Candy Blog

Trader Joe’s always selects their confectionery products with a bit of an atypical flair. Sure, they have some organic mints in tins at the check out counter, but they’re also offering these Trader Joe’s Organic Gingermints as well.

The tin is cute and bold, featuring orange and salmon accents and some wasabi-green highlights. The mints are Kosher and made with organic ingredients, gluten free and vegan. The steel, hinged box holds 50 “mints” though they’re really just ginger flavored ... no peppermint or spearmint flavors in there.

The ingredients are simple:

Organic cane sugar, water, organic tapioca syrup, ginger oil, organic maple syrup, organic ground ginger root, agar, gum tragacanth

They’re rather creamy looking, just slightly off white which could be from the maple syrup or ground ginger root. They’re also very gingery. They’re smoother than Altoids, less of a chalky quality to them. When I let it dissolve, it was a little syrupy instead, kind of like a slippery elm lozenge. Mostly I crunch them, which means that I get a big kick of the ginger immediately. They’re sweet, but it’s more earthy and clean with a lingering heat from the ginger. They’re spicy, but the burn doesn’t accumulate, so I didn’t have trouble eating three or four in a row.

I suspect that these are just repackaged VerMints which are also made in Canada and have the same agar and gum tragacanth ingredients, but that’s fine with me these are certainly easier to find. Trader Joe’s also sells a straight Organic Peppermint tin as well.

Related Candies

1. Torie & Howard Organic Hard Candies
2. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
3. GoNaturally Hard Candies
4. VerMints
5. St. Claire’s Organic Mints & Tarts
6. Anis de Flavigny

The Skinny Cow line of candy from Nestle gives consumers the option of buying candy that has fewer calories than most other single servings.

The Skinny Cow Divine Filled Chocolates with Caramel is a slight offering, only 130 calories packed into only 1 ounce. As far as that making it a lighter version of candy, its caloric density is great than York Peppermint Patties (113 calories/ounce) or 3 Musketeers (122 calories/ounce). However, compared to other nuttier offerings like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (147 calories/ounce) or Snickers (134 calories/ounce), it sounds like a better choice. But the biggest issue becomes the satisfaction, because there’s no point in the empty calories of a treat if they’re not full of pleasure.

Line up the cute little medallion shaped pieces and you’ll be impressed. They’re adorable and because they’re so flat, even at about a third of an ounces they look like a lot of candy. They’re about 1.5 inches across. They smell like, well, sweet.

The pieces have a little stripe of sticky caramel inside. It’s not so much caramel as salty buttery flavored syrup. The milk chocolate is passable; it’s at least real but lacking in an satisfying chocolate flavor. The caramel’s salty kick balances out the overly sweet chocolate.

They’re disappointing, especially since I’ve had the Dove Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Promises, which are only 135 calories per ounce and about half the price per ounce. (Of course it’s up to you to control yourself and not eat a half pound in one sitting.)

Related Candies

1. Nestle Skinny Cow Divine Filled Chocolates with Peanut Butter Creme
2. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
3. UNREAL #5 Chocolate Caramel Nougat Bar
4. Trader Joe’s Les Chocolats Belgique (Belgian Bars): Caramel, Chocolate Buttercream & Speculoos
5. Nestle Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters
6. Nestle Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp
7. Milky Way Simply Caramel

Nestle is continuing their expansion of the confectionery line for Skinny Cow. The dairy dessert brand is now a candy brand as well. They started with wafer bars, which were passable, but contain a poor listing of ingredients.

These single serve packages of Divine Filled Chocolates have only 130 calories, but that’s to be expected because it’s only 1 ounce of candy. The wrapper describes the Peanut Butter Creme variety as velvety milk chocolate and delicious peanut butter creme.

As a treat, they’re lovely. The pieces are well sized and really attractive. If you lined them up on a plate, you’ll really feel like you’re getting a treat. So kudos to Skinny Cow for recognizing that part of candy is the beauty of it.

The ingredients list is long and the filling isn’t really peanut butter, it’s more like a peanut syrup, as it’s a combination of peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, dried milk and palm oil.

They smell sweet and nutty, not that unlike a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. The chocolate is soft and has an easy bite. The center of the chocolate has the thinnest possible strip of peanut butter creme in it. The chocolate is very sweet and milky, without much of a distinctive chocolate taste. The peanut butter creme is salty, that’s what I got at first, an intense amount of salt. There’s 80 mg in the package, which is a lot for only one ounce of candy, but really stood out because it was only in the filling. The peanut butter is gooey and melts right away because it’s mostly sugar, not peanuts.

I actually prefer the wafer bars, even though they’re not covered in real chocolate, because they have a lot of texture to them and feel more like a snack. This feels like a tease, it’s pretty but it doesn’t live up to the expectations that it’s going to be decadent or filling. There’s so little peanut butter in there and it’s only one ounce, the package has only 1 gram of protein. For the same calories, you could have three Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures (44 calories each, almost 1 gram of protein each).

I really don’t understand paying so much money for so little candy when it’s of poor quality. I’d say get something like the Q.Bel Wafer Bars or just have some Reese’s Miniatures (if you can stand to have the whole bag in the house).

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Simple Pleasures
2. Nestle Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters
3. Nestle Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp
4. Bissinger’s 100 Calorie Bar
5. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
6. Trader Joe’s 100 Calorie Chocolate
7. 100 Calorie Packs - How Lazy Are We?

