Earlier this year Hershey’s provided me with a peek at some new products. I’ve been hanging onto the new Bliss White Chocolate Meltaway until it was closer to arriving on store shelves.

This addition to the Hershey’s line will set it apart from many other chocolate morsels such as the Dove line because instead of going super dark, they went all white.

The good news is that Hershey’s is using real white chocolate made with cocoa butter for their meltaway. Though it’s not a real gourmet product it’s still an excellent option for white chocolate lovers for a less-expensive treat. The ingredients list white chocolate as the first ingredient (sugar, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milk, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, tocopherols, vanillin & salt). The meltaway center is made with a mix of the white chocolate and palm kernel oil. As you can imagine the saturated fat content is through the roof, with 6 pieces completing 45% of your daily recommended allowance of saturated fat but also 10% of your calcium.

The pieces are quite elegant. They’re wrapped simply in gold foil (though these were samples and I would expect that they would have the Bliss name on them like the other products in the line do).

The pieces are a creamy pale color with a little squiggle design across the rounded dome of the square. The smell sweet and milky and pretty much taste the same. The salt give them a little pop that makes the vanilla flavors come out more strongly than I would have expected. It’s like a vanilla pudding. A little bland but also a bit unchallenging in comforting way.

The difference between the white chocolate shell and the meltaway filling is rather marginal, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It felt like a piece of soft and creamy, sweet fat.

I liked the packaging - I thought the light blue, creamy white and gold were elegant and evocative of the product itself. I have a bit of trouble eating too many, so added to a mix of other levels of chocolate would be nicer. My only hesitation with them is that the Bliss line seems a bit expensive (regular price $4.99) for what you get. I’d prefer something without palm oil and with real vanilla. My go to white chocolate is still Green & Black’s.

Related Candies

1. Chuao Chocolate Blocks from LEGOLAND
2. Ghirardelli Holiday Squares
3. Askinosie White Chocolate (Plain, Nibble & Pistachio)
4. Hershey’s Bliss Creme de Menthe Meltaway Center
5. Hershey’s Bliss
6. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts

I went back to Target over the weekend in hopes of finding more new Halloween goodies. Though it was mostly the same items I found there two weeks ago, the seemed to have a bit more in the way of their Gourmet Candy Corn line.

They have a lot of funny flavors that seem incongruous with candy corn like Tangerine, Green Apple (plus Chocolate Covered Green Apple), Toffee (which I already reviewed) and S’Mores. However, Pumpkin Pie sounded pretty good.

It’s in the same style of stand up black shiny bag that the other gourmet treats were in. They’re all terribly overpriced, but the packaging is nice enough that you could probably bring a bag as a hostess gift for the right occasion.

I found the colors off-putting. The tip is soft orange, the center is bright yellow but the base is some unworldly fluorescent orange that just makes me think of faded vinyl tub toys. I really couldn’t capture the color in the photo. 

The bag smells sweet and creamy when opened.

The texture is soft and has very little grain to it. They’re sweet and lack that touch of honey that true candy corn usually puts forward. The pumpkin pie here is just a light blend of spices. Cinnamon is the boldest, but it doesn’t rise to the level of spicy or hot cinnamon. There’s a slight twinge of woodsy nutmeg or allspice ... but that’s pretty much it.

I was disappointed. I hoped for some more nutmeg or even a note of clove but instead it was about as bland as generic canned pumpkin pie mix. I think I’m done tasting novelty candy corn, at least when the price is $2.99 per flavor. So if you’ve tried some of the others, chime in with your experience to help out other readers.

Related Candies

1. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
2. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
3. See’s Pumpkin Spice & Root Beer Lollypops
4. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
5. Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
6. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins

Trolli Little Green Men are one of the newer novelty gummis from Trolli, which is owned by Farley’s and Sathers. They’re just as inventive as other gummi makers like Haribo, with a variety of shapes & flavor assortments.

The package looks like it’s geared towards kids. There’s a flying saucer behind the logo with a little bulgy-eyed alien at the steering wheel.

The bag comes with just one shape & flavor. In this case it’s a little green alien with a bulbous head and Cosmic Star Fruit flavored.

For the unfruity, Star Fruit is also known as Carmbola. It’s a strange looking creased/segmented fruit that looks like a five pointed star when sliced. The texture and flavor is something like a cross between a crunchy apple and the flavor of cataloupe and pears.

The gummis are rather startling looking. They have huge green heads and teensy little potbellied bodies. The heads are about 3/4” around and the whole fella stands only 1.5” high.

