One of the newest bars from Divine, a fair trade chocolate maker, is 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries.

The packaging is another iteration of their West African iconography in gold and red on a black background. The bars is 3.5 ounces (not available in a single serve size at this time) and is wrapped well inside the paper overwrap with a textured medium grade foil.

Divine bills itself as Heavenly Chocolate with a heart. They use mostly fair trade ingredients (in this case it was the sugar, vanilla and the cacao), are all natural and use non-GMO soy lecithin. Their dark bars do not use any dairy products and are considered vegan though are produced on shared equipment with milk, wheat and tree nuts.

The construction of the bar is simple. Dark chocolate with a layer of freeze dried raspberries sprinkled on the bottom.

Flipped over, the bar is quite beautiful, like all the Divine bars I’ve had. Nice gloss and snap, a rather red hue to it; I wasn’t sure if it was from the raspberry inclusions or just the natural state of the chocolate. It’s a moderately thick bar, thicker than a Lindt Excellence bar, but not as thick as something like Ritter Sport. The sections are 4 by 6 and pretty easy to snap apart.

It absolutely smells like raspberries with some woodsy and seed notes. The dark chocolate is strong, dark and slightly bitter. I was expecting a fruity chocolate, instead it had strong coffee and charcoal notes. The texture is silky with a dry finish and of course the raspberry bits created some texture. The raspberries are freeze dried bits, with lots of seeds. Chewing the seeds gives off grassy and sesame flavors while the pulp part is quite tangy and has great natural raspberry flavors.

Overall I liked the bold combination of flavors - this was not a timid bar. It was not a bar that I could munch on forever though. I had two pieces, then needed to rest for a while until I was interested in having some more. It wasn’t something I was craving at any point though. If they could do the same bar without the seeds, I think I’d prefer it.

Related Candies

1. Kohler Chocolates Garden Ganache & Toffee Mountains
2. Divine Fair Trade Chocolate
3. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
4. M&Ms Razzberry - Limited Edition
5. Cadbury Raspberry Bunny

I’m the wrong person to review the new Gimbal’s Cherry Lovers but I’ll do my best.

I’m not generally keen on cherry flavors, but I do love real cherries and I’m generally a fan of Gimbal’s products. This bag of little heart shaped jelly bean type objects boast nine different cherry flavors plus vitamin C and real cherry juice. Gimbal’s makes their candies in the USA in a factory that’s Kosher, peanut free, tree nut free, dairy free, gluten free, gelatin free and soy free. So for allergic folks these are pretty special. (Sorry vegans, though the colors are artificial they do use beeswax and confectioners glaze.)

They’re drop dead gorgeous. A riot of reds, pinks and purples they seem to go beyond the frilly satin hearts of the season. They’re a little rustic because each heart is unique and not quite perfect.

Wild Cherry - plain red - you know, cherry. Tart, sweet, floral and deep woodsy notes. But not quite that good. The medicine flavors are kept pretty faint here.

Cherry Vanilla - white with red speckles - like a cherry marshmallow, mostly a soft flavor with a strong fake vanilla flavor to it. Pretty much pleasant.

Black Cherry - deep red - tastes mostly like red. The cherry flavor is pretty intense as far as these hearts go, more on the woodsy side compared to the Bing Cherry.

Chocolate Cherry - brown - oh, this is quite a tragic flavor, not quite cherry and mostly empty cocoa flavors. It’s like a very bad Cherry Tootsie Pop.

Cherry Cheesecake - pink with red speckles - a tangier version of the Cherry Vanilla, this one had a yogurty twang to it and but still a marshmallowy flavor.

Cherry Daiquiri - deep pink with red speckles - this one was rather fun, kind of a lime and vanilla with a hint of cherry cough syrup. A little bit like aftershave though.

Bing Cherry - lighter red -  Tangy and sweet, a well rounded cherry flavor. A little chemical aftertaste from the food colorings, but about as good as the Jelly Belly I usually avoid.

Cherry Cola - dark red - at first I liked the cherry cola, because it tasted like cola, even had a weird effervescent quality to it (maybe that was just the tangy part playing with my mind) but then the cherry kicked in and ruined it for me. But that’s just me.

Kiwi Cherry - pink with green speckles - this was just terrible. Maybe it’s because I had a recent run in with fresh Durian, but I just couldn’t get that out of my head when it came to this one. The kiwi flavors were more like melon and onions than kiwi, though the cherry seemed about average.

The didn’t do a thing for me. The colors were pretty, the shapes and distinctiveness of the flavors was actually pretty good. But I wouldn’t consider these a breakthrough candy so I found it odd that the National Confectionery Sales Association awarded Cherry Lovers best new Premium/Gourmet product:

In six categories, the winners were: Chocolate, The Hershey Co.‘s Reese’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups; Licensed/Limited, New England Confectionery Co.‘s Twilight Series; Non-Chocolate, Ferrara Pan Candy Co.‘s Chewy Lemonhead & Friends; Premium/Gourmet, Gimbal’s Fine Candies’ Cherry Lovers; Snacks, Snyder’s of Hanover, Inc.‘s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwiches; and Seasonal, Maxim Manufacturing & Marketing’s Easter Gummies.

Robby at Candy Addict had a better opinion of these. I’ll just consider them very pretty Valentine’s decorations in a bowl.

Related Candies

1. See’s Cinnamon (Hearts & Lollypops)
2. Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand
3. Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans
4. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
5. Gimbal’s Lavaballs
6. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola

Sunflower Butter Cups ... saying it out loud it doesn’t even make sense, is it a flower or is it a candy? Seth Ellis Chocolatier of Boulder, Colorado has come out with a nut free, peanut free, gluten free, fair trade and organic candy. They simply call them Sun Cups.

Sun Cups come in milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Confusing sounding name aside, they’re sunflower butter (like peanut butter only made with sunflower seeds) in a chocolate cup. Just like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, except, well, not like them.

Each cup is .75 ounces and comes in the industry standard dark brown fluted paper cup. The packages I picked up from the Seth Ellis booth at the Winter Fancy Food Show were flawless and perfect. Even the glossy and bold packaging is made from a compostable film.

The Milk Chocolate Sun Cups smells sweet and milky. There’s a touch of sunflower scent, but mostly it’s a fresh note. The organic milk chocolate is silky smooth and has a strong European dairy note. It’s cool on the tongue as it melts. The sunflower center is creamier than a Reese’s, not exactly moist, but not crumbly and not oily. The center is made with sunflower butter mixed with white chocolate, so it’s a little stiff but has an amazing melt with just a hint of sea salt.

The Dark Chocolate Sun Cups smell like semi-sweet chocolate - a little bit woodsy and fruity. The chocolate is actually rather dark and bitter and though it’s vegan (no milkfat) the cups overall aren’t because of the dairy in the white chocolate & sunflower center. The sunflower butter isn’t very sweet, so the whole cup has a much more savory appeal to it. There’s a grassy note to the sunflower which reminds me a little of jasmine tea and tahini.

I thought I was going to love the dark chocolate more than the milk chocolate, but I found both compelling for different reasons. In the milk chocolate version the milk flavors and silky textures blend together well for a decadent and rather fatty feeling treat. The dark chocolate version is deep and complex and kind of requires a little bit of attention while eating to appreciate how it all fits together.

The fact that they’re gluten free and nut free (both tree & peanut) will set these cups apart from most others right away. The milk chocolate version will be easily gobbled up by kids with allergies and sensitivities without any feeling of them getting a compromise candy. Grown ups without allergies will still appreciate the social responsibility (organic & fair trade) behind them along with the tasty ingredients. I still prefer peanut butter, as it’s a more rounded flavor, but I can’t ignore how great these are.

They might be a little hard to find, though most Whole Foods will order if they’re in the system and not on the shelves. They should be in Whole Foods (Rocky Mountain, Northwest and Bay Area) chain-wide at Pharmaca, Sunflower Markets, Cost Plus World Markets, Jimbo’s in So Cal. I still haven’t found them in stores yet, but they should retail for less than $2.00 a package. Hopefully they’ll have individually wrapped ones around for Halloween later this year.

