The Sweets & Snacks Expo started today in Chicago, with 650 exhibitors profiling thousands of candy products. Here are a few highlight of the new products announced.

Name: Tic Tac® Mixers
Brand: Ferrero U.S.A.
Description: Introducing new Tic Tac Mixers, the newest addition to the Tic Tac family of products. Two exciting flavors in every piece. The first delicious flavor layer of Tic Tac Mixers delights you as it touches your tongue. As you let it melt in your mouth, Tic Tac Mixers transitions to a great tasting flavor combination that will surprise your senses.
Introduction Date: 05/01/2015

Notes: It’s a fascinating idea, though not original. Layering flavors so that the product experience changes over time. The two flavors (Cherry + Cola and Peach + Lemonade) aren’t quite up my alley, but I’m curious how vivid the flavor definition is.

Name: Russell Stover Freeze-it Big Bites
Brand: Russell Stover Candies
Description: A new twist on a classic favorite, ice cream! The Freeze-It candy bars are signature ice cream flavors in convenient and ready-to-go packaging. We offer two classic flavors; smooth vanilla bean or crisp mint chocolate chip both smothered in rich dark chocolate. You can enjoy them immediately after purchasing or place them in your freezer for just 30 minutes to enjoy a frozen ice cream flavored treat.
Introduction Date: Summer 2015

Notes: I like the idea of a mint chocolate chip ice cream candy treat, though I find it hard to believe that it will taste better frozen than actual ice cream.

Name: Caramel Creams® Pop
Brand: Goetze’s Candy Company
Description: Caramel Creams® Pop features the unique flavor of a nostalgic Caramel Creams®, but now in a lollipop format.
Introduction Date: 06/01/2015

Notes: I’m a huge fan of Goetze’s Caramel Creams and really enjoy eating the parts separately. But the proportions on this, based on the image, look completely odd. But I’m willing to give it a try.

Name: FLIPZ® Birthday Cake Covered Pretzels
Brand: DeMet’s Candy Company
Description: Introducing New Flipz® Birthday Cake Covered Pretzels! The perfect combination of sweet, creamy cake frosting, and the salty crunch of a pretzel. Flipz®, the most flippin’ awesome snack ever!
Introduction Date: 05/15/2015

Notes: This sounds dreadful. The only thing that sounds good is the salt. I don’t even understand the obsession with birthday cake, let alone making it into a candy that covers a snack.

Name: Lindt HELLO Bites
Brand: Lindt & Sprungli
Description: HELLO Bites chocolate covered bite sized pieces available in three flavors, packaged in re-sealable stand-up pouches. Pretzel Bites, Toffee Bites and Minty Bites
Introduction Date: 08/01/2015

Notes: Lindt does great chocolate, but this foray into panned candies and the morselization trend is a little odd. For Christmas they do make some panned nuts, but I don’t recall anything along these lines before. The descriptions for the individual products are a little vague.

All images courtesy of their respective makers.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease Fall 2014
2. Candy Tease - Sweets & Snacks Part 2
3. Candy Tease - Sweets & Snacks Part 1
4. Birthday Cake M&Ms
5. Lindt Holiday Almonds
6. Zitrone Honig Tic Tac

In this new episode of Candyology101, Maria and I talk about one of the oldest and most flexible candy processes: panning. Stick around until the end of the podcast and we have an expanded Treat or Trick section with plenty of Sweets & Snacks Expo teases.

Download the MP3 and of course check up on the full show notes.

If you were to make your own perfect mix of Skittles, what flavors would you include?

What new Skittles varieties would you like to see?

List in to episode 13 of Candyology 101 where Maria and discuss all things Skittles (that would fit into 50 minutes).

download the MP3 directly and take a look at our show notes.

The world of happy, fun and beautiful candy should be blissfully simple. Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, lemon drops from lemon juice and sugar and licorice from licorice root.

But there are some terms which have become so generic, they’re losing their meaning. I want to correct that course, or at least clarify how the terms are used on Candy Blog.

There is a wonderful, and rather recent invention called the Gummi Candy. It was innovated in the 1920s in Germany and popularized by the Haribo Gold Bear. Once these unique candies became popular in the United States, they expanded into a very broad and diverse candy category.

A gummi has a base of gelatin. Gelatin is often bandied about has a horrifying ingredient in viral listicles to unsuspecting people who apparently have never read a list of what’s in their food before.

Gelatin is a protein. It’s most often made from pork sources, found in the connective tissues (knuckles, hooves, as well as skin), but it’s also made from bovine or fish sources to create a Kosher/Halal version. Gelatin simply cannot be vegetarian. The protein of gelatin is amazing, it creates a translucent, flavorless base with an inimitable texture. I call it bouncy. Many gummi candies are fat free, or have nominal amounts of fat, so they’re very low in calories per ounce.

