Candy Blog

Nabisco Oreos were one of my favorite cookies. Most of what I like though is the crispy and crumbly dark chocolate cookie. Their initial form, the Oreo Biscuit, was introduced in 1912 and later became the format we know today with the molded sandwich cookie in 1952. One of the best mashups ever invented using Oreos was Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream. There are so many things you can do with Oreos, so it seems a little odd that Nabisco never came out with their own Oreo chocolate bar in the United States. Perhaps it’s their complacency that they’re the most popular cookie in the country. In Asia though, Nabisco tries harder. They have Oreo Chocolate Bars.

I picked up the Nabisco Oreo Bitter Bar at the Japanese market. The standard Oreo Bar has a cream filling with bits of chocolate cookies embedded in it, then the whole thing is covered in chocolate. When I looked at the ingredients on this bitter bar, I was pleased to see the intensity of the chocolate ingredients and decided that maybe this could be the ideal marriage of the Oreo Cookie and the candy bar.

The wrapper is in the familiar Oreo Blue color but decorated with a cacao pod and a little gold ribbon that says bitter in the center. The back of the wrapper is in Japanese though my imported one has a little English sticker on it with the ingredients & nutritional panel.

The bar isn’t that big, it’s only 1.35 ounces, so it weighs less than a pair of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (1.5 ounces) but still manages to contain 216 calories. The wrapper is 6.5” long but the actual bar is only 4.5”. I can’t complain since the bars I bought were pretty flawless looking, so it must have done a nice job of protecting the contents.

The bar smells toasty and sweet, like a cup of hot chocolate. The bite is firm, the center isn’t a soft truffle, instead it’s kind of like a firm cream, like the center of a Frango. There are cookie bits mixed into the dark chocolate center, so the melt isn’t quite smooth because of the crumbs. There is a distinct bitter note of charcoal and deep cocoa

The chocolate coating outside is not terribly dark but is really creamy and smooth.

The ingredients impressed me for the most part, no tropical oils, no partially hydrogenated fats. It’s all milk and cocoa butter. Sure there’s sugar in there and even a small amount of high fructose corn syrup (in the cookie part, I believe), but I overlooked that.

I loved this bar. Absolutely loved it. I bought one while shopping with my sister in Little Tokyo with no intention of reviewing it, then after eating it I went back and bought three more. They were $2.19 each, and I’m pretty price conscious, so that alone is an endorsement. However, most other reviews I saw of it online were underwhelming. I can see their point, it is a little dry and kind of single note with the bitter chocolate cookie dominating.

The bars come in other versions. Aside from the Cookies ‘n’ Cream classic style, they’ve also been available in caramel coffee, strawberry, matcha, banana and macadamia nut.

Related Candies

1. Nestle KitKat SemiSweet & Bitter Almond
2. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
3. Cookies ‘n’ Creme Showdown
4. Trader Joe’s Mint Joe Joe’s versus Mint Oreos
5. Cookie Dough Bites
6. Take 5 Chocolate Cookie
7. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint

P-Nuttles are a pure comfort candy. I associate them with vending machines and truck stops, and I can see why they’d be a favorite snack for both situations. They’re loaded with satisfying protein from the peanuts and a sweet crunch from the toffee coating. Throw in a little salt and it’s has a bit of a savory kick that makes it as much a snack food as a candy.

Peanuts that are individually covered in toffee are far easier to eat then barks or brittles, so I also congratulate Adams & Brooks on solving that dispensing issue.

I saw this new flavor announced last year at the Sweets and Snacks Expo and finally found it at my neighborhood Walgreen’s: P-Nuttles plus Coconut.

The concept is pretty simple, fresh roasted peanuts are coated in a coconut toffee. In addition to the toffee peanuts, a few coconut jelly beans are also thrown into the mix.

The peanuts are not large, but most are fresh and tasty. I ate about half of the bag and found only one bad nut. (It’s never fun, but this is the hazard with using natural ingredients.) The toffee coating varies, some had barely a sheen on them, but others a hefty shell. The flavor is sweet with a light touch of butter. The saltiness varies widely, as does the coconut flavor. Some were quite tropical tasting and others were very salty. I rather liked the variation. The jelly beans are small and pack a pretty good coconut zap. They’re sweet and chewy, though not terribly soft.

I didn’t get any coconut texture in any of this, which I quite enjoy. But the tropical coconut notes were a welcome addition to a rather comforting but bland peanut and toffee experience. I didn’t think I’d care of mixing jelly beans, a decidedly non-organic sort of texture product, with the more artisan peanuts covered in toffee. However, it worked very well. The smooth and consistent flavor of the jelly beans was a welcome sort of dependability when contrasting the varying peanuts and their cloaks of toffee.

Adams Brooks will be introducing more twists on the classic P-Nuttles later this year: P-Nuttles Peanuts Smokey Style and P-Nuttles Peanuts Chili*Lime.

The jelly beans contain confectioners glaze, so this combination is not vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
2. Old Dominion Brittle
3. Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
4. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
5. P-Nuttles
6. Zagnut
7. Chick-o-Stick

The Choceur Milk Chocolate Flame Egg is 12.4 ounces of chocolate for only $3.99. It’s an impressive presentation of chocolate. The packaging is a paperboard sleeve over a huge blue or pink mylar wrapping. The egg is about six inches high and made as two separate hemispheres. Each side is wrapped in gold foil then taped together with a pretty sticker with red butterflies on it. Inside the egg is a little cellophane bag with candies. In the Pink Flame Egg is a bag of milk chocolate eggs with vanilla creme wrapped in gold foil. In the other egg is a little assortment of hazelnut chocolates.

The candy is made in Germany. The package says that it’s all real milk chocolate and has no artificial flavors or colors

They traveled quite well, considering the fact that my mother bought them in Ohio, then took the train to Philadelphia then all the way back to Los Angeles. One of the eggs had a little dent in it, like someone put a thumb through it, though none of it damaged the packaging, so I felt it was still good to eat.

The milk chocolate shell is, well, milky and sweet. It’s European style milk chocolate, so the milk flavors echo that of dried milk a bit, so there’s a little malty note. It’s smooth, but not silky like Dove or Lindt. The tempering is good, everything was shiny and crisp.

The Pink Sleeve version had a small assortment of chocolates inside. There were four different candies with an elegant presentation. They were a little scuffed up here and there, since they were inside a bag inside the egg instead of a little tray.

The dark chocolate faceted piece is Nougat in Milk Chocolate. It was a milk chocolate cream with hazelnut paste and hazelnut pieces in a very mild dark chocolate shell.

The star for me was the Soft Caramel Covered with Crisp Rice and Milk Chocolate piece that looks kind of like a miniature 100 Grand bar. And it was rather similar. The center was a milk chocolate cream nougat which was covered in caramel then the crisped rice mixed into the milk chocolate. It was sweet but had a lot of texture, a little chewy and a little crunchy.

The Hazelnut Trio was a little row of hazelnuts inside what looks like a mountain range. The white chocolate topping was sweet and quite milky while the fresh but small hazelnut at the center of each mountain lent a large crunch to the whole thing.

The red foil wrapped chocolate is Milk Chocolate with Apricot Flavored Center. I didn’t read the package before I ate the first one, so I really didn’t know what it was. The center is a very soft and creamy ganache with a fruity flavor that I thought might be some sort of fruit liqueur, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It’s sweet but has a light melon or actual apricot note to it.

The second egg in the Blue Sleeve had more than a dozen large gold foil wrapped eggs inside. The package calls them Cream Filled Milk Chocolate Eggs.

The eggs are very long and narrow, a little over 1.5 inches long. The matte foil is quite pretty and I have to say that nestling the eggs into the half of the chocolate shell and placing it on a platter is a lovely presentation.