Related Candies

1. Sunbursts Natural Mix
2. Short & Sweet: Bites & Bites
3. Super Sour Worms
4. Colt’s Bolts
5. Sjaak’s Vegan Chocolate Assortment
6. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
7. Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops

I was a little dubious when Ferrara Chocolate entered the segmented spherical fruit made from chocolate market late last year. But I was impressed with the quality, availability and price. Ferrara Pan is best known for its other spheres such as Lemonheads and Atomic Fireballs. They used to be the importers and distributors of Toblerone, Terry’s Chocolate Orange and Cote d’Or chocolate, but when Kraft decided to handle that themselves, Sal Ferrara saw an opportunity to get that niche of sales for his company and moved into chocolate molding.

What’s most exciting about the new brand is the inventiveness of their “Chocolate Oranges”. The initial items were pretty much carbon copies of the existing Terry’s Chocolate Orange (Milk, Dark and Milk Chocolate Toffee Crunch). But now that the initial move into stores is over and hopefully folks sampled over the holidays they’re settling in and pushing the envelope a little more.

The Valentine’s Day version of the chocolate orange is part of the strategy to keep the oranges around for all holidays. This one is Strawberry Milk Chocolate and features a Valentine’s message on every segment.

There are 20 segments in the sphere. The red foil wrapper has a sticker that says Burst then Enjoy, but I do poorly at tasks that require just the right amount of force (watch me bowl sometime). So I just cleave it apart by wedging a knife between the segments.

There are ten messages on the slices, some are icons and others are little sayings. Be Mine, True Love, Only You and Hug Me. There’s no Marry Me but there are little pictures of a cupid, a set of kissing lips, a rose and the iconic Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture. (Well, it’s not quite the same icon, the O in LOVE is upright, not tilted.)

The scent is lightly floral, a mix of milk and strawberry. It reminded me of strawberry Nesquik. The chocolate is smooth but very sweet, has a good roasted chocolate note to it as well as the flavor of strawberry. There’s no tangy component, no freeze dried strawberry bits.

Each of the molded segments is nicely done. Mine were shiny and pretty much perfect - the only hitch was sometimes I broke off part of the design when separating it from the center.

The mix of strawberry flavor and milk chocolate isn’t exactly my favorite, but for what it is, it’s very well done. The chocolate is smoother than what I’ve been used to with Terry’s though absolutely still as sweet.

The idea of doing multiple designs on the segments is pure genius - it actually made me want to take apart the sphere to look at them all. Sharing it would certainly be in order, especially for Valentine’s Day. The price is certainly right at about $2.50 at most stores.

Related Candies

1. Florida Tropic Oranges
2. Ferrara Chocolate Oranges
3. Ferrara Milk Chocolate with Almond Nougat
4. Terry’s Chocolate Toffee Crunch Orange
5. Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms
6. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
7. Meiji Gummy Choco
8. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection

A few years ago Jelly Belly was taking suggestions for their new bean flavors. I was actively advocating honey. I know, it’s not dazzling like Juicy Pear or knock-your-socks-off like Buttered Popcorn, but let’s face it, honey is one of humans’ first candies.

Honey actually made it to the final cut of the flavor voting, but the trendier Acai Berry won (with honey as a close second). The good news is that honey made a good enough showing that Jelly Belly went ahead and made it anyway! Which is good, because I’d much rather have a spoonful of honey than of acai berry.

The beans are dark amber and ever so slightly translucent.

They’re soft and mild - really like a less sweet globule of honey. The texture is smooth overall, though with that slight grain of the thin jelly bean shell. There’s a little bit of a fresh aftertaste, kind of like jasmine tea.

It’s too bad that they’re not all natural (there are some artificial colors in there) but they use real honey in them, and that definitely is apparent.

