Milton S. Hershey is one of great entrepreneur stories of the 20th century. Hershey always wanted to be a confectioner. He was apprenticed to a candy maker as a child and then later tried several times to make it on his own. He focused on caramels and small wrapped sweets, peddling them on a cart pushed around the streets. While working in Denver for another confectioner, he learned a new recipe for boiled sweets, a caramel that was extremely stable as well as delicious because of the use of milk in addition to butter. However, even in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York City ... each of these companies failed. In 1886 he returned home, in debt but still convinced that his new caramel recipe he learned in Denver could succeed. He convinced family members to invest once again and this time was the right time. He created the Lancaster Caramel Company which flourished.

He built this little enterprise into a full factory business by the turn of century, employing over 1,300 people and then sold it off for a million dollars in order to fund his new venture, the Hershey Chocolate Company. Hershey’s is finally introducing their own line of caramels, under the nostalgic name of Lancaster.

The new Lancaster Caramel Soft Cremes’ package looks nostalgic. What’s inside, though, is unlikely to be anything close to what Milton Hershey used to make in copper kettles. The package says “His [Milton Hershey] original caramel recipe is the inspiration for Lancaster Cremes. The ingredients tell the story of a modern confection:

Sweetened Condensed Milk (Evaporated Milk, Sugar, Water, Lactose), Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Palm Kernel Oil, Sugar, Contains 2% or Less of: Dairy Butter (Milk), Glyceryl Monostearate, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Disodium Phosphate, Tocopherols, to Maintain Freshness, Sodium Carbonate.

Though I was a little disappointed to see the use of things like palm kernel oil, tocopherols and high fructose corn sweetener, I was more disappointed at the price for such things. Kraft Caramels are usually about $2 a bag on sale and contain similar ingredients but not the premium price. But, I was willing to give these a try.

The little nuggets are glossy and soft. They don’t smell like much, but have a beautifully soft and chewy bite. The chew and dissolve is impossibly smooth and rich, with good flavor notes of caramelized sugar and butter. It’s like a soft version of Pearson’s Nips. (I could imagine these as fantastic in coffee flavor.) It’s not a completely stiff caramel chew, like a Storck Chocolate Riesen, but much smoother than the soft bite of a Kraft Caramel.

As much as I wanted to hate these for their divergence from Hershey’s original simple ingredients, they are quite good. The texture, the consistency and overall not-too-sweet profile is really ideal. I begrudgingly love them. They come in two other varieties: Vanilla and Caramel and Vanilla and Raspberry. Honestly, I plan to quit while I’m ahead. If they come up with chocolate or coffee flavored ones, I’ll give those a go.

Oddly enough, the Lancaster Caramels are made in Canada, not Central Pennsylvania. Also, they’re not Kosher and there are no other notations on the package regarding nuts, wheat or eggs though the ingredients list dairy and soy as ingredients.

Related Candies

1. Slo Poke Caramel
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
3. Kraft & Ferrara Pan Caramels
4. Hershey’s Miniatures
5. Coffee Nips
6. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
7. Sugar Mama
8. Goetze’s Caramel Creams

Another new year, another new variety of Starburst. This year it’s Starburst Fruity Slushies featuring four new flavors inspired by ... actually, I’m not sure what prompted these flavors.

The orange package is easy to spot and features a bunch of images of tasty looking fruits and some odd blue raspberries on it. The new flavors are strawberry lemonade chill, citrus slush, cherry splash and blue raspberry rush.

The colors are great, if a little unnatural, but the palette is pleasant and easy to tell apart from the other Starburst varieties.

Strawberry Lemonade Chill is in a pink wrapper. It’s a standard strawberry but a little more tart and less floral. I didn’t like it as much as the regular Strawberry Starburst, which is surprising because the idea of strawberry with a touch of tart lemon and a hint of zest would be fantastic. This does not have those qualities.

Cherry Splash is in an easy to spot red wrapper. It tastes exactly like a Cherry Starburst. I don’t know what the splash is, maybe there’s a hint of lime in there, but it’s basically the same wild cherry flavor that has been in the Starburst pack for decades.

Citrus Slush is in a sort of peachy orange wrapper. There weren’t that many in my package, so I had to make my tastings count. Instead of a citrus blast, it’s more like a fruit punch. It’s tart and has some nice tangerine notes, but not as much variety as I would have hoped. Could be orange, so again, not much different from the regular Starburst pack so far ... cherry, strawberry and orange.

Blue Raspberry Rush is in a cerulean blue wrapper and the piece inside matches exceptionally well in its “this is not food” impossibility. The piece smells like raspberry jam, and there is a definite jammy quality to the boiled fruit flavor. It also has a slight effervescent note to it. Overall, a well rounded flavor that ends rather sweet.