The center is soft and creamy with only a slight grain to it, like a good vanilla buttercream frosting. The flavors aren’t intense though the milky notes of the chocolate do take over. It’s a lot of sweet at all once, but thankfully there’s a light salty note to it as well. The center is made from palm fat, so I’d suggest a little moderation on that front and perhaps stick to the milk chocolate egg shell.

While I don’t think I’d just buy these for eating, I loved the look of them and for less than $4 for 3/4 of a pound of actual chocolate, I’d call it an excellent value. It’s a great option for a household with children, who are more likely to dig into the sweeter sides and of course everyone like gigantic versions of everyday items.

The Choceur Milk Chocolate Bunny is 5.29 ounces and made of German chocolate. It resembles the Lindt chocolate bunny quite a bit, though when unwrapped it has some little molded details that the Lindt rabbit lacks. At $1.99, it’s an excellent deal. It’s sizable and easy to eat, as it’s a hollow bunny.

The foil decorating is charming and nicely done to accentuate the shapes like legs, ear contours and mouth.

The bunny looks great. Again, these little friends traveled all the way across the country by rail protected only by their foil and placed inside another bag.

It’s absolutely charming as well, and by that I mean the little collar it wears has an actual metal charm with a rabbit silhouette on it. The elastic gold band is sized about right for a child or small adult (I had it around my wrist for a few hours this morning without any loss of circulation).

A Lindt Rabbit is about twice the price (I saw them for $3.99 this season) and weighs only 3.5 ounces. This rabbit is 5.29 ounces. It should be noted that this is not Lindt chocolate. Choceur, Aldi’s house brand of chocolate, is made in Germany. It’s the same, as far as I can tell, as the egg shells of the Flame Eggs. It’s sweet and milky and with only the slightest cocoa notes to it. Still, it’s pleasant and if you’re presenting this to a child, they will not be disappointed. It’s a beefy looking, rotund little rabbit with thick walls and a good shape. So if you’re going for true chocolate quality and flavor, go for Lindt (or even more upscale with Lake Champlain or See’s). The value here is certainly better than the American options but the flavor profile is certainly in the European style.

Related Candies

1. RM Palmer My Little Bunny
2. The All American Chocolate Bunny Battle
3. Happy Christmas Sweet Friends
4. Riegelein Confiserie Hollow Chocolate
5. Lake Champlain & See’s Bunny Battle
6. See’s Hollow Eggs with Novelty
7. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
8. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
9. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny

It’s National Jelly Bean Day and it’s fun that this year it falls on Good Friday, just before the high holy day of Jelly Beans, Easter.

These jelly beans are from Jelly Belly. I got them at the ISM Cologne candy fair and they’re a little different from something you’d get in North America, they’re Mooncake Jelly Belly.

Mooncakes are little Chinese pastries, a filled cake that sometimes has lotus seed paste but I’ve seen them more often here in the Los Angeles Chinatown with red bean paste. These jelly beans have an odd flavor to them that took a while to describe. They’re sweet and have a toasted marshmallow component but also have a floral musk melon and watermelon note. Then the red bean flavors come out with the center of the bean, an earthier flavor. As far as jelly beans go, this combination is a winner for me.

Jelly Belly not only makes gourmet jelly beans for the American market, they’re quite easy to find in large metropolitan areas. I saw many candy stores in Amsterdam and Cologne had them. Jelly Belly has one factory outside of the United States, in Thailand, where I think these were made. I was told that they’re not available in the United States. I guess it’s just one more reason to travel the world.

Koppers Chocolates just introduced these cute little Mini Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Eggs.

These little gems are simple but unexpected. The center is a lightly vanilla marshmallow, a coating of milk chocolate and then a candy shell. They look like bright blue robin’s eggs. They’re an ideal Easter candy and I’m quite surprised now that I think about it that no one has made these before. (How long before this is the new M&Ms flavor?)