Honestly, I didn’t think much of them when I had them the first time, but the true honey flavor comes through and I found myself wanting more later. I can’t say eating a huge bag of them would be a goal, but they were a nice little mid-day refresher. My confidence level that these are going to appear in stores is pretty low. I don’t expect to see them at the grocery store, but perhaps in the stores that carry the single flavors in bulk ... so the Jelly Belly website is probably going to be the best bet. (A custom mix I’d make for myself would probably be to mix the honey and Citrus Mix for a special sort of cough drop if only they’d make a mentholated jelly bean.)

Jelly Belly are gluten-free, dairy-free and gelatin free plus Kosher.

Related Candies

1. Cool Honey Altoids
2. Boules de Miel (balls of honey)
3. Palmer Bee Mine
4. Melville Candy Company Honey Spoons
5. Pure Fun & Yummy Earth Organic Hard Candies

The Mars family of candy bars, as far as I’m concerned, is all about nougat. They put it in all their legacy bars: 3 Musketeers, Mars (now Snickers Almond), Snickers and Milky Way. For a very short period of time they actually made a plain old caramel and chocolate bar, it was called Marathon.

Back in 2007 or 2008 there was a brief limited edition in miniature form of the Milky Way bar with just the caramel. Then it became a regular item in 2008 in Canada as Mars Caramel (and nut free to boot). It’s taken a while for it to return to the United States, but now it’s available in full bar form here, too (though this one is made in the USA and doesn’t have the no nuts seal, it actually doesn’t list peanuts as a possible allergen ... just egg and of course soy and milk which are in the ingredients.)

The Milky Way Caramel bar fills a hole in the American candy bar grid of confectionery possibilities. It’s a firm caramel covered in milk chocolate. It is unlike the Cadbury Caramello which is a flowing caramel covered in milk chocolate or the Rolo which is small pieces filled with a flowing caramel.

It’s attractive, as are most Mars candy products. The block is smaller than the standard Milky Way bar. It’s only 1.91 ounces instead of 2.05 and not quite as high (as there’s no fluffy nougat in there).

The milk chocolate is thick and doesn’t flake off. The caramel is a milky amber color and has an excellent glossy pull to it. The texture of the caramel is silky smooth and though it’s dense it’s not quite chewy. The scent of the whole bar is a bit like a toasted sugared cereal, not much chocolate punch but plenty of buttery notes.

The caramel has flavor, but that’s just it, it tastes like “flavor” not an authentic “boiled until it caramelizes” sugar flavor.

The whole thing is sweet and of course it’s a lot of caramel to eat, though certainly not as cloying as Caramello. I’ve had a couple of these bars (the broken one pictured above I got at the NACS convention in October and the package was from this weekend) and I simply cannot finish one in a single sitting. I like the proportion of chocolate to caramel and the texture is distinctive. There’s an overriding milk flavor to the whole thing, which I liked. But I prefer my chocolate to be darker and my caramel chewier (it probably doesn’t help that I spent the weekend eating See’s Scotchmallows.). But my preferences aside, it’s well done: real chocolate, no artificial colors and great textures. 

Other reviews of Mars Caramel (which is a slightly smaller bar than the American one, so the proportions of chocolate to caramel may be different): The Candy Critic, Jim’s Chocolate Mission, Candyrageous.

Related Candies

1. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
2. Dove Caramels & Chocolate Covered Almonds
3. Snickers Dark
4. Head to Head: Milky Way & Mars (Canada & UK)
5. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel
6. Milky Way Crispy Rolls
7. Short & Sweet: Caramello /  Mega M&Ms / Orange Kisses

Last year I got a curious comment on my Red Vines review mentioning Grape Vines. I thought they were long gone. Incredibly I read that American Licorice was reviving the grape flavored licorice twists and have been scanning shelves for them ever since. I spotted them at the grocery store last week and of course snagged a package.

First of all, the box and logo are just fabulous. They’re snazzy and happy and classic. I like the simplicity and boldness of the Red Vines packaging, especially the standard tray which seems to be their most popular format. The clear window shows off the product but the unified graphic elements make them easy to recognize on the shelf. I was happy to see that Grape Vines fit right in.

It’s not your imagination nor a strange anomaly in the photo, they’re not all the same color. Some are more on the magenta side of purple and other twists are on the concord-grape-juice purple side. Besides the color, they look and feel just like Red Vines. The texture is matte but smooth with a bit of a glow, as they’re slightly translucent. They’re not at all sticky or tacky. They’re flexible, especially since these are fresh (though I’ll eat licorice fresh or stale).

They’re the kind of candy you can put out on your desk and not worry about. They don’t leave a greasy mess, they don’t really dry out (maybe after a day or so, but an afternoon while you’re working at the computer is just fine). I’ve even stuck them in my pocket out of the bag without incident (though I don’t recommend that for more humid or damp regions).

They smell like Pixy Stix and ball point pen ink and taste like flat grape soda.

The chew is pleasant and not as waxy as Twizzlers can be. The flavor is mild with just a light hint of grape. The grape isn’t all artificial tasting either, sometimes it’s remarkably like raisins. (Though if I wanted raisin flavor I should just eat raisins.) I was pleased to see that they didn’t need to use Red #40 for the coloring so I didn’t get that aftertaste I often find with brightly colored candies.

They’re different. I enjoyed them, though not more than the standard Red Vines and certainly not as much as my cherished black licorice.

On a side note, I got a new lens for my camera for Christmas. Can you tell I was enjoying Grape Vines if only as an excellent subject to test it out? (Tamron SP AF60mm F2 Di II LD (IF) 1:1 Macro)

Related Candies

1. Topps Wild Berriez Wazoo
2. Now & Later
3. Twizzlers (Strawberry)
4. Judson-Atkinson Sours
5. Black Licorice Twists & Snaps
6. Red Vines
7. Kenny’s Licorice Pastels & Root Beer Twists

I see the Florida Tropic oranges from time to time in the stores, but I haven’t really payed much attention to them until this year. When I attended the convenience store show in Las Vegas (NACS) a while back the folks at SweetWorks, the company that makes the Florida Tropic chocolate product line gave me a set of almost every flavor (I got eight of the nine).

Since there are a lot of flavors of their version of the segmented flavored chocolate “orange”, I’m going to deal with just three of them today: Dark Chocolate Orange, Milk Chocolate Orange and the 70% Cacao.

The boxes are quite simple. A plastic holder for the sphere of chocolate segments, which is wrapped in foil. The boxes are simple and show off the product well, but are frustrating to open. They use so much glue on them that it’s nearly impossible to just flip open the top, instead pulling it apart shreds the usability of the box to store the product.

While Terry’s Chocolate Orange tells us to Whack & Unwrap, the Florida Tropic Orange says “Break then Open” with a little drawing of a hand cupping the orange firmly. As I’ve opened a lot of these in the past few weeks I can say this: don’t whack or smack or break. Just open it up and either break it in half then or use a knife to wedge in and loosen a slice. It’s far less messy, though probably not as satisfying.

The foil wrap is great. I’ve been frustrated with the plastic stuff that Terry’s has been using for a few years now, it’s slightly too small for re-wrapping, and of course it doesn’t actually stay the same way foil does. This foil is great, it’s heavy and of course pretty. It’s also, for the most part, color coded by flavor. (Except for the milk and dark orange flavored ones, which are similar shades of orange.)

The pieces are a nice two bite size. They have a textured “rind” and one side of each section is designed to look like an orange slice complete with peel and pulp. There’s a distinct ridge on the edge which makes the pieces a little lighter, which might account for the difference in weight between Terry’s Chocolate Oranges and Florida Tropic. (There are 18 slices, so that also accounts for it.)

The orange scent is a mix of orange oil and the smell or orange Tang drink. The dark chocolate is mostly orange flavored with both the citrus zest and a strange bit of juice note. The melt is quite decent, though not quite buttery and smooth, it’s still slick and only slightly gritty and chalky near the end. (I think the cacao content is about 50% on these.)

The orange is a bit too strong for my desires for this product, but when combined with non-oranged items like pretzels, plain almonds and the 70% Cacao version below, it’s quite a nice treat. I ended up using much of this orange for some chocolate pudding over the weekend. I combined 3 cups of milk, 3/4 cup of cocoa, 1/4 cup of corn starch and 7 finely chopped slices instead of sugar (see my earlier experiment with pudding). No, it wasn’t sweet at all, but it was very chocolately. (Next time I may try the milk ones, as they have more sugar.)

The chocolate is actually vegan however it’s processed in a facility that also handles milk products, so may contain traces of dairy.

The standard Christmas stocking treat, I would guess of all of them, is the Florida Tropic Milk Chocolate Orange.

What I thought was fun about this one when I opened up the wrapper, besides the lovely look of the puzzle of slices, was how it’s put together. I’ve had oranges before that are made of slices that are then melted onto a plastic stem & disk thing. (I think that was the Droste brand ... can anyone confirm?) What this photo shows pretty simply is that the slices are packed into a ball and then a small amount of molten chocolate is squeezed into the bottom to just hold everything together (you can see from the top dark orange photo that the chocolate anchor only extends about half of the way through the middle). Separating them from the sphere isn’t hard at all.

The dairy scent is easily teased from the orange and sugar. There’s a slight creamsicle vibe to the whole thing, maybe like dunking orange sherbet in hot chocolate. The texture is smooth for less expensive chocolate, but still a little fudgy and grainy for my liking. It’s quite sweet as you can imagine for a milk chocolate. Still, it has a good cocoa vibe to go with the strange orange flavors which are both natural and artificial. 

Though I have another half a dozen flavors to profile at some point, I decided to include the 70% Cacao here because it’s such a basic and the only in the bunch that’s not flavored or has any inclusions.

The wrapper is a matte toasty brown. One of the things I really enjoyed about all the oranges I had is how stunningly beautiful they are when opened. They way the slices are all stacked neatly then slightly tilted, like some sort of puzzle. From distance it’s like a tightly tucked chocolate armadillo or pillbug.

As an unflavored product, it’s the only one in the Florida Tropic line that gives me a chance to really taste the chocolate. They use real vanilla and no butterfat or other dairy extenders - so it’s true dark chocolate. (So it also qualifies as all natural.)

The chocolate flavor is in the middle of all the profile notes: a hint of roasted coffee, a touch of tangy raisin, a little whiff of woodsy smoke and a comforting texture that’s both creamy, not too sweet and a slightly dry finish. There’s a small grit to it from time to time, something I noticed in the dark flavored orange so may just be the style for this brand.

Just a correction, I reported before that I believed that the Trader Joe’s version was by Ferrara. It’s now quite clear that they’re actually made by SweetWorks. There’s really not that much difference between them. The biggest is that the standard Florida Tropic is 18 slices and 5.3 ounces and the Trader Joe’s is 6.17 ounces and 20 slices. But besides the size, it’s the same product, right down to the sticker on the top and the color of the foil. Just the box is different (and I rather prefer the Trader Joe’s whimsy.)

I’m quite please so far with the Florida Tropic oranges. Overall the product design is great and their attention to detail is quite good. The flavor variety is large, besides those covered here: Key Lime (Milk), Almond (Milk), Peppermint Crunch (Milk), Pina Colada (Milk), Raspbery (Milk) and Toffee Crunch (Milk). The price is good and the fact that they’re made in the USA may be of comfort to some folks instead of the Terry’s Chocolate Oranges which are made in Poland by Kraft.

So while I’m not a fan of Sixlets, which are also made by SweetWorks, the orange line shows that they can do really cost effective, attractive and crowd pleasing candy. (Not that Sixlets aren’t cute as buttons.)

Related Candies

1. Ferrara Chocolate Oranges
2. Terry’s Chocolate Toffee Crunch Orange
3. Slice of Orange Hot Chocolate
4. Sixlets & Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Flavored Sixlets
5. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
6. Terry’s Peppermint Orange
7. Make This: Christmas Stockings