Candy Blog

After Christmas last year I bought some marzipan that I actually loved. Made by Niederegger in Germany, these folks have been making marzipan for over 200 years. I wanted to buy more, but the only ones I’ve seen in stores are the regular flavor which I tried at the Fancy Food Show and found to be okay.

While I’m not ordinarily a marzipan fan, it’s my dislike for Amaretto that prompts my avoidance, because I actually love almonds and eat them just about every day. But I’m coming around on marzipan ... Charles Chocolates makes an excellent and zesty set of marzipan and I was hoping that Marzipan Orange was a more easily available version of it. (But sadly, really not less expensive.)

I was a little irritated when I opened the bar to photograph it and found that it was slightly bloomed. At first I cursed myself for not storing it properly (this was before the Great Heat Wave of Labor Day Weekend ‘07 that got temps in my candy studio up to 99 degrees during the day when the power went out), but when I opened the other chocolate items my husband brought back from NYC (the Ritter Sport Schokowurfel and another bar) I found that it was just this one and then I raised my fist to curse the folks who sold him a SIX DOLLAR bar that had not been stored properly.

But you know, I ate it anyway. ‘Cuz it smelled sooooo good. I feel pretty good about it, too.

It smells like someone has been in the kitchen juicing fresh oranges and perhaps baking cookies at the same time. The orange zest scent is lovely with an added note of vanilla and a sort of caramelly nut smell topped off with a light chocolate. It makes me happy.

Though the chocolate wasn’t as creamy-melt-in-your-mouth as the capuccino one I had before, I’m pretty confident that this was still tasty stuff, with full chocolate flavor to add to the light zest of citrus. The marzipan was firm and a little on the dry side and only lightly sweet (one of the hallmarks of Niederegger). It wasn’t a super-smooth, doughy version like a fondant or anything, this felt like a rustic almond paste. (It’s pretty high in protein too, 4 grams per 1.4 ounce serving.)

I would definitely plunk down $6 again for a fresh and properly stored bar. I saw on the Niederegger website that they little foil wrapped pieces in various fruity flavors (this is how I’ve tried the plain), I’m going to keep my eyes peeled at the holidays at places like Cost Plus World Market. If you’ve tried these before, where have you found them? GermanDeli.com has the orange bar (and on sale for $4.99 right now).

Unfortunately it’s not vegan (milk in the semisweet chocolate) but it is otherwise vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Soubeyran Array
2. Queen Anne Orange
3. Niederegger Capuccino Marzipan
4. Hachez Chocolates
5. Orange KitKat

I guess if there were a national flavor for Canada, it’d be Maple. After all, there’s a Maple leaf on their flag. How cool is it that a flag actually features a flavor? (I don’t consider dragon or eagle to be a flavor ... though I suppose the Olive branches of Eritrea may count.)

Lately Canada has seen quite a few candy bars featuring Maple in it, including the shockingly red-centered Oh Henry! Oh Canada! bar and a version of the Coffee Crisp.

Caramilk are not found in the US, but its cousin, the Caramello is. It’s just a Cadbury milk chocolate bar with a flowing caramel bubble inside each section. The simplicity Caramilk Maple bar really appealed to me, especially since I was hoping that the flavor of maple would cut through the intense sweetness that keeps me from eating Caramellos more often than every 5 years. (Yes, the sweetness is that satisfying!)

This Caramilk Maple bar was the full 100 gram version (3.5 ounces). A little too much Caramilk, really, but beggars can’t be choosers (Amber brought this to me from Toronto back in April).

Even without breaking a section open to reveal the molten caramel, the bar smelled like sweet, woodsy maple.

Biting into the little section causes the caramel to ooze out. It’s actually pretty nice, smooth and creamy and not too sweet ... it appears that the chocolate itself is the throat-burningly sweet part of this bar. The caramel filling is woodsy tasting without being too artificial and has a little salty hit to it. The milk chocolate, well it’s Cadbury and it has a distinct milky flavor to it that many folks crave. I’m not one of them, but I find it interesting. It reminds me of baby formula or powdered milk.

It’s a fun bar, and I think I’d probably like it in the single-portion size better (they also have a slightly different proportion of chocolate to caramel) and they also come in the Cadbury Caramel Egg for Easter. (I think they’ll be back next year.)

Note: this was not marked Kosher, though American Cadbury products are.

Related Candies

1. Eat-More
2. Naked Chocolate Maltballs
3. Pure Fun Candy Floss
4. Russell Stover Cream Eggs
5. Pearson’s Buns

What fun results! I always like it when readers surprise me with their answers. I thought for sure that Bar None or Marathon would win (though Marathon has an adequate substitute in Curly Wurly). I voted for Bar None.

Who knew there was such passion out there for Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy!

What else did I miss on the list of extinct candies?

Related Candies

1. Twix PB
2. Doscher’s French Chew Taffy
3. I Miss: Bar None
4. Goodbye Reed’s
5. I Miss: Marathon

Here’s the top 10 search strings that brought folks to Candy Blog last month (except for searching for Candy Blog of course).

1. rose petal donuts los angeles
2. M&Ms
3. carnival skittles
4. hershey cocoa reserve size
5. japanese candy
6. bonkers candy
7. trader joes
8. choxie
9. sour skittles
10. maya gold

Well, this past month had a couple of surprises. Honestly, I can’t figure out “rose petal dontus los angeles” at all. Not only that, I can’t even find what page on my site they’d find when entering those search phrases ... let alone why my site was visited 379 times as a result! The second strange one was the “hershey cocoa reserve size”, and I do come up as the first result on google. However, why 233 folks were looking for that, I have no idea. My guess is these are spambots of some sort sifting through my site contents with these keywords, looking for things to swipe from my site to put on theirs. It happens.

The fun thing is to see the staying power of Carnival Skittles (did you know there’s a Carnival Skittles flavored gum now?) ... I wonder what will be next?

There used to be rules and people followed them. Oh, they were informal; things like no white shoes after Labor Day, your shoes should match your belt. Seasonal merchandise wouldn’t be put out until the previous holiday was over (no Christmas goodies before Thanksgiving). But those rules are long gone.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Halloween candy out already at the RiteAid before Labor Day. But at least this was something different. Instead of fruity flavors, this twist is from Brach’s Milk Maid line and is called Caramel Candy Corn.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with Candy Corn. Well, some folks have a love-love or a hate-hate ... which averages out in the big scheme of things to a love-hate for the general population. I hate-love candy corn. I don’t really like eating it, but I love looking at it and the smell of it.

This stuff smells really promising, if a little overwhelming. Like caramelized sugar. It smelled so great in the store, I really wanted to take it home. Of course in the car (which I admit was as hot as one of those scented oil diffusers) the smell started getting to me in the way that candle stores do.

It all boils down to this, if you like Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly, you’ll probably like Caramel Candy Corn. I don’t and I didn’t.

The texture is good, a nice smooth fondant. The white tip is unflavored and the two lower layers, orange and brown, are butter flavored fondant. The caramel flavor that the smell implies is completely missing, instead it has that intense note of butter flavored popcorn just crackling away in the microwave.

I just didn’t like them as much as I wanted to. Not nearly as much as the Brach’s Autum Mix (candy corn, Indian corn and mellow cremes). I was really unhappy that it was $2.29 for the bag to boot ... yeah, it’s a 19 ounce bag, but what do I need 19 ounces of buttered popcorn flavored candy corn for?

Related Candies

1. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
2. Caramel Previews: Mitchell Sweets & Caramoos
3. Spangler Candy Canes
4. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
5. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses