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October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween

What sort of treats did you pass out this year to the kids? What’s your favorite this time of year?

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:06 pm     CandyHalloweenHighlightFun Stuff

Friday, October 29, 2010

Berry Chewy Lemonheads

Berry Chewy LemonheadsFerrara Pan Berry Chewy Lemonhead & Friends are the newest introduction of Lemonheads line. These are the chewy version, they’re kind of like a flavor blasted jelly bean that has a tangy shell.

The Lemonheads line is quite varied now, Ferrara Pan has gone beyond the single flavor boxes (lemon, orange, cherry, grape and green apple) and includes more of these flavored mixes including the Chewy Lemonheads & Friends and last year’s introduction, Tropical Chewy Lemonheads.

The box features anthropomorphic versions of the flavors, Cherry Lemon, Wild Berry, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry and Red Raspberry on stage as if they’re a rock band. Strawberry is a torch singer and Raspberry has drum sticks but no drums.

Berry Chewy Lemonheads

The pieces are attractive, they’re little spheres, slightly larger than garden peas. They’re slightly irregular but boldly colored and uniformly shiny.

Red Raspberry (dark red) has a nice tartness and even a slight dry finish, a mix of floral berry notes with less of the artificial coloring bitterness.

Strawberry (lighter red) is sweet with a light tangy note under the grainy shell. It’s not a very well rounded flavor and has a bit of a bitter note for me because of the artificial colorings.

Blue Raspberry (blue) is very woodsy and strangely chemical at the same time. There’s a floral raspberry flavor but also something kind of like artificial watermelon in there.

Wild Berry (dark purple) has a lot of flavors going on but is mostly a punch flavor, some cherry and raspberry is evident and maybe a little blueberry note in there. Not at all sour.

Cherry Lemon (medium red) was actually really good but strange. The lemon had a strong zest component but not much tang. The cherry was sweet and almost floral. It was definitely not the ordinary sour cherry flavored candy (and nothing like the Cherry Chewy Lemonhead).

The good thing about the mix is that it’s easy to just eat them without looking at the colors because the flavors aren’t that distinctive and never clash. The bad thing is that the flavors aren’t that distinctive and are so mild to the point that all of the best things about Lemonheads (the intense flavor difference between the shell and center) are lost.

I’ll stick to the classic, hard centered Lemonheads, but the Chewy Lemonhead & Friends are pretty good too, so good that I’m giving them out for Halloween as the non-chocolate option.

They’re not vegetarian/vegan because of the presence of confectioners glaze. They’re also manufactured in a facility that also processes peanuts, tree nuts, milk and soy. No mention of wheat. Not Kosher.

Related Candies

  1. Lemonhead & Friends Jelly Beans
  2. Tropical Chewy Lemonhead & Friends
  3. Mike and Ike Berry Blast
  4. Chewy Lemonheads & Atomic Fireballs
  5. Mentos Berry Mix
  6. The Lemonhead & Fruit Heads


Name: Berry Chewy Lemonhead & Friends
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Ferrara Pan
Place Purchased: Dollar Tree (Harbor City)
Price: $1.00
Size: 6.0 ounces
Calories per ounce: 106
Categories: Candy, Ferrara Pan, Jelly Candy, 6-Tempting, United States, Dollar Tree

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:41 pm     CandyFerrara PanJelly Candy6-TemptingUnited StatesDollar Tree

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Eat with your Eyes: Twix Coconut

Twix Coconut

This is a little visual tease ... there’s a new Twix Bar coming out next year, Twix Coconut.

It doesn’t look any different on the outside (actually it looks the same inside, too). It’s kind of like the M&Ms Coconut.

The full review for Twix Coconut is now up!

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:09 pm     CandyHighlightFeatured News

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter CupsI am a huge proponent of improving upon classic candies. The peanut butter cup is so simple, yet there are a few weaknesses in the most commonly found ones on store shelves.

So could a company known for it’s amazingly fresh tasting peanut butter (and other nut butters) make something like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup even better? The new Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have a lot going for them in their lists of specs. They’re all-natural, organic and gluten-free, they use fair-trade chocolate, contain no preservatives and are packaged in compostable wrappers.

