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8-Tasty

Monday, November 3, 2014

See’s Bridge Mix

See's Bridge MixI picked up the Bridge Mix from See’s Candies over the weekend, mostly because the comments from readers were so adamant that it was worth having a try.

At $18 a pound it’s about 2.5 times more expensive than the Brach’s Bridge Mix. It also has all natural chocolate and at least lists a sample of what is probably in the mix: Bite-sized pieces of raisins, coconut, caramel, brittles, almonds, pecans, nougats and more covered in milk and dark chocolate.

See's Bridge Mix

The kind folks at See’s actually gave me a little cup of the mix to sample before I made my purchase ... because it just comes in this one pound box. The box has four little sections, which keep the mix from wandering too much. I don’t know if I would necessarily serve it from the box, but the nice thing about Bridge Mix it’s a panned candy, which means that it has a little glaze on each piece to keep it from sticking together and you can put it out in a bowl without worrying that it’ll all melt into a lump.

See's Bridge MixOne of the first things I should mention is that I’m allergic to walnuts. Not deathly allergic, as I’m still alive, but for the most part my reactions to walnut traces lately has been a swollen throat and flushed skin. The See’s Bridge Mix does contain walnuts. One of the items is chocolate covered nougat, which has walnuts in it. It’s hard to tell, in Bridge mix, which pieces are which, so it’s a little difficult for me review these in the normal manner. For any piece that is the right shape to be a nougat, I have to split open first to see what’s in it.

The good part is that most of the pieces are easy to just chomp. The little items that look like raisins or almonds are raisins and almonds. The pillow things that look like molasses chips are molasses chips. The lumpy things that look like pecans are pecans. It was the little cubes I had the trouble with ... which leads to the general complaint with Bridge Mix.

See's Bridge Mix

Dark Chocolate covered Caramel Rectangles had a more stringy, chewy caramel than the little cube ones I found a few times. These were quite nice, but maybe a little heavy on the chocolate.

Dark Chocolate Lump is Rum Raisin Nougat This is the piece that has walnuts in it.

See's Bridge Mix

Milk Chocolate Cube is Caramel The picture makes this one look like it might be a chocolate caramel, but it tasted rather rich but caramelly overall.

Milk Chocolate Rounded Cube is Butterscotch The See’s Butterscotch is one of my favorite pieces. This version is a little drier and has a different set of ratios for the chocolate and center. I prefer the enrobed piece (not the bar), but the creamy melt of the chocolate and sort of buttery brown sugar fudge do work well, especially with the nuts. This and the caramel looked the same to me, and most of the milk cubes were Butterscotch.

Dark Chocolate Cube is Toasted Coconut These are wholly unexpected for this type of mix. You can see from the cross section, these are packed with coconut, so they’re not too sweet and it is nicely toasted to bring out the tropical flavor.

Flat Milk Chocolate Square is Toffee (not pictured) I like the See’s Toffee, it’s crisp and buttery and easy to bite. The toffee notes are good, but for some reason it’s never had that smooth burnt sugar dissolve that I often crave. It’s a personal preference issue.

See's Bridge Mix

Milk Chocolate Pillow is Molasses Crisp. These might have more chocolate on the regular version available by themselves. They’re crisp and crunchy, with just enough aeration to the honey-molasses candy to make them easy to bite. The lingering honey notes of the center goes well with just about everything else in this mix.

See's Bridge Mix

Milk Chocolate Pecans & Almonds - the pecans are fantastic. They’re roasted perfectly, they have a great woodsy maple flavor, so you get a sweet crunch combined with the chocolate. The almonds are very small, if I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed that they were peanuts. They’re well toasted and decent, a good crunch and probably a different variety than the nonpareil almonds I’ve been eating, because they’re less fibery.

Dark Chocolate Covered Raisins are quite niece. The raisins are big, though the chocolate isn’t particularly dark, it is generous.

The mix is very strong, it doesn’t have any items that feel like they’re cheap filler. I did find that the almonds were left at the end, I was picking out the big bits. But I think once I figured out the code, it was easier to mix and match without worrying that I was going to get a “bad piece.” I do not recommend playing roulette if you have a food sensitives when it comes to this sort of thing.

I would prefer an actual guide on the package, or at least a real listing the items that are in i. I’d also like to just make my own mix… but that’s not the way mixes work. I would definitely buy this again. But I play Canasta, not Bridge.

