Candy Blog

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

For a long time I’ve thought that Arcor candy is some of the worst in the world. Arcor is a huge company and makes candy for many Central and South American countries and actually has quite a big presence in the United States as well. I find their chocolate products disappointing, as well as those with cookies or nuts in them. So I was rather surprised at how much I liked these filled hard candy fruit rods I picked up in July. They little wrappers call them Veni.

They’re made in the Italian tradition of fruity filled hard candies. The wrappers are also nice, a heavy foil with a wax paper lining. The anana (pineapple) was particularly good.

The past few times I’ve been in Target I’ve eyed these Werther’s Original CaraMelts. I wasn’t quite sure what they were, but the did seem to be different.

I like the bag, it’s a little gusseted mylar/plastic bag that stands up easily. There’s not a lot of extra air or weight to it, so it seems efficient but still inviting and durable.

The package says that they’re Soft Creamy Caramel that Melts in Your Mouth. I didn’t know what that meant because the image on the front was just a drawing, not a photo of the actual product. The ingredients list didn’t actually sound that tasty: Sugar, Vegetable Fat (from one or more of the following: Sheanut Oil, Illipe Butter, Mango Oil, Sal Oil, Palm Oil), Cream Powder, Sweet Whey Powder, Butter Fat, Maltodextrin, Skim Milk Powder, Fat Reduced Cocoa, Soy Lecithin, Caramel Sugar Syrup, Artificial Flavor, Salt.

It sounds like some sort of artificial coffee creamer.

The pieces inside are individually wrapped and look a lot like other Werther’s Original Caramel products. Each was well protected and emerged looking in good condition.

The pieces are odd. They’re stocky oval swirls of solid “white confection” in some sort of butter toffee flavor. I was thinking they’d be like butterscotch baking chips. The color is kind of dead - it’s not yellow (or even artificially colored at all) but more of a that grayish color that some people turn before they faint. They’re shiny, but not slick looking. The color reminds me of support stockings.

The smell is, well, buttery. It’s fake but not like the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly. It’s pleasant and not overwhelming. There’s a lot of milky dairy notes to it, and guessing from the ingredients that’s an authentic scent. The bite is like a white chocolate confection. It’s quite smooth but lacks a good melt - it’s like the melting point is a little too high for the human mouth. So it’s vaguely waxy and greasy at the same time. The flavor is lightly salted and buttery with a toffee and caramel note.

I just can’t figure out why I’d want to eat these, unless I was looking to put on weight and perhaps get some calcium (8% of your RDA in 7 pieces). They’re not too sweet, but also just not very satisfying for any of the cravings I get on a regular basis.

I like the classic Werther’s products, but their diversion into chocolate products (I don’t know what to even call this) is hugely disappointing. I think the best caramel product Storck makes is Reisen.

Related Candies

1. Rococo Bee Bars
2. Storck Toffifay
3. Werther’s Original Caramel Dreams
4. Werther’s Caramel Coffee Hard Candies
5. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
6. Green and Black’s White Chocolate

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