Often jelly candies are categorized as gummis, because they are also colorful, translucent and fruit flavored. However, a jelly candy is somewhat different. Jelly candies are solidified using carbohydrates, not proteins. So, a jelly bean center is usually made with corn starch. Other jelling ingredients are pectin, tapioca, potato or arrowroot starch. Gums are also used sometimes to jell candy, which is how the original gumdrops were made, with gum arabic, mastic or gum tragacanth.

Now, I have nothing against jelly candies, but you probably already innately know the different between a Swedish Fish and a Gummi Worm. There’s a substantial different to the texture.

The easiest way to tell the difference, without even putting a candy in your mouth, is to pull it apart. When you pull a Swedish Fish or Spearmint Leaf apart, it’s pretty easy. What you see when you look closely at the spot where it splits is that it creates little strings at the separation. The softer the candy, the more stringy it will be. It’s generally sticky, as in, it will stick to you, your fingers, the package, whatever.

When you pull a gummi apart, you’ll get a lot of stretch, but eventually it will break. So the edges of a gummi will usually be flat, a full clean break. Though the broken surface will be sticky, the strength of the gummi means that it is unlikely to transfer to your fingers or pockets.

I prefer to use the original German word for the candy, gummi, instead of gummy. Since gummy already means something in English which is not necessarily descriptive of actual gummis, it’s easier to just keep them as separate names. However, here on the blog I used the name of the candy if it happens to be Gummy or Gummies.

Gummis are unique enough they shouldn’t be lumped in with jelly candies, no more than compressed dextrose and chocolate should be, just because they’re basically solids at room temperature.

Though there have been attempts to make vegan or vegetarian gummis, there really isn’t anything quite like gelatin in the plant world. So, you may find marshmallows made with agar agar, but they’ll never be quite the same as gelatin marshmallows. For some candies that use gelatin, such as Mentos, they were able to swap out the gelatin in the chewy mints for gellan gum, which is made from bacteria.

Perhaps scientists will be able to synthesize a protein from plants someday, but in the interim, there’s nothing wrong with omnivores making some fun confections by utilizing all parts of the animals we raise for food.

Related Candies

1. Albanese Rainforest Gummi Frog
2. Sugarfina: The Gummis
3. Skittles replace Lime with Green Apple
4. Jelly Belly Soda Pop Shoppe Gummi Bottles
5. Haribo Gold Bears from Turkey and Germany
6. Albanese Gummi Butterflies

In the latest episode of Candyology 101, Maria and get back to study of candy with Compressed Dextrose, or whatever SweeTarts and Smarties are supposed to be.

Download the MP3 and of course check out the show notes.

I’m a big fan of Malted Milk Balls and consider the candy coated Pastel Malted Milk Egg to be one of the best holiday candy creations ever. Brach’s has been making a pastel egg for at least 55 years, and malted milk balls for even longer.

Though the Brach’s brand has been around for over 110 years, they’ve changed ownership, leadership and product focus dozens of times. This means that the products themselves also change. The changes can be for consumer-driven reasons, supply issues and costs. I’ve noticed, since Candy Blog is coming up on 10 years, that the Brach’s Fiesta Eggs have changed quite a bit over the years, and have some photos and notes to document it.

2007 Full Review

Name: Pastel Fiesta Malted Milk Eggs
Brand: Brach’s (Callebaut)
Place Purchased: Long’s (Laguna Woods)
Price: $1.50 (on sale!)
Size: 7.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 132
Type: Chocolate/Malt
Rating: 6 out of 10
Size: 1/2 to 2/3 of an inch
Shell: pastel, crunchy, lightly vanilla
Chocolate: creamy, flavorless, too sweet
Malt: light, airy

Though this was my first year reviewing them, it wasn’t the first time I had them and thought they used to be better.

2011 Full Review

Name: Fiesta Malted Milk Eggs
Brand: Brach’s  (Farley’s & Sathers)
Place Purchased: Target (Glendale)
Price: $1.99
Size: 7.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 132
Type: Chocolate/Malt
Rating: 6 out of 10
Size: 2/3 of an inch
Shells - white with speckles, thick
Chocolate - Real, fudgy texture, lack of flavor
Malt - cripsy, moderately malty

I’d say that this was a lackluster version, though I liked the center, the chocolate brought the whole thing down.

2012 Full Review

Name: Fiesta Malted Milk Eggs
Brand: Brach’s (Farley’s & Sathers)
Place Purchased: Target
Price: $1.89
Size: 7.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 113
Type: Chalk
Rating: 5 out of 10
Size 1.25 to 1.5 inches
Shell: White with few speckles, very thick, hard to bite
Chocolate: weak
Malt: milky, barely sweet, crisp

These were simply too difficult to eat because of the size and shell. The center was good, especially because the ratio was so high.

2015 Malted Milk Eggs Compared

Name: Malted Milk Pastel Fiesta Eggs
Brand: Brach’s (Ferrara Candy)
Size: 7.5 ounces
Price: $2.50
Rating: 5 out of 10
Shell: Pastel. It’s crisp and has the texture of actual egg shells, a little bit of crumble, generally flavorless.
Chocolate: It’s passable stuff. It’s real chocolate, but not great quality. The texture is fatty and smooth, but also extremely sweet, there’s very little cocoa flavor to it.
Malted Milk Center: The texture is very dense, with a lot of milky notes but less malt than the others. It’s not overly sweet and not overtly salty.

