Candy Blog

Last time I was a Trader Joe’s, I was on the prowl for new candies. Usually October is a great time to find new things on the shelves. I completely missed this Trader Joe’s Lumpy Bumpy Bar. Not because there weren’t a lot of them on display, but simply because I thought it was house brand pain reliever.

I can’t quite put my finger on why it doesn’t look like a candy bar, perhaps it’s a bit more long cube shaped than bar shaped. Perhaps it’s the red background with yellow text and blue accents which remind me of those visual disturbances that accompany migraines.

But now that I’ve found it (thanks to a phone call from my husband at the store asking me if I wanted to try it), I have to set aside all that and look at what’s on the inside.

The box does seem like a bit of overpackaging, inside is a mylar wrapper around the bar as well. The wrapper itself is stupidly huge, about one and half times the length of the bar, so it’s folded over inside the box. Perhaps that keeps the bar from moving around.

But once out of all of that it’s obvious why they call it the Lumpy Bumpy Bar.

It’s pretty beefy looking and feeling. It clocks in at two ounces even, so about the same as a Snickers. And the description of it is also similar: creamy caramel and peanut nougat drenched in dark chocolate.

The first bar (pictured) had a rather liberal lump of peanuts on top. The second bar (the one I’m actually basing this tasting on) had only four.

The bar smells smoky and rich, like toasted sugar, peanuts and chocolate.

The textures are extreme. There are the deep crunches of the nuts - both on top and inside the nougat. The strip of caramel on the top of the nougat but under the chocolate is firm and stringy. The nougat is mostly soft and grainy, until I got to the bottom where it was more like a tough caramel.

When chewed up together the peanuts have a definite dark and burnt taste that pushes over everything else in its way. The thin chocolate coating doesn’t contribute much besides holding the rest of it together in its cloak. The nougat is mostly disappointing. I was hoping when I heard the $2 price tag, that the nougat would be Italian, Spanish or French style. Instead it’s more like a Milky Way Midnight with peanuts.

The only part I liked was the part that I think was a mistake - the chewy nougat at the very bottom was stringy and smooth and had a light touch of toasted marshmallow flavor to it. But since only one of my bars did this, I can’t even be sure that it was on purpose. The caramel on the top barely registers as a flavor or texture.

The good news for candy fans though is that this is a certified gluten free product and the ingredients are all natural. There are milk, soy and egg products in it though.

This bar is coming in all over the map from other reviewers (and from the photos, it appears that the bars are actually different in the amount of each element): Futile Sniff loves it (but had no peanuts on top and far more caramel), Gigi Reviews had a similar experience to mine except I found both of mine rather salty, Diana Takes a Bite found it too chewy and big while Patti at Candy Yum Yum wrote it a love letter.  (Yes, it appears that all reviewers are women, I’m guessing the package looks too much like Midol for men to have taken notice yet. I must note that I’ve never purchased Midol, so if this is the kind of analgesic that comes inside that box, please let me know what I’ve been missing!)

So after all that, I’m still stuck on the See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar, it’s half the price (though not quite as large) and more responsibly packaged though it does have almonds instead of peanuts.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows
2. Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road Bar
3. BonBonBars: Malt Ganache & Scotch
4. Ferrara Nougats
5. Payday Fresh from the Factory
6. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolate
7. Snickers Dark

Though I obviously love candy, it’s pretty rare that I go out of my way to buy it. I just look for it wherever I happen to be. After all, the best thing about candy is its ubiquity.

The exception is the Wilbur Chocolate Factory with its little museum and factory store in Lititz, Pennsylvania. First, Wilbur chocolate products are not easy to find, especially since I live on the other coast. Yes, I can order online, but shipping costs and the possibility of melting always makes it a nail biting adventure for me. Second, the prices there on all the products in the store are fabulous. The website & catalogue offerings are spare, but in their little store they don’t just sell their own chocolate products, they also have pre-packed bags of candy favorites such as gummi bears, mint creams, Swedish fish, and various hard candies.

They also feature products like their own fudge and chocolate-covered site-made goodies (my sister got some chocolate covered marshmallows). I also found barley sugar candies and a local brand of a coffee crunch bar. The store is neat and clean, the service great and the candy is always fresh. So even though my sister lives an hour away, while there everyone (my sister, sister-in-law & mother) indulged me on the little diversion on a crisp fall afternoon. (We also went to Hershey’s Chocolate World and up to the Hotel Hershey for drinks.)

