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March 2015

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

YumJunkie Sassy Straws

DSC_8281rbOne of the problems with Pixy Stix, when it comes to offering them as party favors, gift decoration or as part of a candy buffet, is that you can only buy them in the assorted flavors. No one sells them in single flavor packages. Enter YumJunkie’s Sassy Straws. They come in twice the number of flavors, have really cute colors and designs on the straws what’s more, they can be ordered as separate flavor packages.

The flavor offerings go like this: strawberry (pink), watermelon (med-pink), blue raspberry (light blue), blueberry (blue), grape (purple), lime (green), cherry (red), orange (orange), black cherry (black).

The design of the straws is attractive when seen as a bulk arrangement. It’s simple, just a repeated pattern of colored swirls. The straws don’t have any writing on them, or notations of their flavors.

I picked up a full set of flavors at the Fancy Food Show earlier this year. 

DSC_8291rb

There’s no secret recipe for these granulated candies, it’s the same thing that makes up SweeTARTS or Lik-M-Aid. It starts with granulated dextose, which is just glucose (the stuff in corn syrup). Dextrose isn’t quite as sweet as regular table sugar, so this formula take flavors really well without being overly cloying.

Dextrose, Sugar, Citric Acid, Artificial Flavors & Colors. May Include One or More of the Following: Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2 Lake. May Contain Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Milk, Eggs, Wheat & Soy Products

The flavors are actually pretty good. I’m not going to go through each one, but I can say for me the highlights were Strawberry, Grape (which is not quite Pixy Stix grape), and Orange. The dissolve is great, with a granulated start, cool feeling as it releases the flavor and a tangy note throughout. I didn’t like the Blueberry and found the Black Cherry and Cherry to taste exactly the same (which is just fine, it’s really about the straw colors, after all). I did wonder why there was no yellow (lemon, banana, pineapple, whatever).

Each straw is about 6 inches long. While the candy is 101 calories per ounce, there are only 8 calories per straw (only 2.25 grams of candy in there). It would take more than a dozen of these straws to make 100 calories.

Now, someone needs to convince Wrigley’s that they should sell Skittles in individual colors.

Related Candies

  1. Smarties Double Lollies and Mega Lollies
  2. Wonka SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2012)
  3. Runts
  4. Chewy Spree: Original & Mix’d Berry
  5. Goodbye Tart n Tinys
  6. Candy Blox
  7. Giant Pixy Stix


Name: Sassy Straws
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Yum Junkie
Place Purchased: samples from YumJunkie at Fancy Food Show
Price: unknown
Size: 1 ounce
Calories per ounce: 101
Categories: Candy, Compressed Dextrose, 5-Pleasant, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:22 am     CandyReviewCompressed Dextrose5-PleasantUnited States

Monday, March 30, 2015

Willie’s Cacao - Venezuelan Gold 72%

Willie's Cacao - Venezuelan GoldWhile in London last year, I picked up quite a few chocolate bars. One brand that I noticed had good distribution and prices, was Willie’s Cacao. The company direct sources their cocoa beans and manufacturers their chocolate in England. For a small company they make a wide array of chocolate products, like the bars I picked up in single origin varieties like Madagascar, Peru, Indonesia and two different sourcings from Venezuela. In addition they also have a line of single origin cocoas, chocolate pearls and bars with flavors and inclusions.

I picked up the Venezuela Gold Las Trincheras 72% at Waitrose. The package is two little 40 gram bars that are wrapped separately for £2.99, or about $4.50. A lot of other single origin bars are priced at twice that, so it was a gamble that this was going to be passable stuff. The box is quite elegant, dark brown with orange, creamy yellow and gold foiled lettering. The package states that the single estate cacao comes from Hacienda Las Trincheras in northern Venezuela.

The flavor profile is described as smooth nutty notes, which is exactly why I like Venezuelan origin cacao.

Willie's Cacao (Venezuela)

The box helpfully gave me both the bar’s origin date and the best by date. It was produced in November 2013 and good until May 2015. I ate one of the bars after I returned from my trip last year, and saved the other in my climate controlled chocolate fridge until last month.

