Earlier this year one of America’s largest licorice companies introduced something radically different for them. American Licorice launched Natural Vines. They come in black licorice (true licorice) and strawberry licorice (red licorice).

I liked the package, it’s a sharp looking kraft brown with black vine swirls. It stands up well, with a gusset on the bottom. It looked pretty small but each bag is a half a pound. I was a little aghast at the price though. I paid $2.99 for mine. I’d been looking for it in stores for a while and finally found it at the grocery store and it wasn’t on sale. I bought a half a pound of Red Vines last month for a dollar, so this stuff is three times the price.

As the name implies, they’re all natural and feature real licorice extract. The style is America, with its soft chew and molasses and wheat flour base.

Yes, they’re slick looking and shiny. They’re also sticky; far too sticky for my liking as they’re almost moist.

The smell lightly spicy like a cup of chai or a gingerbread cookie. Each nub is about an inch long and a big bite or two small bites.

The chew is soft and a little bouncy. It doesn’t stick at all to my teeth and has a mild flavor overall. The molasses is woodsy, but not bitter. There are notes of toffee and of course anise. There’s also that true natural licorice flavor, which is light and sweet and a little slick on the back of the throat.

The flavor is fresh but also not very intense. I found it easy to eat but not actually satisfying to my cravings for really intense licorice and deep molasses. They’re better than regular Black Vines (or Red Vines Black Twists as they’re officially called), I can’t give them a higher rating. The stickiness, mildness and vastly higher price didn’t really balance it all out.

The ingredients are considered vegan (although there’s cane sugar in there). Also of note, there’s no artificial colors or corn syrup (they use rice syrup). The only hinky ingredient is palm oil, though it’s not much as each 1.41 ounce serving contains only one gram of fat. There’s also 15% of your RDA or iron, 6% of your calcium and a gram of fiber & protein.

Related Candies

1. Switzer’s Chewy Licorice Bits
2. Gimbal’s Scottie Dogs
3. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
4. Black Licorice Twists & Snaps
5. Red Vines
6. Organic Finnska Soft Licorice

When Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy was discontinued by Tootsie back in the late eighties, candy fans searched far and wide for an adequate simulation. For years candy stores suggested Doschers Famous French Chew Taffy. (I even tried it.) But earlier this year Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy returned. I tried the other flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate & Strawberry, but when I picked them up, I also decided to get a package of the Banana in both the Bonomo & Doscher’s brand to compare head-to-head.

As far as the stats go, they’re a little different on a few fronts. I paid $1.99 for the Bonomo and only 99 cents for the Doscher’s. The Bonomo bar is slightly smaller at 1.5 ounces to the Doscher’s 1.62. The ingredients are similar, both are basically corn syrup, sugar and egg whites. The Bonomo uses mono- & di-glycerides while the Doscher’s uses hydrogenated soybean oil (only 1 gram of fat for the bar, so it’s not that much) and a dash of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

Bonomo’s Banana is on the bottom left and the Doscher’s Banana is on the top right.

Both bars are artificially colored. The Doscher’s is a little more dusty yellow than the Bonomo. Doscher’s feels lighter and fluffier, in fact, when I bend it, it’s more pliable. It’s like it has a little air folded in, more like a nougat than a taffy.

The Bonomo is very smooth. It’s a bit stiff at first to chew, but the flavor is bold and consistent. The banana is a bit artificial, relying only on that circus peanut note instead of some other things like vanilla to round it out.

The Doscher’s tastes a little more starchy in comparison, like a Nilla Wafer with banana flavoring. The airy texture seems to make it dissolve quicker, so I actually went through the bars in about the same amount of time. The flavor wasn’t as intense but also seemed friendlier.

On the whole, they’re different but similar enough for me to lump them into a list of taffy products that are descent enough but just not my thing. If you’re a die hard fan of either, I can see why you can’t just swap one for the other.

Related Candies

1. Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy - Chocolate, Vanilla & Strawberry
2. Banana n Cream & Red Orange Mentos
3. Bit-O-Honey
4. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
5. Doscher’s French Chew Taffy
6. Tootsie Roll Mini Chews

Cowgirl Chocolates is an Idaho confectioner that makes spicy things. They’re known for their hot pepper caramels and and spiced up chocolate bars. Some of their flavors are less intimidating but also provoke curiosity; combinations like Spicy Dark Orange Espresso, Spicy Milk Chocolate Mint and Spicy Dark Huckleberry.

