I’m buried in mints! So here’s a huge roundup of all the mint items in my queue that I wanted to get through before Christmas.

Like the Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows I picked up a few months ago, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Mints come in a cute round tin and hold 2.45 ounces. Unlike the Espresso Pillows, these are not a very original product.

Inside the tin is a fluted liner that holds a large handful of soft, white candy-shelled mints. Each is about the size of a kidney bean. The tin says that there are no artificial flavors or preservatives. I think they shy from the “all natural” part because the white shell is created with titanium dioxide.

They reminded me of the classic Dutch Mints and luckily I had some of those around for comparison.

Jelly Belly makes a large variety of Dutch Mints. They come in different colors, these are all hot pink and individually wrapped, though you can also get them in the stark white, pastel mint colors or right now in the Christmas assortment of red, green and white. (And they’re Kosher.)

The Dutch Mint is the size of a garbanzo bean but my guess is the same mass as the TJ’s.

They’re both the same construction, a soft mint fondant with a thin layer or dark chocolate then a crispy candy shell.

Both are lovely and addictive. The Trader Joe’s retails for $1.22 an ounce. The Jelly Belly can go for anywhere from $.70 an ounce for the small 2.9 ounce bag to $.56 for a one pound tub (check out Cost Plus World Market).

Jelly Belly Dutch Mints get a rating of: 8 out of 10
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Mints get a rating of: 7 out of 10 because they’re so expensive.

These also closely resemble the York Mints that also come in a tin.

The previous are great for toting around and especially nice if a restaurant gives you a few with the check. But if you’re entertaining, you might want to provide some other more chocolatey mint morsels.

I’ve always loved After Eight Mints, which are a flowing mint fondant in an ultra thin square. I used to love how they came in individual glassine envelopes, like a little file box of deliciousness.

Of course After Eights are made by Nestle now and not nearly as good as I remember them on top of the controversies that they’re made from questionably sourced chocolate. The Fair Trade movement has been working to bring families and communities out of poverty through fair payment for goods & services.

Divine Chocolate has been doing this since 1998 in the United Kingdom and recently expanded into the United States. Not only do they have tasty bars they also have addition treats like these Divine After Dinner Mints.

The mints are nicely sized for two bites at about 1.5” square. The mild semi-sweet chocolate is crisp and cracks well. The mint fondant center is creamy and minted only slightly so as not to overpower the chocolate. The dark chocolate has some berry and fruity tones that combine well with the cool peppermint flavors.

I’ve seen these at Whole Foods (at an endcap display for hostess giving), so they should be pretty widely available this season.

Divine After Dinner Mints get a rating of 7 out of 10.

Creme de Menthe Altoids have been out for a few months, though it took me a while to find the variety that isn’t covered in chocolate. I realized that I might have seen them before, the green of the package is only slightly lighter than the Spearmint boxes. These were on sale for $1.50 to boot!

Basically the flavor of these is like a Peppermint TicTac. It has a powdery vanilla scent, softer than a harsh peppermint and perhaps just a hint of licorice.

But these are Altoids. Though they might start out mild, they do pack a much stronger kick later on. I like the flavor a bit better than the straight Peppermint if only because of the mix of aromas.

Creme de Menthe Altoids get a rating of 8 out of 10.

Quite a few folks have been lamenting that Trader Joe’s discontinued their English Soft Peppermints. I’m pretty keen on the generic & mild butter mints I find at the drug store, but those were some pretty good mints.

Around this time of year, however, I see a lot of these See’s Peppermint Twists in candy dishes around the office. It took me a while, but I think I found out who makes them. There were two contenders: King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy or Bob’s Sweet Stripes.

I saw this box of King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy at the 99 Cent Only Store and thought I’d give them a whirl. They were a dollar for 3.5 ounces.

I thought they were “butter mints” and read through this to see how I came to that conclusion:

For over one hundred years, King Leo has made delicious peppermint stick candy using only the purest ingredients and old-fashioned care. Now we’ve taken that same quality and care and created new King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy. The same great King Leo taste folks have come to expect, now in a truly soft new candy [emphasis mine] Thanks to a special process we’ve perfected, these bite-sized treats are soft from the moment you open the box. [emphasis mine] No wonder everyone loves King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy so much.