Related Candies

  1. Snack Mix for Traveling
  2. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
  3. See’s Double Caramel
  4. Cedrinca Gran Mix
  5. Eat with your Eyes: See’s Butterscotch
  6. Recchiuti Asphalt Jungle Mix
  7. Leaf Schoolchalk, Allsorts & Pipes
  8. Marich Easter Select Mix
  9. Licorice Bridge Mix


Name: See’s Bridge Mix
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: See’s
Place Purchased: See's (Glendale)
Price: $18.00
Size: 16 ounces
Calories per ounce: 145
Categories: Candy, Morselization, See's, Caramel, Chocolate, Coconut, Nougat, Nuts, Toffee, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:40 pm     CandyMorselizationReviewSee'sCaramelChocolateCoconutNutsToffee8-TastyUnited States

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Dove Dark Chocolate Cranberries

Dove CranberriesDove Chocolate, a Mars brand, often skirts a line in their marketing and products between being a healthy indulgence and pure decadence. The new line of chocolate covered fruit goes for the former but still accomplishes the latter.

Mars sent me some of their new products, including this amazingly large bag of Dove Whole Dried Cranberries in Dark Chocolate. It’s 26 ounces of chocolate covered sugared dried cranberries.

The package makes it look like these are plump cranberries, but they’re the ordinary dried variety. There’s a little bit of sugar added, which is fine, because I’ve had unsweetened cranberries before and they were too puckery,even with a chocolate coating.

Dove Cranberries

The pieces are quite large, and cutting them in half reveals why. They aren’t strangely large cranberries. Instead they’re covered with a lot of chocolate. Often chocolate covered cranberries are flat, but these are very appealing looking. These a plump and a little chew reveals that they’re pretty moist, not leathery. They’re tangy and have a sort of bitterness to them that cranberries are known for, but it’s offset well by the chocolate.

I often find Dove’s chocolate a little bland, but dark chocolate here has a lot of flavor. It’s a rich chocolate pudding vibe, a little woodsy. It’s creamy without being too slick, though Dove does use dairy fats in their dark chocolate, so this is not vegan. (There’s 5 mg of cholesterol in here, which serves as an indication of the level of dairy fats.)

They’re expensive. But there aren’t that many higher quality choices at grocery stores for chocolate covered cranberries. I did find Ghirardelli’s new Dark Chocolate Cranberries are just as good as these but are likely to be harder to find. Steer clear of the Nestle version in their Raisinets line as they’re just terrible.

Related Candies

  1. Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Cranberry
  2. Simply Balanced Dark Chocolate Mixed Berry (Target)
  3. See’s Holiday Pie Truffles
  4. Trader Joe’s A Very Merry Mingle
  5. Nestle Cherry Raisinets
  6. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Powerberries
  7. Nestle Cranberry Raisinets
  8. Dove Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Bars


Name: Whole Dried Cranberries in Dark Chocolate
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: samples from Mars
Price: $14.99 retail
Size: 26 ounces
Calories per ounce: 133
Categories: Candy, Mars, Chocolate, Kosher, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:24 pm     CandyReviewMarsChocolateKosher8-TastyUnited States

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Mint 3 Musketeers Bites

Mint 3 Musketeers BitesWith Mars newest product, their Mint 3 Musketeers Bites, morselization of all of the classic Mars candy bars is complete.

The new bite sized version of the Mint 3 Musketeers is dark chocolate and features a minty nougat center. The Mint 3 Musketeers Bars were introduced in 2007, and though it’s not the powerhouse that Twix or Milky Way represent for Mars, it still fits neatly into the candy bar selection from Mars in a unique way. The regular 3 Musketeers bar only got the mini treatment earlier this year.

Mint 3 Musketeers Minis

The dark chocolate covered mint nougats are about 3/4 of an inch square, a little shorter than that. The sharing size package holds two servings, which seems like a lot, considering the fluffy nature of the pieces. (Even if you went on a binge and ate the whole bag, it would only be 360 calories.)

Mint 3 Musketeers Bites

The pieces are easy to bite. The nougat is soft and airy, the chocolate is thin but doesn’t flake off easily. The nougat is almost marshmallowy, it’s fluffy but doesn’t quite have that latexy bounce. Instead the peppermint flavor and smooth dissolve gives it all a fresh feeling.

