Name: Sun Drops - Plain Milk & Peanut
Brand: Sun Spire
Place Purchased: Wild Oats
Price: $.79 (on sale)
Size: 1.19 ounces
Calories per ounce: 151
Type: Chocolate/Peanuts

Here’s a perfectly good idea gone awry. There’s no reason there can’t be good, tasty, “natural” chocolate candies (I think that’s been proven more recently with things like Equal Exchange, Green & Black, Newman’s Own, etc.). This is an example of a weak candy line. Here’s why: First, the colors are dull and unappealing. They’re not colors that I want to eat (except for the yellow, they look like old-lady lipstick colors). They’re not strong or clean, they’re muddy looking and uneven. A grainy looking outside does not bode well for the inside.

The ingredients are basically sugar (natural with unsulfured molasses, blah, blah) then milk powder, then the chocolate ... that’s a long way down the list. And it shows in the final product. The addition of molasses is a little odd. It gives the whole thing a rather toasty burnt flavor, which I enjoy with my oatmeal but not in my chocolate. In fact, I can taste everything in these drops except for the chocolate. The powdered milk, overly sweet sugar and slightly grainy chocolate just combine for a depressing treat. The crunchy shell is too tough and again adds sweet without flavor and further distances me from any chocolately goodness. If it’s possible, the peanut ones tasted more like burnt sugar and milk powder.

With the same number of calories and fat as M&Ms, why am I eating these? I gave them to Amy to try and after much cajoling (because the package, colors and list of ingredients scared her off - and she was the one that wanted to go to Wild Oats on Saturday!) she did put one in her mouth. She chewed a couple of times and then spit it out in my trash can.

If you are a parent trying to find a wholesome treat for the kids, this isn’t it. It sets them up for a lifetime of disappointments, now that’s spoiling them. Just let them have some M&Ms in moderation (the Almond ones are actually not bad for you since the bulk of the candy is actually a very healthy nut). Or just let them have plain old semi-sweet chocolate chips. Dark chocolate really isn’t that bad as a food. Raisinettes? Really, anything but this. Don’t tease the poor kids by telling them this is candy.

Rating: 2 out of 10

If you’ve ever gotten a hold of a Coffee Crisp in Canada or the UK but you live in the States, maybe you want to be able to get a hold of them more easily.

Check out the CoffeeCrisp.org. They’re mounting a campaign to urge Nestle to release the coffee flavored crisp bar nationally.

I tried one. I thought it was a little sweet, but not bad and I can see how it might have some fervent followers. See my original review here.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Crunch Cappuccino Stixx
2. Cafe Select Chocolate Coffee Trios
3. Pocket Coffee
4. Coffee Beat
5. Coffee Crisp

Name: York Chocolate Mint Truffle Pattie
Brand: York (Hershey’s)
Place Purchased: 7-11 (Hollywood)
Price: $.85
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 121
Type: Chocolate

I have no idea how long these limited editions last. But I’m still seeing the Whopper’s bars in the 7-11 (I picked up three on this trip and I’m considering checking out CostCo to buy a whole box of them). York did a limited edition Pink Pattie this year too, but that wasn’t really a taste change, as they only made the center of the patties pink instead of white.

This is a different product.

First, I have to say that the Pattie that I got at the 7-11 was exceptionally fresh. The chocolate on the outside was smooth and glossy, the smell was minty with a hint of chocolately promise to it. The center of a York is usually a bit more crumbly, like fudge than it is like a truffle cream. The chocolate truffle pattie is no different. More mint than chocolate, it was much more mild than the traditional mint pattie center. Not quite chocolately, but a nice mellow taste to it. Almost like a brown sugar instead of a sweet white confectioners feel to it.

If you can get past to the promise of a truffle inside, it’s actually a really nice bar. The calorie count per ounce is pretty low for a chocolate candy, so if you’re on a diet and looking for a little treat, this might be very satisfying.

As for the difference from the regular pattie, well, it’s not substantial. If they stick around for a while, I’ll continue buying them. They’re a little creamier, a little mellower than a regular York.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Yes, more good news from the candy science front. Not only is chocolate a health food (something that I’ve been espousing since I was in high school and did a term paper on it with that thesis), but sugar may ease stress hormones.

Scientific American reports on a recent study where rats were given twice daily doses of water - either sugar sweetened, dosed with artificial sweeteners or left pure.

Rats, like humans, love sugar. So it comes as no surprise that during two weeks of training for a recent lab experiment, the rodents queued up twice daily for small doses of sugar water. What researchers did not anticipate was the apparent effect of the sweet stuff on their stress levels: when they placed the rats in stressful circumstances at the end of those two weeks, the animals were less agitated than expected.

Multiple blood samples taken from the rats showed lower levels of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids than those that were given a saccharin solution or just plain water before being subjected to psychological or physical duress, according to research presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. “We actually found that sugar snacks, not artificially sweetened snacks, are better self-medications for the two most common types of stress—psychological and physical,” explains Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati who led the study.

Have a look via this link to the article.

Name: Dairy Milk
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: Sainsbury (West Los Angeles)
Price: $1.29
Size: 1.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 148
Type: Chocolate

I picked this up in the interest of documenting all the UK frothed chocolate bars. For those of you keeping score at home, the most well known is the Nestle Aero Bar (which comes in several flavor variations).

Not as wide or plank-like as the Aero (about a third of an ounce smaller), this is a little bar contains bubbleated Cadbury milk chocolate. Cadbury milk, for those of you that have had it, is distinctive in that it tastes like chocolate and powdered milk. Some people think that’s a good thing. I don’t find it that appealing as it reminds me of that time when I was poor.

But with a little positive reinforcement I’m getting over that and finding the flavor rather intriguing (just like it took me many years to get over the rather yogurty flavor of Hershey chocolate).

The bar is light and melts easily on the tongue. It’s sweet, but not as sticky as I found the Aero bar. As with the Aero bar, the bubbles really help to bring out the toasty nuances of the chocolate (I’m guessing the air allows more aromas to combine and give more “flavor” to the bar).

Rating: 7 out of 10