Candy Blog

One of the favorite Easter candies is the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs. They’re unlike any other candy on the market, they’re not quite M&Ms, as the candy coating is soft and has a flavor of its own. A Dark Chocolate version came out a few years ago and though hard to find, returned again this year.

The big news is the new Target Exclusive version of Cadbury White Mini Eggs. Notice that they’re just called white, not white chocolate, just white. Though there is cocoa butter in the ingredients list (which is in real white chocolate), there are also other vegetable fats. I picked up a 9 ounce bag, which was helpfully on sale.

The eggs were not the shape I expected. The standard Cadbury Mini Egg is egg shaped, truly egg shaped, with a wider bottom and almost pointy top. The White Eggs are not, they’re symmetrical ovals. What occurred to me when I saw them was that they were actually a resurrection of last year’s Hershey’s White Chocolate Flavored Eggs.

So, I looked up the ingredients:

Hershey’s White Eggs 2013: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, corn syrup, milk fat, contains 2% or less of the following: cornstarch, artificial color (yellow 5, blue 1, red 40 and yellow 6), soy lecithin, resinous glaze, gum acacia, carnauba wax, vanillin, tocopherols (preservative) and PGPR.

Cadbury White Mini Eggs 2014: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, milk, reduced protein whey, lactose, milkfat, contains 2% or less of corn syrup, artificial colors (includes yellow #5, blue #2, red #40), cornstarch, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors, tocopherols, salt

The difference, as far as I can tell is in the very last ingredients, that make up the shell. The white confection center is made of the same stuff. I didn’t care that much for the Hershey’s version, as I found them to be a bit too sweet and not creamy enough. Especially when compared to the pre-existing real white chocolate M&Ms.

I picked up a back of the M&Ms since I was already at Target for comparison. (And here’s the ingredients, as long as I’m transcribing.)

White Chocolate M&Ms: White chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, natural flavor), sugar, less than 2% of cornstarch, corn syrup, dextrin, colorings (includes yellow #5, blue #1, yellow #6, red #40), gum acacia

Ultimately, the coating on these really gives them a different dimension. The soft and matte shell that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs and the Cadbury White Mini Eggs share is unique and holds a special place in the textural world of Easter. I like the soft scent and interesting slick dissolve on the tongue. The vanilla pudding flavor is also pleasant and goes well with the lightly salty white center.

The one thing that was missing was that sticky, fudgy melt that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs have.

I liked them better than the Hershey’s version, which is weird, because I do actually like the shell a lot on the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Eggs. However, they’re extremely sweet and I found that after five or six I had a raging headache ... so enjoy in moderation.

Related Candies

1. Justin’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
2. Hershey’s Candy Coated White Chocolate Flavored Eggs
3. M&Ms White Chocolate (Easter)
4. Dove Promises White Chocolate
5. Whitman’s Marshmallow Eggs & Carrot
6. Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway Bliss
7. Green and Black’s White Chocolate

Late last year Mars announced some new products coming including Mega M&Ms.

At first I thought these were just the return of the Mega M&Ms circa 2005, but instead Mars has instead imported the specs for their Galaxy Minstrels and Americanized them with bright colors.

They’re sold in familiar packaging, the large laydown bags and the individual serving size. I lucked into a sale at CVS and got two bags for $5, which I think is a fair price for fair quality chocolate.

I scrounged up all the M&Ms I had, and you can see them here from small to large, from left to right: Milk Chocolate Mini, Milk Chocolate Classic, Birthday Cake, and Milk Chocolate Mega. The individual Megas are about .75 inches across. (About the same diameter as an American nickel.) What I also noticed is that they’re extremely similar to the Mars Galaxy Minstrels. I’ve been trying to find a package of those but have had no luck. However, I’ll be in London next month and will try to pick up a package for later comparison.

The original Mega M&Ms were fat, more rounded. They’re basically the same as the current special flavor M&Ms, such as the Birthday Cake or Coconut. I’m a little unclear why they even used the same name, when it’s been only about 8 years since they were last on the shelves.

The Mega M&Ms boast three times the chocolate of a regular M&M. The Mega M&Ms weigh about 2.73 grams each while a regular M&M is about .85 grams. The color assortment is identical to the 21st century Milk Chocolate M&Ms: red, green, yellow, brown, orange and blue. 