I liked them. I didn’t feel the need to overeat or stuff myself. Each piece was nicely sized, the proportion between nougat and chocolate was balanced. I’d probably buy these again ... I’m not sure how they stack up to the York Minis, which are a little denser, but also have their pleasing textural qualities. I’d say I’m just as likely to eat those, although I think the York Minis fare better in transit to the Mint 3 Musketeers Bites.

3 Musketeers items contain dairy, soy and eggs and may also have traces of peanuts. There’s no statement about gluten on the package or about the sourcing of the cocoa.

Related Candies

  1. York Peppermint Pattie Minis
  2. 3 Musketeers Bites
  3. Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip: The Candy!
  4. Fralinger’s Creamy Mint Sticks
  5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Honey Mints
  6. 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp
  7. 3 Musketeers Mini Mix
  8. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate


Name: Mint 3 Musketeers Bites
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: Samples from Mars
Price: $1.79 retail
Size: 2.83 ounces
Calories per ounce: 128
Categories: Candy, Mars, Chocolate, Kosher, Mints, Nougat, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:39 pm     CandyReviewMarsChocolateKosherMints8-TastyUnited States

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Speculoos Cookie Butter Cups

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Cookie Butter CupsWhile Trader Joe’s has been pouring on the pumpkin around their stores, they haven’t forgotten about one of their other core flavors: Speculoos. Their newest item is their Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Speculoos Cookie Butter Cups.

There are a few spice mix flavors that are popular right now: Chai Spice, Gingerbread and Pumpkin Spice. Another one would be Speculoos. The odd thing about the Speculoos flavor is that it’s not just the mild cinnamon and nutmeg mix which is similar to Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread, it includes the actual cookie. The Speculoos cookie is a crispy butter cookie with some brown sugar notes along with the mild spice. I grew up eating Speculoos, though I didn’t know it by that name, they were just called Windmill Spice Cookies.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Cookie Butter Cups

The tub holds 11 ounces of foil wrapped cups. This quantity doesn’t fill the tub completely, but it’s true to its weight. The cups are wrapped in gold foil, and inside each little piece does not actually have a fluted paper cup like the dark chocolate Peanut Butter Cups which come in a similar format. Each cup is about 11 grams, basically the same size as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniature.

Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Bar

Trader Joe’s also offered up a bar version of the Cookie Butter in dark chocolate a couple of years ago. That bar was made with Belgian chocolate in Belgium. This version is made in Canada (the Peanut Butter Cups that Trader Joe’s sells are made in the USA, which might also explain some of the small cosmetic differences.)

INGREDIENTS: Dark Chocolate (Unsweetened Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin [Emulsifier], Natural Vanilla Extract), Speculoos Spread (57% Speculoos [Wheat Flour, Sugar, Margarine {Palm and Rapeseed Oil}, Water, Emulsifier {Mono-and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids}, Citric Acid, Sugar Syrup, Sodium Bi-Carbonate], Salt, Cinnamon), Palm and Rapeseed Oil, Sugar, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Spices, Citric Acid, Hazelnuts, Skimmed Milk Powder, Cocoa Butter. CONTAINS WHEAT, MILK, SOY, HAZELNUTS. MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS, EGG & OTHER TREE NUTS.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Cookie Butter Cups

They smell lightly spicy, like cloves and cinnamon. The cups are shiny and nicely formed. The bite is easy, the center is soft and mostly creamy. It’s not as crumbly as a peanut butter cup can be, with a much creamier texture. The chocolate isn’t overpowered by the center, the chocolate flavors are well balanced with a berry/fruit note and a little dry finish to the quite slick melt. The cookie butter center is not overly sweet, not overly grainy. There are a few little bits of cookie, but for the most part it’s more like a batter than a paste. 

They’re not completely peanut free, so it’s not like these are a great option for those with allergies. But if you’re a lover of candy cups but don’t actually like Peanut Butter, this might be what you’ve been searching for. I think it’s a unique new product and look forward to more cupification of Trader Joe’s products, such as the new Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter.

