One of the earlier reviews I did when I started Candy Blog was of Dr. Doolilttle’s Grapefruit & Blackcurrant Pastilles. I liked them quite a bit, even though they were expensive and hard to find.

After a few years, though, Trader Joe’s stopped carrying them and the comments for that post filled up with folks trying to figure out how to order them or even import them by the case.

Flash forward to last Friday, I was returning from a failed sock-shopping trip when I stopped in at Cost Plus World Market. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles have returned!

They have completely new and distinctive tins (that I might have mistaken for soap if they were on the wrong shelf) and even come in new flavors.

I picked up all three, even though they’re now $2.99 for a tin that holds only 2 ounces (instead of the Trader Joe’s ones that were $1.99 and held 2.5 ounces).

The other difference is also the actual candy pieces. They no longer have the little silhouette of Dr. Doolittle molded into them. Not that I don’t like the smooth surface, it was just a little plainer than I expected.

Soft Fruit Drops Lemon (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Citron) - these sparkling little gummis boast that they have soothing qualities. They are a gummi with gelatin, but have glycerine in addition to vitamin C.

They are firm, like a Haribo (versus a Trolli or Black Forest bear). But the flavor is much more intense than a gummi bear. The lemon is a marmalade or boiled taste - tangy, sweet and a little zesty but more on the jammy side of things than freshly squeezed. They dissolve slowly for the patient among us. But I like to speed it along by kind of chewing them, by folding and pressing them against the roof of my mouth and teeth.

Soft Fruit Drops Pink Grapefruit (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Pamplemousse Rose) - this is the one that I was most interested in, of course, since Pamplemousse is always a huge favorite.

The pastilles are orange, not pink (the ingredients simply say “natural coloring”).

They have a very intense zesty flavor, much moreso than the lemon. Tangy and with that slight bitter flavor of the grapefruit peel. These were definitely the first to disappear. The oily zest essence persists for quite a while after it’s dissolved, too. Not something that goes well with coffee, but I didn’t mind it with afternoon tea.

Soft Fruit Drops Wild Berry (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Baies Sauvages) - this flavor smelled wonderful. A bit like roses, cotton candy and crushed raspberries.

They’re immediately tangy, sweet and jammy. The flavors of the berries are definitely on the blackberry side of things. A bit like a wine gum, there’s a slightly fermented quality to the dark berry tones and maybe a little blackcurrant note.

All the flavors are winners, again, my only complaint here is price. But they are soothing, full of flavor and even have a little dose of vitamin C. The new tins are really pretty and distinctive, though the tops are curved it means I can’t stack them. But I do plan on reusing them as they’re a great shape, easy to open and stay closed in a bag.

The fine folks at Candy Dish Blog (the National Confectioners Association) have too much candy! So they want to give it away to some candy lovers. They’ve got some tasty organic candy canes from Pure Fun and some Zachary gumdrops. I know, those sound so Christmas. But with a little imagination you can use those candy canes as swizzle sticks for some cocktails or warm two in the oven to form a heart.

(Image by Sally Rye under Creative Commons License via Flickr)

Here’s how you win:

Winners will be announced on shortly after. Shipping will be done by the National Confectioners Association (so you’ll have to be willing to tell them where you live!). Good luck!

UPDATE 2/6/2008: Due to a miscommunication the entry period closed about 36 hours early. Winners are announced at CandyDishBlog. It was awesome to read everyone’s list. (Really, no one wanted the Candy Blogger at their cocktail party?)

At the Fancy Food Show I stopped at the Niederegger importer’s booth. I love their flavored marzipans, though I only ever see them around Christmas at Cost Plus World Market.

The newest version is Bittersweet Chocolate filled with Ginger Marzipan (called Marzipan Ingwer on the package).