The flatness makes them easy to pick up and bite. The shell has a very satisfying crunch and there’s a large density of chocolate at the center that’s easy to distinguish. The chocolate itself isn’t extraordinary. It’s sweet and milky, though not entirely smooth in its melt. I found it a bit chalky overall, a bit on the sweet side. That said, they were wonderfully munchable and I did find myself reaching for them while they sat on my desk. I’d like to say that M&Ms would be better with better chocolate, but they tried that with Premium M&Ms and it didn’t spark with the public. Candy companies make the candy we buy. I can wish all I want, but I’m probably not M&Ms ultimate target market.

UPDATE: One of the first things I picked up when I went to London earlier this month was a package of Mars Galaxy Minstrels.

Since they’re also made by Mars, it was a natural item to compare to the new Milk Chocolate Mega M&Ms.

Unlike M&Ms, Minstrels come in only one color, dark brown.

It’s pretty easy to see why I was interested in comparing them, they’re extremely similar in size and shape.

What I did notice, though, is that the brown is much darker and more consistent. The M&Ms version is a little less deep.

In essence, the Brown Mega M&Ms and Galaxy Minstrels look the same, but the similarities end with the shell. The chocolate inside of the Minstrels is smooth, creamy, slightly malty and quite good. There’s a definite European flavor to it, a sort of dairy note that American chocolate rarely has. The M&Ms have a grainy, fudgy quality that is still absolutely tasty, but has more of a candy quality than a chocolate one.

Of the two, I was much more interested in eating the Galaxy Minstrels, and ended up eating my small bag before finishing the handful of Mega M&Ms I saved for this purpose.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Mars 2014
2. Milk Chocolate M&Ms Chocolate Bar
3. Snickers Slice n’ Share (1 Pound)
4. Crispy M&Ms
5. Hershey-ets
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. Head to Head: M&Ms vs Koppers Milkies
8. M&Ms Line
9. Mega Smarties

I heard about this new version of Annabelle’s Rocky Road bar last year and I’ve been hoping to find them in stores. It’s called Rocky Road S’Mores bar and the package describes it like this: Handmade Milk Chocolate Coated Marshmallow with Real Graham Cracker and Cashews

It’s absolutely obvious that the Rocky Road line of bars should have a S’Mores variety.

The bar comes in a bronzy mylar wrapper, it’s kind of hard to tell apart from the Dark Chocolate Rocky Road from a distance, so I almost grabbed the wrong one when I went out to find more.

The bar smells nicely of marshmallow (basically vanilla and sugar) with an hint of the cereal quality of graham crackers. The bar bends and pulls apart very easily. The marshmallow is pillowy and sticky and though the chocolate sticks well to it, it’s rather a thin coating.

The chocolate is very sweet, but melts quickly and gives a creamy component to bind the flavors together. The graham center is interesting, it’s more like a hearty digestive biscuit than a traditional grocery store graham cracker. It’s not sweet, though could use a little pop of salt. The marshmallow is soft and easy to bite, sticky but not really flavorful on its own. It’s so airy, it’s almost a meringue.

I wanted the graham cracker to be crunchier, crisper. It kind of hides in there, where I feel like it should have more of a texture contribution. The bars don’t travel well, they’re easily smashed, though really look no different even when pristine. The rocky part of the rocky road, the nuts, are small bits and don’t do much for me either. It’s unheard of for a commercial candy bar to even have cashews, which are expensive. So, I’ll accept that they’re subtle rocks. Overall ... my favorite of the Rocky Road line.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn
2. Russell Stover Big Bite Dark Chocolate S’Mores
3. Sanders Chocolate Covered Gretzels
4. Trader Joe’s Smashing S’mores
5. Rocky Road Supreme Peanut Butter
6. Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road Bar
7. Dark Chocolate Rocky Road
8. Rocky Road

Mars has been morselizing its candy bar line over the past couple of years. The new Milky Way Simply Caramel Unwrapped Bites are in the latest in the introduction cycle. They’re just little unwrapped cube versions of the Milky Way Simply Caramel bar, served up in a bag for easy dispensing.

I picked mine up at 7-11, which had a sale on their Mars Bites, the Sharing Size were 2 packages for $3.00. (I bought a Powerball for the Wednesday $400M drawing as well, bringing my tally to an exact $5. Yes, I’m aware that my odds are 1 in 175,223,510 of winning.)