The bars are lovely, the mold, which says Willie’s Delectable Cacao gives the otherwise ordinary 2.75 inch square a bit more flair. The tempering is very nice, there’s a good snap to the bar and no bubbles or voids. The color is a little on the red side of dark brown.

The melt is easy but not too quick. The ingredients are very simple, no emulsifiers. Just cacao, raw cane sugar and cocoa butter. There’s a little dryness early on, and some bright fruit notes. The overwhelming flavor I get is not nutty but raisins. I usually associate strong raisin flavors with Peruvian chocolate. There are some other notes of rosemary, roses and plums, but I didn’t catch more than a fleeting cashew note. It’s a bit bitter at times as well, but not so much that it distracted from the other flavors, just enough to keep it from getting too sweet.

For the price, I think they’re very well done bars, and I appreciate the packaging style that allows me to actually eat some now and really save some for later, as I did here. However, I didn’t love this particular bar enough that I would import it. I am interested enough in the brand that I would pick it up again, especially some of the other origins.

Related Candies

  1. Hotel Chocolat Rabot 1745 Venezuela Chuao
  2. Soma Black Science Carenero Superior
  3. Chuao Venezuelan Origin Chocolate
  4. Amano Dos Rios 70% Chocolate
  5. Amano Milk Chocolate Ocumare
  6. Scharffen Berger Finisterra 10th Anniversary Bar
  7. Domori Cru
  8. Amano Single Origin Bars: Madagascar & Ocumare


Name: Venezuelan Gold Las Trincheras 72%
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Willie’s Cacao
Place Purchased: Waitrose (London)
Price: £2.99 ($4.50)
Size: 2.82 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Single Origin, 8-Tasty, United Kingdom

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:15 am     All NaturalCandyReviewChocolateEthically SourcedSingle Origin8-TastyUnited Kingdom

Friday, March 27, 2015

Short & Sweet: Fancy Chocolate Bites

When I was at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January, I picked up a lot of little chocolate pieces, but not full sized bars for review. So here are a few thoughts on some items that are now in stores:

Perugina Milk Chocolate Baci

Perugina Baci are perfect little bites of dark chocolate and hazelnut. Of course they had to twist it up a bit and introduce a white chocolate version ... and now there’s Peugina Milk Chocolate Baci.

Perugina Milk Chocolate Baci

The wrappers are light blue instead of silver. They’re pretty and look the same in shape and structure as the standard dark. The milk chocolate does change the confection quite a bit. The hazelnut because more of the star, as well as the dairy notes from the milk chocolate coating and creamy filling. I still liked them, but I ate some classic dark at the same time. I still prefer the bittersweet coating because it brings out the roasted flavors. But these are still nice and probably something kids may enjoy more or supertasters who don’t like bitter things.

BT McElrath Buttered Toast

I enjoy BT McElrath’s Salty Dog bars (which it turns out I haven’t fully reviewed), which are a great sweet/savory mix of creamy chocolate, salt and crunchy toffee bits. So I was very excited to try the new BT McElrath Buttered Toast. It’s described as Toasted artisan breadcrumbs in our proprietary blend of 40% cacao milk chocolate.

It’s sweet and definitely buttery. There’s a soft bite to this and little bits that crunch like panko. There’s a light salt note along with a little toffee and malt to it as well. Even though it’s a very rich milk chocolate, it might be a little too thick and sticky for me ... maybe I’ll wait for the dark chocolate version to come along.

BT McElrath Red

The BT McElrath Super Red is a 70% bar with little flecks of freeze dried fruit.

BT McElrath Super Red

The tart notes of the berry bits with the rather dark chocolate combine for a lot more flavor intensity than something like a nut chocolate combo would give. The seeds also give a little bitterness, as does the chocolate and dark berry notes.

Vosges Super Dark Matcha Green Tea

Vosges calls these Super Dark bars, though they’re only 72% dark chocolate. That’s because the super part isn’t modifying the chocolate, it’s modifying the inclusions, which are all deemed superfoods.  It’s like they went out of their way to put bitter things in there. I picked up two samples (they look pretty much the same). Vosges Super Dark Matcha Green Tea features spirulina, matcha (pulverized green tea) and cocoa nibs. The grassy notes of the matcha are immediately forward. I enjoy a lot of green tea, though I don’t have matcha very often because it’s pulverized leaves, not just steeped tea. Though I understand that there’s more flavanol bang per gram in matcha than the brewed leaves, it’s just too intense for me. This bar brings out a lot of that experience, so if you’re a matcha fan, this is a fun bar, especially because there are some cocoa nibs in there for crunch. The bitterness was just too drying for me. I had to follow it with some Hojicha.

The Vosges Super Dark Coconut Ash & Banana features Sri Lankan coconut charcoal coconut ash and Hawaiian Banana. The bar does look much darker, blacker than a usual chocolate bar. It smells like coconut cream. The flavor is bizarre as well. There are the immediate chocolate notes, which are like crispy brownie edges, then the coconut flavors and something, well, umami that I can’t put my finger on. Then there’s the weird banana flavor, which is a little like fingernail polish remover, it’s not an integrated flavor, it’s like it escapes from the chocolate and evaporates immediately into the back of my sinuses - eventually within the chocolate I did come across a few tangy bits of dried banana, which were completely different on the banana taste spectrum. I wouldn’t call this a pleasant bar experience, though I do appreciate the attempt at the unique. The ash notes come out at the end, more as a sort of dry charcoal notes.

I actually love the little sizes of all the bars, and BT McElrath sells theirs in an array of sizes, some with mixed flavors so you can try more of choose to suit your mood. Vosges also sells some of their Super Dark pieces in boxes, but they’re about $80.

Related Candies

  1. Perugina Baci
  2. Fancy Food Show 2010 - Day 2 Notes
  3. Vosges Bombalinas - Black Pearl Cashews
  4. Candy on the Trail
  5. Fancy Food Show 2009 Notes - Day One
  6. KitKat Chocolatier (Strawberry & Green Tea)
  7. Vosges Truffles - Fall 2006
  8. Hanahiyori - Green Tea White Chocolates

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:54 am     CandyFancy Food ShowReviewNestleVosgesChocolateNibsNutsItalyUnited StatesHighlightFeatured News

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Melster Marshmallow Fluffies

Melster FluffiesI have very little to say about this product today. On Candyology 101, for our first Easter episode, Maria presented some Dollar Tree candies, as a sort of dare. Of course, once I said I might be interested in one of them, I felt compelled to actually follow through. So, off I went to the Dollar Tree to plunder their aisle filled with R.M. Palmer and Ferrara Candy found nowhere else.

The item I expressed I wanted to try was Melster Marshmallow Fluffies with limited edition Spring Flavors: Vanilla, Lemon, Cherry and Green Apple.

Melster is one of two American companies I know that make Circus Peanuts (Spangler is the other) and I always hope that I will find a version of the Marbits-style candy that I actually like. So, my optimism and one dollar got me this bag. Thankfully it’s only 6 ounces, which means there won’t be much waste after I try them and throw them away.

Melster Fluffies

They’re absolutely ugly. The little cartoons on the package are great, but these just look like hammer-wrecked pastel thumbs.

Since I dreaded them, they were far more likely to impress me than not.

The Lemon Yellow one was pleasant enough. The texture of the marshmallow is firm. There’s a slight grain to the fluff, which is pretty dry but not stale. The sweet lemon flavor is light, giving the whole thing the vague taste and texture of an Italian nougat.

The White Vanilla was also nondescript, it had virtually no flavor aside from sugar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The fact that it had no coloring also meant that there were no strange aftertastes.

Green Apple was mercifully bland, as I was afraid it would be Jolly Rancher-ish. Instead it had a vague note of “flavor” but nothing I could pin down.

Pink Cherry smelled like a new vinyl showercurtain. It tasted like a cross between an antiseptic spray and a generic fruity candle from the dollar store. There was such a bitter aftertaste that upon eating one while taking their photo, I made a mental note to make this the last of my tastings for review. Which is good, because this leaves a long and lingering bitterness.

So, the three decent flavors weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be, but that’s only because I thought they’d be as bad as bad could be. The Pink Cherry actually exceeds the expected horribleness.

For an Easter candy, these should be more attractive, not look like actual pre-hatched chicks and ducks or a roadkill bunny. Brach’s also makes a version of these for Easter, which are equally unattractive. This really isn’t a candy that’s likely to wow me, but if you’re a Circus Peanut fan, you might enjoy the variation on the standard Banana flavor.



