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June 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

Yogen Fruz Smoothies

There are scents that I regard as pleasant and summery and strawberry-banana is pretty high up there. It’s light, fruity & floral but has a sweet kick to it that I can almost taste when I smell it.

Yogen Fruz Smoothies (Strawberry Banana)

Yogen Fruz is a high-concept frozen yogurt & smoothie chain that began in Toronto and now has over 1,000 stores in 20 countries. In this case it’s the smoothies that have been turned into a line of little candies.

The little tin I picked up of the Yogen Fruz Smoothies Strawberry Banana smelled very strong. Even before I took off the plastic overwrap, I had to keep it in a ziploc bag.

Aside from the blastingly strong scent, the ingredients are pretty positive: pure cane sugar, yogurt, tartaric acid, malic acid, natural strawberry and banana flavors, ascorbic acid and natural color.

Though they’re made with nice ingredients, they’re basically a “tablet candy”, much like a SweeTart though not dextrose-based. They come in a tin, the same one, as far as I can tell, that Godiva uses for their Chocoiste Pearls but in this case I had no trouble with opening & closing it.

The little tablets have the umlauted U on them (that conveniently looks like a very big smile) with a light pink speckling. They’re immediately tangy on the tongue and dissolve a little unevenly. It’s both lightly sour and has that yogurt twang.

I thought the taste was vibrant and even a bit unique. If you’re looking for an all-natural SweeTart-like product then this is a nice idea though certainly quite expensive.

These are made in Canada by Big Sky Brands, who also make the Jones Soda candies.

Name: Yogen Fruz Smoothies Strawberry Banana
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Yogen Fruz - Big Sky Brands
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market (3rd & Fairfax)
Price: $1.99
Size: .89 ounces
Calories per ounce: 80
Categories: Chalk, Canada, Kosher, All Natural

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:21 am    

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Lillie Belle Farms: The Wild Thing

Lillie Belle Farms - Wild Thing (Cru Savage)Every once in a while I’m given a sample of something from a candy company or chocolatier and find it to be so wonderful that I consume it as I’m a regular person without a duty to record every bite.

Such was my experience with The Wild Thing chocolate bar from Lillie Belle Farms. So after eating my sample from Jeff at Lillie Belle Farms that I got at the Fancy Food Show in January, I finally found a store the stocks them: Mel & Rose here in Los Angeles.

The Wild Thing is a variety of chocolate known as cru sauvage which, conveniently enough means, wild vintage (or wild source). The beans are from feral cacao trees from old plantation properties in Bolivia that have been harvested. Like many “volunteer” plants that pop up long after a garden or farm is untended, they possess all the crucial characteristics of the well tended trees, but a little something else. Perhaps a little more of the true essence of cacao that made it so attractive to the ancient Americans.

Lillie Belle Farms - Wild Thing (Cru Savage)

The bar itself is wonderfully molded, I like a thick bar. It has the Lillie Belle logo on it, and though that’s pretty too, it doesn’t really make for easy portioning.

It’s a moderately dark bar at 68%. The wrapper mentions that the beans are roasted a low temperatures and then refined for nearly three days.

The color is a nice, solid brown with a hint of deep red. The thick pieces give a lot of room for developing the texture on the tongue. It’s sweet at first, but the melt is smooth and immediate. The primary notes that hit me first were brown sugar and raisin, but as the flavor develops there’s a slight dry bite that holds some cherry, tobacco and coffee notes.

The texture was really what blew me away on this bar. I love the extra silky melt, bright snap and shiny molding.

The bar is made with only three ingredients: cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar. No vanilla, no soy. (Though made in facility that does have soy, so not for soy allergic folks - same goes for nuts & dairy.) As far as I know, this chocolate is the Max Felchlin Cru Sauvage, just remelted (and nicely priced, if you ask me).

My only hesitation with the bar (besides the fact that I don’t like falling in love with things in short supply) is the packaging. While it looks nice, the wrapper is a bit thin, as is the foil. The paper overwrap is excessively glued, and pasted to the foil at that, so I never had any luck with either bar in rewrapping it. (That’s why I have a bunch of zip lock bags.)

If you’re a chocolate fan who enjoys single origins, this is definitely one to experience.

Related Candies

  1. TCHO Fruity
  2. Askinosie Chocolate
  3. Amadei
  4. Domori Cru
  5. Choxie 3 Ounce Chocolate Bars
  6. Malie Kai: Waialua Estate Chocolate
  7. Michel Cluizel Les 1ers Crus de Plantation
Name: The Wild Thing
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Lillie Belle Farms
Place Purchased: Mel & Rose Wine & Liquors (Los Angeles)
Price: $8.00
Size: 2.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Chocolate, United States, Lillie Belle Farms, All Natural

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:45 am    

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Jitterbeans vs GoGo Beans

GoGo Beans vs JitterbeansChocolate covered coffee beans are nothing new and caffeinated candy has been around for a while.

Here are two new super charged coffee bean candies. GoGo Beans are made by How Do You Take Your Coffee and feature “The Eating Roast” coffee, which are beans that are chosen & roasted to be tastier for consuming than for brewing (I already reviewed their JAVAZ). Jitterbeans are the overclocked version of Crackheads (review here) from Osmanium ... and when I say overclocked I mean it, each piece contains about 20 mg of caffeine so the package has as much as 6 small cups of coffee.

Jitterbeans vs GoGo Beans

GoGo Beans
Size: 2.43 ounces (69 grams)
Price: $2.50
Caffeine Content: approximately 125 mg (about 5 mg per bean)
Calories per ounce: 134
Other Fortifications: ginseng, taurine, B vitamins
Allergens: soy & milk - plus uses confectioners glaze so not vegetarian (but made in a peanut free facility)
Ingredient notes: not real chocolate, contains palm kernel oil, artificial colors: Yellow 6 & Red 40
My source: sample from How Do You Take Your Coffee

GoGo Beans

GoGo Beans are super-fortified and offer both the caffeine inherent in the bean plus an addition kick added to the candy shell plus some special B vitamins, taurine and ginseng. The format is an bean at the center (specially roasted for eating) then a mockolate coating all covered in a thick candy shell.

The shell has a pretty immediate light bitterness which may be the fortification or may be the food coloring. That fades away pretty quickly for me. The inside has a mellow cocoa flavor but not a huge kick for me. The texture is soft and has a decent melt, but at times felt a little waxy. The bean at the center was lovely, just as I found with the Javaz - crunchy and crisp with a strong coffee flavor but no oily bitterness.

JitterbeansJitterbeans
Size: 1.3 ounces (37 grams)
Price: retail $3.00
Caffeine Content: 600 mg (462 mg per ounce)
Calories per ounce: not available
Other Fortifications: none
Allergens: soy, peanuts & nuts - also uses confectioners glaze so not vegan
Ingredient notes: Uses guarana for extra caffeine, artificial colors: Red 40, Yellow 5 & Blue 1
My source: All Candy Expo

The Jitterbeans follow the tried and true format of chocolate over an espresso bean and adds a candy shell. Like the original Crackheads, these are in the classic tuxedo colors of black and white, though there’s no actual white chocolate in there.

JitterbeansThe candy shell is rather thin and offers a sandy crunch. Inside the chocolate is sweet and has a bit of a spicy woodsy ginger flavor to it along with the mellow coffee notes. The extra caffeine isn’t bitter at all though some of the beans in the center had a bitter kick. The whole thing is rather tasty and probably very dangerous for those who don’t know that there’s a lot of caffeine in these and consumes a whole box. I limited myself to three beans in the three different times I tried these. That said, I have a hard time believing they have that much caffeine in them without so much bitterness that I’ve found in other caffeinated candies - maybe someone can comment on the caffeine in “guarana seed extract.”

Both of these are great, durable & portable caffeine supplements. They’re tasty and what’s most important - portionable so you can control exactly how much caffeine you take in. That said, I much prefer the more sedate and non-fortified versions and will stick with the JAVAZ for my candy, coffee & caffeine combination. The addition of artificial colors wasn’t enough of selling point.

Jitterbeans and GoGo Beans get a 6 out of 10 - not bad candy, but not for me.

Related Candies

  1. Beechies Force Chewy Candy
  2. Loud Truck Energy Gummies
  3. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
  4. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolate
  5. Pocket Coffee
  6. No Time & Black Black

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:58 am     CandyReviewCaffeinatedChocolateCoffeeMockolate6-TemptingUnited States

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Topps Wild Berriez Wazoo

Wazoo Wild BerriezA few months ago I stumbled on the Blue Razz Wazoo bar. I knew that there was a companion flavor, the Wild Berriez Wazoo but I had no luck finding it.

Finally on one of my candy jaunts a few weeks ago I found it at IT’SUGAR at Universal City Walk (they’re also a few webstores). The bar is rather sought after ... Topps introduced them with a big marketing campaign including TV commercials, then the company that ran the factory that was making them went under. Hopefully Topps will find someone else to gear up to make the bars soon to combat their elusiveness before interest wanes.

Wazoo Wild Berriez

This bar is My Little Pony Lilac.

The berry scent is actually pretty good, it does smell like raspberry flavor, right down to that woodsy smell that the seeds tend to give jam.

Wazoo Wild BerriezThe bar has the familiar Wazoo structure - two layers of soft edible, fruit-flavored Play Doh covered in solidified raspberry milk. The whole thing is sprinkled with tangy candy beads.

The pink layer is sweet and tastes a bit like cherries & strawberries. It’s soft and chewy and has only the slightest grain to it with a barely perceptible bitter aftertaste (coloring).

The yellow layer, well, I had trouble getting it well separated but it tasted about the same, maybe a more yogurty tang to it.

The lilac coating is similarly yogurty - sweet but with a slight fruity tartness.

Overall, as odd as the bar is, it’s a nice change from the heaviness of chocolate and the lack of a creamy component from fruit chews. The little beads are kind of messy, but as a candy it’s a pretty good new interpretation of the standard bar. I admit, it’s growing on me. The only real disappointment is that the flavor wasn’t that distinct from the Blue Razz. I think for a line of bars like this they should be really different - an orange & lemon one might be fun (kind of like a creamsicle) and probably a cherry one along with the Razz. Or go really off the deep end with a mint bar.

Related Candies

  1. Big Bite Gummy Bear
  2. Junior Fruit Cremes
  3. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
  4. Bratz Candy Cosmetics
  5. Gummi Lightning Bugs
  6. Rolly Pop
  7. Kinder Egg
Name: Wild Berriez Wazoo
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Topps
Place Purchased: IT'SUGAR (Universal CityWalk Hollywood)
Price: $1.25
Size: 1.6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 106
Categories: Chew, United States, Topps, Thailand

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:48 am    

Monday, June 22, 2009

Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel

Brach's Indulge Almond EscapesBesides the regular chocolate covered nuts that Brach’s has been making for about a hundred years, Brach’s has more recently branched out into more than the old fashioned pick-a-mix items.

the new Indulge gable-box line includes some boxed chocolate items (like Cherry Creme Clusters) as well as the standard bridge mixes and chocolate covered nuts.

I picked out these two from the samples that Farley’s & Sathers sent me: Coconut Almond Escape and Caramel Almond escape because they both have almonds at the center but were definitely outside of the normal panned nuts offerings.

Besides the color coding of the boxes, it’s hard to tell the candies apart from the pictures on the package ... they’ve obviously taken some artistic license or are able to produce identical candies in both dark and milk chocolate. (Click to see it a bit bigger on Flickr.)

Brach's Indulge Coconut Almond Escape

Coconut Almond Escape is called Rich, creamy, coconut covered almonds coated in luscious dark chocolate.

They make it sound simple but it’s really not. There is an almond at the core and there is a “sweet chocolate” coating (which has lactose as the second ingredient after sugar and before chocolate & cocoa butter). But that white stuff in between goes like this:

sugar, vegetable oil (palm & palm kernel), nonfat milk, titanium dioxide, soy lecithin, vanilla, gum arabic, corn syrup, modified food starch, salt, coconut oil, natural and artificial colors

So that “coconut covering” has very little actual coconut in it ... as far as I can tell the smallest dash of coconut oil and maybe that natural flavoring.

They certainly smell coconutty - like suntan lotion. The pieces are glossy and large. The almonds are crunchy and nicely toasted. The white cream is soft and has a good melt on the tongue ... not quite fondant and rather salty. Sometimes I get a fake butter flavor from it, which turns me off. The whole effect is rather good otherwise and rather different.

I was hoping for the elusive Dark Chocolate Almond Joy experience, but without actual coconut flakes, all the chewy texture is provided by the almonds. It tastes rather fake, but the hit of salt gives them a good munchability. But on the other hand I’m hesitant to recommend a candy that has more coloring (titanium dioxide in this case) than salt. But I don’t know what my daily recommend intake of titanium is. Maybe it makes my cell phone reception better. Or makes me impervious to UV radiation.

Brach's Indulge Caramel Almond Escape

Caramel Almond Escape is Rich creamy, caramel covered almonds in luscious milk chocolate.

I should have photographed these two candies together to show the difference in size. Most of these are about the size of a Peanut M&M.

These milk chocolate pieces look great otherwise, very nicely panned they’re shiny and smooth. I was rather surprised when I opened the package that they smell like maple.

I was hoping for a nice chewy caramel, but probably expecting a Brach’s Milk Maid Caramel.

Instead it’s more like a maple fudge instead of anything resembling a caramel. And it’s an awful like like fake maple.

The nuts are crunchy, but their tiny size leaves the proportions here a bit off as well. I’ve been eating the, but I have a hard time believing that I’d buy them.

Rating: 4 out of 10

It’s nice to see Brach’s bringing production back to the United States, but I’d like to see some less convoluted recipes ... or I’ll just stick to the Bridge Mix, Candy Corn and Spearmint Leaves that they do so well.

Related Candies

  1. Brach’s Indulge Cookie Nibbles
  2. Marich Easter Select Mix
  3. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
  4. Almond Joy
  5. World’s Finest Continental Chocolate Almonds
  6. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
  7. Dove Caramels & Chocolate Covered Almonds
Name: Brach's Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Brach's (Farley's & Sathers)
Place Purchased: samples from Farley's & Sathers
Price: retail $3.49
Size: 6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: Chocolate, Caramel, Coconut, Nuts, United States, Brach's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:19 pm    

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