Name: Haribo Wheels Licorice
Brand: Haribo
Place Purchased: Cost Plus
Price: $1.25 (on sale)
Size: 5.29 oz
Calories per ounce: 86
Type: Licorice

Yes, you can get licorice in whips, twists and bites, but I think that Haribo has the corner on the market when it comes to wheels. It’s really just a whip all rolled up into a disk. They look kind of like typewriter ribbon.

What I think is great about this licorice is that it strikes the ideal balance between texture, molasses and licorice flavor. Some licorice is really sweet, some kind of salty and some is just plain tasteless. This has a nice licorice punch without overwhelming (or causing those nasty licorice side effects) with a mellow and smoky molasses hint from the brown sugar and a good chew with a hint of salt to blend the flavors together.

I find I enjoy eating them by unraveling the spiral, but sometimes I’ll just bite right into the disk. By keeping them in these tight wheels, it allows you to have a soft, chewy whip instead of a hard and flavorless one.

I’d never bought these before, they’ll never displace licorice pastels, which are my absolute favorite incarnation of licorice, but I can still see myself buying these again as they are far cheaper than licorice pastels (why are they so expensive?).

Rating - 8 out of 10

Name: Twirl
Brand: Cadbury (UK)
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices
Price: $1.49
Size: 43 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Milk Chocolate

I think someone needs to start keeping a list of candy bar names that would also make good names for cats.

I posted earlier this month about the Flake bar, which I only kinda liked. I’ve decided that one wasn’t particularly fresh. The Twirl, as near as I can figure it, is just a paired version of Flakes. Only slightly smaller in diameter (about the size of my finger ... I have no idea how big your fingers are) than the Flake, they’re about an inch shorter. Think Twix bars - but with a different center.

Inside are curled flakes of chocolate, then they’re dipped in more milk chocolate to hold it all together. What you end up with is a lot of air, which means that it all melts much quicker and seems to emanate a chocolately aroma. It’s basically more fudgy than creamy.

Name: Flake Snow
Brand: Cadbury (UK)
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices
Price: $1.49
Size: 37 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Milk Chocolate/White Chocolate

Revisiting the Flake, this version is filled with white chocolate curls coated in milk chocolate. I’m so glad it wasn’t coated in more white chocolate. Upon opening it I could definitely smell the sweet white chocolate and then a hint of the milk chocolate. It all had a dried milk tinge to it. The bar was much fresher than the one I got from Cost Plus, so that’s a plus. But it was sweet enough to make my throat hurt. It wasn’t really chalky, but it wasn’t really smooth. For some reason the Twirl bar was much more creamy. This one was definitely not old and the store kept them in the fridge ... so I’m guessing that this bar is just like this.

Ratings - Twirl - 7 out of 10
Flake Snow - 5 out of 10

You may recall a while back I got an order from Japan of candies. The last thing I wanted to share with you that came in that box are the two gums from Lotte.

Name: No Time Gum
Brand: Lotte
Place Purchased: Jbox
Price: $1.50
Type: Gum

The first is No Time, which is a little gray, dusty cube of gum. It’s got a light mint flavor and is advertised as a replacement for brushing your teeth when you have no time. Handy, eh?

There are quite a few “whitening” gums on the market in the States, most have baking soda in them, so they end up tasting rather salty and soapy. No Time does not have that burning mint flavor that some freshing gums have and though it says it has some sort of scrubbers in it, it’s quite smooth. The chew is a little tough, the flavor slightly medicinal. I’m not a big gum chewer, and though I found this pleasant, it’s not something I would seek.

Name: Black Black
Brand: Lotte
Place Purchased: Jbox
Price: $1.40
Type: Gum

Many Americans are familiar with Black Black - especially if you frequent truck stops or college campuses. Black Black may be the original caffienated gum. “Hi Technical - Excellent Taste and Flavor.”

They come in the traditional foil wrapped stick. The color is not black, but rather dark. It looks like it should taste like licorice, like a large chewable sen sen. But, it’s actually flavored quite differently. It tastes like cough drops. Hall’s Menthol cough drops. I don’t know if that helps with the caffiene delivery or not.