One of the items on my list when I got there was the Wilbur’s Milk Chocolate Crisp.

This big bar is 2.25 ounces and packaged simply and classically in a paper-foil wrap and a creamy yellow sleeve.

As part of my search for the best crisped rice bar, this was one that I was looking forward to. I was a little worried though. I’ve tasted, literally, thousands of different candies since the last time I had a Wilbur’s Milk Chocolate Crisp bar. Would it still hold up?

The first plus right away is that it’s a thick bar. I like a bar with depth to hold the crisped rice - I like my rice to get completely enveloped in the chocolate.

Next, the sections were easy to break for sharing or portioning.

The chocolate smelled a bit like milk and mostly like malt. Another great sign.

The chocolate is sweet, melts quickly and is much more silky than most other bars I’ve had lately, including the upscale ones. Yes, there’s a lot of fat in there, but I consider that a selling point as well.

The rice crunchies are a little small but plentiful enough. They have a little bit of salt and a good bit of malt as well.

The flavor combination is excellent, the textures meld well. It’s simple, it’s nicely done. I can’t resist. The Ghirardelli uses all-natural ingredients, this has some vanillin in it instead of vanilla plus some mono-diglycerides in the crisped rice.

I bought two of these bars and am regretting that I didn’t get more as they are both gone now. They were $1.59 at the Wilbur store and I would happily pay $2 for them at my local drug store chain.

Related Candies

1. Isle of Skye Seeds of Change Milk with Crispies
2. World’s Finest W.F. Crisp
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
5. Wheat Chocolate
6. Charles Chocolates Bars

Each year around this time there are lists of the best and worst Halloween candies. At the top folks always seem to have Candy Corn, but right in there is another misunderstood and underappreciated candy, Smarties.

There’s not much too them, they’re a simple tangy compressed dextrose candy stacked into a tight roll and wrapped in cellophane. For almost 60 years CeDe Candy has been churning out the chalky, barely flavored tablets. It’d be a rare Halloween Trick-or-Treat bag that didn’t have at least one roll. More recently CeDe’s product line has expanded to include Bubble Gum Smarties, Mega Smarties and now Xtreme Sour and Tropical Smarties.

The Tropical Smarties roll is attractive, orange and yellow accents give it a sunny, citrus look. The tablets themselves don’t look or smell any different from the original though. Original come in green, yellow, purple, pink, orange and white, Tropical seem to come in green, yellow, orange, pink and white.

In the case of the Tropical array, when eating mindlessly the rolls had a soft sweetness to them with some notes of pina colada and banana/strawberry. In the particular the yellow ones are banana (in the regular array I think they’re lemon) and the white ones seem to be the pina colada.

All of this causes too much thinking for something like Smarties though. Though the different colors are different flavors they’re one of the few candies I won’t separate before I eat.

Tropical Smarties are pleasant, a little milder (if that’s even possible) than the Original.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

The first thing I noticed about the X-Treme Sour Smarties is that they’re more vivid. Not quite SweeTarts colors, but pretty close.

The colors are green, yellow, purple, orange and pink (maybe red). They seem a bit denser and less powdery than the Original.

The flavors are actually perceivable, though not terribly notable. The tanginess is very high pitched. Where SweeTarts are a mid-range tartness (malic acid) these seem more citric acidy.

I like the balance of flavor to tartness with SweeTarts, but I can see this different kind of tartness and the back seat the actual flavors take having its appeal.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

On the whole, I’ve always loved Smarties in the sense that I will eat them, all of them, than later I will feel sick, curse them and vow never to eat them again because of my stupid lack of self control. The ubiquity of Smarties around Halloween is also accompanied by some sort of mind-warping amnesia ray ... and I again repeat my demonstration of how much power these little tablets have over me.

(Note: Smarties are called Rockets in Canada. Smarties made by Nestle are little chocolate lentils and are sold everywhere except for the USA.)

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Smarties Jelly Beans
3. Peeps Monster Mash Ups
4. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
5. Green Halloween

When I was a kid and we’d go to the Halloween Parade in town (Mechanicsburg, PA, if you’re curious), both folks from the floats and those watching from the sidewalks would throw corn. (Not on the cob, silly! Just dried feed corn.) I don’t know why we did it, but I kind of likened it to the harvest version of throwing rice at weddings.

This fun little remembrance has nothing to do with anything. Except that I was recently in Mechanicsburg and that it’s National Candy Corn Day and it made me think of throwing corn.

I picked up this Giant Eagle Candy Place Harvest Mix in Ohio. I believe they’re made by Mayfair. Though the colors looked rather faded in the package and the already known-quantity of the Brach’s Halloween Mix was on the shelves, too, I really wanted to try it. At 99 cents, the risk was minimal.

The assortment was much more broad than Brach’s. First, none of the shapes were assigned a particular color/flavor. Second, there were a lot of different shapes and this mix included both candy corn and Indian corn.

The shapes I found were: owl, skull & bones, pumpkin, jack-o-lantern, cat, witch, ear of corn, bat and mellowcreme pumpkin. The colors were orange, tan, yellow and brown.

The whole bag smelled kind of like band-aids and maple syrup.

Orange mellowcremes tasted like marshmallows and honey. Soft, smooth, very little grain and an even and sweet taste.

The tan shapes had a slight maple flavor to them and were my favorite in the bunch even though they lacked the touch of honey that the orange had.

The brown had a caramel and cocoa note, but it wasn’t very pronounced and seemed much sweeter than the other flavors.

Yellow tasted just like orange, which wasn’t a bad thing overall.

The candy corn were exceptionally smooth and had that light kiss of honey ... really good stuff.

While I didn’t like them as much as the Brach’s, this particular variety had no gelatin in it (but did have egg whites) and was made in the USA so there are many reasons why folks might prefer it.

Even though the colors aren’t as vibrant and the flavors not quite as remarkable it is a quality product and certainly worth the 99 cents I paid.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
3. Candy Corn Kisses
4. Brach’s Autumn Mix

Cost Plus World Market always has a great mix of candies that are both decorative and good quality. This year I picked up their Riegelein Confiserie Halloween Hollow Milk Chocolate foil mix.

They were on sale for $9.99, but going further into the store to the Christmas displays (yes, already out) they had several Christmas mixes that weren’t on sale ... for the same price.

The bag is big, as this is hollow chocolate, and holds 14.1 ounces of actual confection. Not a bad deal for 30% cacao milk chocolate, if it’s good quality.

There were two shapes and seven designs.

Each piece is rather light, weighing approximately 12 grams (about the same as a tasting square).

The designs are cute, the little figures come in ghost, witch, monster and jack-o-lantern ghost. The spheres are just different varieties of jack-o-lanterns.

Each of the pieces has a little design embossed on it, nothing that reflects the foil design in the slightest (I’m guessing that it’s generic so they can use the same molded pieces year round).

The figures look like of like board game pieces, little pegs with flat bottoms (though much bigger, about the size of a meaty thumb). The spheres are about the size of a golf ball.

The chocolate itself is glossy and well molded. It smells, well, a little like parmesan cheese and caramel. Not entirely sweet or chocolatey. I’m guessing this is the high milk content (14% minimum) that comes from dried whole milk.

It takes a little getting used to, it’s rich and creamy, rather smooth but still has a strong dairy component that is less confectionery tasting and more like something I’d expect in a bechamel.

The foils are very pretty and nicely done. They’re a bit thin and I had to pick my package carefully as it’s easy to break these (I’m guessing some thumbs poked through two of mine before I got it home).

The ingredients include PGPR and whey (not allowed in the American definition of real chocolate) but also natural vanilla. But the package was fresh, which I think makes a big difference. (Expiration is July 2009.)

They’re well worth it on sale after Halloween if you can find them, but I think that the Christmas ones are a bit nicer. There’s more variety to the shapes, the balls come with little strings so that you can hang them as edible ornaments and I found the Santa to be quite attractive and would make a great centerpiece accent. But I wouldn’t buy a bar of this chocolate.

Related Candies

1. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)
2. Mori Ex Cacao Gift Set
3. The Great Pumpkin Roundup
4. Thompson All Natural Milk Chocolate Crisp
5. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)