Related Candies

  1. Flipz Gingerbread Flavor Covered Pretzels
  2. Russell Stover Santas: Gingerbread, Peppermint and Maple
  3. M&Ms Milk Chocolate Gingerbread
  4. Twix Gingerbread
  5. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Sea Salt Butterscotch Caramels
  6. Peeps Gingerbread Men
  7. Trader Joe’s Les Chocolats Belgique (Belgian Bars): Caramel, Chocolate Buttercream & Speculoos
  8. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups


Name: Dark Chocolate Speculoos Cookie Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Trader Joe’s
Place Purchased: Trader Joe's (Park LaBrea)
Price: $4.99
Size: 11 ounces
Calories per ounce: 150
Categories: Candy, Trader Joe's, Chocolate, Cookie, 8-Tasty, Canada

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:37 am     CandyReviewTrader Joe'sChocolateCookie8-TastyCanada

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Cranberry

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate CranberryAt first I wasn’t sure what these were. The back of the package says real dried cranberries! covered in rich Ghirardelli chocolate!. But the front says that it’s infused with raspberry juice and a touch of freeze-dried cherries.. A quick peek at the ingredients doesn’t show anything else, except that the cranberries have some sunflower oil in them (makes them more pliable). At first I thought they were like the Brookside fruit things, a little jelly center with some dried cranberries thrown in, but instead they’re actually dried cranberries with some other fruits thrown in.

The Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Cranberry are packaged like the Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews I also picked up at the same time, expect this package is pink instead of light blue. The stand up gusset bag reseals after opening with a zip lock, which is common in these morselized treats these days.

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Cranberry

The ingredients and other packaging don’t say how dark the chocolate is, they call it semi-sweet and it has dairy fats in it. I’d guess somewhere around 55-60% cacao.

They smell very fruity, like cooking jam or a baking pie. It’s alluring ... and they are darling little morsels. The sizes are irregular, but each is wonderfully panned with a glossy shine.

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Cranberry

The bite is soft, softer than I would expect from a piece of dried fruit. The cranberries are plump (I guess plumped with the other fruit additions and a touch of tapioca syrup). It’s immediately tangy and with that light tannic bitterness that cranberries have. The chocolate is smooth, though not quite silky, it offsets the fruit very well and brings its own dry finish.

I found these very satisfying and preferred the texture of the centers to regular raisins or dried cranberries which can be grainy or overly chewy. Though there’s a lot less fat in here than many chocolate treats, with only 120 calories per ounce, that means there’s also more sugars, though some are obviously from the fruit and not as readily available. There’s also 2 grams of fiber, 10% of your vitamin C and 8% of your RDA of iron.



Name: Dark Chocolate Cranberry
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Ghiradelli
Place Purchased: Target (Eagle Rock)
Price: $4.00
Size: 5.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 120
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Morselization, Ghirardelli, Chocolate, 8-Tasty, United States, Target

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:25 am     CandyMorselizationReviewGhirardelliChocolate8-TastyUnited StatesTarget

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Churchill’s Toffee and Fudge Carousel Tin

Churchill's Toffee & FudgeOne of the fun things about candy is that it makes a great gift. But it’s not terribly special to grab some pick-a-mix at the local candy shop and drop the twist-tie plastic bag on someone’s lap and consider it a present. Churchill’s Confectionery recognizes that half and sticks their candy in decorative tins.

The company offered to send me a sample of their line. I’ve actually had Churchill’s before, I have a little red London bus tin that doubles as a bank on my desk at work. So when they offered, I thought it would be good to have some fresh candy to try.

They sent two tins, one was this classic looking embossed Carousel tin that holds English Toffees and Vanilla Fudge and another tin that held three trays of biscuits (cookies). I don’t review cookies ... but I did eat them. The tin holds 14 ounces, which is separated into two 7 ounce bags of candy. So it’s not quite the lush look of a tin full of candy until you dump the cellophane bags into it, but they do stay fresh.

Churchill's Fudge

I’ve never quite understood fudge, and this version does little to help me out. Fudge is basically a mixture of sugar and butter ... though modern versions use more advanced ingredients. Many candies have the same ingredients; it’s the texture of fudge that differentiates it from caramel or toffee. Fudge has a slight grain to it, on purpose, which is reintroduced by carefully heating it to a precise temperature and then allowing it to cool partially before stirring. Stirring too soon will make the sugar crystals too large and not stirring enough just makes the texture incomplete. (More in this excellent and slightly technical explanation.)

Ingredients: Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Sweetened condensed milk, refined vegetable oil, clotted cream 2.8%, butter, emulsifier: soya lecithin, humectant: glycerine, natural flavour, salt.