The variety was not innovative. I feel like the new Starburst are stuck in this rut or retreading the same territory. While I enjoy the idea of there being an infinite exploration of flavors for Starburst and Skittles, I think we have the standard flavors for a reason, they work well in this medium.

Related Candies

1. Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn
2. Starburst Very Berry
3. Starburst Sweet Fiesta
4. Starburst Flavor Morph
5. Mentos Rainbow
6. Tayas Damla - Filled Fruit Chews
7. Festival HiCHEW: Candied Apple & Cotton Candy
8. Starburst Retro
9. Starburst Berries & Creme and Fruit & Creme

One of the favorite Easter candies is the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs. They’re unlike any other candy on the market, they’re not quite M&Ms, as the candy coating is soft and has a flavor of its own. A Dark Chocolate version came out a few years ago and though hard to find, returned again this year.

The big news is the new Target Exclusive version of Cadbury White Mini Eggs. Notice that they’re just called white, not white chocolate, just white. Though there is cocoa butter in the ingredients list (which is in real white chocolate), there are also other vegetable fats. I picked up a 9 ounce bag, which was helpfully on sale.

The eggs were not the shape I expected. The standard Cadbury Mini Egg is egg shaped, truly egg shaped, with a wider bottom and almost pointy top. The White Eggs are not, they’re symmetrical ovals. What occurred to me when I saw them was that they were actually a resurrection of last year’s Hershey’s White Chocolate Flavored Eggs.

So, I looked up the ingredients:

Hershey’s White Eggs 2013: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, corn syrup, milk fat, contains 2% or less of the following: cornstarch, artificial color (yellow 5, blue 1, red 40 and yellow 6), soy lecithin, resinous glaze, gum acacia, carnauba wax, vanillin, tocopherols (preservative) and PGPR.

Cadbury White Mini Eggs 2014: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, milk, reduced protein whey, lactose, milkfat, contains 2% or less of corn syrup, artificial colors (includes yellow #5, blue #2, red #40), cornstarch, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors, tocopherols, salt

The difference, as far as I can tell is in the very last ingredients, that make up the shell. The white confection center is made of the same stuff. I didn’t care that much for the Hershey’s version, as I found them to be a bit too sweet and not creamy enough. Especially when compared to the pre-existing real white chocolate M&Ms.

I picked up a back of the M&Ms since I was already at Target for comparison. (And here’s the ingredients, as long as I’m transcribing.)

White Chocolate M&Ms: White chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, natural flavor), sugar, less than 2% of cornstarch, corn syrup, dextrin, colorings (includes yellow #5, blue #1, yellow #6, red #40), gum acacia

Ultimately, the coating on these really gives them a different dimension. The soft and matte shell that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs and the Cadbury White Mini Eggs share is unique and holds a special place in the textural world of Easter. I like the soft scent and interesting slick dissolve on the tongue. The vanilla pudding flavor is also pleasant and goes well with the lightly salty white center.

The one thing that was missing was that sticky, fudgy melt that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs have.

I liked them better than the Hershey’s version, which is weird, because I do actually like the shell a lot on the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Eggs. However, they’re extremely sweet and I found that after five or six I had a raging headache ... so enjoy in moderation.

Related Candies

1. Justin’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
2. Hershey’s Candy Coated White Chocolate Flavored Eggs
3. M&Ms White Chocolate (Easter)
4. Dove Promises White Chocolate
5. Whitman’s Marshmallow Eggs & Carrot
6. Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway Bliss
7. Green and Black’s White Chocolate

Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper HeartBreakers are a clever holiday version of the Gobstopper. They’re not the same candy, so it’s an interesting mash-up of elements and holiday themes.

The pieces are small compressed dextrose centers with some layers of hard sugar on top with some extra flavors in there. Classic Gobstoppers had many layers and flavors, but Wonka doesn’t make those any longer because they can take weeks to create from a center the size of a sesame seed. So they use a large SweeTart type candy at the center and the coating changes flavors only a handful of times.

A lot of candies get revamped over time. As I’ve heard unofficial from a Wonka insider, the classic SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies changed size & shape because the original equipment broke and since it was used only for that product line, they decided to reformat the molds to be more consistent with the Valentine’s and Christmas shapes.

The Everlasting Gobstopper HeartBreakers shifted colors in the newly available version for 2014. It’s not a drastic change, but a small tweak.

Cherry is mellow, with a sweet cherry flavor. After the top layer dissolves away, the coating is yellow. It doesn’t take much then it’s crunchable and I can get to the SweeTart-style center. The interior flavor is pretty neutral.

Watermelon is sweet and fresh, a little unexpected for this type of candy. After the initial layer dissolves, the layer under that is also a medium pink. The center is lightly tangy, but not overly sour. The layer under the watermelon-pink is also watermelon-pink.

Pineapple is delicate and light. It’s only slightly floral and fruity, but not tart bite. After the flavor dissolves away, the next layer is yellow. It’s smooth and cool on the tongue.

The classic HeartBreakers (above) were more vividly colored, with yellow and magenta instead of white and pink. While I miss the original colors and really don’t care much for the watermelon, I still love these. The limited palette is still attractive. I’m hoping the Easter version will also be back.

Related Candies

1. Wonka SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2012)
2. Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers Eggbreakers
3. Gobstopper Heart Breakers
4. Runts Freckled Eggs
5. Ausome Jewelry Kit
6. SweeTart Hearts
7. Gobs of Gobstoppers

Target often has a good selection of holiday candy in smaller packages, usually in theater boxes. I picked these Trolli Sour Brite Hearts up on the same shelf.

One of the things that makes Valentine’s Candy so fun is that it’s often packaged for gifting on the level of an actual card (or in addition). It means that small things can be remembrances of affection in a way that a one dollar bag of candy probably can’t other times of the year.

So, the Trolli Sour Brite Hearts are a perfect way to say “I know you like highlighter pens, why don’t you try eating these?” Or perhaps, “I thought you’d enjoy some heart shaped candy to make you pucker so I’ll think you want a kiss.”

The gummi hearts are nicely formed and dusted with a sugary, sour sand. Some are bicolored, but most are solid colors.

Creamy orange - tangy, a little orangy ... nice. Not intense but passable.

Creamy green - a rare lime gummi in a green apple world. Much more zesty that I would have expected and the right level of tartness. Of course it reminded me a lot of household cleaners, but who doesn’t like a clean house?

Red - cherry. Whoa, it’s like a gummi version of a Cepacol lozenge. It has a nice bite to it, so it’s not watered down, but something I would prefer to share with a cherry-loving friend than eat myself.

Blue is raspberry with a sort of inky floral flavor to it. It’s probably one of the most tart of the bunch.

Yellow is rather weak, for a while I was even wondering if it was a punch flavor. It’s more like Mountain Dew than lemonade and not terribly sour or intense.

Pink is strawberry and probably one of my favorites. It was a bit like Jell-O, comforting and flavorful.

Though the name says they’re sour, they’re really not. I’d call them pleasant and reliable, but not much more than that. I thought a buck was a nice deal for a little something to take to a movie with a friend. I had some Albanese Sour Worms on hand to compare and definitely think that the Albanese is far more intensely sour (and flavorful).

Trolli Sour Brite Hearts are made on shared equipment so they may not be suitable for those with allergies to milk, tree nuts, peanuts and soy.

Shopping at Target around a holiday always yields an exclusive candy item. This season it’s Dove Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Promises.

I was surprised that Dove hasn’t done these in the past, as it seems like a ideal flavor infusion for their marketing. They’re a Dark Chocolate piece infused with artificial hazelnut flavor. That doesn’t actually sound that good, but I was willing to give it a go.

The pieces are wrapped in dark brown foil and like all of the other Promises, the foil has a little affirming motto printed inside. At least three of mine said, “hug someone today.”

They’re beautiful to look at and smell alluring. It’s easy for artificially flavored candies to overdo the smell, especially with dark chocolate products, but this started with a good balance. It’s a toasty scent of maple syrup, coffee and hazelnut with a sweetness to it. The melt is very good, smooth but with a little bit of a dry finish to it. The hazelnut is just a flavor, a note of roasted nuts and a trace of toffee sweetness. It’s not overpowering or too fake. It would be great to have real crushed hazelnuts in there, like the Almond version, but I can see that the goal here is really about the texture.

They’re quite rich, in fact, they clock in at 156 calories per ounce, so there’s lots of cocoa butter and dairy butter fats in there. I found that two made an excellent treat, but were still a little on the sweet side for me as a dark chocolate product.

Back in July of 2012, I reviewed the Target exclusive Dove Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Promises and was later called by Dove (Mars) representatives to let me know that their Dove line was converting to Rainforest Alliance certified cacao, starting with the Dark Chocolate. To date, I’ve only seen the Dark Chocolate, there have been no subsequent roll outs of the certified sustainable cacao on anything but the plain dark chocolate. The Mars website still says they’re on target for all cacao sourced through traceable channels by 2020 and should hit 35% by the end of 2014.

Dove Dark Chocolate Promises contain soy and dairy and are made in a plant that uses peanuts and tree nuts. (Some Dove chocolates are made in nut free environments, so be sure to check the labels.) There’s no statement about gluten.

Related Candies

1. Dove Mint & Dark Chocolate Swirl Promises
2. Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate (Rainforest Alliance)
3. Ghirardelli Squares Milk & Hazelnut Crisp
4. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
5. KitKat Hazelnut Cream
6. Fling: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut
7. Dove Milk Chocolate Pecan Pie Caramel Promises

I saw that DeMet’s had some holiday themed Flipz (coated pretzels) but I skipped right over the peppermint white confection version in order to pick up Flipz Gingerbread Flavor Covered Pretzels.

To be honest, it sounds terrible, in part because I didn’t know there was something known as Gingerbread Flavor Cover in the confectionery world ... and then I probably wouldn’t have dreamed that the appropriate place to put that would be on top of pretzels. So curiosity trumped revulsion.

The DeMet’s copywriters don’t help the situation either, here’s the marketing passage from the back of the bag:

Whenever hunger strikes, make sure you’ve got FLIPZ nearby! FLIPZ are the most flippin’ awesome winter snack ever!
That’s because they combine crunchy, salty pretzels with rich and warm gingerbread for an outrageous anytime snack. Anytime is the right time for a Flippin’ Awesome snack!

They’re standard mini pretzels with big salt crystals on them. Then they’re coated in this weird, artificially colored confection that’s supposed to look like chocolate. It’s made with sugar, palm oil and dried milk but natural flavors. The texture is pretty good - it’s creamy and kind of cool on the tongue without getting too grainy or greasy. It’s not chocolate-like, but still pleasant. The flavoring is interesting. If you gave it to me without the gingerbread description, I would have called this orange spice. I don’t know why, but I was getting a light and appealing orange zest note to it the whole time. There’s a gentle spice to it, maybe a bit of ginger but nothing too biting like cinnamon or clove. The salty crunch of the fresh pretzels keeps it all from getting too sweet.

I like them. I ate them. I wouldn’t have believed it if it didn’t happen to me.

Other reviews: The Impulsive Buy found them in a tub & gave them a 7 out of 10, Metal Misfit reviewed them before Halloween.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Santas: Gingerbread, Peppermint and Maple
2. Twix Gingerbread
3. Sanders Chocolate Covered Gretzels
4. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
5. Pretzel M&Ms
6. DeMet’s Turtles: Pecan & Cashew
7. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites

Hershey’s has answered the call for a holiday candy bar. The bar is actually a candy they’ve been selling for quite a few years, just a new format. It’s a white confection flavored with peppermint and studded with crunchy nonpareils formed into the standard Hershey bar mold. It’s pretty simple and named that way, too, Hershey’s Candy Cane Bar.

The bar is available in two formats, the large 3.5 ounce king sized bar I picked up or a regular 1.5 ounce single serving bar. Both feature the simple packaging design of the white background with little striped fringes at the ends and the bold Hershey’s logo across the front.

Hershey’s is also offering their regular bars in this same 3.5 ounce size in Holiday packaging, so you can get the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with a snowman on the front and Cookies n Creme bar with a nutcracker on it. I’ve seen these on sale quite widely in both versions at Target, KMart and other drug store chains, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. Hershey’s did a Mint Miniatures mix years back that included a version of this. (I always though it would be good as a Nugget.) It’s also available as the Hershey’s Candy Cane Kiss (with less food coloring) as well.

The bar is 4 sections by 4 sections, and the package suggests that 6 pieces is a portion. The white confection is a creamy color, a little on the yellow side with lots of red nonpareil crunchies evident. The ingredients show that this is a hybrid confection, not quite true white chocolate, though it does have some cocoa butter in it, it also has some other tropical oil. However, there are no other fillers like whey.

The snap shows the crunchies and the texture of the bar. It’s a little soft, no hard snap of a high-cacao chocolate bar here. There’s lots of sugar and that’s fine with me.

The flavor is like a Smooth n Melty mint. It’s peppermint with a clean dairy flavor to it, it’s rather like eating a room temperature ice cream. It’s quite sweet, but not quite as cloying as I’ve experienced with the Cookies n Creme bar or the lesser quality RM Palmer white confections. I don’t care for the flavoring the red food coloring of the nonpareils imparts, but it’s far less than I notice on the holiday Smooth n Melty Mints which are also out on store shelves right now. (A white confection drop with red and green nonpariels on the bottom.)

I like it. I had no trouble eating the whole bar. It’s different from the slick smoothness of the real white chocolate Dove Peppermint Bark. It’s more candy than chocolate.

Related Candies

1. R.M. Palmer Candy Cane Cups
2. Hershey’s Peppermint Bark Bells
3. Peeps Chocolate Dipped Sugar Cookie & Candy Cane
4. M&Ms White Chocolate Peppermint
5. Dove Peppermint Bark
6. Christmas Mint Round Up
7. Andes Mints & Dessert Indulgence
8. Short & Sweet: Butterfinger Jingles and Mint Miniatures