Harry & David are known for their fresh fruit boxes & baskets. They also have a pretty good selection of candies, especially seasonal varieties. Like Trader Joe’s, some are made especially for Harry & David and others are just repackaged with their brand name on them.

When looking through their selections I like to spot the items that they carry that I don’t see anywhere else and saw quite a few a couple of weeks ago in their fall selection. Many items aren’t even mentioned on their website. (If you go into the store they’re always sampling things, too.)

Fruit jellies in general are a ho-hum candy. The kind of thing most of us will eat if it’s around but rarely buy. I’m a huge fan of gourmet pate de fruits which are more intense distillations of real fruits and I was hoping that these Harry & David Fall Leaves Fruit Gels were more like that than Brach’s Fruit Slices. Mostly, I bought them because they were pretty.

Each little “hand” is about 1.75” across at the widest. The colors are all vibrant and though they’re rather thick, still translucent. The sugar coating adheres nicely so they’re not at all messy.

Pear (chartreuse)

This color was a little disturbing to me, kind of like antifreeze. Happily it tasted like a crisp pear-flavored jelly. Tart and with that strange melon note that pears always seem to have. The grainy sugar coating even mimics those little gritty bits in pear flesh.

Lime (green)

Very much the epitome of a lime jelly. It has a strong zest to it, even a little bitter at times, a little tangy bite and an overall LifeSavers flavor (you know, back when LifeSavers made lime).

Strawberry (red)

Biting into it, it has a bit more tartness than many fruit jellies, more like a strawberry-lemonade than straight strawberry. But the scent is wonderfully summery - that sweet mix of flowers and cotton candy.

Raspberry (darker red)

It has a nice berry fragrance and an immediate jammy flavor of raspberries. But something went weird toward the end, there’s a strange very sweet aftertaste, as if it has some sort of artificial sweetener in it (but of course it’s not on the ingredients list, which is what has me mystified). I couldn’t really investigate this anomaly as there was only one raspberry leaf in the bag.

Tangerine (orange)

Not as vibrant looking as the other colors, this was a little paler, I’m guessing because it’s tangerine and not orange. The flavor isn’t as intense as I’d like. Mellow and citrusy, but not tart or zesty.

Lemon (yellow)

I picked out a package with a lot of lemon because I assumed that I’d like them. The lemon zest was strong and reminded me of fresh lemon balm that my grandmother grew by her back door. As we’d leave her house after a visit we’d all grab a little sprig and rub it in our hands. The smell reminds me of long car rides on farm-lined country roads in Ohio. It’s only slightly tangy and quite smooth.

The price was steep for jellies that aren’t actually real fruit ($8.95) and I’m not likely to buy these again. But if I had a very specific need for an edible decoration such as cupcakes or as an accent on a dessert tray, these more than satisfy. If I’m going for inexpensive fruit taste, I’ll probably keep going for Sunkist Fruit Gems (only in the larger bags that include grapefruit, of course).

These are vegan (no gelatin and all artificial colors) but not Kosher.

Related Candies

1. Loukoumi Artisan Confections
2. Organic Zootons
3. Sunkist Fruit Gems
4. Fruit Parfaits
5. Chuckles
6. Boule Chocolates and Fruit Pate

Nestle Treasures is a line of little chocolate indulgences, a little more upscale than their more commonly found Nestle’s Crunch. I picked up Nestle Treasures 50% Cacao Dark Chocolate Truffle

Most of the marketing looks directed towards women with a tagline of a sweet break from life. This is probably why I’ve ignored them up until now. I don’t want chocolate that’s a break from life, I want chocolate that’s with me every moment of my life. I want a partner. But hey, it’s not like I’m a normal demographic and I think anyone who markets specifically towards people like me (obsessive candy bloggers) is gonna get fired for incompetence.

I stood in the aisle at Ralph’s debating whether or not to get these.

This particular version of the Nestle Treasures is also called Renew with Dark Chocolate (though it doesn’t really say that on the package, except on the other side panel. The back, near the flap says Say “I Do” to a whole New You. Really? A whole new me just from a truffle?

The box is a polyethylene terephthalate (PETE - coded 1 for recycling) stand up “bag”. It’s actually rather nicely done. The translucent bronzy brown plastic let me see that it was only half full (there were 14 pieces when I dumped them out and counted). The package could be at least a third shorter and still have lots of breathing room and probably save on material, space & shipping. (At least I can recycle it curbside in my blue bin.)