The wrapping on the bars is cute and simple. The text is bold and dominates with the name of the bar, which is basically a description of the flavor combination. The chocolate comes in spicy or mild and milk, white or dark. Each package is color coded and features a silhouette of a woman on a horse in the center.

I was drawn to the Mild Milk Chocolate Sarsaparilla at a local restaurant supply store called Surfas. Sarsaparilla is a new world vine that’s the basis for the flavor. Sarsaparilla was used in conjunction with Sassafras to create the flavor we know now as Root Beer. I don’t drink much soda any longer, but if I were to pick something up, it would probably be a really strong root beer. True Sarsaparilla is pretty hard to find. The ingredients on this bar list sarsaparilla oil as one of the flavorings.

The bar is a light milk chocolatey plank, divided into six sections. It’s a small bar, but I prefer a little taste of novelty flavors instead of the big 3.5 ounce tablets.

The scent is light and woodsy with a strong note of sassafras (though there is no actual sassafras in there). The melt is just slight grainy with a hint of dairy flavors. It’s quite sweet, one of my least favorite things about sodas.

The flavor is very complex, it’s woodsy, a deep rooty flavor that reminds me of beets and molasses. There are notes of pine, cinnamon, cloves, eucalyptus, wintergreen, lemon and nutmeg. What’s missing is the actual chocolate flavor. It made me wonder if this would have worked better with a white chocolate base ... or perhaps a dark chocolate one. It’s really hard to find root beer flavored candies, especially in the finer quality range.

I still finished the whole bar, but the overt sweetness gave me a sore throat so I had to eat it in three different sittings.

Related Candies

1. Eat with your Eyes: Mischer Root Beer
2. Hot Tamales Spice Jelly Beans
3. Brach’s Soda Poppers
4. Cowgirl Chocolates Buckin’ Hot Habanero Caramels
5. Kenny’s Licorice Pastels & Root Beer Twists

Since starting Candy Blog my consumption of ice cream has decreased to nearly nothing. Two reasons: I simply can’t afford the calories given my candy habits and as I get older I’m less and less lactose tolerant (which really takes the enjoyment out of it). That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss it. One of the things I miss is the texture; the other is the flavor combinations. Mint chocolate chip just doesn’t work in the same way in any other format than ice cream.

Baskin-Robbins has a line of ice cream themed candies. I tried the chewy candies a few years ago and decided that they were not for me. But I did see these hard candies at the 99 Cent Only Store. Baskin-Robbins Smooth & Creamy Hard Candy. I decided to try the Pralines ‘n Cream because it sounded like a flavor that could be made into a hard candy well. The ingredients looked pretty good too: sugar, corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk, salt, natural & artificial flavors, soy lecithin, honey and soybean oil.

The candies are individually wrapped and well marked (in case you buy several varieties and want to mix them in a bowl). Each piece was a combination of two colors, a light milky caramel color and a darker toffee color. They smell sweet, toasty and rather like walking into an actual Baskin-Robbins.

The texture isn’t quite silky smooth, but they’re still quite slick. I prefer to crunch mine and these have a nice cleave to them (though some could also be tough and chewy - that could be that I left them in my car and it got a little hot). The flavor has a good blend of caramelized sugar notes, butterscotch pudding and a liberal dose of salt. They’re quite sweet, but so is Pralines ‘n Cream Ice Cream. I ate most of the bag in one sitting, so after three or four it got a bit throat searing - that’s a lot of sugar.

I was pretty pleased with these. They’re a little different from something like a Werther’s, more milky. The price was pretty good, too. I know the bag only had 3.5 ounces for a dollar, but that’s a decent deal for a very dairy laden candy. I don’t know why the package says “Value Size”, as I don’t know what other package sizes and price points are available. Usually value sizes are large ... I considered this two servings. (Though the package seems to think three is a serving.)

Each piece has 20 calories. They’re not really low calorie candies, just small. At 121 calories per ounce, there’s a fair amount of fat in there for a sugar candy, about 2 grams per ounce.