So I was expecting a soft mint. Either crumbly soft or mushy soft.

These were neither. They’re soft as in rounded and smooth, but after that they were not butter mints until I sucked on them for a while. Which is kind of the opposite of “soft from the moment you open the box”. Annoyance aside, they’re peppermint candies. They are airy and dissolve nicely and of course none of those hard candy sharp edges. They’re sweet and a bit less intense than a starlight mint and really pretty to look at. Like those English Soft Peppermints that were really made in the Netherlands, King Leo are made in Mexico. Kosher.

King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy gets a 6 out of 10.

I’m not completely convinced that just because something is covered with chocolate that it’s candy, but I couldn’t resist a little roundup of these two chocolate covered cookies.

I first had Trader Joe’s Peppermint Joe Joe’s last year and thought they were tasty - a chocolate cookie sandwich with a mint cream filling, but like Hydrox. I had a bit of trouble with the fact that the cookie part wasn’t quite as good as the Oreo.

Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joe’s sucked me in this year. I mean, look, they’re covered in real dark chocolate!

The regular Joe Joe’s come in a one pound package, which is pretty dangerous in my house. Though I’m not a cake or baked goods fan in general, I do have a cookie problem. (If Candy Blog were to ever expand, it’d be into cookie reviews.)

The cute tray was sealed in cellophane and protected every single cookie from any damage in transit.

There are ten in all. Each is dusted with a bit of crushed mint candies.

They smell very minty, to the exclusion of all other flavors, such as chocolate.

They’re also pretty hefty, clocking in at about one ounce each. (And 150 calories.)

The cookie is crumbly and has a dark toasted cocoa flavor. The chocolate is creamy and perhaps a little sweet. The cream filling is where this doesn’t go as well, it’s grainy, which is fine, but it’s also a bit greasy. If I eat it all as a sandwich together, it’s great. Eating just the filling is a disappointment.

The ingredients list was pretty clear. Real chocolate, no artificial flavors or colors ... the only item that gives some folks pause is palm oil. (But some of the sugar is actually organic evaporated cane juice.)

Overall, it’s super tasty and should be enjoyed like a candy and not a cookie. (If you’re wondering what the difference is, I’d say that a serving of cookies like Oreos is three, but for these, the serving size is one.)

Rating: 8 out of 10.

I had Nabisco’s Pure Milk Chocolate Covered Mint Oreo Sandwich Cookies earlier this year. I found them in a little package at a drug store in Santa Monica while picking up some items for a beach picnic. I ate them in the car on the way there. It wasn’t until I was shopping at Target last week that I found them in a larger package.

This is a dangerous thing. I like them a bit too much.

The Oreos come in a tray with individual slots. There are 12 cookies in the box instead of 10 in the Joe Joe’s (but this box weighs only 7.5 ounces instead of 9.4). I don’t know the regular price on these, they were $2.50 on sale so were less per ounce than the Joe Joe’s.

As I expected the ingredients list wasn’t quite as wholesome, but I’ve got to give credit to Nabisco for not coloring the cream centers pink or green. The chocolate is real, but there’s palm oil in there and way down on the list is a bit of high fructose corn sweetener. All the other ingredients are pretty much the usual stuff.

The tray protected the individual cookies well, each one was glossy and had wonderful little ripples of milk chocolate on top.

These also smelled strongly of peppermint, and a little bit of milk.

The cookie crumble of the Oreo is spectacular. It’s a little sandy and releases immediate salty and smoky cocoa notes. The soft crunch is punctuated by the smooth milk chocolate, which isn’t as sweet as I would have expected (especially after having the Joe Joe’s). The cream center is grainy, lightly minted but without any greasiness to the fatty cream.

Each cookie is 90 calories and weighs about .65 ounces.

They’re stellar.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Related Candies

1. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
2. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
3. Asher’s Milk Chocolate Covered Things
4. KitKat Mint Dark Chocolate Minis
5. Hershey’s Cookies and Brownies
6. Best Regards: Craves
7. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint

Before Tootsie came out with their seasonal Candy Cane Tootsie Pops fans of peppermint and Tootsie Rolls were relegated to making their own. Though it was relatively simple to jam a Tootsie Roll on a chop stick and then smash a couple of starlight mints onto it, it just didn’t have the same classy, holiday flair as this store-bought version.

