Candy Blog

For a while Hershey’s made a candy-shelled chocolate candy called Hershey-ets. They’re still produced at Christmas and sold in inside little ornaments or plastic cane-shaped tubes, but they’re not a regular product. Then came Hershey’s Kissables. While they’re a wonderful addition to the Hershey’s line, they’re still not the same as Hershey’s Eggs. Like Cadbury Mini Eggs, these are an Easter Only Item.

There are a lot of egg shaped candies this time of year, and just calling something Hershey’s Eggs seems like a poorly differentiated name. But candy lovers know what we’re talking about. Forget that the packaging probably hasn’t change much in twenty years ... these are just a jolt of chocolate wrapped in hard sugar.

Hershey’s Eggs have it all going on. It’s a large egg of chocolate, bigger than the size of an M&M Peanut. They come in lovely pastel shades of blue, yellow, pink and green. The shells are thick and hard, and give each candy a rather substantial feel. They’re solid milk chocolate and each Egg weighs the same as a single Hershey’s Kiss (really! I checked). The shells are super-thick and crunch but often I find that my shells have cracks in them. As I don’t think you can get salmonella from chocolate eggs, I don’t reject the broken-shelled ones as I would with a carton of chicken eggs. I do find that I’m not able to cleave off the shell with my teeth like I can with an M&M, but the different type of crunch is wholly satisfying. If someone is eating these near you, unless they’re suckers, you’re gonna know it.

Where the bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs smells like sugar and milk, the Hershey’s Eggs smell like chocolate. That tangy milk chocolate from Pennsylvania that you either love or hate. Fortunately there’s enough room in my heart to give both Hershey’s Eggs and Cabury Mini Eggs a ten. And of course I’ll proceed to stock up on these when Easter is over.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
2. Hershey’s Miniatures
3. Kissables (Reformulated)
4. Nestle Creme Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs
6. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
7. Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs

Many other holiday candies are just different packaging for regular candies. Really, what’s so Christmassy about red and green M&Ms or Peppermint Patties in red and green foil? Cadbury Mini Eggs stand as one of those candies that aren’t sold any other time of year and as much as I’d like them to be, I treasure them when I see them in a way that I might not if they were as ubiquitous as M&Ms (whatever color they might be).

Cadbury Mini Eggs are unique. While there are plenty of other candy covered chocolates ala M&Ms, the Hershey’s Eggs, Kissables, Jots and other imitators. There’s nothing else like the Mini Eggs, Cadbury doesn’t make a candy covered chocolate bean. They’re even oddly shaped, irregular, more like little rounded cones than eggs, they’re just such satisfying shapes.

What sets them apart from other chocolate candies at this time of years, first and foremost, is that they contain Cadbury chocolate. Cadbury is rather milky tasting, and certainly very sweet. Then it’s all cloaked in this amazingly odd slightly sanded, matte shell. The shell is crunchy and has slightly cool feel in the mouth. You can dissolve it away to get to the chocolate centers, or you can crunch the whole thing together for a sweeter burst.

The colors are even a little less common. Because of the matte finish the yellow, pink, blue and white morsels look like chunks of colored chalk and even have a slightly chalky feel when you first put them in your mouth.

Here’s the big surprise, when I turned them over to see where they were made it said “manufactured by Hershey Foods Corp under license from Cadbury, Ltd.” How long has that been going on? Um, since 1988 ... jeeze, shows you how much I pay attention!

UPDATE: New for 2007! Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs ... hmm.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
2. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
3. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
4. Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs
5. Peeps
6. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel
7. Hershey Eggs

I’ve ignored these bars for years. Well, they’re not really bars, they’re lumps. Maybe that’s why I avoided them, they’re just plops, like something you’d make at home.

I can’t say that I see them very often, but after the pleasant Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll experience, I thought I would give these a try. So what is a Bun? It’s a nut and milk chocolate patty filled with a white fudge/fondant (vanilla or maple) or caramel. The Bun bar was originally made by Wayne Bun Candy Company back in the 1920s, which was based, oddly enough in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Later the bar was bought by Clark of Pittsburgh (the Clark bar) but when Clark was ailing they sold the Bun rights off to Pearson’s in 1998, which only makes sense as Pearson’s was already known for their high protein Salted Nut Roll.

The version that appealed to me most was the caramel, so I’ll start with it. The nuts are whole (or halves, actually) so they provide a huge boost of texture to the sweet milk chocolate. The center is a thick and soft caramel. The whole bar doesn’t smell like peanuts or caramelized sugar, instead it smells like coconut. It also has a tangy quality to it that I can’t quite put my finger on that kind of ruined the experience. It’s salty, but not quite in the right balance.

The chocolate on this one was glossier and I have to say, when it’s fresh, it’s a rather handsome looking candy plop. This one has the requisite nut and chocolate smell. The vanilla center is sweet and has a nice vanilla flavor (part artificial and part natural). The peanuts keep the whole thing from being too sweet. It’s not a bar I would buy again, but I appreciate that when it first came out, as a combination bar it’s filling and interesting.

What kind of confuses me about the whole history of the Bun and Pearson’s is that they already have a candy similar to this, called the Nut Goodie. The Nut Goodie came on the market a good ten years earlier than the Bun Maple, yet Pearson’s still continues to make this regional favorite. (I’ll need to get a hold of one and do a comparison.) Anyway, this is definitely the highlight of the Bun line. The center on this is a maple fudge. It’s smooth and soft and has a microfine crystalline structure that melts quickly in the mouth and mingles well with the nuts and milk chocolate. It’s quite a bit saltier tasting than the Vanilla one, but I think that’s what makes the flavors pop. Of the three, this is the one that was consumed first.  I suspect that these are the hardest to find of the three varieties, so I can’t bump up the whole rating for the line.

If you’re looking for Pearson’s candy, look no further than their affiliate website. You have to buy in whole boxes, but their prices are excellent (less than $.65 a bar) and they offer assortments of Pearson’s and even retro candy boxes that include Rocky Road, GooGoo Clusters and Moon Pies.

(click on any photo for a bigger version)

Our friend Matt (the one who brought back the Olympics candy) also picked up a great assortment of mass-market candy bars and I’m going to try to sprinkle those into the CandyBlog.net repertoire in the next few weeks.

This Milky Way bar is nothing like any Mars product here in the States. Each little stick is a tube ala Pirouline but instead of being hollow, these have a wonderful buttercream filling. Then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. They smell sweet and milky, like walking into an ice cream parlor.

The chocolate is very sweet, but smooth, with that European milk taste. The cookie shell is crispy and flaky with lots of micro thin layers. It tastes like a fantastic ice cream cone. The cream center is firm but still soft. It’s buttery smooth without any graininess to the sugar. There was no English ingredients list, but my German and my tongue is good enough to recognize hydrogenated oils.

Again, here’s a tasty little morsel that you just can’t get in the States and sometimes I wonder why. The package is a scant 25 grams, so even though it’s very high in calories per ounce, the package only has 130 total calories for the two fingers (about 150 per ounce, much less than a pure chocolate bar). Even though they look delicate, I got them in perfect condition, unbroken and unsmashed.

Note: Milky Way in Europe is actually what we know of as Three Musketeers in the United States - it’s a fluffy nougat covered in milk chocolate.

See’s recently moved into the “candy bar” arena with their Awesome collection. They’re candy bars you can buy singly at their stores or in boxes of eight bars. They’re a buck a piece and prepackaged and a pretty good deal for a premium candy bar (unlike Lake Champlain’s 5 Star line).

See’s packaged an old favorite, peanut brittle into a compact bar and covered it with chocolate. It’s less of a nut brittle and more of a toffee though, in my opinion, but the recipe is absolutey for brittle (baking soda being the operative ingredient).

The bar is a little tiny, at only one ounce, it’s a little less of a candy bar than I’m used to. But the whole peanuts and salty brittle is a really great combination. It tastes really salty, but when I checked the sodium content, it’s not really any different than any other standard nut candy bar like a Reese’s or Snickers. The milk chocolate coating is sweet and smooth. The bar crunches and flakes easily with a slight foamy texture (that’s brittle for you). I liked the bar, but it’s not going to knock the Awesome Nut & Chew bar from that top spot in my mind.

I’m glad See’s created some more portable versions of their best candies. I’m just waiting for a Scotchmallow version in dark chocolate. I read in Los Angeles Magazine that the candy bars were actually created by the workers at the factory, who had been making them with short ends for themselves and as gifts when the corporate folks decided it was a really good idea. I know it sounds odd, but for dieters, these could be a good option. The bars are smaller than standard candy bars (this one is an ounce, the Nut & Chew and Walnut Brittle are 1.5 ounces) so you can feel indulgent without being tempted by a full box of mixed chocolates. I’m a firm believer in giving yourself what you crave, in moderation. Because there are a lot of nuts in all versions they’re very filling (the protein and all).