The great thing about fudge is that it’s a wonderful blank slate for so many other flavors, including chocolate or pecan penuche. As this is Vanilla, it’s actually a blank slate. You can see that the ingredients are decent enough. The pieces are well formed and the color is of a camel-colored coat. Churchill’s has mastered the smooth texture style of fudge (I actually like mine a little grainy). It smells sweet and buttery but has no browned sugar notes (And has no brown sugar ingredients, either.)

Churchill's Fudge

The pieces are nice little rectangles, wrapped in silver mylar. This vanilla fudge is extremely sweet with only a slight note of actual vanilla bean. A little note of the woodsy bourbon would be nice, or some deeper toasted sugar notes would have pleased me. Overall, this is too sweet. And coming from a person who actually eats sugar lumps from time to time, that’s saying a lot.

I could really only eat these with a very strong cup of coffee or some salted nuts. They’re just too sweet straight.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Churchill's Toffee

One of the oddities in the confection world is how the same candy is called different things in different places. What’s even more vexing is when the new word means something else completely. Take toffee. In the United States we know toffee as a hard, crunchy, caramel brittle. But in the United Kingdom, for the most part, toffee is actually what we call caramel. However, I didn’t need anyone to tell me what this was ... I know a caramel when I see one.

They’re nice rounded pieces wrapped in gold mylar, with a soft milky scent. They’re about the size of Coffee Nips, and if Coffee Nips were chewable, that’s what they’d be like. They’re extremely smooth. The chew is stiff but not sticky or tough. The flavor is a bit salty with burnt sugar notes. It dissolves away to nothing with very little left stuck to my teeth.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Both recipes include milk and soy ingredients and may contain traces of nuts. The glucose syrup is also from wheat, so I don’t think it’s gluten free.

There are a wide variety of tin designs available from Churchill’s. They’re very traditional but do feature a few classic tourist items (like the double decker red bus). I don’t think it’s something I’d buy for myself, but with the right contents and design, I could see them as a good quality hostess gift or thank you item.

Related Candies

  1. Lovely Candy Chewy Original Caramels
  2. Hershey’s Lancaster Caramel Soft Cremes
  3. Sugar Daddy
  4. See’s Double Caramel
  5. Helliemae’s Salt Caramels
  6. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
  7. Coffee Nips


Name: English Tofees
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Churchill’s Confectionery
Place Purchased: Samples from Churchill's Confectionery
Price: £9.99 ($16.35)
Size: 14.1 ounces
Calories per ounce: 135
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Caramel, 8-Tasty, United Kingdom


Name: Vanilla Fudge
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Churchill’s Confectionery
Place Purchased: Samples from Churchill's Confectionery
Price: £9.99 ($16.35)
Size: 14.1 ounces
Calories per ounce: 120
Categories: All Natural, Candy, 6-Tempting, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:17 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewCaramel6-Tempting8-TastyUnited Kingdom

Monday, June 30, 2014

Marks and Spencer Percy Pig

Marks and Spencer Percy PigThough most of the confectioners I was searching for in London were chocolate related, I knew I needed to pick up a package of Percy Pig Soft Gums from Marks & Spencer. It wasn’t hard to find them, as it was hard to walk more than three blocks in central London and not run across one of their food stops.

They’re described as Soft gums made with fruit juice. Made without artificial colors or flavorings. Though they call them gums, they’re actually gummis, as in, they’re made with gelatin. The texture is a hybrid between marshmallow and gummi.

Marks and Spencer came up with the idea for Percy Pig in conjunction with one of their contract manufacturers, Katjes, in Germany. Marks & Spencer wanted something fruity and foamy. The look of the candy was based off of the existing Tappsy panda-faced licorice line from Katjes. 

Marks and Spencer Percy Pig

The color is definitely close to what I’d call pig skin pink. It’s a light color that’s more like putty than actual artificial pink common in most candies here in the United States. The scent is rather berry-like, a little floral with a tangy sort of yogurt note.

The texture is soft and easy to bite, they’re not too tacky or stiff. The flavor is much more intense than the similar Haribo foamy gummis I’ve had over the years. They’re wonderfully well done, good tartness, good jammy berry flavors (strawberry and raspberry). The ears are a little more tart and less creamy (marshmallowy) than the face.

It’s a great product and I can see why Brits are so fond of them. There are plenty of similar products on the market now, but for a long time they really occupied a niche that was not well served by the existing candies available. I would love more flavor variations, but since I know that Katjes makes them, they have lots of other yogurt gums and other foamy gummi candies in their repertoire ... some also in amazingly cute shapes.