Though it wasn’t open and out on the counter for tasting, the fellows at the booth really thought this was a special bar and opened one up for me to try. After I confirmed that it was in fact, pretty darn tasty, they gave me the rest to take home. I had a hard time, even with all my other samples, not continuing to eat it before I got home to photograph it.

It’s a bittersweet chocolate shell filled with a rustic almond marzipan with chunks of candied ginger.

The bar was fresh and glossy, it has a woodsy and spicy scent. A little touch of bitter almond at the start along with the creamy and slightly bitter dark chocolate. This slowly gives way to the mellow almond paste flavors with less of the “amaretto” taste and into a warm ginger burn. It finishes again with the chocolate. 

I ate the whole bar.

I am definitely a fan of Niederegger, though I can’t stress this enough: it has to be fresh. They make a wide variety of products, including traditional loaves of plain marzipan, but they’ve found a new convert through their consistent flavor versions.

The chocolate contains milk products, so this is not a vegan product but it is all-natural.

Related Candies

1. De la Rosa Mazapan
2. All Candy Expo - Wednesday Noon Update
3. Niederegger Marzipan Orange
4. Soubeyran Array
5. Charles Chocolates
6. Halvah and Turkish Delight
7. Niederegger Capuccino Marzipan

See’s candy shops carry more than their distinctive boxed chocolates.

Usually for holidays they’ll have some other panned sugar candies. For Valentine’s Day this year the trend seems to be cinnamon flavor. So I picked up a bag of their See’s Hot Hearts and their Cinnamon Lollypops.

The Hot Hearts were a bit expensive, in my opinion, for a sugar candy. It was $4.50 for a 12 ounce bag of what are basically heart-shaped Hot Tamales.

But hey, the bag was pretty and included a real piece of ribbon on it and a thick plastic bag with pretty little red foil printed hearts.

While See’s makes their own chocolates and lollypops, I’m pretty sure they have their sugar candies specially made for them by an outside company. I was hoping my trip to the Fancy Food Show might shed some light on that, because, spoiler alert ... these were good and I think I might want some more after Valentine’s Day!

The candies are a deep red color, lightly glossy and almost an inch across at the widest part of the heart.

The candy shell is crisp and a little grainy. The jelly center is sweet and very cinnamony. The sizzle of these heart-shaped jelly beans is substantial.

The cinnamon flavor is both woodsy and fiery, capturing all of the great aspects of cinnamon.

Even though there’s a fair amount of food coloring in these (including Red 40), there’s no bitter aftertaste. Not that there ever is an aftertaste, since I don’t actually stop eating them.

Yes, I want to know how to get them all year long, or themed for other holidays, like Fiery Eggs for Easter or a Screaming Phoenix for Halloween.

See’s has been making their own Lollypops for years. The flavors change from time to time, but lately they’ve been adding in their seasonal flavors.

See’s Cinnamon Lollypops are the same rounded block shaped lolly made from a hard caramel base.

The scent is odd. It smells like caramel and cinnamon. But the scent and the flavors are never completely integrated. They just exist side by side.

Mmm, toasted sugar and butter flavors. Then, wow, a pop of hot cinnamon. Then the mellow and sweet caramel.

I liked them, but not quite as much and not in the same way as the Hot Hearts. They last a long time, but the combo of boiled sugar and butter with cinnamon never quite meshed for me. Plus there was a bit of a bitter artificial color aftertaste on these.

The pops are a great, reliable candy. They’re only 70 calories each, but be warned, they’re not fat free. Not that fat is a bad thing, it’s pretty much necessary for a caramel. Their Butterscotch lollypop is still the best (and the Root Beer is the best of their seasonal flavors). I’ve picked up the other flavors for review twice ... but ate them before I could photograph them.

