Dippin’ Dots is a frozen treat, made from flash frozen spheres of real ice cream.

I heard that Flix Candy was coming out with a candy version of the dessert and I was excited. I hoped it would be like Astronaut Ice Cream, simply little spheres of freeze dried ice cream. What they created with their Ice Cream Flavored Dippin’ Candy is eminently more complicated than that and equally disappointing. I found the candy while on vacation last week and ponied up the two bucks for the little 1.6 ounce packet of the Banana Split flavored version of the smooth creamy bites.

The Dippin’ Candy features little spheres of four different flavors: strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and banana to simulate the flavors of a real banana split. The sphere vary in size but are about a quarter of an inch in diameter. The package smells sweet and a little like bananas and cocoa when opened.

The spheres are solid and firm with the basic structure of them created with a sort of flavored white confection. The base of the candy is made from sugar and tropical oils with some milk.

Vanilla is sweet, pure greasy, grainy sweet. It has more milk in it than the others, but it does nothing to moderate the sweetness or improve the creamy qualities.

Strawberry doesn’t really taste like strawberry ice cream, it doesn’t really taste like much at all.

Chocolate was especially greasy. It wasn’t as sweet, but it was waxy and never actually dissolved very well or melted.

Banana has a mild and milky banana flavor, it’s definitely the most notable of the set.

The ingredients list is huge. However, they list the ingredients for each color/flavor separately (though they don’t really define which is which, except the chocolate one is pretty easy to figure out).

Color Coating: sugar, vegetable oil [palm kernel and hydrogenated palm, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oil], whey powder, nonfat dry milk, sorbitan monostearate, polysorbate 60, yellow #5, red #40, soy lecithin, vanillin, natural and artificial flavors.

White Candy: sugar, nonfat milk powder, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, monoglycerides, titanium dioxide, artificial flavor.

Confectionery Coating: sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil [palm kernel, coconut, palm], cocoa powder, whey powder, soy lecithin, vanillin.

Chocolatey Candy: Sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil [palm kernel, coconut, palm] cocoa processed with alkali, dextrose, cocoa powder, whey powder, soy lecithin, vanillin.

It’s an interesting idea, and I applaud the packaging and the flavors chosen for launch (there’s also a Cookies ‘n Cream version which I’ll review separately). However, the execution is just sub par; it’s the kind of candy I expect from R.M. Palmer around Easter. I can’t believe that they couldn’t come up with a better tasting candy sphere (and with better ingredients). The only thing that I can think that they’d be good for at this moment is decorations, in a situation where they might not actually be eaten.

Note: Ferrara Pan also has a spherical ice cream treat called Dry Scream (more here) based on Itti Bitz frozen treats. I’m still trying to track that down.

Related Candies

1. Baskin-Robbins Hard Candy - Pralines ‘n Cream
2. Ritter Sport Sommer-Genuss 2010 Limited Editions
3. Choco-Fudge Mallow Sundae
4. Dove Desserts Bananas Foster
5. Jelly Belly Ice Cream Parlor Mix
6. Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy
7. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
8. Skittles Ice Cream

While on vacation last week, I made a point of tracking down some locally made candies along the Central Coast of California. First up is Mehlenbacher’s Taffy which is made in Paso Robles, California.

The taffies are sold in long pieces, about the size of a cigar, quite different from the normal nugget or little twist. Each is 1.25 ounces, so I consider it a full serving of candy. The pieces are about 5 inches long and wrapped in a tough, thick cellophane and twisted at the ends.

The ingredients are very simple: corn syrup, cane sugar, butter and then flavorings and coloring (though not all are colored). They’re had pulled in the traditional fashion on a hook and then hand portioned and wrapped. They make 51 different flavor varieties, though none of the stores I found carries more than a dozen.

Here’s a little video from a local TV station about the company:

I first saw Mehlenbacher’s mentioned in a Martha Stewart spread (I think as a suggestion for wedding favors). So when I was in Paso Robles last year, I picked up the assortment you see pictured in this review. Then I ate them and didn’t review them. (Or maybe I lost a few.) So when I returned to the area again, I made a point of finding some more. However, I didn’t match the flavors, one for one. So the photos differ a little bit.

Root Beer is one of my favorite flavors of all time and one that goes really well with taffy. The root beer is good, I liked its blend of earthy flavors like ginger and pine along with a little menthol and wintergreen kick.

Root Beer Float is a twist of caramel and cream colored taffies. The root beer flavor is snappy, with a good wintergreen freshness to it along with a creamy butter and vanilla note to it.

