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May 2009

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Reese’s Select Cremes

Reese's Select Peanut Butter CremesThe Reese’s Select line has finally expanded beyond the initial offering of the Reese’s Select Cluster which launched in early 2008.

I spotted these new Reese’s Select Peanut Butter Cremes at Target over the weekend. They sport no banner that says “new” but they certainly weren’t there last month.

The 8 ounce bag is long and sturdy and kind of oddly puffed up. I assumed this was to protect the candy inside from getting smashed. (And air is pretty cost effective.) Inside are approximately 18 little individually wrapped pieces.

Reese's Select Peanut Butter CremesThe description on the bag says Smooth, Creamy Peanut Butter covered in Rich Milk Chocolate. I expected peanut butter meltaways.

The pieces are about 1.5” inches square, slightly domed (a full 1 inch high). They have a little R medallion molded on the top for Reese’s.

I had a little trouble with the integrity of a few pieces. I thought I chose my bag well and was careful bringing it home, yet two of the pieces that I ate (I consumed about half the package) were smashed completely.

Aside from that, the little individual wrappers are sturdy and feature full ingredients info (many individually wrapped Hershey’s items do not).

Reese's Select Peanut Butter Cremes

The little pieces smell of sweet peanut butter.

The bite is interesting, the chocolate shell, though soft, is thick enough to give a big burst of chocolate texture and slight dairy taste immediately. The melt is smooth and rather silky. The center is not at all like a meltaway - this is a full on gooey cream. (Spreadable like room temperature butter.)

At first I was taken aback because I found it extremely salty. But it did balance the sweet milk chocolate well. The texture combination and the rounded flavors gives these pieces well earned decadence points.

In case you were curious, the ingredients are:

Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, milk, chocolate, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanilla beans), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, less than 2% salt, partially hydrogenated palm oil, cornstarch, PGPR, soy lecithin, TBHQ, natural flavor.

The sodium content isn’t as extreme as it tastes. It’s 95 mg for 36 gram serving, which is actually less proportionally than regular Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

These are not made in Mexico, like the Clusters, and these are also Kosher.

Overall, an interesting addition to the Reese’s line, a smoother melt and much higher quality than I expected. I enjoyed them quite a bit, and found that everyone else in the office did. Perhaps an 8 ounce bag isn’t big enough?

Related Candies

  1. Reese’s Enigma & Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Eggs
  2. Malley’s Chocolates
  3. Hershey’s Bliss
  4. Reese’s Pieces
  5. Choxies in Boxies
  6. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
Name: Reese's Select Peanut Butter Cremes
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Reese's (Hershey's)
Place Purchased: Target (Burbank)
Price: $3.49
Size: 8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 150
Categories: Chocolate, Peanuts, United States, Hershey's, Reese's, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:16 am    

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Melville Candy Company Fruit & Veggie Pops

Melville Candy has always made fantastically attractive lollipops. They have an extensive line of Honey Spoons and an amazing array of Barley Sugar Pops (which I will review after I finish eating one of each).

They were highlighting their line of Harvest Candy at the Fancy Food Show back in January.

Fruit & Vegetable Pops

The array includes large lollipops shaped like vegetables and fruits.

  • Corn - Butter Popcorn

  • Apple - Citrus Apple

  • Pumpkin - Pumpkin Spice

  • Watermelon - Watermelon

  • Carrot - Carrot Cake

  • Orange - Citrus Orange

  • Strawberry - Citrus Strawberry

  • Grape - Citrus Grape

  • Peach - Peach

  • Banana - Banana

  • As you can see above when you compare that list to my photo, I didn’t pick up all the flavors.

    Apple - is a large and deep red pop. It’s shaped like an apple and about 2.5” in diameter and slightly domed. The shrink wrap has a little stem and green leaf, but after opening it up, it’s just a plain red lollipop. I was expecting the normal “candy company green apple flavor” that has no relationship with the real world. Instead it tastes like sweet, solid apple juice. I didn’t get any “citrus” per se, but the smooth texture of the candy and the light fruity flavor was appealing.

    Orange - is about the same size as the apple but has two little leaves at the top and a bumpy texture on the molding. The flavor is mostly sweet with a touch of orange zest. It’s not at all tangy, which sets it apart from most orange lollies on the market (like Orange Tootsie Pops).

    Melville Corn Lollipop

    Corn - it’s a tall and narrow pop, about 5 inches long. The shrink wrap on it has the little husks and peeling the wrapper form the top is rather like shucking corn. The molding of the pop is textured just like rows of corn niblets.

    I didn’t know what to expect for the flavor. They described it as buttered popcorn. I’ve always found “butter flavor” especially in things like popcorn snacks and Jelly Belly to be rather repulsive (and one of the chemicals used to create this, diacetyl, is actually causing dire health complications for workers exposed to it).

    Happily the flavor here is more like the toffee-like coating on kettle corn. The butter flavor is very mild and the toasted sugar flavors are more prominent with just a hint of creamed corn to really sell the corn-ness of it.

    Carrot - it’s about the same size as the corn, but obviously tapered at the top as a carrot is. I was hoping for a wonderful spice pop, with notes of ginger and maybe raisins. Instead it was kind of a sweet generic yellow cake taste. Not bad, but just not quite as cool and innovative as I’d hoped. However, the shape & texture was amazing - smooth & easy to eat.

    The sticks are large and beefy and the pops are substantial (1.75 ounces each). They last a long time and the smooth texture makes them a pleasure - not a mouth-wrecker.

    It’s also nice the the pops are shrink wrapped instead of in little baggies, for use as favors or on display, this makes the especially appealing. They retail for about $2 to $3 each (depending on whether you buy them in full boxes or individually). As a molded hard candy these do have a tendency to droop when exposed to high temperatures or simply when they get old, so if you get some, eat them soon.

    Other reviews: I first heard of these on Sugar Savvy years ago (which may or may not be made by the same company) & Candy Addict tirelessly reviewed the whole array.

    Related Candies

    1. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
    2. Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
    3. Lindt Chocolate Carrots
    4. Zotter Candy Bars
    5. Candy Corn Kisses
    Name: Harvest Lollipops: Corn, Carrot, Orange & Apple
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Melville Candy Company
    Place Purchased: samples from Fancy Food Show
    Price: $2.00 to $3.00 retail
    Size: 1.75 ounces each
    Calories per ounce: unknown (probably about 110)
    Categories: Hard Candy, United States, Melville Candy Company

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:21 am    

    Monday, May 4, 2009

    Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

    Dark Chocolate Reese's DarkThe Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have finally returned as a regular product (teased here in CandyForums.net).

    Dark chocolate Reese’s come and go from Hershey’s. Last summer they were a limited edition product as a tie in with the Batman: The Dark Knight movie.

    The new package design is different enough that I was able to spot them from the next checkout aisle at Target (though I definitely have candy-vision) on Saturday.

    I have to say that the wrapper is rather spare, though bold. As someone who has to look at design pretty often in her day job, I wasn’t really pleased with the mix of fonts. (The script logo, the italic san serif “dark chocolate” and then the regular san serif of the “2 peanut butter cups” and weight info ... but then the use of black outline on white in a serif font for “dark” feels like an afterthought.)

    image

    But enough of this judging a book by its cover. It’s what’s inside that matters, right?

    So what does the package say is inside?

    Semi-Sweet Chocolate (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanillin, artificial flavor, PGPR, milk), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, TBHQ.

    Okay, so it’s not really dark chocolate, it’s dark chocolate with some milk fats ... not that big of a deal. It’s pretty common in mass-marketed semi sweet chocolate candies. 

    Reese's DarkThe encouraging part is that these cups are full sized. When Mars makes a limited edition or dark chocolate version of a milk chocolate product, they have a tendency to make it smaller. This package is 1.5 ounces, the standard these days for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup two packs.

    Each 3/4 of an ounce cup is lovely to behold. Satiny smooth with lightly fluted sides. It may be that these were fresh (as it’s a new product) but there was no little oily pool on the top of the chocolate.

    They smell very dark - like deeply roasted nuts and woodsy charcoal.

    Like most other Reese’s products, the chocolate is a very soft bite. The dark chocolate, though it lists sugar as the first ingredient, is not at all sweet. The first impression I get is bitterness - a nutty toasted bitterness that goes well with the deep peanut flavors.

    The salty hit from the crumbly & grainy peanut butter went well against the creamy chocolate. It has a nice melt without the fudgy grain that the classic milk chocolate has.

    Overall, this is a winner. I can see craving these in the evening (I usually don’t want super-sweet after dinner) and keeping the Reese’s Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups for daylight hours (afternoon pick-me-up).

    They also come in the little foil-wrapped miniatures, but Target didn’t seem to have those in stock yet. If you’ve tried though (they were also available about three years ago), let me know how they are.

    Related Candies

    1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Bar
    2. Reese’s Select Clusters
    3. Reese’s Whipps
    4. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
    5. Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar
    6. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
    Name: Dark Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Hershey's
    Place Purchased: Target (Burbank)
    Price: $.69 each
    Size: 1.5 ounces
    Calories per ounce: 140
    Categories: Chocolate, Peanuts, United States, Hershey's, Reese's, Kosher

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:31 am    

    Page 5 of 5 pages ‹ First  < 3 4 5

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