Inside the little pieces are individually wrapped in orange-gold mylar. They’re nicely molded, every one I opened was perfect and shiny.

They smelled deep and smoky and mostly of peanuts. Yes, roasted peanuts.

The shell is 50% cacao chocolate, so it’s middle of the road semi-sweet. (A little chart on the back reminds me that dark chocolate has naturally ocurring antioxidants which help to maintain health.)

It’s quite smooth and buttery. The “ganache” center is made from chocolate and palm oil and maybe more cocoa butter. It’s not quite the same as a real truffle made with butter or cream, but has a great slippery meltaway texture (not as slippery as a Lindt Lindor Truffle though). It also features a little sprinkling of cacao nibs. Not big bits, more like coffee grounds. They provide a nice crunch but not much flavor. But the peanut notes at the top are distracting for me. (The ingredients list both natural and artificial hazelnut & peanut flavors.)

They also come in two other varieties: Relax (milk chocolate & caramel) and Revive (milk chocolate & cappuccino).

There are lots of things I liked about these and I find myself continuing to eat them. But they don’t satisfy my desire for truffles, just my desire for something chocolate ... and not quite that either. Still, much better than the Hershey’s Bliss I tried recently (though not a one to one comparison as they didn’t really have a dark chocolate meltaway). They’re also quite different from the Dove Promises offerings as well, especially if you’re looking for something with nibs in it.

Related Candies

1. Askinosie Chocolate
2. Scharffen Berger Milk Nibby Bar
3. Nestle Noir
4. Nestle Crunch Cappuccino Stixx
5. Endangered Species: Eco-Rounds
6. The Real Nestle Swiss

It’s the first day of fall, so my thoughts turned to harvest.

Brach’s is pretty much the gold standard for Candy Corn for me. There are other good quality makers out there too, like Jelly Belly and Zachary, but I prefer the Brach’s stuff because I can actually taste the honey and that’s what I prefer.

Brach’s has a pretty extensive line of candy corn products and they’ve returned to shelves for fall. I’ve seen the Autumn Mix, Indian Corn and regular Candy Corn on shelves. I picked up this newer version called Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn this year. I tried the other flavor introduced last year as well, Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn which I found tasted more like buttered popcorn than caramel.

The pieces are fun and feel like fall and harvest. They’re a medium brown on the bottom, a milky red in the middle and have white tips.

Unlike my experience with the Caramel Candy Corn, this didn’t smell at all before opening the package. Once I did, I found it a pleasant mix of apple, sugar and vanilla - exactly what I would have expected from the name.

Most of the pieces seem pretty big and dominated by the red center.

Like most candy corn, this bag had its assortment of not-quite-ready-for-primetime players. These were shorter pieces that were missing one or more colors. I rather like the variation and ability to eat just one of the flavor layers if I want, so I don’t hold it against them.

The red center has a light apple flavor, rather like apple peels not the sour green apple candy flavor. The brown caramel layer at the bottom has a light salty hit to it and a butter flavor that bugged me when I just at the brown bits alone. But as I’ve noted before, confections that use Red 40 tend to leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. So I enjoy these for about five minutes and then I regret eating them. Then I toss them in a drawer in my desk, go away for the weekend and come back and it’s like I’ve completely forgotten about the aftertaste (maybe it has some sort of short-term memory wiping properties?).

As a novelty flavor, I like these better than most. I wouldn’t mind it being added to the Autumn Mix, but I still prefer Indian Corn. Brach’s also makes a Milk Maid Chocolate Caramel Candy Corn which isn’t even mentioned on their website but I saw on ebay. I’m still looking for it.

This candy corn has gelatin in it, so it’s unsuitable for vegetarians and isn’t Kosher or Halal.

Related Candies

1. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
2. Candy Corn Kisses
3. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
4. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
5. Brach’s Autumn Mix

I went on a strange little odyssey. It all started with an interview I was prepping for with NBC’s Today show. Hershey’s was changing some of their products, swapping out real milk chocolate for coatings that used other oils instead of the native cocoa butter in chocolate.