Name: Marshmallow Fluffies
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Melster
Place Purchased: Dollar Tree (Echo Park)
Price: $1.00
Size: 6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 80
Categories: Candy, Easter, Impact Confections, Melster, Marshmallow, 4-Benign, United States, Dollar Tree

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:20 pm     CandyReviewEasterImpact ConfectionsMelsterMarshmallow4-BenignUnited StatesDollar Tree

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Brach’s Spiced Jelly Bird Eggs

Brach's Spiced Jelly BeansWhen I was very little, as far as I knew, Jelly Beans came in a scant few flavors and they were basically the same as Spice Drops. Later Jelly Belly came along and revolutionized jelly beans by trying to make everything into a flavor at least once.

Brach’s now calls their fruit blend of Jelly Bird Eggs their Classic Flavors, and they call what were, for about 100 years the classic flavors simply Spiced. I guess when a couple of generations grow up with fruity jelly beans, that happens. Now, I might complain that things have changed over the years, and a pound of coffee is no longer a pound of coffee ... but this bag is actually a pound of jelly beans. For only $2.49 ... not a bad deal overall ... if they’re any good.

Nowhere on the bag does it go beyond that name to describe what the flavors actually are. It appears there are six flavors.

Brach's Spiced Jelly Beans

I’ll start with Green which is epitome of a Spearmint jelly bean. It’s like a jelly bean version of Spearmint Leaves. The shell is grainy and far too sweet, but the center has a lot of fresh spearmint flavor, with little pops of extra flavor now and then. Very refreshing. I picked these out of the bag and ate them first.

Black is Licorice, which is not surprising to anyone who’s ever had jelly beans. The flavor is strongly anise, crisp and sweet but with a little bitter edge that I think may come from the artificial colors. I liked them, they were good but there were far fewer blacks than any other color in the bag.

White is Peppermint but a rather mild mint. As much as I like peppermint, it simply doesn’t go very well here. It’s weak and watery, kind of like a peppermint tea instead of a peppermint candy. Still, I didn’t avoid them and I enjoyed the fact that they didn’t have any colorings in them.

Orange is Orange Spice. I think it’s spiced orange, because it’s not Orange Slice orange, there’s a note of cinnamon and clove to the shell, but the center is orange. These irritated me, because I wanted a zesty Jelly Bird Egg equivalent of the Orange Slice. However, I applaud them for making an orange that was actually in keeping with the spice theme.

Pink is Wintergreen. I love wintergreen and these were pretty good, aromatic and medicinal but with a bitter finish.

Purple is Clove. I don’t care for clove as a candy flavor or spice, so I’ll pass on this one. It was strong and well rounded, with both aromatic notes and the bitterness that I’m never sure is coming from the flavorings or the colorings.

Red is Cinnamon. I like cinnamon a lot and I eat plenty of Hot Tamales. These were spicy and sweet, a good balance, especially since it seemed to come from the jelly center, not just the sugary shell.

On the whole, they’re an acceptable blend of flavors, just what I expected. I wish the sugar shell wasn’t quite so grainy and sweet, but the jelly center is actually rather smooth. The contain no pectin, they’re only jelled with corn starch.

The beans were made in Mexico. They have a beeswax and confectioners glaze on them, so most vegans would not eat these. Jelly Bird Eggs are made in a facility that also uses milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy.

Related Candies

  1. David’s Signature Beans Jelly Bean Sampler
  2. Ferrara Pan White Hot Red Hots Jelly Beans
  3. Spearmint Leaves
  4. Russell Stover Pectin Jelly Beans
  5. Hot Tamales Spice Jelly Beans
  6. Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans
  7. Blueberry Hill Spice Jelly Beans


Name: Spiced Jelly Bird Eggs
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Brach’s
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Glendale)
Price: $2.49
Size: 16 ounces
Calories per ounce: 104
Categories: Candy, Easter, Brach's, Ferrara Pan, Cinnamon, Jelly Candy, Mints, 5-Pleasant, Mexico, Walgreen's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:07 pm     CandyReviewEasterBrach'sFerrara PanCinnamonJelly CandyMints5-PleasantMexicoWalgreen's

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