The hard candies also come in Very Berry Strawberry and Mint Chocolate Chip. I have my doubts about the success of those flavors in this format, so I’ll probably just quite while I’m ahead.

Related Candies

1. Cookies ‘n’ Creme Showdown
2. Choco-Fudge Mallow Sundae
3. Jelly Belly Ice Cream Parlor Mix
4. Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy
5. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
6. Skittles Ice Cream

Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy is a curious little confection. It’s curious in that it’s not really Turkish and it’s not really taffy. But it really was made by a guy named Victor Bonomo, whose father was from Turkey.

Turkish Taffy is made by boiling sugar, corn syrup and egg whites. But instead of being fluffed like a traditional nougat or pulled like taffy it was poured and baked in large sheets like candy bark. The resulting texture has an incredibly smooth and long chew with no hint of sugar crystals. It was originally sold in bulk and pieces could be purchased by weight at candy counters at department stores and five & dimes back in the 1940s. By the 1950s the company started selling bars where the customers were encouraged to whack them before opening to break into individual pieces.

When Victor Bonomo retired in the 1970s, the company was sold to Tootsie who made the candy from 1980 to 1989. Around 2003 there were tickles on the internet that the candy was going to return (including a few emails I got that never turned into anything), but it wasn’t until this year that it actually happened. Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy is now available in the classic bar format and little individually wrapped bites in the original four flavors: Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate and Banana.

I’ll start by saying that most chocolate chews are a disappointment. They can never match the chocolate punch of actual chocolate. The only thing going for a chocolate chew is the chew part, so it’d better be good enough to transcend the watered down flavor.

The color of Bonomo Chocolate Turkish Taffy is like chocolate nonfat milk, a light creamy brown. A bit lighter even than a Tootsie Roll, which I’m guessing is the most widely consumed chocolate chew in the United States.

To eat I followed the directions to whack the package firmly before opening on the corner of a table. I did it several times until I felt that the bar had been cleaved into several pieces along its length.

The pieces are thick and firm, but with some gentle pressure they do bend. Bend quickly enough and you can actually break it or pull very slowly and it will stretch. It smells lightly sweet and a little like cocoa and sweet, powdery marshmallows.

The chew is hard at first but melts after some work and warmth. The flavor is thin and watery - a light cocoa note but very little more than that. It’s not terribly sweet, which is a relief. The texture however, is dreamy. It’s smooth and silky, a chew that has no middle or end, it’s completely the same all along. The only thing that’s different is that it gets smaller the more I chewed.

The cocoa was disappointing, but the fact that it wasn’t too sweet and provided a strong texture without anything left sticking in my teeth was a huge plus.

The Bonomo Vanilla Turkish Taffy is simple. It’s uncolored, which gets high marks from me right away. It smells a little like marshmallows, but mostly like sugar.

The chew is firm and tough at first but softens. It’s exceptionally smooth and consistent, all the way to the end. The flavor is lightly creamy and has a good vanilla flavor that’s not too artificial though really not that deep either. It’s more robust than a Vanilla Tootsie but still not exceptionally interesting at a certain point.

Of the three classic Neapolitan flavors I tried, this was by far my favorite. The bar last a long time and since it’s a chew, it’s a lot lower in calories than a chocolate or nut product. So this 1.5 ounce bar has only 160 calories (the chocolate one has 150).

I avoid strawberry taffy for the most part. It lacks the things that I like about strawberries - like the texture of the seeds, the mixture of tartness, sweetness and floral aromas. Strawberries smell like cotton candy to me, or maybe cotton candy smells like strawberries - it’s like part of consuming it is the scent which carries its own portion of sugary calories.

The Bonomo’s Strawberry Turkish Taffy is bright, bismuth pink. It’s artificial looking, like a lump of plastic left over from an injection molding project for Barbie Corvettes. The scent is similarly off-putting. It says “strawberry with a hint of vinyl”. The texture is the same as the other varieties - smooth and a long, glossy chew. The flavor though was all sweet, a strange fake strawberry that was like a cheap body wash and a terrible bitter note from the food dye (it said Red #3 & Blue #3, which is not usually one I call out for bitter, metallic aftertastes).