I gathered up all the products I could find, including the ReeseSticks (previous review here). I found the single serve package at the drug store, but it was expired and I didn’t think that was fair, so I found this Reese’s Lovers Assortment (photo here) at CVS’s freshly stocked Halloween aisle. I found exactly what I wanted ... but I was a little surprised because the front of the package said that the ReeseSticks were crispy wafers | peanut butter | milk chocolate.

Well, that didn’t match what I had. This is happy news, right? The milk chocolate is back!

But when I opened up my Reese’s Lovers Assortment I was more than disappointed. The little single finger packages of ReeseSticks were quite clear, they said only crispy wafers | peanut butter. What are they pulling?

Well, I’ve already bought them, so I may as well try them and add them to my list of re-reviewed items.

Flipping over the bag, they do list all the ingredients for the products separately and though the front and both sides of the package mention milk chocolate, the ingredients tell the full story:

Sugar, peanuts, wheat flour, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, dextrose, whey, nonfat milk, cocoa butter, contains 2% or less of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel and/or palm oil), salt, palm kernel oil, milk fat, soy lecithin, corn starch, leavening, TBHQ, vanillin.

The old ingredients (courtesy of Mike’s Candy Wrappers) from 2003:

Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, milk, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin & pgpr), peanuts, wheat flour, sugar, dextrose, cocoa butter, contains 2% or less of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (contains palm kernel and palm oil), salt, palm kernel oil, leavening, soya lecithin and TBHQ and citric acid.

The little sticks in the assortment are a little smaller than the regular twin pack. These are .6 ounces each, but are still pretty substantial feeling.

The possibly-chocolate coating (well, the ingredients say that there may be cocoa butter in there and no other oils) looks pretty good, a little greasy but a nice medium color. It smells like peanuts and Easter grass. Sweet and artificial and, well, comforting.

Unless chilled the coating was pretty soft and sticky. The crunch of the foamy and flavorless wafers allowed the peanut butter to come through. Without much chocolate flavor, these reminded me of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch, without all the sharp mouth-wounding bits. It’s pretty salty though, saltier than I would like. (135 mgs in a current twin pack versus 110 mgs in the original one.)

Overall, I prefer the memory of the real chocolate one - less salty and I recall it having some chocolate flavor input. I don’t like ingredients lists that tell me what might be in there in there. I don’t want to eat palm oil, I want cocoa butter. But it’s still a pretty good candy product and not as noticeable a change as the Kissables.

Final note: Though the package deceptively promised me milk chocolate in my ReeseSticks, it also said that the Fast Break was not real chocolate on the outside ... but on the inside and the reverse of the package it was.

Related Candies

1. Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers Almond
2. Hershey’s Miniatures
3. Kissables (Reformulated)
4. Reese’s Whipps
5. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
6. Reese’s Sticks

Several readers have emailed me telling me that I must try Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites. I usually avoid the tubs of TJ’s chocolate goodies in the summer, but things have cooled off and I was hot on their trail.

The tub describes them as Crispy, crunchy, salty pretzels covered with rich dark chocolate and natural sprinkles. Okay, I’m curious what natural sprinkles are. A peek at the ingredients shows that they’re, well, sugar, corn starch and confectioners glaze. I’m guessing that unless sprinkles have some sort of artificial colors, they’re all natural.

The 7 ounce tub sounds generous, but let me just say right now, it’s not enough.

Many of my bites were fused together (enough in different linked chains that I wondered if I could create a Tetris layout). Instead of being panned (tumbled in a drum and coated with chocolate and then a sealing glaze) these are simply dipped so they have a flat spot on the bottom. This is helpful, as it keeps them from rolling around when I pull out a handful and put them on my desk. Each little bite is about the size of a plump garbanzo bean or hazelnut.

The chocolate looks especially dark and the ingredients shows that this is pretty good stuff; it even has real vanilla in it but does have some milk fat (sorry vegans, the confectioners glaze already spoiled this as a treat for you).

The tub smells smoky and sweet with a little hint of malt from the baked pretzels.

The chocolate melts easily and is smooth and creamy but has a dry and slightly bitter finish. The pretzels are crunchy and have a liberal dose of crunchy salt on them that’s echoed by the sweet crunch of the nonpariels.