Iced Coffee smells pretty rich, like a sweet, sugary coffee. The flavor isn’t quite that intense and has a creamier flavor than I anticipated (I figured it would taste like black coffee). It’s very much on the bitter and strong side of the coffee flavors, but really watered down with the sugary sweetness.

Peanut Butter was a mild looking, almost vanilla taffy. The flavor was sweet and had a great peanut butter note to it and was very smooth. I could have used just a little hint of salt, or maybe they should make a flavor called Sea Salt Peanut Butter for those who crave that.

Peanut Butter Cup is a twist of both the chocolate flavor taffy and the peanut butter. The scent was like peanut butter and cocoa. The chocolate part of the taffy wasn’t very chocolate (not like a chocolate caramel or anything that intense). It was all very mellow and woodsy, with a slightly chalkier chew from the cocoa and real peanut butter. Like the peanut butter, I think it would benefit from just a dash of salt.

Neapolitan is a twist of the classic strawberry, vanilla and chocolate flavors. The scent of the strawberry dominated, with its soft floral and toasted sugar notes. But the flavor of the twist as a whole was just sweet and pleasant. The chocolate and vanilla didn’t do much and the strawberry was little more than the smell. The chew was soft and lasted a long time with no grainy finish.

Wintergreen was rather medicinal, cooling on the tongue but just didn’t feel like candy. This was a flavor I tried in my original assortment and didn’t pick one up on my re-do.

Hot Cinnamon is a twist of white and red. It was weird. The ingredients said it was only flavored with cinnamon oil, but it had a huge clove note to it, so much that my mouth was literally numb at one point, like clove oil often does. It wasn’t a hot, sizzling cinnamon. I liked the intense flavor and soft chew of it, but I did actually want more of the woodsy cinnamon notes.

Banana is bright yellow and completely artificial tasting, though the label said “banana extract” not artificial banana flavoring. It’s sweet and a little toasty, like a marshmallow. I enjoyed it quite a bit and think it would pair well as a twist for many of the other flavors. (Banana-Peanut Butter-Chocolate might be fun.)

The prices varied quite a bit. The first time I bought them at the farmers market on the square in Paso Robles (Spring 2010), this time I picked them up at Jack Creek Farms in Paso Robles for $1.50 each and some other flavors at Candy Counter in Cayucos for $1.75 each. The Mehlenbacher’s Taffy website (warning, it autoplays music) has them for $1.85 a stick.

On the whole, I’m not a big taffy fan. I appreciate the simplicity of the product, but once the flavor goes beyond a good malty molasses, I lose interest pretty quickly. So many taffies that I’ve tried taste about as interesting as the wax paper they’re wrapped in. This was different, Mehlenbacher’s is definitely doing something different here. It could be the use of real butter or the attention to the pulling of the boiled sugars. I’m still not inclined to keep buying it for an every day treat, but there are a few other flavors I’d like to try and I’m always up for some root beer.

I’d love to see an all natural line from them too, something with natural flavorings (though many are actually naturally flavored with extracts or peanut butter/cocoa) and natural colors - that would really set them apart.

Related Candies

1. Bonomo & Doscher Banana Taffy
2. Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy - Chocolate, Vanilla & Strawberry
3. Chuao Chocolate Blocks from LEGOLAND
4. Molasses Pops
5. Kenny’s Licorice Pastels & Root Beer Twists
6. Doscher’s French Chew Taffy
7. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses

Ghirardelli Chocolate is America’s second oldest chocolate company, making cacao products in the Bay Area of California since 1852.

The Ghirardelli family owned and ran the company until the 1960s when the company was sold to the Golden Grain Macaroni Company (makers of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat), then in the 1980s Golden Grain was swallowed up by Quaker Oats (the Pennsylvania treat). About 6 years later Quaker sold Ghiradelli off and it was once again an independent entity, if only for about six years when in 1998 it was bought up by Lindt and Sprüngli of Switzerland (which was making chocolate only seven years longer than Ghiradelli).

I mention all of this because there was something vaguely familiar about this bar called Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree when I picked it up and it took me a while to figure it out. A couple of years ago I reviewed Lindt Excellence Dark with a Touch of Sea Salt. While I found Lindt’s a good bar, it’s either the quality of the Ghirardelli chocolate or the addition of almonds that really make Ghirardelli’s bar special.

The bar’s mold is nicely designed. Each of the eight sections include the Ghirardelli eagle logo. The molding is overall good, though there are some voids and bubbles on the front of the bar, I didn’t notice anything else amiss when I snapped the bar in half or inspected the bottom of the bar.