One of my favorite items I picked up for Candy Blog review early on were some chocolate sticks from Japan. I thought their packaging was so clever and chic, I’ve been hoping to find them again. (Mostly I find they package their chocolate in little squares like the US.)

I was excited to see Meiji Dark Rum Milk Chocolate on eBay, so when my friends Robin & Amy were going to Japan, I put it on my wishlist. I got two boxes, which is good, because I ate the whole first box before even doing this review.

The box has a curious design, featuring a cut crystal goblet with rum as the main element below a medallion with the name of the candy. I’m not that familiar with how to serve rum straight, as I usually mix it, but in a goblet or even a more petite appertif size would still not be the way I’d go. (I’d probably serve it in a snifter or a lowball.)

Inside the box, each stick of chocolate is in a little individual wrapper. The box is not really full, they’re loosely packed in there and the whole thing weighs barely more than an ounce, so there’s no way to overindulge here.

Most of the package is in Japanese, so I can’t say for sure what the weight actually is but the figure 2.2% is mentioned on the front, I’m guessing that’s the alcohol content ... and there is real alcohol in here.

The sticks are three inches long and an ideal size (about 3.3 grams) for a very light treat.

One of my favorite candy bars is the Ritter Sport Rum Trauben Nuss, which also has real rum in it. This is a bit more pure, as it doesn’t have any fussy nuts or dried fruit in it. The sticks have a soft bite to them, this is not a dense or intense chocolate, though the rum notes are quite apparent when I opened it.

The chocolate has a quick and oily melt, a smooth and slick texture and a strange warm and cold sensation all at once. The oils in the chocolate (I suspect there are some other tropical oils in there) give it a cooling effect on the tongue, but the rum has a sort of warming effect on my throat. The chocolate isn’t very strong, it’s not terribly sweet and has a well rounded woodsy and milky profile.

I like my rum dark, I go for blackstrap because it has more of the smoky and toffee flavors. The rum here was more medicinal, more light, not quite smooth.

It’s not a candy for everyone, I find them pretty indulgent and a little weird, but I also enjoy rum balls.

Related Candies

1. Cadbury Dairy Milk Rum & Raisin
2. Winter Fancy Food Show 2010 Concludes
3. Doulton Liqueur Chocolates (Cointreau & Teacher’s)
4. Nips: Butter Rum & Peanut Butter Parfait
5. Rum Cordials
6. Ritter Sport Capuccino and Rum Trauben Nuss
7. Meiji Mild Bitter Chocolate Sticks

I saw these Haribo Hot Sticks first on the Candy Gurus site and knew I had to have them.

They’re a strange combination of flavors, at least to the American palate. The package describes them as Fruity-Spicy & Liquorice. They’re sugar crusted gummis in three flavor combinations: Hot Orange + Liquorice, Ginger-Lemon + Liquorice and Raspberry-Jalapeno + Liquorice.

Haribo is a global confectionery brand, but this package is for the German market, with the majority of the package information in German and a smattering in English.

There are three flavors, but I have trouble telling them apart. The raspberry was easy, since it was pink, but the orange and lemon versions were more difficult.

The texture is soft and bouncy, the sugar crust is fine and adheres well to the candy, so well that there was barely any in the bottom of the bag. Each has a licorice end, and that flavor was consistent across all the pieces. It was very sweet with a mild anise flavor. I’m not usually the keen on Haribo’s licorice, but this gummi version was mild and traditional.

Hot Orange + Liquorice - the orange end had a little tangy citrus note and at first, I had trouble detecting anything else, but soon the warming spice of what I can only guess is hot pepper started. It was really just the heat, there wasn’t much of the vegetable note to it. The licorice combined well with it, mostly evening it all out and providing a more lingering sweetness.

Ginger-Lemon + Liquorice - this was the flavor that drove me to find the Hot Sticks. I love Haribo’s Ginger Lemon gummis, so the addition of licorice sounded great. The earthy flavor of the ginger balanced very well with the herbal notes of the anise-licorice. The tartness of the lemon cut the sugary sweetness of the grainy coating.

Raspberry-Jalapeno + Liquorice - I have to admit that jalapeno is not one of my favorite flavors. The raspberry and jalapeno flavors were well balanced here. The tangy and floral berry notes came right out, but so did the green vegetable flavors of jalapeno along with the very warm notes of the pepper. When I just ate a bite from that flavored end, I found it slightly too hot for me. However, when eating as a whole candy, with the soothing woodsy note of the licorice, it’s interesting ... still, it was a bit chaotic. Of all the flavors here, this one was the least successful. But it could just be that I’d never tried that combination before and it was too jarring for me to appreciate.

Overall, it’s a really fascinating mix. Each bite is different, and because the flavors are separated on different ends, you can kind of control how much of a mix you get. I’ll probably stick with the much more mundane Lemon Ginger, but the addition of licorice, especially this particular version of a gummi licorice, is quite good.

Related Candies

1. Haribo Gold Bears from Turkey and Germany
2. Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone Gummis
3. Haribo Pearlico Lakritz
4. 12 European Licorices
5. Ginger Chews: Hot Coffee
6. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
7. Cowgirl Chocolates Buckin’ Hot Habanero Caramels