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September 2009Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway BlissEarlier this year Hershey’s provided me with a peek at some new products. I’ve been hanging onto the new Bliss White Chocolate Meltaway until it was closer to arriving on store shelves. This addition to the Hershey’s line will set it apart from many other chocolate morsels such as the Dove line because instead of going super dark, they went all white. The good news is that Hershey’s is using real white chocolate made with cocoa butter for their meltaway. Though it’s not a real gourmet product it’s still an excellent option for white chocolate lovers for a less-expensive treat. The ingredients list white chocolate as the first ingredient (sugar, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milk, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, tocopherols, vanillin & salt). The meltaway center is made with a mix of the white chocolate and palm kernel oil. As you can imagine the saturated fat content is through the roof, with 6 pieces completing 45% of your daily recommended allowance of saturated fat but also 10% of your calcium. The pieces are quite elegant. They’re wrapped simply in gold foil (though these were samples and I would expect that they would have the Bliss name on them like the other products in the line do). The pieces are a creamy pale color with a little squiggle design across the rounded dome of the square. The smell sweet and milky and pretty much taste the same. The salt give them a little pop that makes the vanilla flavors come out more strongly than I would have expected. It’s like a vanilla pudding. A little bland but also a bit unchallenging in comforting way. The difference between the white chocolate shell and the meltaway filling is rather marginal, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It felt like a piece of soft and creamy, sweet fat. I liked the packaging - I thought the light blue, creamy white and gold were elegant and evocative of the product itself. I have a bit of trouble eating too many, so added to a mix of other levels of chocolate would be nicer. My only hesitation with them is that the Bliss line seems a bit expensive (regular price $4.99) for what you get. I’d prefer something without palm oil and with real vanilla. My go to white chocolate is still Green & Black’s. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:42 am Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy CornI went back to Target over the weekend in hopes of finding more new Halloween goodies. Though it was mostly the same items I found there two weeks ago, the seemed to have a bit more in the way of their Gourmet Candy Corn line. They have a lot of funny flavors that seem incongruous with candy corn like Tangerine, Green Apple (plus Chocolate Covered Green Apple), Toffee (which I already reviewed) and S’Mores. However, Pumpkin Pie sounded pretty good. It’s in the same style of stand up black shiny bag that the other gourmet treats were in. They’re all terribly overpriced, but the packaging is nice enough that you could probably bring a bag as a hostess gift for the right occasion. I found the colors off-putting. The tip is soft orange, the center is bright yellow but the base is some unworldly fluorescent orange that just makes me think of faded vinyl tub toys. I really couldn’t capture the color in the photo. The bag smells sweet and creamy when opened. The texture is soft and has very little grain to it. They’re sweet and lack that touch of honey that true candy corn usually puts forward. The pumpkin pie here is just a light blend of spices. Cinnamon is the boldest, but it doesn’t rise to the level of spicy or hot cinnamon. There’s a slight twinge of woodsy nutmeg or allspice ... but that’s pretty much it. I was disappointed. I hoped for some more nutmeg or even a note of clove but instead it was about as bland as generic canned pumpkin pie mix. I think I’m done tasting novelty candy corn, at least when the price is $2.99 per flavor. So if you’ve tried some of the others, chime in with your experience to help out other readers. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:25 am Candy Tease: September 2009While I usually think of September as the time to introduce new holiday themed candies, there’s a lot new everyday candy coming out. Most of the big news is in advance of NACS which is the National Association for Convenience Stores and Petroleum Retailing trade show. (Yes, they show a lot of candy and snack food at that convention.) The biggest news is that Mars has settled on some new products as a result of their years of limited editions. Some people are going to be very happy. Name: M&M’S(r) Coconut Chocolate Candies Name: M&M’S(r) Wildly Cherry Chocolate Candies Name: Jots (Halloween) Name: Color Me Candies Name: MILKY WAY(r) Simply Caramel Name: 3 MUSKETEERS(r) Truffle Crisp Bars Name: ICEE Gummy Candy Name: MEGA Candy Buttons Name: ICEE Popping Candy Name: TWIX(r) Java All photos courtesy of their respective manufacturers. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:40 am Candy • New Product Announcement • Featured News • Monday, September 28, 2009
Trolli Little Green MenTrolli Little Green Men are one of the newer novelty gummis from Trolli, which is owned by Farley’s and Sathers. They’re just as inventive as other gummi makers like Haribo, with a variety of shapes & flavor assortments. The package looks like it’s geared towards kids. There’s a flying saucer behind the logo with a little bulgy-eyed alien at the steering wheel. The bag comes with just one shape & flavor. In this case it’s a little green alien with a bulbous head and Cosmic Star Fruit flavored. For the unfruity, Star Fruit is also known as Carmbola. It’s a strange looking creased/segmented fruit that looks like a five pointed star when sliced. The texture and flavor is something like a cross between a crunchy apple and the flavor of cataloupe and pears. The gummis are rather startling looking. They have huge green heads and teensy little potbellied bodies. The heads are about 3/4” around and the whole fella stands only 1.5” high. They smell fresh, a bit like melon and citrus. They’re soft and pliable, but not sticky or very greasy to the touch. The flavor is immediately lightly tangy but an overall mild berry or pear flavor. They’re nice in that they’re a big bite of gummi. The flavor is different enough to seem distinct, but not too exotic to seem weird. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:44 pm Friday, September 25, 2009
Festival HiCHEW: Candied Apple & Cotton CandyI’ve been on a HiCHEW spree lately. Partly because Morinaga went on a binge and released about a dozen flavors. Besides their traditional array of 6 or 7 standard flavors they have another half a dozen single flavor packs out. HiCHEW is one of those rare Japanese candies that’s being distributed around the world. Here in Los Angeles, I can get Lemon, Mango, Strawberry or Green Apple HiCHEWs at just about any 7-11 or Cost Plus World Market. But the limited edition flavors, the seasonal and the specialty assortments are a little harder to come by and require either an order directly from Japan (I’ve been using JBox and Asian Food Grocer) or a visit to Little Tokyo to Marukai Market, Mitsuwa Marketplace or Nijiya Market. Today I have the two from the Summer Festival (Matsuri) line: Candied Apple & Cotton Candy. (I don’t know if there were more than these two ... maybe a Kettle Corn or Deep Fried Butter version escaped my view.) The packages are compact, they have only 7 pieces in them instead of the longer packs that have 10. Even without knowing Japanese the packages are bold and easy to understand. There’s a little picture of a man selling candied apples with some stylized fireworks above him. Then of course the big candied apple (which seems to be dipped upside down to the way I’ve always had them, the stem is a the top, not where the stick enters the apple). On the side of the package is the little diagram of what the candy looks like. A pink outside and white core with little flecks of what I’m guessing are the candied coating bits. It smells softly sweet, a little like milk tea. Biting into it there’s an immediate apple juice flavor then a background of sweet sugar. The little flecks are sparkly crunches of sugar. I couldn’t quite get an actual flavor from them. It becomes quite juicy. The texture is quite smooth except for the crunches. I don’t think I’ve had a candied apple in over 15 years, so I can’t say for sure that this is an authentic representation contained within a 1 inch by 1/2 inch block. But it was still fun. Rating: 7 out of 10 Cotton Candy HiCHEW smells simply like sweet. Pretty much the same as the Candied Apple. It’s sweet, but not sticky sweet or cloying. It’s simply fresh. Not quite vanilla, which can be a little boozy and not quite a toasted sugar flavor either. It’s creamy without being milky. It’s clean without being flavorless. It’s a mystery wrapped in foil and stuffed with little crunchy bits. The combination of the texture of the HiCHEW which is a taffy/gummi product that’s at once bouncy and smooth and the little cotton candy grainy bits is odd. Really nicely done cotton candy always has these little bits of grain where either the sugar didn’t melt & reform properly or moisture has caused it to recombine into a hard candy bit. Yes, it’s grainy, but the grains give way to soft sugar flavors. It’s like cotton candy in all the right ways. And it leaves out the sticky paper cone. It’s just so hard to describe that all I can say is that after I took the photos of the first pack I got from JBox, I made sure to pick up two more packs when I saw them in Little Tokyo. It’s difficult to say but this is the best colorless and flavorless candy I’ve ever had. How do the Japanese do it? (I’m also still obsessed with the Juntsuyu I wrote about several years ago and add it to my order at JBoxevery time.) Rating: 10 out of 10 Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:57 am |
Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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