Though the taste isn’t necessarily enticing, the charge is definitely there. I couldn’t find any info on how much caffiene is in a stick, but I can tell you from experience that I had a terrible headache about two weeks ago. I tried aspirin, then ibuprofen and finally chewed a stick of black black ... whew, sweet relief. Of course I had trouble sleeping later that night (next time, I’ll try the black black first!).

It’s a good thing to keep in your arsenal. Much better than drinking caffienated drinks when driving, if you ask me, because you don’t need as many bathroom breaks.

Ratings - No Time - 5 out of 10
Black Black - 7 out of 10

Name: Curly Wurly
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices
Price: $.99
Size: 26 grams
Calories per ounce: dunno
Type: Caramel

Upon reading Steve Almond’s Candy Freak (one of these days I’ll put up a comprehensive review), I found out that the discontinued bar from the 70s called Marathon is kind of available in the UK as Cadbury’s Curly Wurly.

The concept behind this bar is simple. A loosely braided caramel plank is covered in milk chocolate.

And they did it beautifully. The bar smells of carmelized sugar, very sweet. The caramel is soft but plenty chewy. I find it’s important to give the bar a good bite or else you’ll end up with little bits of chocolate flaking off on your clothes.

Now, with that out of the way, does anyone else know what curly wurly means? I’m familiar with it from the lyrics to Blinded by the Light:

And go-cart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside.

And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride.

Tell me, what is this curly wurly that Early Pearly is riding in?

Rating - 8 out of 10 (it’s gotta be easier to find for me to give it tops)

Related Candies

1. Dolfin Chocolate Bars

I just found out that Hershey has a cool free offer. For 15 wrappers you can get one of six retro designed logo tees.

More info here. There’s a $2 shipping and handling charge, but totally worth it if you dig these candies and logos. If you love the shirt and just don’t want to eat that much candy (what’s wrong with you?), you can order them for $16.95 each. 

Unfortunately I can’t get part of their freakishly elaborate flash site to load the terms & conditions, but I’ll post more as I find it.
Thanks meme for the heads up!

UPDATE: I caved and went to their site using IE and found this page which should tell you most everything you want to know. Except what I want to know, which is whether or not the Twosomes count. But Meme, you’ll be happy to hear that for all five it’s only 55 wrappers!

Name: Gummi Clown Fish
Brand: Haribo
Place Purchased: CandyWarehouse.com (sample)
Price: $19.50 ($3.90 per pound)
Size: 5 lbs!
Calories per ounce: 100 calories (based on Gummi Bear package)
Type: Gummi

This was my biggest score from the recent trip to the CandyWarehouse. It’s a five pound box of gummis. Whew!

These little cuties are shaped like clown fish (yes, like Nemo from the movie). Each little fish is about two inches long and an inch wide. They’re big gummis. Luckily Haribo gummis are not sticky, so they’re easy to hold while you take a bite or pull it until it snaps (you can get it to about four inches before it gives way).

While real clown fish come in one color - orange, these come in three. Yellow (lemon), Green (sour apple?) and Red (berry?). I had a lot more trouble telling the flavors apart on these. I’m positive yellow is lemon, but that’s as much as I can commit to.

Soft, tart and sweet, these are excellent gummis. The large size makes them kind of fun to chew on, you get to decide how much you want by the size of your bite - but it’s harder to mix flavors. The size of the package is a bit daunting. I opened the bag the afternoon I got them and plowed through maybe a dozen fish and then separated them into little baggies of about a half a pound each. All my friends will be getting a fun hostess gift whenever they invite me over.

If I had my druthers, I’d do different colors and flavors than they chose. I’d like a pink grapefruit, an orange orange and keep the yellow lemon. Yes, they’d all be citrus. I’d call them Citrus Clown Fish.

Rating - 8 out of 10

Name: Tadelle Wafer
Brand: Sagra ?
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices (Los Feliz)
Price: $1.49
Size: 1.23 oz
Calories per ounce: 155
Type: Wafer

There’s a cookie that’s practically a candy that I really enjoy called Chocolatiers, made by Lu. They’re little wafer sticks with chocolate cream coated in sweet dark chocolate.