I didn’t think it smelled particularly special, like brownies, which in itself is a tantalizing scent, but really didn’t do the rest of the bar justice.

The bar is called Intense Dark but I can’t find anything that says what the percentage of cacao is for the bar. The appearance is dark like coffee with a light reddish hue to it. The bar has a liberal sprinkling of crushed almonds in it and of course large flakes of sea salt.

The flavors of the chocolate are very mild, but a good blend of hot cocoa, coffee and woodsy tobacco. The almonds give a fresh crunch and the light sprinkling of salt doesn’t overwhelm any of the other elements.

It’s an extremely munchable bar, not too dark for a snack but still more sophisticated than a standard Dove or plain Ghirardelli bar. I didn’t expect to like the bar so much since it’s such a simple idea and construction, especially since I had the nut-less Lindt version before. The freshness of the elements and well executed format just come together so well here. I wish that Ghirardelli didn’t feel the need to use dairy (milk fat) in their dark chocolate though, it would make this a much more accessible bar. (It’s also made in a facility that processes peanuts as well.)

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s 70% Dark with Caramel and Black Sea Salt
2. Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt
3. Lindt Excellence Dark with a touch of Sea Salt
4. Marich Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews
5. Ghirardelli Intense Dark

Wonka has a strong tradition of sugar candies, as the brand originated with Sunline, makers of SweeTarts, Pixy Stix and Fun Dip (Lik-M-Aid). One of their legacy candies is Laffy Taffy. It’s just fruity taffy with the added bonus of a joke or two on the wrapper.

Back when I was a kid Laffy Taffy was known as Tangy Taffy and was sold in large flat bars similar to Jolly Rancher Stix (well, bigger than that). They came in intense and artificial flavors like Green Apple, Watermelon and Banana. After the Nestle takeover of Wonka they made some changes, like dumping Wacky Wafers (photo) and changing Tangy Taffy to Laffy Taffy.

Laffy Taffy still comes in bars, but the most common product I see are these little two inch long pieces. Each piece is about 35 calories and is two bites. They come in tubs and of course are a staple of pinatas and Halloween bags.

They’re soft and usually take on the shape of the package, but they’re very easy to get out of the plastic wrapper once opened. It’s a true taffy, there are no egg products in there like Bonomos or Doschers taffy have. There’s a touch of oil, so they’re not completely fat free (about a half of a gram of fat per piece).

Strawberry is pretty, very pink and fragrant. It’s like cotton candy or lemonade. The flavor isn’t very strong, lightly tangy and sweet with a well moderated fake strawberry flavor. There are little snaps of salt and tartness throughout. The chew is long and steady and quite smooth.

Banana - this is an intense fake banana candy. The banana is intense enough that it gave me a cool feeling on my tongue, similar to the effect of nail polish remover in both the tingling and the strange caustic scent. I like fake banana, so the sweetness and weird artificial flavor was fun for me. Your mileage may vary.

Sour Apple - if they called this green apple, I don’t think I’d have much of an issue. However, with the word sour in there, I have certain expectations, such as tartness. This was not sour. It was not even particularly vivid, just a mild fake green apple flavor. The texture is smooth and chewy and there’s a strange salty note to it that bugged me in this instance.

Grape is purple and the taffy version of a grape SweeTart. It’s zippy with a purely artificial flavor that’s a cross between grape juice, straight malic acid and pen ink.

The jokes on them are true groaners like “How do billboards talk?” (Sign Language!) and truly poorly written ones like “What kind of chain is edible?” (A Food Chain!)

I’ve grown out of these, for my fruit chews I prefer something a little tamer and friendly like Skittles. But these have the advantage of being vegetarian (no gelatin) over products like Starburst or Bonomos. They’re Kosher; there are no nut or gluten statements on the package.

Related Candies

1. Chewbies Liquid Taffy - Orange
2. Bonomo & Doscher Banana Taffy
3. Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy - Chocolate, Vanilla & Strawberry
4. Banana n Cream & Red Orange Mentos
5. Skittles (Fruits, Wild Berry, Tropical, Smoothies & Sour)
6. Starburst
7. Doscher’s French Chew Taffy

A couple of months ago Jelly Belly announced a new jelly bean flavor: Candy Corn Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. Jelly Belly, which began as Goelitz Confectionery Company, has been making Candy Corn for over 110 years so I’d think that they know a lot about Candy Corn.

