Last weekend I went to ExpoWest, which is a natural products trade show held in Anaheim. There are about 30 choccolate or candy companies that display there so I try to stop by for a few hours during the show to check out the new treats. This year I saw that Sjaak’s, the California-based chocolatier that’s Fair Trade, Organic and often Vegan had some new items.

These little floral shaped bites are Hazelnut. Amazingly they’re also vegan - so no dairy products in there even though it’s “milky.” The chocolate is smooth, the hazelnut flavors are pretty bold. (I think a darker chocolate option would be fun, too.)

Wonka introduced a line of jelly beans back in 2006 (original review). They were matte, opaque pastel jelly beans with a strange grainy shell but familiar SweeTart flavors.

This year the product seems to have been reformulated, though there’s no mention of it on the package which is also redesigned. Readers alerted me that they were different this year.

The 2010 version of SweeTart Jelly Beans are more vibrant and come in the current SweeTart flavors of Cherry, Lemon, Grape, Blue Punch, Green Apple and Orange.

I noticed the color difference before I even took the bag home. They’re more opaque and shinier with consistent colors. They’re at once familiar and a little different.

The version I’ve had before had a grainy and cool-to-the-tongue shell. When I saw these and remembered the comments, I was wondering if Wonka was just using the Spree Jelly Beans which have a harder shell.

The shell is more crisp than the previous version and the flavors seem a little more distinct and intense. They also seem to be more faithful to the flavors of the chalky original SweeTarts disks. But what’s missing is probably the tangy hit that the real SweeTarts have.

As you’ll notice, I found quite a few abnormal ones in my bag. These were a few that had distinctive shapes, quite a few were just larger than what I’d call normal or smaller than what I would have thought should be the target. They all tasted fine - the narrow ones obviously had more shell to them proportionally.

They’re still nice - the grape is much better as it is tangier now. I enjoyed the citrus flavors even though they weren’t particularly sour. Green apple is okay, though bland and I usually pick out the cherry and blue punch ones but if I ate them it’s not the end of the world.

In the end, the update is definitely different but I wouldn’t call it an improvement. I think it brings them more in line with what I’d expect from a product extension but still not as good as actual SweeTarts. Now if they could only do the SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies with all the flavors of SweeTarts we’d have something to talk about.

The versions I’ve tried before (2007 & 2008) were made in Canada. This bag was made in Mexico. There are no allergen statements on the bag, so they may be nut free/gluten free and contain no animal-derived products.

Related Candies

1. Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans
2. Big Tex Giant Jelly Beans
3. Hot Tamales Spice Jelly Beans
4. Smarties Jelly Beans
5. Wonka Nerds Jelly Beans
6. Lifesavers Jellybeans

Most Easter candies are pale pastels and muted colors. The new Easter Dots are just the opposite - incredibly bright little knobs of flavored jelly.

More stuff I’ve photographed and eaten but never written up as a full review. Here’s an array of bars from the small confectioner called Coco-Luxe. They’re rather different from mainstream fare and all happen to contain cocoa nibs.

Coco-Luxe Monkeyin’ Around bar is milk chocolate with banana chips, cocoa nibs and alfa sea salt.

Coco-Luxe Spumoni bar is white chocolate with dried cherries, pistachios and cocoa nibs.

Coco-Luxe Roark is dark chocolate with cocoa nibs.

You can see the full package images by clicking on the thumbnails:

Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t exactly a big candy holiday. Potato and shamrock flavored candies, thought they exist, aren’t exactly mainstream.

Godiva, who is always good at merchandising, has a limited edition Shamrock Mint Truffle. These dipped bonbons are right up my alley, they’re a a classic mint ganache with Godiva chocolate chips enrobed in a dark chocolate shell and strung with a lucky green shamrock.

Godiva was kind enough to send a box of them to me, you can also get them as singles in the store. A box of 5 retails for $12. (The samples I got came in a box of six ... dunno why that was.)

The spheres are beautiful. I’ve mentioned before that I prefer enrobed chocolate over molded pieces, there’s something about the tempering of enrobed chocolate that I think has a better mouthfeel. So these had me right away with their excellent attention to detail. The little clovers in a white chocolate colored light green were cute - the flavoring wasn’t too sweet and didn’t distract from the rest of the confection.

The pieces smelled mostly of minty chocolate. The whole thing reminded me of mint chocolate chip ice cream. The shells were thin and coated the cream filling expertly - none had any cracks or leaks.

The filling was creamy smooth with a light mint touch. They were sweet, but the dark chocolate did a good job of balancing it out. They really were the bonbon version of mint chocolate chip ice cream. The only hesitation I had with them were the colors - I don’t know what the ingredients are but the center looks like it might have a touch of coloring in it, which makes it look like grout, not some sort of decadent peppermint ganache. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be a year round item (though I could see a little peppermint candy candy decoration for Christmas).

I ate the whole box with very little help: Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

Johnny also has a review of them.

Related Candies

1. Fannie May Mint Meltaway
2. Robitaille’s Presidential Inaugural Mints & Turtles
3. Hershey’s Nuggets Double Chocolate
4. Kohler Chocolates Garden Ganache & Toffee Mountains
5. Ritter Sport Peppermint
6. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane