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July 2013

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat

Lindt Hello Crunchy NougatHello is a new sub-brand from Lindt Chocolate with a wide variety available exclusively at Target in the United States. (You can get some bars & products at the Lindt website and from Amazon.) Lindt calls it “a brand new collection of contemporary and sinfully delicious premium chocolate bars, sticks and boxes, inspired by classic desserts and treats.”

I’m not sure how it differs from some of their other bars before, but the packaging is certainly different. Instead of the stuffy but easily recognized Lindt package which featured a continental flair, these are certainly modern looking with a lot of flirty typography and forced casualness.

I picked out two bars for my first try (they were on sale, 2 bars for $4.00). Today I’ll review the Hello Crunchy Nougat.

The German style of nougat is a hazelnut paste, not the fluffy egg and honey confection. It’s a milk chocolate shell with a nougat filling and some little shards wafer bits (wheat flour is listed on the ingredients).

Lindt Hello Coffee Blast

The bar is large and thick. At 3.5 ounces, it’s quite long but not as wide as their other tablets. For filled bars I enjoy this format, though it’s usually hard to get a bar that hasn’t been broken in transit or on display. (Since my bar was, this is a photo of the soon-to-be-reviewed Coffee Blast, which has the same mold.)

Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat

The milk chocolate is creamy and sweet, though a little sticky. The filling inside the little sections is far sweeter but has a warm roasted hazelnut flavor with a bit more of a milky, sticky note. The cookie bits are good, they add a touch of salt or at least a little malty flavor that cuts through all the sugar. I also caught a few shards of hazelnuts, which added a nice chew though not much crunch.

It’s a fatty, fatty bar, in a good way. At 156 calories per ounce it was easy to see that it was more than filled with sugar. Ground hazelnuts plus a lot of milk and some coconut and palm oil bring the saturated fat up to 7 grams per serving. I don’t know if I’d buy it again, as there are other hazelnut bars I like better, but mostly because I’d prefer a very dark shell on this to offset all the sweetness inside. I’ll keep looking through their range to see if there’s something that would suit me better, because it was a good deal for $2.00.

Related Candies

  1. Lindt Wasabi
  2. Limited Edition Ritter Sport Winter Kreation + Factory Store
  3. Eat with your Eyes: The Most Awesome Chocolate Bar Ever
  4. Choceur Nougat Bites & Marzipan Bites
  5. Lindt Excellence Dark with a touch of Sea Salt
  6. Lindt Fioretto
  7. Storck Toffifay
  8. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs


Name: Hello Crunchy Nougat
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: Target (Eagle Rock)
Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: Candy, Lindt, Chocolate, Cookie, Nuts, 8-Tasty, Germany, Target

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:05 pm     CandyReviewLindtChocolateCookieNuts8-TastyGermanyTarget

Monday, July 29, 2013

Life Savers Berry Bites Gummies

Life Savers Berry Bites GummiesWrigley’s has released a new Life Savers Gummies variety. It’s called Life Savers Berry Bites.

They come in three flavors: strawberry, red raspberry and cherry berry (which is not a real thing).

Their construction is different from the usual Life Savers Gummis. First, they’re smaller, about same diameter as a hard candy Life Saver, but without the hole. They’re thicker and have two layers. The top is the semi-transparent gummi layer and the bottom is called a white “light textured layer” which is a foamy gummi, a bit denser than a marshmallow.

Life Savers Gummies

Strawberry is the lightest color, a pale pink which sometimes looked a little orange. The flavor is well rounded, a good combination of tartness and sweetness. Strawberry is pretty easy to do well, as Life Savers have done here. The foamy layer is also a little tart and seems to be less berry, but not quite creamy.

Red Raspberry is the red and was the least successful of the set. It was tasty, but not jammy enough for me and didn’t distinguish itself from the other two. It was sweet and has berry notes, but it was bland overall.

Cherry Berry is dark red. If it’s supposed to be a mixed berry, that was lost on me, because this was a true Life Savers Cherry flavor. It’s zingy and intense, except for the foamy layer which gives it a bit of air without diluting the flavor completely.

I appreciate that Life Savers didn’t go out and make too many berry flavors to fit into this mix, just because they do five flavors in their rolls. Three is a good mix and all three of these were successful, though probably not a good match for my favorite flavor ranking. Now ... if they make a citrus mix, we’ll have something to talk about.