The bag holds 15 little cubes. That’s two servings, as this is a Sharing Size. So each serving is 7 or 8 cubes which comes to 190 calories. If you’re trying to moderate yourself, four would be 100 calories but trip up and eat the whole bag by accident, you’re looking at 380.

Mars has always made beautiful candy bars. (See this photo for evidence.) The new bites line, though, suffers from the packaging style. The little candies are not sealed like panned candies so they get scuffed and dented in the bag together.

The pieces are well formed, they’re cubes but most have little “feet” where the chocolate pooled. They’re rather milky smelling, it’s a sort of cereal and milk note. The chew is soft, the caramel is very smooth though it doesn’t have the taffy-like toughness that I enjoy in my caramel, it does have good toffee and toasted sugar notes. The chocolate is passable, it’s sweet and has a lot of dairy flavors, but it’s not exceptionally chocolatey. (A dark version of these someday might be nice, but if I want that, I’ll probably just have some Marich.)

Overall, I was very pleased with these. They’re easily poppable, satisfying in the sense that the textures and flavors were better than I expected. I didn’t want to eat the whole bag in one sitting, but I did finish it in three days. I can imagine that the packaging won’t do well in the summer months, and forget it if these get smashed a bit, because you’d be in for a huge mess inside the bag. They’d be easy to mix in with other things (like a Chex Mix for a really sweet & salty combo) or as an ice cream topper.

Related Candies

1. Bonomo Taffy Nibbles: Vanilla and Banana
2. Milky Way Unwrapped Bites
3. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Sea Salt Butterscotch Caramels
4. Nestle Butterfinger Bites
5. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
6. Rolo Minis
7. Short & Sweet: Dollar Store
8. Milky Way Simply Caramel

It’s a new year and time for a new variety of Skittles.

This year’s flavor variation is called Skittles Desserts and features five different colors themed on dessert creations: Orange Creme (peach), Raspberry Sorbet (red), Strawberry Milkshake (creamy pink), Blueberry Tart (blue) and Key Lime Pie (bright green).

The pink package was pretty easy to find on the shelf. The current varieties of Skittles are the Original Fruits (now with green apple), Wild Berry, Sours, Tropical and Darkside. For Easter there’s also a pastel version of the Original Fruits.

Orange Creme is kind of pointless. It’s absolutely like an orange sherbet, which is to say, orange with all the great things taken out. The addition of the creme flavor component gives it a sort of Play-Doh flavor note that’s a little too fake milk. There’s no zest, though a light tartness.

Raspberry Sorbet has a strong floral note and only a light tartness. There’s also a bitter aftertaste for me, perhaps the food coloring. Overall, it’s a nice flavor that combines well with the others.

Strawberry Milkshake is comforting. It’s just strawberry with a sort of yogurt note. It’s not as floral or as tart, just sweet and slightly creamy.

Blueberry Tart is tough to say succeeds. It does have a lot of blueberry flavor in it, both the deep boiled jam note and the sort of tart and tannic tea flavors. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a dessert like a berry tart, it’s closer to a fresh berry flavor though that’s not a bad thing.

Key Lime Pie is absolutely disappointing. I’ve had a lot of key limes, both fresh, frozen and mock versions. Key limes are definitely different from the standard Persian limes in both the flavor profile and texture. This lime is more Persian than Key. It’s tart, but not overly so, but misses that milky, sort of chalky note that key limes have.

This flavor assortment was lackluster. There were no stand out flavors, nothing new. It’s just a series of small tweaks to flavors that we’ve all seen before from Skittles. I didn’t think they combined particularly well, which is usually one of the features I like best about Skittles. Since the loss of the Lime Skittle in the Original Fruits variety, I’m left without a favorite Skittles package. I haven’t bought them since I stopped finding the bags with the original variety in them. In last year’s review of the Skittles Darkside, I listed a few ideas for new mixes (including Skittles Pies, kinda what they did here).

Related Candies

1. Skittles Darkside
2. Skittles Crazy Sours (Europe)
3. Skittles Blenders
4. Panda Blueberry Liquorice
5. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
6. Andes Mints & Dessert Indulgence
7. Skittles Chocolate Mix
8. Skittles Carnival Flavors