They smell fresh, a bit like melon and citrus. They’re soft and pliable, but not sticky or very greasy to the touch. The flavor is immediately lightly tangy but an overall mild berry or pear flavor.

They’re nice in that they’re a big bite of gummi. The flavor is different enough to seem distinct, but not too exotic to seem weird.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Trolli Sour Brite Eggs
3. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
4. Wonka Sluggles
5. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis
6. Starburst GummiBursts
7. The Simpsons Fruit Snacks
8. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

Last week I told you that pandas have berry flavored noses. This week I’m telling you that all natural pandas are pink grapefruit flavored.

Bissinger’s Naturals line has an excellent array of exotic flavored & nutritionally enhanced gummy pandas. I was frustrated for many years because the only place I could get them was on their website and you had to order 4 packages of each flavor ... I’m more of a grazer than a consumer. So I would visit their booth at trade shows. I’d always arrive and they’d say “oh, we’re not tasting the gummys today.” Or if they were, I’d be directed to go visit a counter where the staff is dressed in white lab coats like they work for Clinique and I would be given one single gummy to try and no access to the packages & labels.

Finally at the Whole Foods by the coffee counter I found a whole display of Bissinger’s Naturals Gummy Pandas. They come in two package sizes, the little 4 ounce stand up pack shown here and some flavors were available in 100 calorie packages for a smaller taste. They come in Goji Guava, Blueberry Acai, Green Tea, Pomegranate White Tea and Pink Grapefruit with Grapeseed.

I was a little aghast at the price - $3.99 for four ounces, but it’s not like I don’t splurge on candy from time to time. (Yes, $16 a pound for gummi bears.)

These gummies are quite soft and a little greasy (coconut oil & beeswax keeps them from sticking together). They’re darker than I would have expected for a grapefruit flavored candy, but the coloring is all natural, from black carrot juice.

When I opened the package I found they smelled very nice - sweet and with a strong note of grapefruit oils and a little like the powder for Country Time Lemonade. It certainly made my mouth water.

They’re quite gummy & bouncy bears. The chew is stiff but squishy (I think gummi fans know what I mean). The flavor is tart, a slight bitter note of the grapefruit and a not too sweet base. The texture is ultra smooth.

The ingredients are interesting. The product is all natural, gluten/wheat free as well as containing no artificial colors or sweeteners. The main sweetener is tapioca syrup (organic) instead of corn syrup ... so if you shun corn this might be the perfect gummi for you. Later on the list is grapeseed extract. That’s supposed to add some antioxidants, but I don’t much care one way or the other if my candy gives me that sort of stuff.

The flavor is well rounded and doesn’t have any of that weird aftertaste that some all natural candies that are fortified can have. They’re a cute shape and the ability to buy just one flavor instead of a mix is often a bonus.

The bottom of the label does say that they’re produced in a facility that processes milk, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and eggs. So I don’t know what to say about that Gluten Free statement. Then there was a strange little K over at the edge of the back of the package. Last year Bissinger’s announced that they were going Kosher ... could this be their Kosher symbol? I couldn’t be sure and their website was no help. So I emailed them. A helpful woman named Jenney replied quite promptly to my question with this: The gummies are definitely certified kosher, and the gelatin is kosher and does come from pork. You are free to make of that what you will, I find those statements in conflict. Unless there’s something new in pigs that I’m not aware of.

Besides the price and the incongruity of their claim of gluten free with their allergen statement and this newfangled pork-is-Kosher I like ‘em a lot.

FOLLOW UP 10/10/2009: I continued my correspondence with Jenney at Bissinger’s. She insisted again that the product was both Kosher and porcine. She presented me with a certificate from the ingredient company, Gelita, that shows its status. With that I contacted Gelita who refused to tell me what’s in their Kosher gelatin, as they were bound by their confidentiality agreements with their clients.

I emailed again, telling Gelita that I was referred to them by Bissinger’s for more information but have heard no reply after a week of waiting. So folks who avoid pig products can take this to mean what they wish. I do not feel confident calling this a pork-free product and am extremely uncomfortable with a company that says their products are Kosher yet insists they contain porcine gelatin with no twinkling of acknowledgment of that incongruity.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Puckerooms
2. Gourmet Gumdrops
3. Jelly Belly Sunkist Citrus Mix
4. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles (Lemon, Grapefruit & Wild Berry)
5. Kasugai Pineapple Gummy
6. Pink Grapefruit Mentos

There’s been a bit of chatter about Cadbury over the past few months. First, Cadbury is going Fair Trade with their most popular product, the Dairy Milk bar. Since the bar is the United Kingdom’s #1 selling bar with $852 million in sales buying only fair trade cocoa will make a huge difference for cocoa growing regions. (It’s also #1 in Australia and India.)