While I thought it was ghastly, I can understand that some folks will love the stuff. I get it, I love things that I know are fake and weird, too - like American Cheese.

I know that Bonomo’s is a well-loved brand. I know that it’s also pretty intensive to create, so these packages were $1.99 each - twice the price of the Doscher’s French Chew, which is often sold as a replacement. Maybe with time and larger volume the price will drop back down, but I’d much rather have some real nougat. But at this price I expect artisan or all natural. They are Kosher but there’s no statement about gluten or nuts (they do say that they’re processed in a facility with milk products). Classic Caramel of Camp Hill, PA is making the taffy for the Bonomo Turkish Taffy company. Classic Caramel also makes SloPokes, Kits and BB Bats.

Other reviews: Sugar Pressure and Candy Favorites.

It also comes in Banana, I picked that up too, along with Doscher’s French Chew in Banana and will do a comparison soon.

Related Candies

1. Melster Peanut Butter Kisses
2. Now & Later
3. Tootsie Rolls & Fruit Rolls
4. Doscher’s French Chew Taffy
5. Airheads
6. Abba Zaba

Endangered Species Chocolate’s hook is that the packages feature attractive, threatened animals and their profits go towards education about and protection of the environment.

They recently reformulated all their bars when they got a new cacao source (which does change the flavor profile for high end chocolate), so they sent me an array of bars to try. Today I thought I’d start with their simplest offerings, their single serving bars in Organic Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa and Organic Milk Chocolate 43% Cocoa.

The chocolate in the bars is Rainforest Alliance Certified as well as gluten free, Kosher, organic and ethically trade. The dark chocolate bar is also vegan (though made on equipment that also processes diary, peanuts and tree nuts). The package is made of 30% post-consumer recycled material yet it’s pretty nice to look at. The 70% Dark bar features the Karner Blue Butterfly, which is only about 3/4 of an inch across but a sparkling iridescent blue that draws the eye.

The bars are nicely proportioned. They’re slender - about 5.25” long and only 1.5” wide. Each is divided into three segments that are slightly domed and thick enough to provide a satisfying snap when broken.

The melt is smooth for the most part, though I did get an occasional spot of grit (fibery bits of cacao). It’s thick and lightly acidic with some bitter cherry notes. There’s coffee and anise and maybe some light citrus peel plus a strong note of vanilla. It puddles like pudding on the tongue and though I think there’s a smidge too much cocoa butter in it, the ratios support the flavor profile well. There are a lot of flavors going on and at times the finish is dry while other pieces I’m noticing a much lighter green tea note at the end.

Sometimes very dark chocolate isn’t as munchable as milk or milder stuff. It’s as if it’s too complex; this bar is dark and has a good mix of flavors but doesn’t feel too sophisticated for snacking. It pairs well with salty foods as well as nuts and dried fruits.

The second bar is the Organic Milk Chocolate 43% Cocoa Bar. I have to say that 43% is a pretty dark shade of milk chocolate. Some are as low as 20% cocoa content and there are those that go as high as 68% - but the low 30% range is what I think we’re most accustomed to.

This package features a lion. The package tells me that lions spend up to 21 hours a day sleeping. The rest of that time is spent in search of food, though they don’t eat every day. The package also says that lions are the only felines that live in social groups, maybe meaning that society leads to such high levels of cooperation that 21 hours of sleep are possible ... maybe we could learn something from that.

I stuck the milk on top of the dark here to show you the difference in color.

The main dairy ingredient in this bar is organic milk powder. It smells just like that - like sweet powdered milk.

The snap is much softer than the dark chocolate, though not fudgy like some milk bars like Cadbury can be. The melt is smooth, though not light and slick like Dove. It’s much thicker and velvety. The dairy notes fade and there’s a stronger caramelized sugar flavor along with the stronger bitter cocoa notes. There’s a hint of coffee, toffee and cedar in there.

This wasn’t my style of milk chocolate, it’s just too powdered milk flavored to me. I don’t know quite what that flavor is, but it reminds me of nutrition, which is not what I want in my treat. I’m guessing that this is just the profile that others prefer. The fact that it’s organic will also have appeal for folks who are looking to avoid hormones in their dairy products.