Candy Corn is a bit polarizing, since it’s a rather simple and cheap candy it becomes ubiquitous in the fall around Halloween and Thanksgiving. Some folks actually like it but I think most don’t have a feeling one way or the other about the candy itself, but might have some strong associations with the occasions attached.

So what is the essence of Candy Corn anyway? In my mind it’s a honey flavored firm fondant. So a jelly bean that’s Candy Corn flavored should have some aspects of that.

The bean has the requisite colors: orange, white and yellow. (In an ideal world though it’d be an orange background with white and yellow additions.)

The flavor is at first a little like fake butter but gets much better after that. I was afraid it was just going to be a honey toasted version of buttered popcorn. But it’s a bit more than that. The dominant flavor is actually a mix of the toasted marshmallow and honey bean. There is a butter note, but it goes away quickly.

Are they great jelly beans? Well, they’re interesting because they do in fact taste like candy corn. But part of what I like about candy corn is the layering. I like to bite off the crispy and dry white tips, then the orange layer, savoring the slightly moister and denser yellow base for last. The jelly bean has none of that interactivity. I can’t search through a handful of jelly beans looking for that misformed kernel that’s just orange or only two layers.

However, if you simply love the flavor of Candy Corn but have been wishing for a less pointy version of it, then Jelly Belly has the best solution.

Related Candies

1. Whitman’s Candy Corn Marshmallow
2. Jelly Belly Honey Beans
3. Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy Corn
4. Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn
5. Puffy Candy Corn
6. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
7. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
8. Candy Corn Kisses

I’ve been on a roll with the Cookie Dough Bites line of products lately. This box of Cookies ‘n Cream Bites says it’s new, but the product was announced back in January 2010.

New! From the Makers of Cookie Dough Bites - Creamy White Chocolatey Balls with Crumbled Pieces of Cookie.

One of the wonderful things about the Oreo type cookies is the deep, charcoal flavor of the cookie itself. It’s not terribly sweet, crisp and with a sandy, crumbly texture that’s just had to beat either as a cookie or as the base of a cream pie. Crumble those cookies up and put them inside other things? Pure brilliance. Some ice creams put in the cream centers of the cookies, but this is completely unnecessary, the vanilla ice cream base takes care of the “cream” part of the Cookies ‘n’ Cream name.

Another dreamy component of the mix of ice cream and cookie pieces is the chaos of it all. In any bite you might get grainy crumbs or a large, dry piece of cookie, so big you can actually crunch it. The texture is inconsistent in the best way possible.

Now that you can see the cross section of these nuggets, you can see where this review is going to go. The center of the candy is a dough ball made up of a white “cookie” base with a few grains of the chocolate cookie. Then it’s all coated with the palm oil, sugar and milk “cream” along with a smattering of cookie bits.

What should have happened was the center should have been the dark cookie and the outside the mix of the cream and more cookie bits.

But I have to review what’s in front of me.

The Bites vary in size, from the size of a Milk Chocolate M&M to the size of a Peanut M&M. They’re kind of grey with little speckles of black from the cookie bits. They smell sweet and milky. The cream coating is fudgy and sweet, but with very little in the way of “melt in your mouth” qualities. The center of the bites are a little on the dough-side, not moist and with a light taste of raw flour. The center isn’t as sweet as the outside and sometimes I detect a little salt in there. The hint of cocoa and true cookies is completely missing. Sometimes I’d get a little sense of them, but only as some sort of rest from the overt sweetness of the cream.

I can say with confidence that these aren’t the worst thing that I’ve had in the Cookie Dough Bites line. But they’re also far from the best. The center of the Brownie Bites would have been far better in this instance. If you’re looking for a chocolate cookie candy without all that pesky chocolate flavor, then step right up. These are sweet and have only a smidge more flavor than the Cupcake Bites (and no artificial colors) so they get a 4 out of 10.

Related Candies

1. Cinnamon Bun Bites
2. Oreo Bitter Bar (Japan)
3. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
4. Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites
5. Cookies ‘n’ Creme Showdown
6. Cookie Dough Bites
7. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint

While things have stagnated in the world of Life Savers hard candy rolls, it seems that Wrigley’s (current owner of the Life Savers brand) can always innovate new versions of their Gummies line.

I found this package of new Life Savers Gummies Collisions at the drug store. It’s not listed on their websites.

The concept is pretty simple, each piece has two flavors, divided longitudinally. There are three sets in the package: Raspberry Lemonade, Cherry Watermelon and Pineapple Punch. Two flavors in one gummi isn’t really new, gummi worms have been doing it for years. Here we have the worm eating its tail to form a hoop of gummi.