The second bit of news is that Kraft, the global food powerhouse that owns not only a large corner of the cheese food world but also Toblerone, Terry’s Chocolate and Cote d’Or, made a bid for Cadbury.

Cadbury has chocolate factories all over the world and each one has slightly different local takes on the product. Here in the United States the Cadbury Dairy Milk products aren’t even made by Cadbury, they’re made by Hershey’s under a licensing agreement. (But it’s not like Hershey’s even makes it from scratch, the major raw material of the chocolate crumb - a mixture of dried milk and chocolate - is shipped to Hershey, Pennsylvania to be combined on site with sugar and other ingredients to form the end product.)

I thought it was high time to compare these two different recipes. So I found the closest products I could to compare.

I found a nice single serve block of Cadbury Dairy Milk from the UK. It was in marvelous condition and looked like it had been stored well at the India Sweets & Spices where I shop - it’s kept at the end of the produce section in the refrigerated area - so it’s climate controlled.

I also picked up a few of the super cute Dairy Milk Buttons, which are little chocolate disks.

For the American version I found a nice back of Dairy Milk Miniatures from Hershey’s Signatures line.

It’s apparent when putting them side by side like this that the American made (on the left) is darker than the UK made one (on the right). What I liked about these two products is that they single pieces of each were similar shapes & thickness.

Both have a nice sheen and are well molded.

The UK Dairy Milk Bar features a lovely matte purple wrapper. It’s easy to open, though not easy to close.

I liked the deeply segmented bar that broke easily into pieces. Each is beveled, so it’s easy to snap off and easy to bite.

The bar smells sweet and rather cheesy, like cottage cheese or maybe yogurt. The cocoa notes are sweet, more like chocolate cake than cocoa. In fact, but those together and the closest I can get is this smells like a rich chocolate cheesecake.

The melt is thick and sticky; it’s sweet at first but then gives way to some deep toffee and caramel sugar notes. Then it gets sweet again ... a bit too sweet for me. After two pieces my throat was burning and I had to drink some water and eat some plain crackers.

The melt is consistent. Quite smooth but not silky or buttery. It didn’t feel fatty, it felt fudgy - like the sugar wasn’t quite integrated with the cocoa.

The dairy notes were decent, a little thick in the back of my throat but not as powdery tasting as some other European style milk chocolates.

Overall I would have preferred a much smoother & more chocolatey punch. However, that’s not what the Dairy Milk bar is about, it’s about the milk component as much as the chocolate, since there are near equal proportions. Milk solids clock in at 23% and cocoa solids are 20%. There are also about 5% vegetable fats in there taking the place of cocoa butter.

This is why the front of a Dairy Milk bar doesn’t even say chocolate - they’d have to put the vegetable statement on the front along with it by their current labeling standards.

I wanted to be as thorough as I could, so I also tasted a package of Dairy Milk Buttons which are kind of like Hershey’s Kisses in that they’re little nibbles of chocolate.

They’re about the diameter as pennies (though some were dime or nickel sized). The bottom has a little embossed Cadbury logo.

Each little piece is rather thin, so melts quickly on the tongue. They release the flavors quicker and taste more milky to me. There’s also a slight cool effect on the tongue.

I liked them, and the little shapes are probably very easy to combine with other items like nuts, popcorn or candies for a more varied mix of textures.

The American has a sweet, slightly tangy milk scent with a hint of toasted cocoa. The bit is soft but has a good snap to it. The melt is a bit on the sticky side but not overly sweet.

It has a bit of a fudgy flavor and texture, though much creamier. I wouldn’t go so far to call it silky, in fact parts of it were downright gritty. It had a good toasted & smoked taste to it, much darker in taste than the traditional Hershey’s or Mars.

The overt flavors are definitely of the dairy products, not of the chocolate.

It is Kosher ... the UK bar has no Kosher mark.

Okay, so they’re similar but not quite the same. I did some investigating on the labels:

First, it’s the ingredients.

Cadbury Dairy Milk from Bournville, UK
Milk, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, vegetable fat, emulsifiers, flavorings.
49 gram bar - Expiration: 11-2009

Cadbury Dairy Milk from Hershey, USA
Sugar, milk, chocolate, cocoa butter, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR, natural and artificial flavor.
8.5 ounce miniatures package - Expiration: 12-2009

Since the portions & packages were so different, I did a little Excel magic on them and standardized it to compare:

From what I can tell, there is a just a smidge less fat in the American but slightly more sugar ... now these are tiny, tiny amounts. Not enough, as far as I know, to account for the color difference. Also, the UK labels are more precise - American standards allow rounding, UK measures in tenths.

