Candy Blog

Though I obviously love candy, it’s pretty rare that I go out of my way to buy it. I just look for it wherever I happen to be. After all, the best thing about candy is its ubiquity.

The exception is the Wilbur Chocolate Factory with its little museum and factory store in Lititz, Pennsylvania. First, Wilbur chocolate products are not easy to find, especially since I live on the other coast. Yes, I can order online, but shipping costs and the possibility of melting always makes it a nail biting adventure for me. Second, the prices there on all the products in the store are fabulous. The website & catalogue offerings are spare, but in their little store they don’t just sell their own chocolate products, they also have pre-packed bags of candy favorites such as gummi bears, mint creams, Swedish fish, and various hard candies.

They also feature products like their own fudge and chocolate-covered site-made goodies (my sister got some chocolate covered marshmallows). I also found barley sugar candies and a local brand of a coffee crunch bar. The store is neat and clean, the service great and the candy is always fresh. So even though my sister lives an hour away, while there everyone (my sister, sister-in-law & mother) indulged me on the little diversion on a crisp fall afternoon. (We also went to Hershey’s Chocolate World and up to the Hotel Hershey for drinks.)

One of the items on my list when I got there was the Wilbur’s Milk Chocolate Crisp.

This big bar is 2.25 ounces and packaged simply and classically in a paper-foil wrap and a creamy yellow sleeve.

As part of my search for the best crisped rice bar, this was one that I was looking forward to. I was a little worried though. I’ve tasted, literally, thousands of different candies since the last time I had a Wilbur’s Milk Chocolate Crisp bar. Would it still hold up?

The first plus right away is that it’s a thick bar. I like a bar with depth to hold the crisped rice - I like my rice to get completely enveloped in the chocolate.

Next, the sections were easy to break for sharing or portioning.

The chocolate smelled a bit like milk and mostly like malt. Another great sign.

The chocolate is sweet, melts quickly and is much more silky than most other bars I’ve had lately, including the upscale ones. Yes, there’s a lot of fat in there, but I consider that a selling point as well.

The rice crunchies are a little small but plentiful enough. They have a little bit of salt and a good bit of malt as well.

The flavor combination is excellent, the textures meld well. It’s simple, it’s nicely done. I can’t resist. The Ghirardelli uses all-natural ingredients, this has some vanillin in it instead of vanilla plus some mono-diglycerides in the crisped rice.

I bought two of these bars and am regretting that I didn’t get more as they are both gone now. They were $1.59 at the Wilbur store and I would happily pay $2 for them at my local drug store chain.

Related Candies

1. Isle of Skye Seeds of Change Milk with Crispies
2. World’s Finest W.F. Crisp
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
5. Wheat Chocolate
6. Charles Chocolates Bars

Each year around this time there are lists of the best and worst Halloween candies. At the top folks always seem to have Candy Corn, but right in there is another misunderstood and underappreciated candy, Smarties.

There’s not much too them, they’re a simple tangy compressed dextrose candy stacked into a tight roll and wrapped in cellophane. For almost 60 years CeDe Candy has been churning out the chalky, barely flavored tablets. It’d be a rare Halloween Trick-or-Treat bag that didn’t have at least one roll. More recently CeDe’s product line has expanded to include Bubble Gum Smarties, Mega Smarties and now Xtreme Sour and Tropical Smarties.

The Tropical Smarties roll is attractive, orange and yellow accents give it a sunny, citrus look. The tablets themselves don’t look or smell any different from the original though. Original come in green, yellow, purple, pink, orange and white, Tropical seem to come in green, yellow, orange, pink and white.

In the case of the Tropical array, when eating mindlessly the rolls had a soft sweetness to them with some notes of pina colada and banana/strawberry. In the particular the yellow ones are banana (in the regular array I think they’re lemon) and the white ones seem to be the pina colada.

All of this causes too much thinking for something like Smarties though. Though the different colors are different flavors they’re one of the few candies I won’t separate before I eat.

Tropical Smarties are pleasant, a little milder (if that’s even possible) than the Original.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

The first thing I noticed about the X-Treme Sour Smarties is that they’re more vivid. Not quite SweeTarts colors, but pretty close.