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

They’re also about $2 per package of two cups. Premium has a premium price. But I was on board, I wanted to see if eco-awareness would make the actual candy tastier (and possibly limit my other candy consumption because of the pricetag.) So after I got them home and took a few pictures I turned over the package to see some serious trash talk from Justin himself:

Think of your favorite peanut butter cup. How would you feel if I told you that compared to ours it tastes like chocolate covered sawdust? That’s right, I said it. Imagine what happens when I take the best tasting organic peanut butter in the world and delicately place it into the highest quality organic and fair trade chocolate available. Yup. Peanut Butter Cup Perfection. [signed] Justin

I don’t mind a little puffery in sales copy, but I don’t like it when my preferences are insulted. Why would Justin start out our relationship by exhibiting such contempt for my predilections? (For the record, my problems with Reese’s have never involved the peanut butter, it’s about the lackluster chocolate.) It took me a while to shrug this off, but I think I managed to center myself back to zero on the predisposed opinion scale.

Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

There are two cups in the package, which weighs 1.4 ounces (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are 1.5 ounces per two cup package). Each cup is exactly 100 calories.

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

I picked these up at Whole Foods within a week or so of them being placed on store shelves (I frequent the one near my office for lunch and I always cruise by the chocolate shelf). The “best by” date was 5/11, so they’re are definitely fresh. Yet there was a slight bloom on all of the cups. This is the opposite of the issue I usually have with peanut butter cups, which tend to get a greasy sheen as the peanut butter oils migrate into the chocolate.

They smell wonderful, mostly like grassy, fresh peanuts but with a light note of milk and cocoa.

What I noticed first when biting into the cup was how sandy and dry the center was. Most peanut butter cups will bend first, this crumbled and broke into chunks. Not a bad thing, just different. The chocolate is silky smooth and like a silky not-to-sweet chocolate butter. The peanut butter center is salty and sweet with strong roasted peanut notes. The texture is odd, it’s not pasty or buttery, it’s crumbly. It’s not grainy either, it’s a very fine sort of powdery texture. The chocolate really makes up for a lot of that with its silken texture and consistent melt.

The other thing I noticed, as the photo shows is that it’s not a coherent block of peanut butter filling. It has some swirls of milk chocolate in it and a rather thick chocolate reservoir on the top. This was the same with all of the cups that I got (see the dark chocolate one below as well).

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter CupsSo after the milk chocolate version, I was definitely curious how the dark chocolate would fare with the different texture style for the peanut butter center.

The Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are also gluten free, organic, use fair trade chocolate, Kosher and packaged in biodegradable wrappers. They’re also vegan. I consider this a pretty big deal, lots of dark chocolate bars are considered vegan but very few “candy” bars are. (But note that they are processed on shared equipment that has been used for dairy ingredients, so they’re not for folks with dairy allergies.)

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

Many all natural products have brief ingredients lists, but Justin’s is quite elaborate, mostly because each ingredient needs a qualification:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Chocolate Liquor*, Organic Cocoa Butter*, Organic Soy Lecithin, Organic Vanilla), Organic Peanut Butter (Organic dry roasted peanuts, Organic palm fruit oil), Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Cocoa Butter, Organic Vanilla Flavor, Sea Salt.

* denotes Rainforest Alliance Certified products

I don’t know what the status of Palm Fruit Oil is on the list of palm oils these days. Palm plantations displace rainforest, but then again this is organic. Maybe some free range, wild-foraged palm fruit oil would be preferable.

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

The chocolate is silky smooth, just as the milk chocolate version was, but much more intense. In this case the chocolate flavors overpower the peanut butter flavors in many bites (mostly because of the inconsistent distribution of the chocolate, both of my cups had a full chocolate center). The cocoa flavors are woodsy with a slight acidic burn and tannic, bitter bite. It balanced well with the lightly sweet peanut butter center.

I liked the chocolate but I bought these because I thought they were peanut butter cups. Where’s my peanut butter!

I like that the peanut butter is less sweet than many other peanut butter confections, but I wanted it to be more buttery, it was like they used peanut flour instead of actual ground peanuts with all their glorious native oils. For this price I need a cup that delivers consistent ratios of peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a new product and maybe they don’t have things worked out, but the fact that the same swirling and high chocolate ratio occurred in both versions leads me to believe that this is either intended or permitted. Some folks might prefer it that way, so there’s a unique selling proposition for Justin’s. But it doesn’t rise to the level of Peanut Butter Cup Perfection.

Justin’s Nut Butters makes a variety of nut butters, like Honey Almond (which I love) and also a Hazelnut Chocolate (which I haven’t tried yet) ... so once they get their inconsistencies settled, I think that should be their next product developed. An Organic, Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Cup. Then we’ll talk about chocolate nut cup perfection.

UPDATE 3/14/2011

I picked up some new samples of Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups at ExpoWest. They were given to me directly by Justin himself. The packaging is identical, but the cups are greatly improved.

Justin's Peanut Butter Cups

My main complaints about the cups were that the peanut butter was too dry and there was too much chocolate. New versions hitting store shelves addressed this. As you can see from the photo above, the peanut butter is more consistently distributed in the center and appears less crumbly and dry. The chocolate shell still has a crisp, well tempered bite to it, but the peanut butter portion is well defined and flavorful. It tastes like a little darker roast as well and perhaps even a little saltier.

On the milk chocolate version I have to update my rating to 9 out of 10. Justin really did rise up to the challenge he made on the wrapper, this is better than a Reese’s.

The dark chocolate version also gets an upgrade, but only to 8 out of 10. It’s vegan, so that’s a huge thing, but the chocolate is still bitter and has a strong olive and grassy taste to it that overpowers the peanut flavors. The textures were excellent and the ratios dead on perfect.

My last hesitation on this product line is still the price though, but they’re definitely worth it now.

I was a bit overwhelmed when talking to Justin that I forgot to mention my desire for the Hazelnut Cup (though he said he’d read the review). Instead of pitching that I told him I wanted someone to make an all-natural peanut butter that had an additional bit of cocoa butter in it instead of hydrogenated tropical oils to keep it emulsified. The cocoa butter would keep it from separating but also add that inimitable texture, (and if you used un-deodorized) a light malty taste and keep it spreadable.

Related Candies

  1. World’s Largest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  2. Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  3. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster
  4. Colt’s Bolts
  5. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  6. Boyer Smoothie


Name: Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Justin’s Nut Butter
Place Purchased: Whole Foods (Park LaBrea)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 143
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Justin's Nut Butter, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, Peanuts, 9-Yummy, United States


Name: Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Justin’s Nut Butter
Place Purchased: Whole Foods (Park LaBrea)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 143
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Justin's Nut Butter, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, Peanuts, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:57 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewJustin's Nut ButterChocolateEthically SourcedKosherOrganicPeanuts8-Tasty9-YummyUnited StatesWhole Foods

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Honees Honey Filled Drops

Sometimes candy can be therapeutic. Honey is supposed to have cough suppressing qualities. Honey candies are a great, compact and less-sticky way to serve up honey.

Ambrosolio Candies Honees

I’ve picked up these Honees made by Ambrosolio Candies of Italy a couple of times in the past year. The first time I found them at Mel & Rose Wine & Liquors, which they were $1.25 ... not bad as far as I was concerned. But then I went to downtown Los Angeles last weekend to a place called Jack’s Wholesale Candy & Toy (photos) and found a box of $24 for only $12.99 ... that’s about 54 cents a package. I bought the whole box (and they said that when their current inventory was gone, the price was going up to $14). They were far cheaper than the lovely French Boules de Miel I got last year at a gourmet store.

The candies are simple. It’s a honey flavored hard candy with a gooey honey center. They come in this simple foil package of nine candies. Each rectangular rod is about one inch long with rounded sides. It fits in the mouth easily, it’s about the same mass as a Starlight Mint (5 grams).

They’re sweet but not cloying or throat searing, it’s more soothing. The honey notes are a little malty, soapy and floral and sometimes I get a little whiff of lemon or eucalyptus. I found that sometimes I could let the candy dissolve and reach the honey center but most of the time I bit them and sucked out the honey or chewed them up.

They’re all natural and only have three ingredients: sugar, corn syrup and honey. (But the honey keeps them from being vegan.)

They’re less like cough drops and more like candy. I can’t say that they calmed my cough that much (but it’s just allergies at the moment, not a cold). They also come in a menthol version and a milk & honey version.

Related Candies

  1. Gimbal’s Honey Lovers
  2. Jelly Belly Honey Beans
  3. Boules de Miel (balls of honey)
  4. Melville Candy Company Honey Spoons

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:43 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewHard Candy & Lollipops8-TastyItaly

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