The center this year is different. It’s darker in color, which does indicate that the recipe or manufacturing process has changed. The colors are great, I like the shell, though many commenters do not like the new version. I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong here, except that I don’t plan on buying them again, but I’ll finish the bags I have.

Related Candies

1. Pastel Malted Milk Eggs Compared
2. Sugarfina: The Chocolates
3. Ovomaltine Chocolate Bar
4. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Eggs (Plus a Bonus)
5. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
6. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
7. Naked Chocolate Maltballs

In our latest episode of Candyology 101, Maria and I compare our list of our least favorite Easter candies and then cover Jelly Beans.

Don’t forget we have show notes to accompany the episode if you want to check them out.

You can download the episode directly via the MP3 link.

When I was at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January, I picked up a lot of little chocolate pieces, but not full sized bars for review. So here are a few thoughts on some items that are now in stores:

Perugina Baci are perfect little bites of dark chocolate and hazelnut. Of course they had to twist it up a bit and introduce a white chocolate version ... and now there’s Peugina Milk Chocolate Baci.

The wrappers are light blue instead of silver. They’re pretty and look the same in shape and structure as the standard dark. The milk chocolate does change the confection quite a bit. The hazelnut because more of the star, as well as the dairy notes from the milk chocolate coating and creamy filling. I still liked them, but I ate some classic dark at the same time. I still prefer the bittersweet coating because it brings out the roasted flavors. But these are still nice and probably something kids may enjoy more or supertasters who don’t like bitter things.

I enjoy BT McElrath’s Salty Dog bars (which it turns out I haven’t fully reviewed), which are a great sweet/savory mix of creamy chocolate, salt and crunchy toffee bits. So I was very excited to try the new BT McElrath Buttered Toast. It’s described as Toasted artisan breadcrumbs in our proprietary blend of 40% cacao milk chocolate.

It’s sweet and definitely buttery. There’s a soft bite to this and little bits that crunch like panko. There’s a light salt note along with a little toffee and malt to it as well. Even though it’s a very rich milk chocolate, it might be a little too thick and sticky for me ... maybe I’ll wait for the dark chocolate version to come along.

The BT McElrath Super Red is a 70% bar with little flecks of freeze dried fruit.

The tart notes of the berry bits with the rather dark chocolate combine for a lot more flavor intensity than something like a nut chocolate combo would give. The seeds also give a little bitterness, as does the chocolate and dark berry notes.

Vosges calls these Super Dark bars, though they’re only 72% dark chocolate. That’s because the super part isn’t modifying the chocolate, it’s modifying the inclusions, which are all deemed superfoods.  It’s like they went out of their way to put bitter things in there. I picked up two samples (they look pretty much the same). Vosges Super Dark Matcha Green Tea features spirulina, matcha (pulverized green tea) and cocoa nibs. The grassy notes of the matcha are immediately forward. I enjoy a lot of green tea, though I don’t have matcha very often because it’s pulverized leaves, not just steeped tea. Though I understand that there’s more flavanol bang per gram in matcha than the brewed leaves, it’s just too intense for me. This bar brings out a lot of that experience, so if you’re a matcha fan, this is a fun bar, especially because there are some cocoa nibs in there for crunch. The bitterness was just too drying for me. I had to follow it with some Hojicha.

The Vosges Super Dark Coconut Ash & Banana features Sri Lankan coconut charcoal coconut ash and Hawaiian Banana. The bar does look much darker, blacker than a usual chocolate bar. It smells like coconut cream. The flavor is bizarre as well. There are the immediate chocolate notes, which are like crispy brownie edges, then the coconut flavors and something, well, umami that I can’t put my finger on. Then there’s the weird banana flavor, which is a little like fingernail polish remover, it’s not an integrated flavor, it’s like it escapes from the chocolate and evaporates immediately into the back of my sinuses - eventually within the chocolate I did come across a few tangy bits of dried banana, which were completely different on the banana taste spectrum. I wouldn’t call this a pleasant bar experience, though I do appreciate the attempt at the unique. The ash notes come out at the end, more as a sort of dry charcoal notes.

I actually love the little sizes of all the bars, and BT McElrath sells theirs in an array of sizes, some with mixed flavors so you can try more of choose to suit your mood. Vosges also sells some of their Super Dark pieces in boxes, but they’re about $80.

Related Candies

1. Perugina Baci
2. Fancy Food Show 2010 - Day 2 Notes
3. Vosges Bombalinas - Black Pearl Cashews
4. Candy on the Trail
5. Fancy Food Show 2009 Notes - Day One
6. KitKat Chocolatier (Strawberry & Green Tea)
7. Vosges Truffles - Fall 2006
8. Hanahiyori - Green Tea White Chocolates