At first I thought the sprinkles were silly, that they got in the way of the simplicity of the crunch and creamy components. But then I picked out some that had fewer crunchies on them and didn’t find them as satisfying ... maybe it’s just the little extra bit of sugar that puts it all together. Something about hitting a little crunch in your mouth and having this anticipation - will it be sweet or salty?

I love chocolate covered pretzels and this format is great. The issue I have with larger pretzels covered with chocolate is biting into it can make a mess, the pretzels make crumbs and the chocolate can crack and flake off. These go straight in the mouth whole, either one at a time or two or three even to make a mouthful. As a chocolate treat for someone who’s minding calories, the fact that there’s a large pretzel component there keeps the calories per ounce much lower than most chocolate candies.

My only major misgiving here is that it’s easy to eat the whole tub at once, so mind your portion control - maybe put a small handful in a little baggie or else you’ll find yourself mystified that there’s an empty tub sitting on your lap at the movies. (But is that really Trader Joe’s fault?)

Other thoughts: GiGi Reviews, Baking Bites and It’s Sweet & Savory.

UPDATE 2/9/2009: Trader Joe’s has stopped carrying these but I tracked down the manufacturer. They’re at Chocolate Potpourri and called Chocolate Pretzel Balls and are available in milk, dark and white.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels
2. Daffin’s Candies Factory & World’s Largest Candy Store
3. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolate
4. Disneyland for Candy Bloggers
5. Maud Borup Potato Chips
6. Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups
7. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Banana Chips

Less is more. And I never would have guessed that such simplicity would be so complex.

Askinosie Chocolate makes Authentic Single Origin bars. They’re made with a very short list of ingredients: cocoa beans, sugar and cocoa butter (they make their own facility from the same origin beans).

There are no emulsifiers and not even any vanilla.

The package isn’t quite so simple. It’s a waxed paper envelope that folds over at the top with a little tie of recycled string from the bags that are used to transport cocoa beans. Inside is the bar itself, wrapped simply in a clear cellophane sleeve and an insert that details the origin of the cocoa beans.

The first bar that I tried is the San Jose del Tambo made from Arriba Nacional beans from Ecuador. At 70% this is a pretty dark bar.

The bar is absolutely gorgeous. The simple molding with the lettered squares format is inspired - each is the perfect sized portion for a bite and it’s fun to play with them to make new words if you’re Scrabble-y.

The snap is quite sharp and doesn’t quite melt readily, but when it does, it’s quite smooth.

The overall flavor was light and bright with notes of caramel, cardamom, coffee, black pepper, licorice & molasses. The finish is a little dry but also sweet.

After that happy experience I picked up the Soconusco from Mexico made of Trinitario beans.

The look of the bar was the same - beautifully shiny and with a bright snap.

This bar had a grassier scent of olives and black & green teas. The melt was smooth but had a very perceptible dryness right away. There were a few fruity notes of some berries, but overall it didn’t have the variation in elements that I like especially in the woodsy and balsam tones.

Askinosie makes a large variety of products including cocoa (which make sense if Shawn Asknosie is making his own cocoa butter, he’s gonna have a lot of cocoa solids left over) but there were two that I was especially interested in. His Nibble Bar which includes cacao nibs and the White Chocolate bars.

I found these Itty Bar Nibble Bars in Santa Barbara at Chocolate Maya a few weeks ago.

They’re not big, just two inches long and about an inch wide, but packaged in pairs. At only $1.00,  I think they were a steal! (The big bars were $8 each.) They’re the same San Jose del Tambo but, obviously, with some same origin cocoa nibs scattered in.

They’re much more tangy than the large format bar but it still has the same caramelized sugar notes and coffee flavors with a light peppery finish.

It’s easy to say that $8 is too much for chocolate. But keep in mind that like many artisan chocolate makers, Shawn Askinosie is making his growers essentially his partners. It’s called a stake in the outcome and not only do they get fair prices, they also get a share in the final sales of the finished products.

Some fair trade products can make me feel like it’s charity, not an actual purchase for the sake of the quality. That’s far from the case here. The consumer of the chocolate gets both the full experience from the look and feel of the package down to the actual taste of the product there’s also so much more going on in the background.

I am a huge fan now and will probably seek out every product in the Askinosie line. (Except maybe this item.) Maybe someday Askinosie will do an Ocumare bar.

