Candy Blog

I’ve always turned up my nose at Palmer chocolates. I’ve had their mockolate bunnies at Easter before, and in my candy-deprived-state of childhood I would eat them. But I never really liked them. So as an adult with the financial means to make other choices, I have avoided them.

But taking a risk this season was a little easier, as I found that Walgreen’s carries these little single-serving bags (two ounces) of the foil covered Premium Milk Chocolate Balls. It said premium, maybe they were good!

The ingredients looked promising:

Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Whole Milk, Chocolate, Soy Lecithin and Vanilla.

Real vanilla, they took this premium thing seriously.

Palmer’s have always looked pretty, so I wasn’t disappointed with the merry red and green foil decorated with holly leaves in a band of gold around the middle. Inside the foil they weren’t terribly attractive though, looking more like a wad of putty.

They smelled sweet and slightly milky. I didn’t detect any real vanilla complexity though. I popped one in my mouth and immediately got a hit of sugar. As the grainy chocolate melted it was very sweet with a vague dairy taste and pleasant vanilla aroma. But very little chocolate. Though it melted, it felt a bit chalky and waxy instead of smooth and buttery. The texture is cool on the tongue and I don’t actually mind a bit of sugary grain to my chocolate, but without much of a chocolate flavor I was underwhelmed.

They’re pretty, I’ll give them that.

There are a lot of different kind of flavored candy canes out there. I could probably start a blog and post about a different one each and every day. And bore myself and you to tears.

I rather like hard candy and I rather enjoy candy canes. I’m more interested in the minty and spicy flavors as I like that combination during the winter, not the fruity flavors. If I had to give holiday seasons a flavor set it would go something like this:

Halloween = Milk Chocolate and Nuts
Thanksgiving = Caramel
Christmas = Nougat, Mint and Spice
Valentine’s Day = Dark Chocolate and Sweet Fruit Flavors
Easter = White Chocolate and Sour Fruit Flavors

Of course the product above from Hershey’s has very little to do with that list. The Hershey’s Chocolate Mint Candy Canes are really lovely. A white cane with small green and red bands and a larger brown stripe winding its way around the generous 5 1/2 inch cane. I would guess that some folks would pick these up more often because of the pleasant color scheme than the taste.

Because they’re not that tasty.

The candy is nice and solid without that foamy crunch that some canes have. These have a mild minty taste and an overwhelming cardboard chocolate flavor. The word chocolatey doesn’t do it justice. It’s like someone watered down a Tootsie Roll with sugar and a dab of peppermint. The stale and plain chocolatey taste has no relation to much of what’s great about chocolate itself. It’s not rich, it’s not creamy, it’s not complex, it’s not fulfilling or addictive. I had a lingering aftertaste of packaging material with a minty hint.

So what makes them like this? Here is the list of ingredients: Sugar, Corn Syrup, contains 2% or less of: Natural and Artificial Flavor, Artificial Color and Soy Lecithin. So there you go, there’s no chocolate in there.

If you’re looking for candy canes to decorate with and this fits your color scheme and you’re one of those people who never actually eats them, well, these are definitely for you. Oh, and they’re Kosher!

I reviewed the Payday covered in real milk chocolate earlier this year. That was a limited edition item and was quickly replaced with this permanent offering called the Chocolatey Avalanche bar. Cuz you know, given a choice, no one wants real chocolate. They want chocolate-like products!

The Payday Chocolatey Avalanche is pretty good. It does have real chocolate in there, it’s just mixed with some other tropical oils (and that wonderful, ubiquitous PGPR that’s all the rage right now) so it no longer qualifies as chocolate . Under the mockolate, the peanuts have a good salty hit to them that balances out the sweet and soft nougat and the slight chew from the caramel. The bar tasted slightly of cinnamon, but perhaps it was stored somewhere close to a case of Atomic Fireballs.

The best thing about this bar was that it was fresh. Every last nut on there was crunchy and tasty.

The limited edition offering at the moment, however, is called Peanut Butter flavor Avalanche which also has no chocolate. It’s a peanut butter core, covered in caramel and rolled in peanuts then dipped in a peanut butter coating.

I’ve eaten two of these so far. The first one I wolfed down the night before my CNBC appearance because I wanted to prep myself properly. The bar was dry and though filling, it stuck in my tummy like a rock. The second one I ate (pictured above) was a bit more pleasant. I’m glad I gave it another try. Still, the crumbliness of the nougat center was just too much when combined with the lack-luster peanut coating. If I were a milk drinker that would have been the perfect accompaniment. But candy shouldn’t need to be consumed with a beverage in order to work.

I’m reverting to the regular old Payday. It never lets me down.

There I was last spring, talking up the Easter-only Cadbury Mini Eggs. But it turns out they do have a Christmas version of them.

Irritatingly enough they couldn’t be bothered to name them. The package says Cadbury Solid Milk Chocolates with a Crisp Sugar Shell. What the? You call that a name? How about Christmas Cadberries?

I was hoping they’d be just like the Mini Eggs. I opened the package and they smelled similarly inviting, like sugar and cocoa. But the colors, oh, they colors are just off. I don’t know if the photo above conveys it. They look like pencil erasers. Kind of chalky, not quite pastel, not quite vivid. Inconsistent, bumpy and just weird.

On the tongue they’re familiar. Soft and slightly cool, the shell is crisp and crunchy. The milk chocolate inside is a little tangier than the last time I had these. I was terribly disappointed to see that they have PGPR in them as well (which was pointed out by a reader, Jenn, who commented on the Mini Eggs review and prompted me to search for these).

It’s odd how quickly my feelings can change, I have a hard time believing this is a bad bag. It might be the different colors or the PGPR (that could be in the Easter version for all I know) but they’re just not the same. I can’t give these more than a 6 out of 10 (the taste is okay but they sure don’t look tempting).

I went looking for Christmas candy of all sorts last week during the holiday break. I seem to have the best luck at Walgreen’s since they have dependable sales and a clean store (I also went to Target, but everything came in super-jumbo bags). As I expected Russell Stover’s has their assortment of single-serving goodies that are similar to the Easter and Halloween ones. I did, however, find one that I’d not seen before, the Russell Stover Coconut Wreath

They were on sale for 50 cents, so I could hardly pass it up. I’m a sucker for coconut haystacks which is what I expected this to be.

I wasn’t disappointed either. The plop of coconut and milk chocolate was shiny and smelled of coconut. The coconut was crunchy and well-toasted, giving it a much more chewy texture than something like a Mounds bar. The coconut bits were rather small, like little flecks instead of being little curls like you’d find in a bag of coconut shreds in the baking aisle.

It wasn’t too sweet at all, just a nice mellow mix with an interesting texture.

If I was disappointed it was at the shape. I expected something that looked like a donut, instead it’s just a plop. What’s like a wreath about this? Or was mine malformed and had a filled center?

I have to say that I’m pleased that Candy Blog has prompted me to give the Russell Stover holiday lines a chance. Their quality is excellent (no PGPR in the chocolate) and when on sale they’re about the same price as any consumer candy bar and usually feature less common flavor combinations.

Other Russell Stover holiday candy reviews:

Pumpkins: Vanilla Marshmallow and Marshmallow & Caramel

Cream Eggs: Strawberry, Maple & Coconut