Related Candies

1. See’s Pumpkin Spice & Root Beer Lollypops
2. Cinnamon Fire Twizzlers
3. See’s Hollow Eggs with Novelty
4. Cinnamon Imperial Hearts
5. Gimbal’s Lavaballs
6. Chewy Lemonheads & Atomic Fireballs
7. See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar

Each day on the floor is a cacophony of flavors, smells, colors and even sounds. There’s a sociability element to it and at certain times of the day some booths are jam packed while at other times it’s mystifying that they’re not. And as tempted as I am to grab people walking by to get them to try something that I’ve just discovered, I have to remember to focus on my own goal, which is to let you readers know what’s on the cusp of breaking out as a big new trend and what classic favorites are still out there to be experienced.

One item I tasted the first day and promptly forgot their name was Rubicon Bakery. So after searching for two days, I found them again and even got another sample for later review. They’re all-natural freeze-dried meringue kisses flavored with berries and dipped in Guittard’s dark chocolate. They’re called CocoaBerries and already have a great following with calorie-conscious folks. Low calories & oodles of antioxidants aside, I loved the Strawberry ones which aren’t at all sweet, but bursting with a fragrant & tangy crunch inside a dark chocolate shell.

On the second day my eyes glazed over part way through, just as I arrived in the California Pavilion (really just a corner where a lot of the California companies were concentrated). So I went back with an empty stomach and a renewed sense of adventure.

Coco-Luxe, which has amazingly beautiful packaging, has some new bars. I was smitten with the one called Monkeyin’ Around which is milk chocolate with banana chips & cocoa nibs. I got an array of all their cocoa nib bars (Happy Trails in Dark and Spumoni in White) for a more extensive try back at Candy Blog Studios.

After a few near misses, I finally found Brandini Toffee, which is made in Southern California and has won oodles of awards. The flavors are dark and woodsy, with strong butter and burnt sugar flavors. Then just a touch of chocolate to hold some crushed almond bits to the pieces. They package them in tins or boxes.

I also took a few minutes to check back in with companies that I’ve tried quite a few times. Plush Puffs was there, with the best kind of display, an interactive one. They had little set of burners for fresh-toasting your choice of marshmallows. (They’ve made them a bit smaller, which makes them one big bite or two small bites.) I had a vanilla bean one which smelled so wonderful as it toasted. I paired it with a fresh and wonderful Peerless Cappuccino (one of the other benefits of a mixed food show instead of a single focus one like All Candy Expo).

There were some other fun marshmallow goods at the show. I enjoyed a nice taste of Butter Baked Goods had a Matcha Tea Marshmallow. They were light and puffy, not too sweet with all the fragrant punch of green tea and none of the bitterness.

Though the combination of chocolate and coffee beans has been around for a while, I thought Javaz by How Do You Take Your Coffee brought a few new twists to the idea. They have both milk and dark chocolate covered coffee beans that are specially selected & roasted to be good tasting when eaten, using organic and fair trade beans. And then they’re also given a candy shell.

They also have a line of Java Rocks which are little coffee infused chocolate pieces that are covered in candy shells that look like little pebbles. I hope to get more info on them as they start appearing in markets.

I was so pleased though to get to spend at least a half an hour at an import company called Crossings French Food (website). They handle French confectionery products including some of my favorites such as Arnaud Soubeyran (Montelimar Nougat) and Chocolat Bonnat and never made fun of my pronunciations.

Everything is just so stunningly beautiful that I wanted hug it. (Okay, maybe I was high on sugar, caffeine & chocolate.) I don’t even know where to begin, but here are a few highlights:

Dragees Pecou is an old French company that takes their candy panning very seriously. The colors are bright and crisp, the palette fresh and appetizing and the ingredients sound fantastic. One of the appealing new developments is that they’re going to be selling them in small packages of about 4 ounces each (often you can only get them in bulk or repackaged by a third party).

I tried (pictured left to right):

Fruit Cordials in bright citrus colors.

Little meringue kisses dipped in milk, white and dark chocolate.

70% Dark Chocolate in heart shapes and pastel colors.