The colors are green, yellow, purple, orange and pink (maybe red). They seem a bit denser and less powdery than the Original.

The flavors are actually perceivable, though not terribly notable. The tanginess is very high pitched. Where SweeTarts are a mid-range tartness (malic acid) these seem more citric acidy.

I like the balance of flavor to tartness with SweeTarts, but I can see this different kind of tartness and the back seat the actual flavors take having its appeal.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

On the whole, I’ve always loved Smarties in the sense that I will eat them, all of them, than later I will feel sick, curse them and vow never to eat them again because of my stupid lack of self control. The ubiquity of Smarties around Halloween is also accompanied by some sort of mind-warping amnesia ray ... and I again repeat my demonstration of how much power these little tablets have over me.

(Note: Smarties are called Rockets in Canada. Smarties made by Nestle are little chocolate lentils and are sold everywhere except for the USA.)

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Smarties Jelly Beans
3. Peeps Monster Mash Ups
4. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
5. Green Halloween

When I was a kid and we’d go to the Halloween Parade in town (Mechanicsburg, PA, if you’re curious), both folks from the floats and those watching from the sidewalks would throw corn. (Not on the cob, silly! Just dried feed corn.) I don’t know why we did it, but I kind of likened it to the harvest version of throwing rice at weddings.

This fun little remembrance has nothing to do with anything. Except that I was recently in Mechanicsburg and that it’s National Candy Corn Day and it made me think of throwing corn.

I picked up this Giant Eagle Candy Place Harvest Mix in Ohio. I believe they’re made by Mayfair. Though the colors looked rather faded in the package and the already known-quantity of the Brach’s Halloween Mix was on the shelves, too, I really wanted to try it. At 99 cents, the risk was minimal.

The assortment was much more broad than Brach’s. First, none of the shapes were assigned a particular color/flavor. Second, there were a lot of different shapes and this mix included both candy corn and Indian corn.

The shapes I found were: owl, skull & bones, pumpkin, jack-o-lantern, cat, witch, ear of corn, bat and mellowcreme pumpkin. The colors were orange, tan, yellow and brown.

The whole bag smelled kind of like band-aids and maple syrup.

Orange mellowcremes tasted like marshmallows and honey. Soft, smooth, very little grain and an even and sweet taste.

The tan shapes had a slight maple flavor to them and were my favorite in the bunch even though they lacked the touch of honey that the orange had.

The brown had a caramel and cocoa note, but it wasn’t very pronounced and seemed much sweeter than the other flavors.

Yellow tasted just like orange, which wasn’t a bad thing overall.

The candy corn were exceptionally smooth and had that light kiss of honey ... really good stuff.

While I didn’t like them as much as the Brach’s, this particular variety had no gelatin in it (but did have egg whites) and was made in the USA so there are many reasons why folks might prefer it.

Even though the colors aren’t as vibrant and the flavors not quite as remarkable it is a quality product and certainly worth the 99 cents I paid.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
3. Candy Corn Kisses
4. Brach’s Autumn Mix

Cost Plus World Market always has a great mix of candies that are both decorative and good quality. This year I picked up their Riegelein Confiserie Halloween Hollow Milk Chocolate foil mix.

They were on sale for $9.99, but going further into the store to the Christmas displays (yes, already out) they had several Christmas mixes that weren’t on sale ... for the same price.

The bag is big, as this is hollow chocolate, and holds 14.1 ounces of actual confection. Not a bad deal for 30% cacao milk chocolate, if it’s good quality.

There were two shapes and seven designs.

Each piece is rather light, weighing approximately 12 grams (about the same as a tasting square).

The designs are cute, the little figures come in ghost, witch, monster and jack-o-lantern ghost. The spheres are just different varieties of jack-o-lanterns.

Each of the pieces has a little design embossed on it, nothing that reflects the foil design in the slightest (I’m guessing that it’s generic so they can use the same molded pieces year round).

The figures look like of like board game pieces, little pegs with flat bottoms (though much bigger, about the size of a meaty thumb). The spheres are about the size of a golf ball.

The chocolate itself is glossy and well molded. It smells, well, a little like parmesan cheese and caramel. Not entirely sweet or chocolatey. I’m guessing this is the high milk content (14% minimum) that comes from dried whole milk.

It takes a little getting used to, it’s rich and creamy, rather smooth but still has a strong dairy component that is less confectionery tasting and more like something I’d expect in a bechamel.

The foils are very pretty and nicely done. They’re a bit thin and I had to pick my package carefully as it’s easy to break these (I’m guessing some thumbs poked through two of mine before I got it home).

The ingredients include PGPR and whey (not allowed in the American definition of real chocolate) but also natural vanilla. But the package was fresh, which I think makes a big difference. (Expiration is July 2009.)

They’re well worth it on sale after Halloween if you can find them, but I think that the Christmas ones are a bit nicer. There’s more variety to the shapes, the balls come with little strings so that you can hang them as edible ornaments and I found the Santa to be quite attractive and would make a great centerpiece accent. But I wouldn’t buy a bar of this chocolate.

Related Candies

1. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)
2. Mori Ex Cacao Gift Set
3. The Great Pumpkin Roundup
4. Thompson All Natural Milk Chocolate Crisp
5. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)

Since I knew I was going to be traveling, I thought I’d pick up some easy to carry chocolate for my trip a few weeks ago. I know that I’m guilty of ignoring Godiva here on the blog, even though it’s a major upscale brand of chocolate here in the United States, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give some of their chocolate a go.

Godiva introduced their Chocoiste line which features all sorts of fun goodies that are convenient to carry for a little pick-me-up and sold at lots of stores, not just their outlets.

I chose the Godiva Chocoiste Dark Chocolate Pearls as a way to experience their dark chocolate without any of the muss of fuss of their fancy boxes.

The tin is lovely, tall and narrow with an elegant simplicity and holds 1.5 ounces.

I ran into trouble quickly though. I couldn’t and still can’t get the frelling thing open. Once I did get it open, my thumbtips were sore and this experience repeated each bowb-bowb time I wanted to try a little more. (I even thought it’d losen up, but after three weeks with this frakking thing, I feel like I’m demonstrating my inability to learn from my ficky-fick mistakes and I should just dump them into a ziploc.)

Each of the little pearls are the size of garden peas. Glossy and dark, they are attractive and ready to prove they’re spherical by rolling around the airplane tray table. (Yes, I put down a napkin first, I do have some standards of sanitation.) Luckily they also sit easily on my keyboard near lesser used keys.

The dark chocolate isn’t particularly dark (and contains dairy products like butteroil and milk) but is mellow and rich with a smooth melt. It’s certainly a step up from M&Ms, but at this price ($3.95 a tin) it’s hardly worth it. I would enjoy the tin if it weren’t so expletively frustrating.

Though I tried the dark chocolate first, I spent more time with the Godiva Chocoiste Dark Chocolate Pearls with Mint simply because the tin worked. It opened easily but stayed snapped shut firmly during all my travels.

The pearls looked exactly the same as the plain dark chocolate ones. They smelled like freshly crushed peppermint and spearmint leaves. The chocolate was smooth and had a cool touch of mint that tasted absolutely fresh and authentic.

Both pearl varieties use a resinous glaze, so are unsuitable for strict vegetarians.

Godiva also makes a Mandarin Orange version of the Dark Chocolate that I think I would like very much. Their other versions include Milk Chocolate Pearls, White Chocolate Pearls and Milk Chocolate Caffe Latte Pearls. Other items in the Chocoiste line include chocolate panned nuts & fruits, and solid chocolate bars.

I can see these being a nice gift item or stocking stuffer and the tins are wonderfully shaped and reusable (you could stuff your iPod earbuds in there or just refill with some other treat of your choice). As an everyday item, in this economy and most others I’ve experienced, I’d have to pass.

Other Chocoiste reviews: Sugar Hog tried the Milk Chocolate Domes, The Eating Well tried the Raspberry Bar and Food Mayhem sampled many of the Chocoiste products.

Related Candies

1. Godiva Spring Pearls
2. Russell Stover Color Me Candies
3. Hershey-ets
4. Chuao Chocolate Blocks from LEGOLAND
5. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
6. M&Ms Premiums