Candy Cane Tootsie Pops are a little different than other special flavor editions of Tootsie Pops. But not in remarkable ways. Yet I’ll list them for you anyway. First, the they’re in a clear cellophane wrapper. Second, the wrapper is done in a double twist at both the base of the pop and at the top of the pop. (Remember, the regular wrappers cover the pop and twist only where the stick meets the pop.) Third, the shape is not like the regular Tootsie Pop, which has a band that extends from the base up and around the top. Instead this band goes around the middle, just like a Charms Blow Pop. (Hmm, the wrappers are the same as Blow Pops too ... wouldn’t it be fun if they made mint Blow Pops?)

The wrappers are vexing. They’re sealed at the base, so hard to get off and not as easy to rewrap around the candy if you don’t finish it all at once.

The mint hard candy outside is peppermint. It has a pleasant swirl of red that goes through the white dominant base. It’s very smooth, in fact, smoother than a regular Tootsie Pop, fewer voids. Honestly, it made me wonder why Tootsie Pops aren’t all this smooth.

I’m a cruncher, so it didn’t take long before I was able to dissolve away enough of the hard candy outside to crunch into the Tootsie Roll center. Let me state that’s where this gets disappointing. A Tootsie Roll is just a chocolate flavored taffy. I like them well enough as a durable, all weather candy. But they’re really only good inside Tootsie Pops (orange). Because mint is rather one note (no tartness, just sweetness and cool mint) instead of complex like the fruit flavors (the flavor, the tart, the tangy all combined) the Tootsie Roll scent becomes very obvious. It smells like chocolate scented cardboard.

It smells like the box hot cocoa mixes come in after you take the packets out.

It’s just disappointing.

I think these are a fun idea, but there’s really no way to improve them without fixing the Tootsie Roll. The combo just doesn’t bring out the best that a Tootsie Roll has to offer and hide its shortcomings.

Related Candies

1. Chocolate Dipped Altoids - Creme de Menthe
2. Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy
3. Tootsie Pop Drops
4. Jo’s Peppermint Crunch
5. Tootsie Rolls & Fruit Rolls
6. Charms Blow Pops & Zip-a-Dee
7. Hot Tamales Ice

One of M&Ms Holiday Mixes isn’t just a color shift in the regular offering. It’s the Mint Chocolate M&Ms, which aren’t available during any of the other special editions for other holidays like Easter or Halloween.

I haven’t had these in years, as I used to find them to be dangerously addictive and for the past few years I’ve tried to concentrate on candies that were new to me.

But this year I was happy to hear that they were back and thought it was high time that I had some again and of course document there here so fans could squee with delight. (Also, they were on sale, so I bought this bag and a bag of the Holiday Mix Almond M&Ms, which I ate in two days.)

The lentils come in three colors: White, Green and Red.

I pulled out a few regular M&Ms as a comparison (on the left) for the photo because I thought the green and red were actually a different shade. And so they are!

It’s tempting to think that these are just minted Milk Chocolate M&Ms, but they’re a little different in several ways.

Yeah, they’re really good. I love mint & chocolate and though the milk chocolate of M&Ms isn’t spectacular, it’s certainly fun to put away.

Related Candies

1. M&Ms Mint Dark Chocolate
2. M&Ms Premiums
3. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
4. Nestle Toll House Mint Holiday Gems
5. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
6. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
7. M&Ms Line

Hershey’s introduced their Signatures line last year, which is an upscale set of offerings within the traditional Hershey’s fare that’s available at grocers, drug stores and discount retailers. (The Reese’s Clusters were the first item in this line that I found.)

Hershey’s Bliss is also part of this Signatures line. The initial launch of Bliss included milk chocolate, dark chocolate and a milk chocolate meltaway.

As the winter holidays approached, the Hershey’s Bliss Creme de Menthe Meltaway Center appeared on shelves. I first spotted them at Hershey’s Chocolate World back in October, but they smelled so overwhelmingly minty without even opening the bag, I was afraid that the airline would think I was a drug mule trying to cover the scent of something illegal from the famous contraband-sniffing-Beagles of LAX.