I have no preference, except to say that I don’t care much for plain Dairy Milk. I prefer it with nuts in it and they do have an ample variety of bars that have nuts. It’s just too sweet and doesn’t have enough of a cocoa punch. I’ve become spoiled by the high cocoa content of products like Scharffen Berger and Amano when it comes to just eating by the piece.

For those in the United States, the British made bars can be found at import shops and places like Cost Plus World Market. For those in the UK, I’m sure it’s near impossible and pointless to get the American made stuff.

So it all comes down to personal preference. There are lots of folks who prefer the American made because it’s what they’ve grown up on. It’s a little bit firmer because of the all-cocoa-butter content but not quite as milky as the classic British made bars. Have you had both? Which do you prefer?

Related Candies

1. Amano Milk Chocolate Ocumare
2. Cadbury Dairy Milk Snack
3. Scharffen Berger Milk Nibby Bar
4. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
5. Cadbury Mini Eggs
6. Dairy Milk Bubbly
7. Flake Dipped

Last year Trader Joe’s introduced what I think was their first original candy bar. The Lumpy Bumpy Bar did not live up to my Trader Joe’s expectations (and they rarely disappoint me).

This year they have the new PB&J Bar which features peanut butter, milk and dark chocolate and raspberry jam.

The box is hot pink with eye-numbing blue & orange text. It in no way reflects my expectations for what’s inside. Again, I think it’s some sort of medicated soap or analgesic.

Like the previous bar, it’s much smaller than the box (well, I can’t name a candy bar that isn’t smaller than the volume of the packaging) - the box is 4.5” long and 1.5” high & wide. The actual candy bar is about 3 inches long and about 1 inch high. But then, you know, it was easy to get back into the box after taking the picture.

But still, what is it?

PB&J are sandwiched between milk and dark chocolate then sprinkled with crushed potato chips. Potato chips? Yes, crisp, delicious potato chips. This means you have it all - sweet and salty; smooth and crunchy. Lucky you!

The bar is quite interesting to look at, though I couldn’t figure out where the dark chocolate is ... maybe there’s a slim layer between the jelly and peanut butter.

The peanut butter is quite dark and has a deep roasted flavor. It’s not terribly sweet and of course is not only salted but has little bits of potato chips in there for additional texture and salt.

The bite of the bar is interesting. The peanut butter has an easy give, but the jelly bottom layer is quite firm. However, it is very jelly like in that it doesn’t stick to the teeth like gumdrops do. The flavor doesn’t come out right away, there is a berry note, but it isn’t until I chew it up that I got the nice, deep jammy raspberry flavors (seedless).

What I learned about the potato chips is that they provide crunch, but they’re gluten free!

The two ounces felt like quite a lot of food, and I actually ate the bar in two sittings - 1/3 when I took the photo and the other 2/3 while doing the review. The calorie total is 300, a smidge more than I like in a single portion.

Since there are no other readily available bars like this, I give it high marks for filling a niche. I’m definitely more likely to pick it up over the Lumpy Bumpy ... but there are so many other items at Trader Joe’s that I prefer, I’m not sure it’ll ever happen.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms
2. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps
3. Trader Joe’s Sweet Story
4. Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows
5. BonBonBars: Malt Ganache & Scotch
6. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
7. Theo Confections

The newest thing about Candy Corn over the past five years has been flavors: Green Apple, Pumpkin Spice, Caramel Apple, Tangerine and on and on.  The odd thing is that their kin, little shaped mellocremes, have always come in different flavors - harvest mixes come in maple & chocolate and the Easter specialties often had delicate citrus & berry flavors.

So now comes the ultimate mash-up of candy corn. Both flavored and covered in chocolate. It seems odd that this product hasn’t succeeded before.

I found this bag of Toffee Flavored Candy Corn covered in Milk Chocolate at Target. They have a special line of little stand up pouches like this marketed in their house-brand.

The package is cute & compelling - a dark orange accented thick cellophane bag with a clear window to show off the shiny chocolate covered mix. I thought it was a little expensive at $2.99 ... but $7 a pound for a chocolate item isn’t that bad, and this is a Candy Holiday.

About one third of the package is chocolate covered. The rest are plain Naturally & Artificially Flavored Toffee Candy Corn. The colors are a muted amber center with the stereotypical yellow base and white tip.

