon to be discontinued), Reese’s Cookies, FastBreak, Reese’s Sticks, Nutrageous, Reese’s Snack Barz, Reese’s Pieces Peanut, Reese’s Easter Eggs (two versions), Reese’s Bars for those who don’t like their candy in cups or shaped like trees, and of course the less-than-comprehensive Reese’s Full Line, another Big Cup (with mixed nuts) and their new favorite child, the Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar.

Though I try to be on top of the Limited Edition candies and review them when they first come out, I totally dropped the ball on this one. The KitKat Mint Dark Chocolate Minis came out in time for Christmas, though they’re not specifically packaged as a holiday item (other Hershey’s holiday products had little snowflakes on the packages).

The good thing about them being a quasi-holiday item is that they came on sale after Christmas along with all the other holiday candy that may be fresh but sports a now dated red and green wrapper. According to the freshness code, these are good until July 2007!

(On a side note, I have not seen the Cookies ‘n’ Mint Nuggets again this year.)

Let me just start by saying that I liked these far better than the Mint KitKat that came out in the middle of last year. While that one was sickly sweet, this was minty and fresh tasting.

The little shape of these Minis is also fun. Instead of the usual two-fingered snack size, these are a little shorter and of course are only one finger. About the size of my pinkie, which is rather small as fingers go. Because of the small size I felt like there was more chocolate on these. But I also felt like the crispy wafers were really, really crispy. The minted chocolate is pretty smooth, a bit sweet and lacking a rich chocolatey experience, but generally in support of the cookie and mint elements.

I don’t know if I’d buy these again since I’m getting a little tired of them since it was a 10.5 ounce package, but I found them to be far better than most of the other Limited Editions I’ve had in the past year or so.

There are lots of other reviews of these online cuz I am late to the party: SugarSavvy.net, SugarHog.net, News You Can Eat & Slashfood.

Here’s a strange product line from Hershey’s in the Philippines. They’re called Mallow Blast and are described thusly on the package:

It’s a mind-blowing combination of light chewy Marshmallows bursting with luscious grape flavor, dipped in rich Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

Hershey’s Mallow Blast(tm) - an explosion of flavors!

Also available with Strawberry and Orange Flavored Filling.

I’ve tried other Asian marshmallows before with a fruity filling in them, but this was a first to have them dipped in chocolate.

The Grape Mallow Blast packaging was certainly fun looking. The overall package is a pack with five individually wrapped pieces. Mine were slightly smashed but otherwise unharmed by their journey.

The grape ones smell very strongly of grape jelly and no hint at all of chocolate. The little twist of marshmallow is about as big as my big toe, but with a fruity filling (my toes might be filled with fruit, I’ve never checked). The marshmallow is springy and not terribly sweet. The jelly center is firm and tangy and of course grapey.

The Orange Mallow Blast smelled more of chocolate. The orange inside was actually pretty nice. A bit on the artificial side, but with a balance of zest and tang to it. The chocolate was crumbly and not terribly creamy, but all things considered, it was tasty enough for me to finish off the package of five.

Of course it’s not real chocolate on the outside, but I guess the labeling restrictions are different for other countries. The package clearly calls it Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, but the only “chocolate” in there are some milk solids and cocoa powder much later on the list after the number three ingredient, hydrogenated palm kernel oil. That said, they’d probably make a good treat for dieters, as they’re rather satisfying but not that dense in fat calories (6 of them have 3 grams of fat and 150 calories).

I could see these being popular in the States. The way that they’re packaged though makes it easy for them to get crushed, so they’d probably have to place them in a little tray with sides or something to prevent that.

The Mallow Blasts are certified Hallal.