This is like that, only instead of just being a chocolate cream, it’s hazelnut cream. Yummy. The description on the package says “compound chocolate coated wafer with crocant filling.” Not as appetizing as it tastes. In fact, the label is in a multitude of languages. The bar itself is made in Turkey, but the ingredients are translated for the entire United Nations: English, German, Russian, Czech, French, Arabic and I think Romanian. They must send this bar everywhere.

The bar feels very light, as it’s mostly air. The wafers are crisp and light and bring a lot of air into the tasting of the bar, which help the hazelnut aroma penetrate the chocolate and sugar. The chocolate is not a highlight here, as it’s not even real, but the crispy wafers are delicate and star in this bar. I’m a sucker for wafers and hazelnuts ... if only it were better chocolate, I would follow this candy to the ends of the earth.

From the wrapper: “none of our products contain pork fat”

Rating - 7 out of 10

Name: Exotic Candy Bars (Red Fire, Black Pearl & Naga)
Brand: Vosges
Place Purchased: Neiman Marcus (Beverly Hills)
Price: $6.50 each (yee!)
Size: 3.3 oz
Calories per ounce: 160
Type: Chocolate (flavored)

A kind reader, flickerfly, emailed me a few weeks ago to point me to Vosges, specifically their Red Fire Bar. Their website is sure sassy but the prices are pretty darn, well, pricey. If you have a moment, browse their website. It’s an odd combination of haute, indulgence, health and yoga. I’m not going to be in Chicago or New York for a while, so I figured I’d see what they had at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills (I’d actually never been to the Neiman Marcus there before). 

The woman behind the counter was on the phone pretty much the whole time I was there and all I saw of interest were three of the bars that they offered, and even though they were $6.50 each, I picked up all three. The back of each tells me how to eat an exotic candy bar (which is apparently different than eating other bars). You can read that here.

The first is called Naga Bar and is milk chocolate with Sweet Indian curry powder and coconut flakes. Upon opening the mylar package inside the box, the curry is quite pronounced along with a sugary smell and a slight aroma of chocolate. The chocolate itself is very milky and sweet. After sitting on the tongue for a moment, if bursts with the curry. The milk and the muskyness of the curry is a good blend and the choice of milk chocolate over dark is the right impulse. The curry leaves a little burning feeling on the tongue and throat. The coconut added a nice little texture to it, but I never got the flavor of it.

Next was the bar that I was most looking forward to, Red Fire Bar. It’s Mexican ancho and chipotle chili and cinnamon in dark chocolate (55%). The cinnamon is the top note on this bar. I’ve always enjoyed the combination of cinnamon and chocolate and usually use it in my hot chocolate. The next thing I taste is that it’s a very sweet bar, though buttery smooth to melt there’s a slight grain to it, which I must assume are the spices. Then the chili hits. It’s not so much a flavor as a feeling. A burning on the insides of my lips and my throat. There’s a bit of a smoky note to the bar as well. It’s a really nice combination, though not one I could eat a lot of in one sitting because of the fire element. Of the three bars, this is the one I finished first.

Last was a bar I wasn’t quite sure of. Called Black Pearl Bar, it’s Japanese ginger, wasabi and black sesame seeds in dark chocolate (55%). There was little scent to this bar, a slight woodsy note which I figured was the ginger and of course the chocolate. Upon melting in the mouth, this bar had none of the grain that the fire bar had, just a few sesame seeds (which I could have done without, thank you). The ginger is nice and earthy with a slight burn to it - or was it the wasabi. The horseradish notes didn’t really stick out, but the combination of wasabi and ginger is spicy without a painful throat burn.

As with many of these gourmet bars, I found the price to be a bit prohibitive. As a treat, I certainly plan on going to one of their shops in Las Vegas, Chicago or New York (whichever city I get to first). The Aztec truffle collection would be the first thing I’d try. Of course this riot of flavors has inspired me to try some different things in my own candy next time I whip up a batch of truffles.

Ratings - Naga - 6 out of 10
Red Fire - 7 out of 10
Black Pearl - 6 out of 10