The package smells off-putting. It’s a fake butter flavor which leads me to a rant about toffee:

Toffee is carefully boiled sugar and butter. The essential qualities of toffee (as it’s made in America) besides the crunchy texture & cleave are the toasted flavors of the caramelized sugar and the creamy melt of the butter/heavy cream. It’s not about the butter flavor, it’s about the burnt sugar. So when someone offers me something toffee flavored I expect dark sugar notes not artificially flavored buttered popcorn.

I tried sampling it a few times and found it too artificial, so I left the package open overnight and that seems to have let some of the volatile organic compounds evaporate and it became a bit more appealing if bland. Rather like ordinary candy corn. I even detected the smell of milk & chocolate in there.

The plain candy corn is nicely textured. It’s soft but not too crumbly, it melts easily and though it’s sweet it’s not too sickly. It could have used just a tad more salt to sell the toffee flavor.

The chocolate covered pieces are very nicely panned. They’re huge and meaty, with a thick coat of chocolate.

It seems more sugary than the uncoated stuff. The milk chocolate isn’t particularly creamy, though the flavor profile has a fair bit of the dairy component to really sell the toffee part. I liked the combination of textures - the fondant of the candy corn has a crumbly texture, kind of like the center of a York Peppermint Pattie. (Which makes me wonder why I’ve never seen Mint Candy Corn and then the logical conclusion of Chocolate Covered Mint Candy Corn.)

I give them kudos for the attractive mix and the innovation factor here. It’s also available in Green Apple flavor (maybe some green apple fans would love it - I’m not keen on the combo of chocolate & green apple).

The package gives full disclosure: Candy made in USA. Bag made in China. Packed in Mexico. (Best by December 27, 2010) It also says that it contains milk, eggs, soy and coconut and may contain peanut & tree nuts. The only thing it doesn’t mention is gluten.

Related Candies

1. Marich Easter Select Mix
2. Candy Place Harvest Mix
3. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
4. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
5. Mint Cremes from the Makers of Jelly Belly
6. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
7. Candy Corn Kisses
8. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
9. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn

Candy Season has started with the first Halloween candy entering the aisles as drug stores, discount warehouses & grocery chains move their summer & back to school merchandise to clearance.

I was excited to find the new Bat Dots in the large theater-sized box at Target over the weekend. They haven’t quite put out all their Halloween items yet, but I found these in the regular candy aisle on a little hanging display at an endcap. I first tried them after All Candy Expo and was looking forward to seeing this single flavor box.

Bat Dots are black but instead of being the black licorice Crows in a different box, they’re Blood Orange.

The package is great and plays with themes of the orange as a harvest moon, the word bat is juicy and the little bat shaped Dot uses an orange slice as a smile.

It’s unusual to find a box of Dots that has just one flavor, and for it to be blood orange is quite a coup for citrus lovers.

As far as flavor goes, these are packed with it. There’s an immediate tartness followed by some nice zesty notes and a strong orange juice flavor. They’re soft and easy to chew ... and for some reason they’re not sticking to my teeth quite as much as other Dots.

My only misgiving with these is the heavy use of food coloring so I get a little weird aftertaste ... if I don’t pop another one in my mouth right away.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Candy Corn Dots seem like a natural mash-up. They look pretty cute - though I have to say that they weren’t as consistent as the package leads me to believe. The layering is sometimes spot on, with a yellow third on the bottom and an orange top (no white tip) but other times I had to turn over the Dots to even see the yellow.

I didn’t know what flavor to expect but I girding myself for fake butter. Instead they ended up being a pleasant French vanilla or maybe pudding flavor. It was missing that light touch of honey that the better candy corn has ... but overall it’s a cute take on Dots.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Ghost Dots have actually been a seasonal product for three years now. Again, I give Tootsie some props for the package design and the concept itself.

They’re regular fruit Dots, but they’re all the same translucent & spooky beach glass light green color.

The spooky part is you never know what you’re going to get. It’s rather interesting to experience the flavors without the color contribution to the flavor event. It confirmed that I really don’t like cherry much, even if there isn’t a crazy aftertaste and I had trouble telling my citrus apart from time to time. It’s tempting to think that they should be glow in the dark, but I don’t think that’d be safe. (Though maybe it would be - kids could mount them on little sticks and carry them around while trick or treating for extra visibility!)

Rating: 6 out of 10

I really couldn’t beat the price on these either - for a buck they’re a fun change-up and hopefully they’ll go over well and return every year. (I haven’t seen them in the Trick-or-Treat size yet ... has anyone else?)

Related Candies

1. Short & Sweet: Summer Bites
2. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
3. Candy Corn Kisses
4. Dots
5. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn