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February 2010

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Eat with your Eyes: Candy Logs

A building kit made from compressed dextrose. The little jar was kind of like a Play-Doh tub but held actual non-toxic toys you can eat.

Candy Logs

They were very dense, crunchy and kind of hard to bite. But left sitting out they did really well. Yellow was banana, like the old Wacky Packs. The top of the little package was a roof that can go on top of the little house.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:18 am     CandyFeatured NewsFun StuffPhotography

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans

Lemonhead & Friends Jelly BeansThe new Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans stand out on the shelves among all the other Easter candies. The bright primary colors - mostly yellow and red are definitely spring-ish but not the usual pastels.

The small bag is jam packed with candy. It’s 14 ounces of little jelly beans made with real fruit juice. Most other bags on the same shelf were about 9 ounces.

This new version of the popular Lemonhead candy is rather similar to the new Chewy Lemonheads. They’re a jelly center covered with the tart and grainy shell that Lemonhead fans have come to know and love. (My mouth just waters at the thought of it.)

Lemonheads & Friends Jelly Beans

The beans are small, not quite as small as Jelly Belly, but pretty close. If you can’t tell already, they’re also vivid - strikingly, saturatedly vivid. They’re probably the most deeply colored jelly beans I’ve seen. I’m not that fond of too much food coloring for two reasons. The first is that it often leaves an aftertaste. The second is that it often colors my tongue and I don’t like people to know how much candy I’ve been eating. Other folks are not fond of artificial colors as they’ve been linked to hyperactivity in children.

The ingredients list an array of acids that I’m accustomed to seeing in candies: fumaric acid (fermented apples & grains), malic acid (found in grapes and green apples) and citric acid (found in citrus) but another that I hadn’t noticed before called adipic which Wikipedia tells me is used mainly as a precursor for the production of nylon. (That sounds alarming but doesn’t mean that it also isn’t food.)

Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans

The five flavors are: Lemon, Orange, Grape, Green Apple and Cherry.

The bag definitely smells fruity, mostly citrusy.

Lemon is intense and sour. There are both tangy juice notes and a good dose of almost-bitter zest. It’s convincing. Kind of mind blowing.
Orange is also quite tart though has a more balanced sweetness. The orange notes are mostly juice and lacking a lot of the zestiness of lemon.
Cherry is powerful and floral with more of the tart cherry flavors than black cherry. Strong aftertaste of both the cherry flavoring and food dye.
Grape are nearly navy blue, not purple. The flavor is an intense version of SweeTarts and nothing like actual grapes. I love this stuff.
Green Apple is weird and chemical. There’s a woodsy apple note to it, but it’s very sour and has some strange artificial thing going on that I can only call “fake green apple.” Folks who like that stuff (like Jolly Ranchers) will enjoy it.

The levels of acid in these is quite high, so I wouldn’t recommend eating more than a small handful at a time. I found after more than a dozen of them it gave me a literal sour stomach. But for a little pick me up while driving or mixed with some other candies they’re definitely not your grandmother’s jelly beans.

I found them a little pricey for sugar candy compared to the cheap jelly beans usually around this time of year, but then again, they’re quite concentrated so it only takes a little. I liked that the bag was actually full. So many candies these days come in half empty bags, these feel sumptuous and indulgent.

There are no statements about the gluten free status on the package, they’re not vegan (confectioners glaze). Made in a facility where peanuts, tree nuts, milk, and soy is used. There was also a choking hazard warning (on all the Ferrara Pan products as far as I can tell). This was an extremely fresh package - the expiration date is 12/22/2011.

Related Candies

  1. Jelly Belly Honey Beans
  2. Tropical Chewy Lemonhead & Friends
  3. Spree Jelly Beans
  4. Judson-Atkinson Sours
  5. Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans
  6. Chewy Lemonheads & Atomic Fireballs
  7. The Lemonhead & Fruit Heads
Name: Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Ferrara Pan
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $2.49 (on sale)
Size: 14 ounces
Calories per ounce: 99
Categories: Jelly, Sour, United States, Ferrara Pan, Easter

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:18 am    

Eat with your Eyes: Richart

I don’t remember what flavors these Richart Petits were, but they were cute as buttons.

Richart Chocolates

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:58 am     CandyFeatured NewsFun StuffPhotography

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Chocolate Covered Peeps

Dark Chocolate Covered Marshmallow PeepsPeeps Dark Chocolate Covered Marshmallow is pretty much the biggest thing to happen to Peeps. Oh sure, they’ve dabbled with cocoa flavored Peeps or maybe put them inside a chocolate shell, but an actual chocolate dipped Peep made by Just Born is pretty revolutionary.

First thing, they’re singles and they’re individually wrapped. Other Peeps are sold in trays with more than one serving. So each one will be fresh and ready to eat. (This may or may not be a good thing, I’m not sure if Just Born is going to make Chocolate Covered Stale Peeps.)

I’m going to start with the dark chocolate covered version because that’s what I was attracted to first, but I also have the milk chocolate version. They’re nicely priced, I think the regular retail is about 80 cents, but I picked these up at RiteAid at two for a dollar.

Dark Chocolate Covered Peeps
(No, the Chocolate Peeps do not poop M&Ms ... that’s just there for scale, you silly goose.)

The big thing about Peeps in their chick format (not the bunny format) is that they sit upright. A standard array comes in a conjoined row of five weighing 1.5 ounces. In this case a single Peep is covered in chocolate and sits on its side. They’re huge but well detailed for a chocolate enrobed item. (Think about how hard it is to get details on the blanket covering something that’s extruded in the first place.)

Dark Chocolate Covered Peeps

Each piece is one ounce and biting into it answers several questions I had:

First, it’s a yellow Peep in there. Unlike a standard Peep which is only colored on the outside sugar crust, this Peep has coloring all the way through the marshmallow. (Not really something I’m fond of, in fact, I prefer the Ghost Peeps for Halloween which have no artificial colorings.)

Second, there is no sugar crust. It’s just a skinless Peep covered in chocolate.

The dark chocolate coating isn’t a terribly complex chocolate or even that dark (there’s no percentage on the package). It has milk fat in it (but it’s not like we had any hopes that a chocolate covered marshmallow was going to be vegan, did we?). The shell is rather thin, perhaps a little thicker than I’m accustomed to with the Russell Stover versions.

The marshmallow texture is airy and far lighter and less latexy than I experience with Peeps. I can put my tongue through it in my mouth, kind of like a smooth sugary foam instead of a marshmallow.

It’s sweet of course but not grainy. The dark chocolate has a bittersweet and dry quality to it that helps round out the fake vanilla flavoring.

Milk Chocolate Covered Marshmallow PeepsThe Peeps Milk Chocolate Covered Marshmallow comes in a bright yellow wrapper (kind of violating the unspoken industry standard that blue is milk chocolate). It was extremely easy to spot when I first walked into RiteAid, so they can definitely say that the package fits the brand.

The interesting thing that I noticed about the ingredients is that it doesn’t seem that these are just your regular individual Peeps run through an enrober. These appear to be a different formula. The marshmallow portion goes like this: Sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, whey (milk), gelatin, cocoa processed with alkali, and less than .5% of the following: invertase, natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin, yellow #5 and potassium sorbate.

Regular sugar-crusted Peeps contain: Sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, contains less than 0.5% of the following: potassium sorbate, artificial flavors, yellow #5, carnauba wax. (The wax, I believe, is the eyes.)

Milk Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Peeps

The sweetness and moistness of the marshmallow is even more noticeable over the dark chocolate version. The milk chocolate shell has some good dairy notes, but it isn’t quite as creamy as I would have liked. The good thing is that it held together well, I didn’t have big flakes coming off as I bit into the fluffy marshmallow.

The texture differences were rather minor here, not at all like the ordinary sugar crust but not enough of a contrast to provide added interest.

Mostly I found the milk chocolate version too sweet though the fake vanilla was actually kind of fun - like a White Toostie Roll is fun for a while and then I realize that there is food out there with real flavor.

I don’t quite understand why they had to make them yellow inside, I think a lot of parents might have preferred them to leave out the Yellow #5.

I know that many bakeries, candy stores and fudge shops have been dipping Peeps and offering them to their customers for many years, so this version may be a bit of an adjustment and some may prefer the inner sugar crusting.

The package says that they may contain peanuts, tree nuts, egg and coconut - in addition to the ingredients soy and gelatin. They are gluten free.

Related Candies

  1. Peeps Mash Ups - Savory
  2. Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbits
  3. Pete’s Gourmet Confections: Marshmallows
  4. Peeps inside a Milk Chocolate Egg
  5. Peeps Mash Ups
  6. Peeps
Name: Peeps Dark Chocolate & Milk Chocolate Covered Marshmallow
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Just Born
Place Purchased: Rite Aid (Echo Park)
Price: $.50 on sale
Size: 1 ounce
Calories per ounce: 110
Categories: Chocolate, Marshmallow, United States, Just Born, Easter

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:56 am    

Eat with your Eyes: Choceur Belgian Chocolates

Choceur Belgian Chocolates. I haven’t much more to say than that.

Choceur Belgian Chocolates

These were pretty but looked kinda like hedgehogs to me. (Photo of box here.)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:00 am     Candy

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