So I waited for them to show up locally and sure enough Target has them in stock (on sale, though I’d hardly call $3.50 for an 8.8 ounce bag of Hershey’s a great deal).

Last year Hershey’s released a limited edition Hershey’s Kiss in Mint Truffle (and they’re back this year).

The exterior packaging is pretty, it screams mint & casual indulgence. The interior foil wrappers are not so nice. I was not keen on the shift from the elegant bronzy tones on the outside to the screaming goldenrod text with the green foil.

Inside the pieces were a little soft, a little greasy looking. But beyond that ... they were quite dreamy.

The chocolate is smooth and creamy and the center is just slightly fudgier with nice mint flavor that had both peppermint and spearmint notes (the spearmint part was a refreshing change). It was also a little salty, just like the Mint Truffle Kisses, but the chocolate was silkier.

I really didn’t think I’d like these, but they’re a very successful little morsel. Everyone at the office seems to agree, as the bag is now empty and folks have asked if there are any left.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway Bliss
2. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
3. Jo’s Peppermint Crunch
4. Andes Mints & Dessert Indulgence
5. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
6. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
7. Inside Out Junior Mints
8. London Mint is really from Ohio

Since I knew I was going to be traveling, I thought I’d pick up some easy to carry chocolate for my trip a few weeks ago. I know that I’m guilty of ignoring Godiva here on the blog, even though it’s a major upscale brand of chocolate here in the United States, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give some of their chocolate a go.

Godiva introduced their Chocoiste line which features all sorts of fun goodies that are convenient to carry for a little pick-me-up and sold at lots of stores, not just their outlets.

I chose the Godiva Chocoiste Dark Chocolate Pearls as a way to experience their dark chocolate without any of the muss of fuss of their fancy boxes.

The tin is lovely, tall and narrow with an elegant simplicity and holds 1.5 ounces.

I ran into trouble quickly though. I couldn’t and still can’t get the frelling thing open. Once I did get it open, my thumbtips were sore and this experience repeated each bowb-bowb time I wanted to try a little more. (I even thought it’d losen up, but after three weeks with this frakking thing, I feel like I’m demonstrating my inability to learn from my ficky-fick mistakes and I should just dump them into a ziploc.)

Each of the little pearls are the size of garden peas. Glossy and dark, they are attractive and ready to prove they’re spherical by rolling around the airplane tray table. (Yes, I put down a napkin first, I do have some standards of sanitation.) Luckily they also sit easily on my keyboard near lesser used keys.

The dark chocolate isn’t particularly dark (and contains dairy products like butteroil and milk) but is mellow and rich with a smooth melt. It’s certainly a step up from M&Ms, but at this price ($3.95 a tin) it’s hardly worth it. I would enjoy the tin if it weren’t so expletively frustrating.

Though I tried the dark chocolate first, I spent more time with the Godiva Chocoiste Dark Chocolate Pearls with Mint simply because the tin worked. It opened easily but stayed snapped shut firmly during all my travels.

The pearls looked exactly the same as the plain dark chocolate ones. They smelled like freshly crushed peppermint and spearmint leaves. The chocolate was smooth and had a cool touch of mint that tasted absolutely fresh and authentic.

Both pearl varieties use a resinous glaze, so are unsuitable for strict vegetarians.

Godiva also makes a Mandarin Orange version of the Dark Chocolate that I think I would like very much. Their other versions include Milk Chocolate Pearls, White Chocolate Pearls and Milk Chocolate Caffe Latte Pearls. Other items in the Chocoiste line include chocolate panned nuts & fruits, and solid chocolate bars.

I can see these being a nice gift item or stocking stuffer and the tins are wonderfully shaped and reusable (you could stuff your iPod earbuds in there or just refill with some other treat of your choice). As an everyday item, in this economy and most others I’ve experienced, I’d have to pass.

Other Chocoiste reviews: Sugar Hog tried the Milk Chocolate Domes, The Eating Well tried the Raspberry Bar and Food Mayhem sampled many of the Chocoiste products.

