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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

College Farm Organic Naturepops

Here’s an all natural, organic candy that does a great job of looking and tasting like a traditional mass-manufactured lollipop. But these are different from the moment you pick up the package, because they’ve taken the packaging into account when creating the product.

College Farm Organic has been around for over 50 years (making traditional candies at first) and have only recently gone after the organic hard candy market. Their line of products include hard toffees, hard candies and these lollies.

image

They’re a nice size and shape. Not huge, but a good morsel. They’re oval shaped and rather flat. They’re smooth for the most part with some bubbles and voids, but nothing to cut up your mouth like a Tootsie Pop can. They aren’t clear, more opaque than most other hard candy lollipops, but the colors are appealing. They’re wrapped in a very noisy biodegradable corn starch cellophane.

They come in a mixed bag of 18 pops in four flavors.

Citrus Blast (orange) - smelled like lemonade, but tasted like very concentrated orange. Tangy, sweet, a little zesty.

Tropical Treat (yellow) - definite apricot and mango flavors with a bit of pineapple. Tart and sweet and tasty.

Cheery Cherry (red)  - mild and tart and overall pleasant but with no particular flavor there. It did get more flavorful as I went along, but never really gave me a zing.

Wild Berry (dark red) - floral and sweet with a nice rounded berry flavor that wasn’t particularly raspberry or strawberry but a nice overall experience.

College Farm Organics Naturepops are made with no gluten, nuts, dairy, soy or eggs and with evaporated cane juice, so they’re suitable for folks with dietary restrictions and vegans.

The size is great and they taste just like hard candies - if you’re looking for something to give the kids that you won’t feel quite as guilty about, then pick some up. I saw them at Whole Foods over the weekend ($3.99 a bag), so they’re making their way into stores and you can buy them at Amazon (for about a dollar less per bag, but of course in quantities). As a Green Halloween candy, they fit into the fun factor. Lollies were not on my prime list of Halloween booty, but they were definitely something to be consumed (and not traded). The taste is the same as a traditional lolly and they don’t look any different, so the kids won’t think that you’re that stick in the mud that gives out “healthy” stuff.

Name: Naturepops
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: College Farm Organic
Place Purchased: samples from College Farm
Price: ~$2.95-$3.99 retail
Size: 5.1 ounces
Calories per ounce: 113
Categories: Hard Candy, United States, Organic, Kosher, Green Halloween

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:26 am    

Monday, September 25, 2006

Twizzler Sourz

These were introduced almost two years ago, so I was a little confused by the NEW! starburst on the package. But I hadn’t had them anyway, so into the basket they went.

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I don’t know when citrus flavors stopped being the normal “sour” flavors, but I’ve missed them a bit. It’s not like blue raspberry is any more natural as a “licorice” flavor than orange or lemon.

These are a wheat-based chew, which is what most “licorice” is. The center is flavored and then dusted with a sour sugar coating. They smell really nice as a combo - a little floral, a little fruity and a slight tangy essence. Leave them in a desk drawer and it’s kind of like an edible sachet.

They’re wee morsels, smaller than most licorice bites. They have the same basic star shape in cross section, which is great for holding onto all the sour dust.

Strawberry - mild in the strawberry department and with a decent tart bite.

Cherry - a nice chemical cherry flavor with a solid sour kick, but no complexity. A bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Green Apple - a pretty good sour apple flavor with a combo of the floral notes and that realistic apple juice taste and a sizeable tartness that satisfies. My favorite of all of them.

Blue Raspberry - floral and with an odd sort of yellow mustard note in there that confused the heck out of me. Not as sour tasting as some of the others and of course the mustard thing was kind of unpleasant.

Overall, they’re tasty, but don’t really provide any more candy satisfaction than some other tangy chews that I’ve had lately. I might even prefer the Sour Strings I had this summer or the SweeTarts Shockers - Shockers have the lead because of the variety in a single roll.

Name: Twizzler Sourz
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Hershey's
Place Purchased: 7-11 (Silverlake Blvd.)
Price: $.89
Size: 1.8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 100
Categories: Chew, Sour, United States, Hershey's, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:35 am    

Friday, September 22, 2006

Pigall & Brejk

A friend recently came back from Sweden, and you know that means I got some fun new European candy bars. The first one has the best name ever for a candy bar ... Pigall.

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Frankly, a bar named Pigall is kind of scary. This bar actually had part of the label in English, so let me fill you in on the ingredients: sugar, hydrogenated vegatable oil, cocoa butter, rice crisps, dried partly skim milk, cocoa mass, milk, sugar, milk fat, buttermilk, hazelnuts, fat-reduced cocoa, emulsifier, salt, flavorings. The 40 gram (1.4 ounce) bar had 250 calories ... that’s 177 calories per ounce. (The label says it’s actually two servings) It might win an award for the highest caloric density product I’ve ever tried. Pigall is right!

The bar is long and kind of soft. The chocolate on the outside is very light in color and of course it smelled very sweet. On the inside there’s a “nut truffle” filling that I can only describe as a chocolate buttercream. It was seriously buttery though from what I could read on the ingredients, it’s some sort of whipped vegetable oil filling.

Mixed in with the buttercream filling are rice crispies.