For some more history on Percy Pig, you can read up at this feature article on The Independent.

Related Candies

  1. Katjes Tappsy mit Schoko-Geschmack
  2. Sugarpova: Sporty & Splashy
  3. 12 European Licorices
  4. Katjes Tappsy
  5. Puffy Candy Corn
  6. Van Slooten - Autodrop Total Loss
  7. Katjes Tropical Gummis & Yogurt Gums


Name: Percy Pig
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Katjes
Place Purchased: Marks & Spencer (London)
Price: £0.90 ($1.50)
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 96
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Katjes, Gummi Candy, 8-Tasty, Germany

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:27 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewKatjesGummi Candy8-TastyGermany

Monday, June 23, 2014

Simply Balanced Dark Chocolate Mixed Berry (Target)

Simply Balanced Dark Chocolate Mixed BerryTarget has a variety of house brands on their shelves right now, though not that many in the candy aisle any longer. I did spot this new variety of little fruity chocolate morsels and picked up Simply Balanced Mixed Berry Fruit Juice Pieces Covered in Dark Chocolate. I don’t actually know what these are supposed to be called, since that sounds more like a description than a name. The brand called Simply Balanced is also new to me, the package says that its goodness guarantee takes the guesswork out of eating well.

As far as I can tell, a Canadian confectioner called Brookside invented the concept of a little antioxidant-themed jelly morsel covered in dark chocolate back in late 2010. They grew quickly enough that Hershey’s decided to purchase the company and of course knock-off versions have emerged over the intervening years. This version from Target has some interesting elements to it.

They’re made with Rainforest Alliance certified cacao from Ecuador. Though it’s nice dark chocolate, it’s only 60%. The package also calls them fruit juice pieces, similar to the language used by Brookside for their jelly thingies. In reality they’re jellies. They’re made from glucose, water, fruit juice from concentrate, citric acid, pectin and corn starch. So, it’s less fruit juice and mostly sugar. Honestly, I would mind something called dark chocolate covered fruit jellies (those already exist, and they’re usually raspberry or orange flavored and usually sticks). But this new genre of candy is trying to paint itself with the fine qualities of antioxidant rich berries, when the reality is they’re made from not just blueberry, pomegranate and cranberry juice, but also apple and lemon.

Simply Balanced Dark Chocolate Mixed Berries

As much as I may make fun of their marketing materials, it is a list of ingredients that I could put together in my kitchen (though the end product wouldn’t look as nice). The pieces are large, like Peanut M&Ms instead of the smaller pieces from Brookside. The coats are not quite as smooth, a little dinged up, I think, from getting jostled around. But still shiny.

They smell a little fruity, with some woodsy notes of chocolate. The bite is pretty soft, the jelly center is springy and dissolves quickly. Some had a small hint of grainy sugar to them, but most were smooth. The chocolate is creamy and has a good, quick melt and soft bite. The fruity centers were tangy with a strong blueberry and cranberry flavor to them. There’s a light bitter note towards the end that reminded me of cranberries.

Simply Balanced Dark Chocolate Mixed Berries

The pieces are easy to eat and a nice change from nut and chocolate combinations. They’re not innovative, but nicely done. The ingredients are pretty clean and the use of Rainforest Alliance cacao and labeling it as being made with non-GMO ingredients is a nice touch.

The candies contain soy and are made in a facility that also processes milk, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and eggs. (Too bad, it would be nice if these were at least free of some of the major allergens.) They’re kind of expensive at $3.59 for only 7 ounces, but comparable to the Trader Joe’s, Brookside and Brach’s versions price wise, but I actually prefer them.

Related Candies

  1. Brach’s Dark Chocolate Blueberry Acai
  2. Brookside Dark Chocolate Pomegranate
  3. Necco Wafers SmartFruits
  4. Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Grapefruit, Goji Berry & Red Apple
  5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Powerberries
  6. Nestle Cranberry Raisinets


Name: Mixed Berry Fruit Juice Pieces Covered in Dark Chocolate
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Target
Place Purchased: Target (West Hollywood)
Price: $3.59
Size: 7 ounces
Calories per ounce: 148
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Jelly Candy, 8-Tasty, United States, Target

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:34 pm     All NaturalCandyDesigner ImpostorReviewChocolateEthically SourcedJelly Candy8-TastyTarget

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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.

 

 

 

 

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