Related Candies

1. Godiva Spring Pearls
2. Russell Stover Color Me Candies
3. Hershey-ets
4. Chuao Chocolate Blocks from LEGOLAND
5. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
6. M&Ms Premiums

Long before Jelly Belly made jelly beans, they made all sorts of other kinds of candy including dozens of different fondant-type confections. The Goelitz Bros. Candy Company made buttercream candies which took many different shapes and flavors - the best known is candy corn.

One lesser-known version of those buttercreams were little treats like these Mint Cremes (there is no butter in there).

Last year while in Pennsylvania

Looking at the through the cellophane wrapper they were exceptionally regular. About the size of a quarter they came in four colors: yellow, pink, white and green.

They’re smooth and firm to the touch (the hand crafted variety break easily).

They don’t smell like much, so I worried at first that I’d bought something completely different.

But after biting into the first one it was clear, these are a very stiff fondant, flavored strongly with peppermint.

They’re all the same flavor.

The outer shell is glossy and seals in the flavor and scent and keeps them a bit softer than I think they’d be otherwise. It’s a combination of carnauba wax, beeswax and confectioners glaze.

Inside the center is dense, like a mello creme or candy corn but with a strong and heavy mint. Not as strong as an Altoid, but a bit more than a peppermint starlight. It’s pretty much the inside of a York Peppermint Pattie.

I was hoping they’d have a more “melt in my mouth” quality than I got. They’re a bit stiff and lacking some personality. But they’re very pretty and would make a different offering in a wedding favor mix or at the end of a meal at a restaurant with the check. I was hoping for a bit more creamy consistency, especially since they’re called cremes like the Romanego Fondants I had last year as well, but considering the price of these, I really shouldn’t have been expecting something that delicate. But it’s not as though these were cheap either. At $12 a pound I’m entitled to expect something.

In the end, I think I prefer good old fashioned pillow mints (after dinner style).

These have a confectioners glaze so may not be appropriate for vegetarians who don’t wish to consume shellac.

Related Candies

1. Smooth n Melty
2. Junior Mints Deluxe
3. York Mints
4. Junior Mints - Heart Shaped
5. Jelly Belly - Full Line

Altoids has a pretty wide variety of flavors and their newest innovation (from late 2006) is offering their most popular mint flavors covered in dark chocolate. This summer Wrigley’s has not only brought out a new mint flavor, Creme de Menthe, they also offer it in the Altoids Dark Chocolate Dipped Mints format.

The dark brown tin with gold and green accents looks rich and inviting. It was easy to spot on the rack at the checkout at Safeway when I was up in the Bay Area and I was lucky enough to catch them on sale, too, at only $1.50 for the package.

The tin design has been revised a bit in the past year. (Here’s the old and here’s the new.) Inside is a kraft brown waxed paper liner.

The dark chocolate covered mints don’t look like much and look identical to the previous varieties. They smell, well, minty and chocolatey.

I prefer crunching mine. The chocolate cleaves off pretty easily and the mint inside has a satisfying crunch. But the chocolate is pretty good too, though tastes more of mint than chocolate, it’s creamy and has a buttery melt and dry finish.

I can’t quite peg what Creme de Menthe is in the first place, so all I can say is that this variety is for people who would like Altoids but find them too strong.

These are like eating a hardened Junior Mint. The dark chocolate complements the mellow mint well, the mint lingers and feels fresh and cool longer after it’s gone.

I ate the whole tin. While the curiously strong Peppermint variety keeps me from eating more than, say, eight or ten in one sitting, it took me only two sessions to eat this whole package. But of course the package only holds 1.76 ounces, so it wasn’t a huge binge. And my breath smells pretty good now. I think I might prefer the softer bite of something like Junior Mints, Dutch Mints or York Peppermint Patties, but I have to say that the crunch was different enough that these aren’t quite interchangeable. (But they are more expensive.)

As with all the traditional Altoids mints, these have gelatin in them and are unsuitable for vegetarians.

Related Candies

1. Altoids Chocolate Dipped Ginger Mints
2. York Mints
3. Junior Mints - Heart Shaped
4. Chocolate Dipped Altoids
5. Jelly Belly - Full Line
6. York Pinkermint Patties