I also tried these crazy-divine Chocavenlines Hazelnut in Chocolate Candy Coated, White which were a hazelnut covered in chocolate and then a melt-in-your-mouth white coating.

To take home for review, I have some Paris Caramels made with goat’s milk. I tried some of the more traditional cow-based Fleur de Sel and they’re insanely buttery.

If you can’t tell, this one booth made the whole trip worth it. I want to repaint my house in these colors. I want to string these and wear them like pearls. I want to fill huge floor-to-ceiling glass cylinders with the dragees and just stare at them all day long. (And it all tasted good, too.)

Kraft had a nice booth that highlighted their chocolate brands: Cote D’Or, Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Milka and Toblerone.

Toblerone debuted a Fruit & Nut bar in Europe last year and it’s finally arrived on our shores now. In addition, Terry’s Chocolate Orange was explained to me. They have their standard Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate version. Then they add in a seasonal flavor each winter. This year it was Peppermint, the year before a White Chocolate. And next year we’ll get a Toffee Crunch Terry’s Orange. (But there’s still a larger selection in Europe.)

I try not to approach company’s with too many preconceived notions, whether I’ve had a bad experience at their booths before (after all, these trade shows are primarily for them to make sales, not explain their products to me) or just haven’t liked their products. But hey, I’m known for being capricious and carrying a grudge as much as being descriptive and exhaustive. And that tactic paid off on when I went to the Sweets company booth. They make taffy and fruit jelly sticks.

But this year they have something a bit more elegant. Dark Chocolate Wine Gels in Port, Cabernet and Champagne. The short sticks are elegantly packaged in half round “tubes” with a little cellophane sealed tray. The taste is subtle and not at all fake or like it’s trying to hard (like, frankly, salt water taffy can be). I’m looking forward to finding them in stores soon.

I’m packing up my car for the drive back to Los Angeles, it’s absurd how many samples I have. Many are old favorites that I’ve picked up for personal consumption, but I’m also planning a bit of a giveaway while it’s still cool enough to ship.

Related Candies

1. Fancy Food Show 2009 Notes - Day Two
2. Fancy Food Show 2009 Notes - Day One
3. Sconza Jordanettes
4. Short & Sweet: Fancy Food Bites
5. Nougat de Montelimar
6. Artisan Marshmallows: Plush Puffs

Seattle Chocolates has revamped their line of bars, with spiffy moderne designs in bright colors. I want them to make socks, scarves & ties to go with them. (They did actually have some promotional buttons to go with them that I did pick up.)

Picked up some ample samples of Figamajigs with Mint which are just lovely in a white and pale green candy coated lentil style and their Figamajigs Raspberry bar. Love their simple combination of real figs and cocoa with dark chocolate.

Lake Champlain has a lovely line of new organic truffles. I only got to try the fig and honey. It’s a true ganache center, with more of the dark berry tones and touch of caramel sweetness of the honey.

They also featured the return of their fabulous novelty foil treats for Easter.

Chuao looked colorful and spicy as usual. I mentioned that the Firecracker, introduced last year at the All Candy Expo, was a bit too spicy for me and they were happy to report they’ve cut the spice. Sure enough, it’s much easier on my throat, but still has a warm burn to it (plus the fun of the pop rocks).

Seth Ellis Chocolatier has really bold packaging, but what stopped me in my tracks was the Candied Lemons, it’s actually dark chocolate covered candied whole lemon slices. Tangy, zesty, sweet and creamy.

This photo is of their ginger truffle, which I didn’t try, but I did have their lemon truffle and thought that was tasty as well.

L’Estasi Dolce had the best truffle of the day. They do a line of wine infused truffles, but it was the was Lemongrass and Ginger in dark chocolate that was the real winner for me.