Related Candies

1. Amano Single Origin Bars: Madagascar & Ocumare
2. Theo 3400 Phinney Bars
3. Equal Exchange: Espresso, Mint & Nibs
4. Sweetriot!
5. Scharffen Berger - Cacao Nibs

Bananas Foster is a New Orleans specialty created by chef Paul Blang?. The dessert consists of vanilla ice cream topped with bananas flambe’d in sauce of butter, dark rum, brown sugar, banana liquor and cinnamon. (I think it makes a great topping for pancakes or crepes.)

Dove has come out with a line of dessert-inspired bites including this one, the Bananas Foster and Tiramisu (made from lady fingers, marscapone and coffee). I picked the Bananas Fosters because I figured that the caramel format fit it really well (where I didn’t think it’d work as well with the Tiramisu in theory).

The little foil wrappers were a rather unsightly yellow color. Vaguely florescent, they don’t remind me of real bananas, it reminds me of Banana Runts. (But be warned as well, I rather like fake banana things, i you don’t that may interfere with your enjoyment.)

The Bananas Foster Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Promises come tightly wrapped in a strange twisted stand up box that didn’t want to stand up for me. (And in my frustration I ended up opening it on the bottom instead of the top and now I’ve completely ruined it.)

Inside the foil is a light milk chocolate disk. It smells nicely of milk chocolate, sugar and green bananas. The bite is soft, but the chocolate snaps nicely, even in this heat. The milk chocolate isn’t particular intense, I think the aspect that Dove chocolate does best is silky smooth and that’s here all right.

The caramel filling is strange but completely consistent with the way that Dove has been making it for their other caramel filled Promises. It’s thick, but not chewy. It’s very smooth, but feels emulsified like pudding instead of like actual caramelized sugar and butter. But hey, caramel banana pudding is good, too. (I like butterscotch pudding with bananas in it.)

The banana flavor isn’t overwhelming, just a light touch. The caramel notes are non-existent, but thankfully the whole thing isn’t too sweet either. I wanted a little touch of rum and a little touch of brown sugar ... but while it wasn’t even close to imitating real Bananas Foster it was still satisfying.

Check out other reviews for the Tiramisu: Chocoflyer tastes both Tiramisu & Bananas Foster, Gigi Reviews, Candy Addict and The Onion’s AV Club.

Related Candies

1. Dove Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Bars
2. Banana n Cream & Red Orange Mentos
3. Zotter Candy Bars
4. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
5. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
6. Chuao ChocoPod Collection
7. Dove Jewels

I found two more flavors of Nips to add to my growing collection.

The series seems to be color coded, peanut butter is accented with orange. I think orange is the universal color for peanut butter (though I could see yellow working too).

The Peanut Butter Parfait Nips didn’t sound that appealing to me. I wasn’t sure what the peanut butter center would be like. The picture on the box makes it appear as though it’s some sort of caramel sauce flavored with peanut butter.

These seemed more regular than the Dulce de Leche ones that I had before, not as much leakage.

After cracking one open (yes, with a nutcracker) I found out why these weren’t leaky. The center isn’t gooey, it’s a dry and crumbly partially defatted peanut butter.

The shell was like the Caramel Nips. Sweet, creamy and toasty tasting.

After a while I got kind of tired waiting for the peanut butter flavor, so I crunched it a bit. The peanut butter innards are very sweet, a little greasy (thank goodness for the defatting) and really peanutty.

The combination is nice, but completely overpowers the caramel at this point. Then the peanut butter dissolves away and I’m left with shards of caramel Nip (well, that’s my fault for crunching). Not really much of a winner for me.

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Butter Rum Nips sport a medium purple banner across the box and on the little wrappers.

Though I enjoy rum as a spirit, I don’t drink it straight and rarely in mixed drinks at all. I think it’s best in sauces and baked goods, so putting it in a candy seems like a pretty good idea to me.

They don’t smell like much in the box. Kind of like box.

If you’ve ever wanted Butter Rum LifeSavers to be more creamy, and I mean actually have milk in them instead of being milk flavored, this is the stuff.

The caramelized flavors, the smooth texture and the oh, so fake rum flavor all combines to make a really satisfying treat. I was dubious, but these won me over on the second piece.

Related Candies

1. Nips: Caramel & Dulce de Leche
2. Coffee Nips
3. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
4. Goodbye Reed’s