Right now I think they only come in the large resealable package, but will probably be available in the king sized packages as some point. They’re similar to the Wonka Whipped Wingers which I believe had natural colors in them.

Related Candies

  1. Storck Mamba Sour Gummies
  2. Van Slooten Flowers & Butterflies Mix of Sugared Liquorice
  3. Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies
  4. Wonka Whipped Wingers Gummies
  5. Puffy Candy Corn
  6. LifeSavers Tangy Fruits Gummies
  7. Lifesaver Gummies


Name: Life Savers Berry Bites Gummies
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Wrigley’s
Place Purchased: samples from Wrigley's
Price: $2.59
Size: 8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 92
Categories: Candy, Mars, Wrigley's, Gummi Candy, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:01 pm     CandyReviewMarsWrigley'sGummi Candy7-Worth ItUnited States

Monday, July 22, 2013

Eat with Your Eyes: Caramel Bar

I’m taking a few days off. I’m on a cookie vacation. (No, that’s not a vacation from cookies, it’s a vacation with lots of cookies.)

Fran's Almond Gold Bar

I’ll be back later this week with more candy, but in the mean time, enjoy this photo of a Fran’s Almond Gold Bar which was “buttery caramel, toasted almonds and dark chocolate.” (Full package photo.)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:34 am     CandyCaramelChocolateNutsUnited StatesHighlightPhotography

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Lucky Country Aussie-Style Black Licorice

Lucky Country Soft LicoriceLucky Country is an American licorice company that makes Australian-style licorice. What is Australian style? It’s distinguished by large pieces, a soft texture and a molasses & wheat flour base.

Lucky Country is not as easy to find in stores as Twizzlers or Red Vines, but for folks who like a really rich tasting licorice but don’t want to spring for the European or Australian candies, it’s a good option.

Lucky Country sent me some bags of their black licorice and some of their fruity varieties. I’d tried their black before (the photo of the package shown is from 2008, but the pieces below are the more recent shipment).

Lucky Country Black Licorice

The nuggets are big. They’re about 1.5” long and about .6 inches in diameter. It only takes five pieces to make a portion, which comes out to about 130 calories. Even though it’s not fat free, it’s very low in calories overall, only 92 calories per ounce, because it’s a wheat-based chew and the primary sweetener is molasses. The molasses also adds a bit of nutrition. There 6% of your daily RDA of calcium and 8% of your RDA of iron.

I was disappointed to see artificial colors in the ingredients. It’s pretty easy to find all natural licorice out there, so there’s little reason to compromise on this if you don’t like Red 40, Yellow 6 or Blue 1 going into your candy or body.

Lucky Country Black Licorice

The pieces are a little sticky but overall quite chewy and soft. The flavor is well rounded with a good licorice and anise flavor along with a smoky and earthy flavor of molasses. They’re not as sweet as Panda licorice, and I enjoy the twisted segments as a shape versus the long, smooth bar of Panda.

It’s good stuff, and since it’s made in the US, it’s pretty affordable stuff. Personally I prefer the format of pastilles (like Good & Plenty) so if they ever go in that direction, I’d be interested to try them.

Related Candies

  1. Panda Traditional Soft Original Licorice (with High Fructose Corn Syrup)
  2. Aldi Grandessa Australian Licorice
  3. Natural Vines - Black Licorice
  4. Walgreen’s Australian Licorice (Chocolate Covered)
  5. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
  6. Young & Smylie Traditional Licorice
  7. Kookaburra Licorice


Name: Aussie-Style Traditional Black Soft Licorice
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lucky Country
Place Purchased: samples from Lucky Country
Price: $1.89 retail
Size: 6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 92
Categories: Candy, Kosher, Licorice Candy, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:28 pm     CandyReviewKosherLicorice Candy7-Worth ItUnited States

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Sugarfina: The Chocolates

Sugarfina Assortment

Last week I profiled the exceptional and hard to find gummis from Sugarfina. They also sent a second Bento box to me with chocolate items. They’re all panned candies but a far more diverse selection from the gummis. Most are made in the US, and like the gummis, Sugarfina doesn’t specify who makes them.

Sugarfina - Vanilla Bean Malt Balls

Vanilla Bean Malt Balls: The white chocolate coating is flecked with vanilla bean bits. The pieces smell strongly of vanilla with a hint of toffee and coffee in there. The coating is sweet and milky, but completely overwhelmed by the bourbon-y vanilla. There’s also a fair bit of salt in there, so it wasn’t as sickly sticky feeling as it could have been. There’s a layer below that, perhaps a dark chocolate but mostly it’s there to break up the sweetness. Below that is the crunchy center, which has a mild cereal flavor but not much in the way of malt.

The whole effect is satisfying, but in the sense that I didn’t need to eat more than two in one serving. So even though the package was small and had very few pieces in it, I never felt the need to gobble the whole thing up.

Sugarfina - Single Malt Scotch Cordials

Single Malt Scotch Cordials: are a classic from Koppers. While I love the panned cordials, these raised my expectations a little too high. I’m good with a comforting rum flavored cordial without complaint. But these were labeled as single malt scotch. Though they have a little stronger note of leather or tobacco, they’re not terribly different from the ordinary flavored cordials. I’ll probably stick to the rum or cognac version in the future.

If you’ve never had them, there’s a liquid center, which is a little flavored syrup, then a sugar crusted shell then a layer of dark chocolate. The sugar shell makes it all very sweet.

Sugarfina Espresso Caramels

The Espresso Caramels were very similar to the Trader Joe’s Butterscotch Caramels (which I suspect are made by Marich). They’re wonderfully proportioned with a fair amount of mild semi-sweet chocolate and a nugget of soft, chewy caramel at the center. The coffee notes were not particularly strong, but still created a satisfying candy.

Marshmallow S'Mores

The Marshmallow S’Mores are an extraordinary little construction. At the center is a little marshmallow, then a milk chocolate coating. What sets this apart is the dusting of graham cracker on the outside. The marshmallow is mild and also kind of tiny, so all it does is make the whole thing lighter and easier to chew without giving it the doughy puff of sugar that I usually associate with Smores. The milk chocolate is sweet and very milky which offsets the graham crackers slightly salty and cereal flavors. I didn’t really care for the graham notes, mostly because they seemed a bit on the stale side, for crumbs.

DSC_2438rb

Pastel Malted Milk Eggs are a classic. It’s hard to not like them, even when they’re bad. There were only four of them in the little box, because they were each so big. The malt was good, crunchy and dense. The chocolate was okay, it didn’t add much to it, as is usually the case with pastel eggs because of the crunchy shell. I’d eat a lot of these if I had them.

Peanut Butter Caramels

DSC_2455rbPeanut Butter Caramels are not new to me. I tried them a few years back after hearing the concept and being intrigued. It’s a caramel center with a peanut butter coating then it’s rolled in powdered sugar. The whole effect is sweet, not peanutty enough and not chewy either. But I still find myself eating them all. I don’t know if they need chocolate or not, but I like the idea of a peanut butter confection that doesn’t have chocolate.

Rainbow Raisins

Rainbow Raisins

Rainbow Raisins were completely new to me. It makes sense, if a Peanut M&M is just a candy coated Goober, why can’t there be a candy coated Raisinet?

The colors are satisfying and lovely. The shells are crunchy and perhaps even a little floral tasting. The raisins were especially moist and chewy though sometimes I wasn’t sure there was any chocolate in there at all. They’re quite sweet, but the tangy bite of the raisins cuts that a little bit.

On the whole, the chocolates are quite fun and it’s easy to see how the hard to find combinations would make a special gift. They’re also expensive and though the bento boxes are a silly amount of packaging, the regular boxes are actually pretty efficient as they’re stuffed to the brim. The result of the packaging is that the candies don’t roll around a lot and get scuffed up.

I’m giving the whole roundup an 8 out of 10 rating.

Related Candies

  1. Sugarfina: The Gummis
  2. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Sea Salt Butterscotch Caramels
  3. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
  4. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Eggs (Plus a Bonus)
  5. Bit-O-Honey
  6. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
  7. K Chocolatier

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:10 pm     CandyReviewCaramelChocolateCoffeeMaltPeanutsWhite Chocolate8-TastyUnited States

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