Candy Blog

It’s a little early for Sweets and Snacks Expo announcements for new products, but there are a few new items of note in the candy world.

Name: Justin’s Candy Bars
Brand: Justin’s Nut Butter
Description: Available in three gourmet flavors, Milk Chocolate Peanut, Dark Chocolate Peanut and Milk Chocolate Almond, Justin’s Candy Bars contain organic chocolate, nuts, caramel and nougat. Justin’s All-Natural Candy Bars contain 25 percent less sugar, 50 percent more protein and 100 percent more fiber than the leading conventional candy bar, Snickers, the company said.
Introduction Date: Exclusive at Whole Foods through June 2012, available wider after that.
Notes: I tried these at ExpoWest and have to say that these don’t taste like healthy candy. There’s no compromise on the flavor and texture. I’ll have a full review soon.

Name: Gummi Pet Cockroach
Brand: Jelly Belly
Description: Gummi Pet Cockroach will join Pet Rat, Pet Gator, Pet Dinosaur and Pet Tarantula this June. The candy is created with two different flavors: one for the “legs” and the other for the “body.” The Gummi Pet Cockroach candies will be available in blackberry and cherry, grape and lime, and orange and blackberry.
Introduction Date: June 2012
Notes: I really don’t have a problem with novelty shapes as a rule. But this one isn’t quite the right coloring, it looks more like a flattened spider and certainly the size is out of scale. Also, what’s intimidating about Cockroaches is their crunchy shell. Jelly Belly was so accurate with their flavors for the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans (well, I hear that they were, I didn’t try all of them) it’s just a little disappointing that they didn’t go for the scary accuracy of big bugs instead.

Name: Dulce de Leche Ovation Sticks
Brand: SweetWorks, Inc.
Description: Ovation Sticks feature caramel truffle centers covered in all-natural dark chocolate.
Introduction Date: Available Now
Notes: The Ovation sticks are usually individually wrapped, which makes them ideal for serving in situations where you don’t want a big pile of opened chocolate. But for snacking for yourself, it’s a little daunting to either unwrap or observe all the wrappers you’ve created after a binge.

Name: Juicy Drop Taffy
Brand: Bazooka (Topps)
Description: The taffy packs in 2.36-ounce pouches containing eight pieces and a sour gel applicator, which lets consumers increase the sour flavor on the candy, the company says. The new items will debut in Blue Rebel and Knock Out Punch flavors.
Introduction Date: Available Now
Notes:

Name: Milk Chocolate Covered Gretzels, Twisted Toffee & Pretzel and Pecan-dy
Brand: Sanders Candy
Description: Milk Chocolate Covered Gretzels are cinnamon graham crackers shaped to resemble pretzels. Cashew Almond Pecan-dy is a mix of popcorn and caramel coated nuts. Chocolate Drizzled Cashew Almond Pecan-dy is the company’s popcorn and caramel-coated nut mix with dark and milk chocolate
Introduction Date: Available Now
Notes: The sweet and savory trend meets the comfort candy trend with Sanders. They redid all their packaging design recently, I think it suits them well and stands out.

Name: Gummy Cupcakes
Brand: Can You Imagine That!
Description: The fun-size gummy cupcakes with sprinkles come in a gift box and make a fantastic treat or sweet present.  And, if you’re looking for something a little more dramatic, there’s the Giant Gummy Cupcake, weighing in at 1 lb. Both are available in a variety of bright colors and flavors of gummy.
Introduction Date: Available Now
Notes: It’s far more appealing to eat food shaped like food than like vermin (though I’m not really a big consumer of cupcakes). These are deliriously cute and I’m probably going to buy them just to take their picture.

Here’s a couple of really early teases as well from Mars:

September: MilkyWay Caramel Apple Minis are bite-size bars featurirng apple flavor caramel covered in milk chocolate. Packing in 11.5-ounce lay down bags.

September: The return of Candy Corn White Chocolate M&Ms.

November: Twix Sugar Cookie Minis combines Twix with sugar cookies. The 10.5-oz. packages will carry a suggested retail price of $3.99;

November: 3 Musketeers Hot Cocoa with Marshmallow Minis is a new limited-edition holiday flavor that will be available in a 10-oz. bag for a suggested retail price of $3.99.

Ferrero Hazelnut Eggs are new in the United States for Easter. They’re based on the popular Ferrero line of Rochers, not their Kinder Eggs (which are illegal in the United States).

The bag is expensive. It was 3.5 ounces and cost $3.99. There are only 10 little eggs inside. However, I liked the spare packaging which did the job of protecting the foil wrapped eggs as they were all fresh and unmarred.

The package says that they’re Crispy bite size eggs smothered in milk chocolate with luscious cream. Each egg is about 1.5 inches long.

The chocolate shell is extremely light in color, the ingredients bear this out, with sugar as the first ingredient in the shell and milk as the second with cocoa butter and cocoa mass pulling up the third and fourth slots.

It smells extremely sweet, a little like pudding and nutella. The bite is soft, the construction is similar to a Ferrero Rocher. There’s a nearly liquid hazelnut cream center, a crisp cookie shell and then the chocolate coating on the outside. (There are no crushed nuts in this item.)

The creamy center is sweet, sticky and quite slick. The smoothness gives up the roasted hazelnut flavors easily, and matches the sweetness of the chocolate shell very well. The light wafery crisp of the inner shell is the only thing that breaks it up and gives a little malty corn flake note to it (it’s made with wheat flour).

Ferrero Cocoa Eggs are like Ferrero Rondnoir. There’s a dark chocolate shell, a wafery light shell under that and a creamy dark chocolate filling. There’s only a touch of hazelnut in there, according to the ingredients, and I really didn’t catch any of the flavors.

Like it’s hazelnut buddy, there’s also a bit of palm oil in the center, which is a little disappointing, but expected. The Ferrero group has pledged to sustainably source their cocoa and palm oil by 2015. They also say that they don’t purchase cocoa from slave farms, but don’t have a formal certification process yet.

The dark chocolate is well rounded, with a strong fudgy flavor like brownies. There’s even a slight bitter note to it that’s balanced out by the much sweeter creamy filling and more bland wafers.

I liked the Cocoa Eggs a bit better than the Hazelnut. They’re both different from their year round versions as well, which means that they are a little more “special” than just a reshaping and some pastel packaging.

They contain nuts, milk, soy and gluten. The only artificial ingredient was vanillin. They’re filled with fat (delicious fat) and clock in at 163 calories per ounce, on the very high side for candy.

I found them expensive for the amount and quality of the product. They were good, but not fantastic. For the same money, I’d probably be happier with See’s Scotchmallow Eggs.

Related Candies

1. Aldi Choceur Flame Egg & Chocolate Rabbit
2. Tony’s Chocolonely Chocolate Easter Eggs
3. Milka L’il Scoops
4. An Easter Dash - Reviews in Short
5. Godiva Spring Pearls
6. Ferrero Prestige (Ferrero Garden)
7. Ferrero Raffaello & Rondnoir
8. Ferrero Rocher

I was shopping for candy downtown at Jack’s Wholesale Candy and found these brittle disks. They’re made by a local company named Las Trojes which is based in Anaheim. I’m not quite sure what the name means, as troje is a granary or barn but could also be a storehouse.

The packages are quite simple, and do a fantastic job of showing off the product. They’re all extremely simple: a mix of sugar and seeds and/or nuts. They were also very inexpensive, at only $1 each for a two ounce package.Seed brittles are a beguilingly good snack but they’re also a great way to bind together vexing little seeds into something easier to transport and consume.

I picked up all three varieties they had at the store.

The packaging features a thick piece of cellophane folded over the round disk and held in place by the label sticker on the back (or is it the front?).

Las Trojes Pepitoria Mixed Seeds Brittle is quite a gorgeous little find. There are peanuts, sesame seeds, almonds, coconut and pumpkin seeds (pepitas) with only the addition of sugar to hold it all together. There are no added oils or partially hydrogenated fats or gelatins. It’s a vegan snack.

The disk is easy to snap apart for eating. It’s firm and crisp, but if you live in a humid area, they can become a sticky mess quite quickly. I don’t expect these would do well in parts of Texas or Florida for that reason.

The distribution of nuts and seeds is pretty even, I didn’t find parts that seemed to be all one nut, though peanuts were by far the largest bulk. The plank smells quite toasty, with a little note of toasted sesame and perhaps even a bit of burnt nuts. The sugar has a honey note to it but doesn’t add a whole lot of sweetness to the brittle, as there really isn’t much more than is needed to bind everything together. The pepitas, peanuts and sesame seeds have the strongest flavor, I didn’t catch much of a contribution from the almonds or coconut.

Las Trojes Pepitoria Coconut Brittle is a great looking disk. It’s thick and crisp and doesn’t look like anything you’d make at home with store bought coconut flakes. These look fresh and rustic.

The brittle has a little bit more bend to it, probably because the coconut is more fibrous and makes breaking it a little harder. The toasted coconut scent is incredible, the caramel and creamy tropical notes all swirl together. Though there’s a lot of crunch at first, it turns very chewy after that. The toffee flavor of the burnt sugar is great and again, it’s far from being too sweet, though it is the sweetest of the three products.

Las Trojes Pepitoria Pepita Brittle is a great mix of greens and browns, the pumpkin seeds are glossy and toasty. I love pepitas in trail mixes, but I never eat them on their own. It smells like toasted pumpkin seeds, just like you’d expect. The seeds are crunchy and a little grassy tasting. This is the least sweet of the entire set and for the most part it’s about the pumpkin seeds. Though some of the seeds looked a bit burnt, I didn’t get the same sort of bitter toasted note from this that I did with the mixed brittle.

They’re all beautiful and wholesome snacks that barely qualify as candy. That’s not to say that they’re not laden with calories. The Pepita one is the leanest at 260 calories for the 2 ounce portion, but it also has 7 grams of protein and only 16 grams of sugars. The Mixed Brittle is 300 calories but packs 8 grams of protein and only 15 grams of sugar. The fat in there is from the nuts and seeds, which are generally regarded to be better for you than dairy or animal fats ... though still watch the calorie count. The Coconut one comes in as full on candy, even with only two ingredients with 310 calories, 200 of them from fat and only 3 grams of protein.

All the nutrition aside, I find these sorts of snacks more satisfying than many candies. There’s a great mix of textures and flavors, plus they’re really beautiful to look at. I’d definitely pick these up again, but I’d probably try to share them. They work far better when consumed right after opening and of course I find it hard to keep from eating the whole package anyway.

Related Candies

1. Joyva Sesame Crunch
2. Adams & Brooks P-Nuttles plus Coconut
3. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
4. El Almendro Turron Selection
5. Old Dominion Brittle
6. Morning Glory Confections: Chai Tea & Cashew Brittle
7. Munch Bar
8. Pocky Kurogoma (Black Sesame)

The drug stores and big box discounters are in full Easter mode right now. But I found a little display of St. Patrick’s Day items at Target on an endcap near the party supplies. It included the Hershey’s Kisses filled with Creme de Menthe in a very green bag accented with green shamrocks.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d had these before, I had to pull out my droid phone and look it up. Even then, I still suspected that these were another limited edition Hershey’s Kisses item, the Mint Truffle Kisses (reviewed in 2007).

The Kiss packaging is to the point. They’re green folk. Whoop de doo. The little flags say Creme de Menthe, which is a bit generic in a way, I was hoping they’d have little shamrocks on them instead of dots to separate the text.

The molded Kisses are sharp, consistent and shiny. They smell quite minty and a little chocolatey. The semi sweet shell is mild and imbued with quite a bit of mint, whether it started that way or not. The melt is good, for a Hershey’s chocolate item, not terribly smooth, but not chalky or fudgy either. The center is a little more like a smooth fudge, not grainy but not like a flowing fondant like a cordial. It’s a bit salty, which balances the sweet well and gives the peppermint a little bit more dimension.

I liked them well enough. It’s easy to eat just a few of them as a little refreshment. I didn’t find myself reaching for them over and over again after three or so. The mint flavor is clean and not too sickly sticky.

The ingredients list is long and features a lot of vegetable oil for the center (the second ingredient for the filling) which includes palm oil. The allergen statement only lists peanuts (and of course it’s made with dairy products and soy) but says nothing about tree nuts or gluten. Hershey’s is far behind the rest of the chocolate world with its ethical sourcing of cocoa, so if you’re looking for a nice minty treat without enslaving children, try Seth Ellis Mint Sun Cups or the Divine After Dinner Mints.

Related Candies

1. Sun Cups Dark Chocolate Mint Cups
2. Tea Forte Minteas Lemongrass Yuzu
3. An Easter Dash - Reviews in Short
4. Hershey’s Bliss Creme de Menthe Meltaway Center
5. Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
6. Hershey’s Mint Truffle Kisses
7. Kisses Coconut Creme
8. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
9. Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses

Mars has introduced White Chocolate M&Ms a couple of times in the past, most notably the M&Ms Pirate Pearls tie in with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

This new Easter version of M&Ms White Chocolate is a little different in all the right ways.

The first thing is the appropriateness. White Chocolate is inextricably tied to my memories of Easter. The white confection works so well with pastel colors, it’s milky sweetness just embodies the sugary overload of the season.

I picked up this bag at Target, it’s over a half a pound but still a little pricey at $3.19 for the bag at regular price. Though they’re Easter themed, with the Red M&M wearing a furry white rabbit suit on the package, it’s just the colors. There are no little icons on them like M&Ms has done in the past with the holiday versions.

The morsels are larger than regular M&Ms. I’ve come to expect this with the limited edition M&Ms. The Dark Chocolate Mint M&Ms are also oversized and part of me wonders if they’re just using the former Mega M&Ms production line or the M&Ms Premium.

The large size and thick shell means that there are a lot of textures going on, and each gets to shine. The shell is crunchy and crisp. The light coloring means that there’s no perceptible off flavoring from the colors for me. The centers are smooth and creamy. When I say cream, it’s like it’s real dairy cream. Instead of tasting like frosting, these taste more like vanilla pudding. The white chocolate has both a lot of cocoa butter and milk solids in it. Cocoa butter is the second ingredient, so it’s quite light without being overly sweet or greasy.

While I wasn’t blown away by the earlier Pirate Pearls, this larger size and less sweet flavor is really quite good. Granted, you have to like white chocolate in the first place, but for a mass-marketed white chocolate product, Mars has addressed a lot of the confections shortcomings quite well.

The package lists possible allergens as peanuts, almonds and wheat and it’s definitely made with dairy and soy. Mars has not released any information about going fair trade or ethically sourcing their current American cocoa products, though they’re planning release of ethically trade chocolate products in Europe. (More on that here at Change.org.)

Related Candies

1. Dove Promises White Chocolate
2. M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn
3. Cookies ‘n’ Creme Showdown
4. M&Ms Premiums
5. See’s Hollow Eggs with Novelty
6. M&Ms Line
7. Green and Black’s White Chocolate