I found the bar interesting, but too much like eating the frosting off of a piece of cake. The prospect of that much trans fat kept me from eating more than half the bar.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the second bar, Brejk. It’s hefty, clocking in at 56 grams.

image

It also came in two pieces, which I always like. Good for sharing, a little neater and you can save some for later. This one came on a little tray and I thought for a moment that they were Finnish 100 Grand bars.

The bar is built like this - a light chocolate cookie is covered with a stripe of dark caramel then the whole thing is covered in a light milk chocolate studded wtih crisped rice.

The chocolate is sweet and has that European milky taste and a kind of tang to it. The textures are interesting too, think of it as a cross between a Twix bar and a 100 Grand and you’d pretty much have this bar. The cookie center is crumbly and bland but maybe had a little hit of salt to it. The caramel is dark and chewy, but not too sweet. The milk chocolate covering it is sweet and creamy though there aren’t as many rice crispies as you’d get in a 100 Grand.

I thought it was a great bar and I wonder why we don’t have something like it here in the States. The only place that I reliably see Marabou products is at Ikea, so if you see this one there and you like

Trix

Twix or 100 Grand bars, pick it up for a try.

Name: Pigall & Brejk
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou (Kraft)
Place Purchased: gift (thanks Russ)
Price: unknown
Size: 1.41 ounces & 1.98 ounces
Calories per ounce: 141 & 177
Categories: Chocolate, Caramel, Cookie, Finland, Kraft, Marabou

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:18 am    

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Candy Rocks and Rock Candy

In the continuing quest for “that candy people bring you from vacation” I’ve got two new ones.

imageThis one is called, not surprisingly, Rock Candy. Though it’s nothing like the large sugar crystals most of us call Rock Candy, it really looks like rocks. They look like those pretty tumbled, polished and choice pebbles you see in jars a kitschy gift shops. These came from Colorado.

They’re really jelly beans. Each apparently random variety of rock is actually a different flavor. The panning and artistry on them is great. The colors are deep and complex and really convey the “rockness” of them. It would have been nice if they gave you some sort of guide about the flavors though.

imageGreen: Lime ... yeah, just plain old lime. Sweet with a nice floral aromatic that of course reminded me of household cleaners.

Maroon: Cherry. Pretty flavorful, a little tart bite and the rest was just sweet black cherry flavor.

Purple: Grape. Kind of a strange and artificial tasting grape, but the prettiest of all the rocks.

Putty: Lemon. Really nice and flavorful. Wholly unexpected because of the color.

Brown: Spice. Nice and strong with a spicy cinnamon and licorice combo. It might just be licorice, but I can’t tell and why is it brown?

Aqua: Wintergreen. Nice and cool.

imageThe other rock candy were these Glacier River Rocks from “Montana’s Glacier Country”. They really do look like rocks. Instead of going for the ultra-polished look, these are kind of lumpy. Most are the size of raisins and even have a bit of pucker to their coats. They’re muted colors and the shells of the rocks are soft and matte.

Inside the crisp shell is a rather sweet and milky tasting milk chocolate. The crunch is nice and the look is great, but the chocolate is not very chocolatey - more milky and because of the ratio of shell to filling, thy don’t have a lot of flavor.

I really liked the look of both candies, even together.

image

Neither are a candy I’d probably purchase as a native of either of these areas, but they’re pretty and easy to carry gifts that have a little more pizazz than the ordinary salt water taffy.

Name: Rock Candy & Glacier River Rocks
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Taste of the Rockies & Montana Tom's Chocolate Goodies
Place Purchased: gifts (see websites for ordering info)
Price: $2.50 & $3.99
Size: 5 ounces & 4 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Chocolate, Jelly, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:41 am    

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Lifesaver Musk

Months and months ago a reader suggested I get familiar with a strange favorite it Australia - musk sticks. Basically they’re pressed candy stick flavored like musk. You know, the perfume. I figured if I’ve eaten violet candies, rosewater ice cream and 10 year old Lifesavers, there’s no reason I shouldn’t try these.

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I found them at Mel & Rose’s, which seems to carry a lot of Australian candies. The package doesn’t make them look that appealing, the word musk has those little “smell wafts” coming off of it. The candies themselves are the pressed chalk variety like Pep-O-Mint, not a hard candy like the Butter Rum Lifesavers.

They smell like incense or a soap shop. It’s more like a lightly floral patchouli. So when I took the photo and then put the roll in my desk drawer, it was kind of like a sachet in there.

The little candy is sweet and of course easy to crunch. The flavor has no other notes besides this soapy detergent scent and made me wonder if this is what it’d be like to eat incense cones. There isn’t any listing of ingredients on the package or dietary info, so for all I know, they are meant to be burned.

I have no idea if the Lifesavers version of musk is consistent with the other musk sticks so popular in Australia and New Zealand, but I think my curiosity is satisfied. I suppose if I were trying to cover up strong mouth odors (like smoking or antibiotic side effects) this might be a good candy, but for some reason I think my neck should be perfumed, not my breath.

Note: though these candies are branded Lifesavers, they’re made by licensing agreement by Nestle.

Name: Lifesavers Musk
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Lifesavers (Nestle)
Place Purchased: Mel & Rose's
Price: $1.00
Size: 22 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Mint, New Zealand, Nestle

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:22 am    

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