Each piece is just shy of one inch around. They’re easy to identify and all were nicely molded. Life Savers gummis are quite soft and pliable. They’re also pretty big, clocking in at about 4 grams each while most gummi bears (using Haribo as a standard) are about 2.2 to 2.5 grams.

Raspberry Lemonade is yellow and red. The raspberry flavors are really interesting, because I got a lot of the seed notes along with the floral overtones. But the lemon only gave up a smidge of zest, no actual tart lemonade vibe in there.

Pineapple Punch is half aqua and half yellow. It smells mostly of punch and unfortunately also tastes of fruit punch. I was hoping for some of that inimitable Life Savers pineapple flavor, and the yellow side did have a little hint of it, but it was dominated by the artificial punch flavor. There was a slight sizzling, effervescent intensity to the flavor. It was sweet and had a lot of guava notes with a little hint of mango, papaya and of course the pineapple.

Cherry Watermelon is light green and red. This one definitely had the strongest scent, which was the watermelon. The watermelon flavor was also strong in the candy, even when eating the cherry half. It reminded me of a slightly thinned out Jolly Rancher. Tangy, sweet and with a sort of rind flavor. The cherry gave the whole thing that slight woodsy flavor. Mostly I think they missed the boat on the cherry thing: Life Savers wrote the book on Wild Cherry, they own that flavor. It should be in here, if they have a cherry something, it should be the iconic Life Savers Wild Cherry.

There was a sameness to each of the varieties, I didn’t taste a distinction between the two sides. So that means instead of having six flavors in the bag, there were really only three. That’s not an amazing diversity, however, if you like all three flavors, that means you’re never going to be disappointed at getting any particular version. I didn’t care for the watermelon & cherry one, so a third of the bag would have been disappointing for me.

Related Candies

1. Trolli Soda Poppers
2. Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies
3. Life Savers Pep-O-Mint & Wint-O-Green
4. Meiji Poifull
5. Au’some Easter 3-Dees Gummy
6. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
7. Lifesavers Gummies Sour
8. Lifesaver Gummies

Russell Stover makes a good selection of classic candies. It’s a step above mass-manufactured candy bars, but not quite to the level of fine chocolates. Their strongest area is in holiday specialty candies and they’re probably best known for their Easter Eggs. For the rest of the year folks just have to wait for them to come back or buy one of their sub-par boxes of chocolates.

Lately Russell Stover has come out with some of their favorites in individually wrapped pieces in bags. I picked up this bag of Russel Stover Marshmallow & Caramel in Fine Milk Chocolate at the drug store. Russell Stover already makes this candy in fun shapes for the holidays, like Hearts for Valentines Day, Eggs for Easter, Pumpkins for Halloween and probably something like a Tree or Santa for Christmas (I can’t seem to find that one).

Each piece is individually wrapped and a little larger than I think you’d expect for a candy in a box of chocolates. They’re just a bit shy of a half an ounce (.494 to be exact) and clock in at about 57 calories - so two of these makes a pleasant snack at a rather low caloric density for a chocolate product. They’re quite attractive too, with nicely rippled and thick milk chocolate. The packaging protected them well, with no scuffs or cracks.

Most of the pieces were about 1.75 inches long and 1 inch across. They’re not as thick as I would have hoped, I kind of wanted a lofty marshmallow center like the See’s Scotchmallow. Each piece is about two bites. The marshmallow is soft and latexy, spongy and only slightly sweet. There’s a vague cinnamon and cereal flavor to the whole thing. The caramel is sweet and has a little chew to it. The chocolate coating is sweet, milky and a little sticky in the melt but overall of good enough quality to hold up to the other flavors.

The whole effect was a very sweet product with distinct textures and some slight differences in flavors. The caramel didn’t have much of the smoky, burnt sugar flavors which is too bad because that really could have pulled it together. As a small indulgence, it meets some very basic needs. I think it would probably be more fun to pop this into a microwave and then between a couple of graham crackers for a caramel infused S’more.

For folks who miss the holiday version of these, now you can have it year round. I might prefer the Valentine’s or Halloween version because it has less chocolate and more marshmallow but go with whatever suits your needs.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Giant S’mores Bar & Mint Dream
2. Milky Way Simply Caramel
3. Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbits
4. Russell Stover Eggs
5. See’s Scotchmallow Eggs
6. Caramel Previews: Mitchell Sweets & Caramoos
7. The Great Pumpkin Roundup