Related Candies

1. NewTree Dark Milk
2. Scharffen Berger Dark Milk (68%)
3. Lake Champlain Organic Dark Bars
4. Endangered Species: Milk Chocolate with Peanut Butter
5. Endangered Species Halloween Treats
6. Endangered Species Chocolate
7. Thompson’s Organic Chocolate

I think one of the best comfort confections out there has to be a fresh Pecan Turtle, especially if it’s made with dark chocolate. But when I saw this box of Demet’s Hazelnut Turtles at the 99 Cent Store on Friday I was willing to entertain the notion that hazelnuts would be equally delicious.

I have to say, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen hazelnut turtles before. I’m even more surprised to see them from DeMets, especially since their website makes no mention of their existence at all. The other weird thing about the package is that it doesn’t say “made with Nestle chocolate” on the front. Not that this is a bad thing, I don’t really care much for the chocolate on DeMet’s turtles, so the lack of it brought the possibility that it was better.

The box is huge but clearly says that there are 6 pieces and they weigh 3.5 ounces. Since I purchased them at the 99 Cent Only Store they were only a buck, which I think is a great deal for a real hazelnut and real chocolate confection. The box was shrink-wrapped, so they were definitely fresh though I couldn’t find a freshness date on them. Each little turtle is about 1.5” inches around but sits in a larger slot in the box. They’re just plain over-packaged.

They smell sweet and a little like caramel and fresh oatmeal. Biting into them it was clear that these were mostly caramels and not that studded with nuts at all. The caramel had a nice chew, a good stringy pull and light salty note. The hazelnuts are chopped pretty small but still have a good crunch and grassy/roasted flavor. The chocolate is fair; it’s very sweet and has a strong dairy flavor but not much cocoa really.

I would have loved a good quality, hazelnut rich chew here, but I shouldn’t have expected so much for a buck. Still, it’s better than many candy bars and hazelnuts are pretty hard to find in mainstream confections.

Related Candies

1. DeMet’s Turtles: Pecan & Cashew
2. Fannie May Pixie
3. Walkers Nonsuch Roasted Hazelnut Toffee
4. Robitaille’s Presidential Inaugural Mints & Turtles
5. Storck Toffifay

While many mints these days are touting how strong they are or that they’re sugar free, the Choward’s line just plugs away at the same mildly-flavored line. They’re not easy to find, so when I spotted these at the Albanese Candy Factory Outlet, I grabbed both the Choward’s Spearmint and Lemon. They have classic textured foil wrappers and list that there are 15 mints in the package.

Choward’s Spearmint are plain white, the ingredients list no colorings. The little squares are are nicely formed. They’re about 2/3 of an inch square and have an excellent embossed Choward’s logo across the center on both sides. They stack easily and have a pleasant texture of unglazed fine bone china.

The spearmint is completely mild. It’s sweet ... much sweeter than I expected. Since they’re made with actual sugar instead of dextrose, it’s noticeable. (Dextrose or glucose is said to have only 74% of the sweetness of sucrose.) Since it’s not very minty, it’s hard to pay attention to anything but the sweetness. But I suppose maybe it’s a good deal - you get more sweetness for the same number of calories.

I found them fun to eat, but really not much for a long-lasting minty freshness. As a breath freshener, well, they didn’t make things worse. Just a little sweet pick-me-up. I can see them going well with mild drinks like tea.

The Choward’s Lemon is a bit more of a curiosity. The ingredients are interesting in that the flavoring is just oil of lemon and citric acid (for tartness). I was expecting a bit of a lemon mint, instead it’s kind of like a SweeTart.

The crunch is smooth and hard and like the Spearmint, it’s quite sweet. But the citric acid gives it a little sour kick. The lemon oil is zesty and certainly more complex than SweeTarts. They less grainy texture took a little getting used to. Ultimately they were just too sweet for a sour chalky candy (I guess that’s why I like the dextrose-based ones) but I liked the texture quite a bit.

Related Candies

1. Choward’s Guava
2. All Natural Necco Wafers
3. Spearmint Leaves
4. Pastiglie Leone
5. SweeTarts: Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2006)
6. Choward’s Violet