New Tree is kind of a sleeper for me, I like that they combine cool flavors, I think their naming is a little kooky and the chocolate a little chalky sometimes… but then again the packaging is pretty. But I was transfixed by their new line Alpha, which has omega 3 fatty acids, courtesy of flax seeds. The Thym bar also has the flavor of thyme in it, it was so fresh and bright and the dark chocolate set it off so well, it was a wonderful fresh taste in a crowded room.

Gifford was a nice find, great traditional wax paper wrapped caramels. Also a great story of a company with a great heritage brought back from bankruptcy.

Ferrara Pan, known for Lemonheads & Atomic Fireballs, has expanded into chocolate panned goodies recently. I tried some of their nuts, but was taken with their Dark Chocolate Covered Biscotti. It’s a mild, semisweet chocolate and a hard, crunchy biscotti bite. Very munchable.

For fans of the discontinued Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites, you’ll be happy to find out that I’ve found the source. They’re at Chocolate Potpourri and called Chocolate Pretzel Balls and are available in milk, dark and white.

On the non-candy front:

Q Tonic was really refreshing, all tonic & citrus and virtually no sweetness.

Dry Soda has a really nice array of soda flavors, no high fructose corn sweetener and a really great not-quite sweet flavor.

Rogue Creamery makes great Blue Cheese. But I think everyone already knows that.

Coach Farms from New York had some lovely goat cheeses, especially their triple cream.

(All photos by Emanuel Treeson, (c) All Rights Reserved)

I know that most folks are glued to their TVs, listening to the radio or viewing streaming versions on the web of this joyous inaugural.

Here’s a confectionery break. (And a break for me, but I’ll have a roundup from Fancy Food posted soon.)

(Chocolates shown are from Cosmic Chocolates, their most popular set right now. Photo by Emanuel Treeson (c) all rights reserved.)

I’m a the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco right now and just completed the first day on the floor as I write this.

One of the items that I’ve tried every year is the Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster but never actually saw them in stores until I found them at my local cheese shop. (And then later saw them at Williams-Sonoma.)

Koeze Company used to be known as a tried-and-true roasted nut company, mostly cashews. You may have even gotten it as a corporate gift at some point.

The sad part is that I paid $10.50 for this box of five pieces and it was bloomed. I could have, and probably should have, taken it back for a refund. But I’m kind of lazy and I realized that in this case, they weren’t that bloomed, as in the chocolate wasn’t chalky, so I ate them.

The other cool thing is that I knew I was coming to the Fancy Food Show and would have the opportunity to try them again ... just to confirm.

The construction of the cluster is pretty simple. A base layer of whole pecans (or are they half pecans?) covered in a thick layer of Koeze’s combination of their peanut butter and “white confection” and then the whole thing is coated in dark chocolate.

A candy that combines pecans and peanut butter certainly isn’t common. What’s great here is that that the elements of each of those nuts is used to its full potential. the pecans are light and crispy with a great woodsy flavor. They’re plentiful and the nice size of the pieces means that it’s a lot of pecans.

The peanut butter layer is the unique selling point here though. While they say it’s white chocolate, close inspection of the ingredient label shows that it’s really “white confection” and sadly contains no cocoa butter. However, things like fractionated palm oil and hydrogenated palm kernel oil aside, what this white confection does is add some dairy to it - some none fat milk and whole milk along with the super fine & creamy peanut butter that Koeze Cream Nut is known for.

It’s not a thick and sticky peanut butter layer, instead it’s a light and creamy peanut cream. A touch of salt but mostly it’s a slick and silky peanut sweet.

The pecans are so light and airy as well, they’re not crushed to bits and packed in there, instead they’re just loosely lumped there, it makes the whole thing feel, simply light.

The dark chocolate is also silky smooth. More of a semi sweet than a really dark, it holds it all together, but the nuts are the true star.

There’s really nothing else like it on the market. It’s extremely munchable, very satisfying.

My big complaints, really, are the price and the pseudo-cocoa butter. But good nuts are worth it. And if you have the money or what to give an indulgent gift to a nut lover, this is a pretty good option.