It’s been well over a year since I had my first Pocket Coffee. They’re not easy to find in the United States, so I’ve been looking for an adequate locally-found replacement. I tried the Anthon Berg Coffee filled chocolates as well, but I haven’t been able to find just the espresso ones (the other flavors are a little too sweet for what I’m looking for in this case).

So I was quite excited when I saw these at Trader Joe’s, Espresso Chocolates. The package says that they’re “Rich, Dark Chocolate filled with Liquid Espresso Coffee.” Exactly what I’ve been looking for.

The package holds 3.88 ounces, and by my count, that’s 11 or 12 individual pieces (I can’t remember how many I ate ... except for “all of them.”)

The pieces are about the same size and shape of Pocket Coffee (or Mon Cheri) with a pleasant little wood grain on the top. Like it’s a log filled with espresso ... you know, the kind that you find in the Black Coffee Forest.

The chocolates are gorgeous and all were prefectly formed with no cracks or bleeds. Unlike the Pocket Coffee, these have no internal sugar shell (though they might form one eventually ... see above where I admit that I’ve already eaten them all and can’t experiment). The ingredient are: Cocoa Mass, Wheat Syrup, Sugar, Lactose, Cocoa Butter, Espresso Coffee, Soy Lecithin. Now, I suspect that the Wheat Syrup and Espresso Coffee are the syrupy filling (as I can’t imagine Wheat Syrup integrating well with chocolate and the Espresso filling is definitely sweet).

The filling is thicker than espresso, it’s woodsy and tangy and has a good coffee flavor but also some other notes rather like molasses or barley. The chocolate shell is sweet and tasty.

I’m not quite sure who makes these for Trader Joe’s, but the box says that they’re made in Germany, so I don’t think they’re made by Ferrero (the ingredients aren’t quite the same either). The package is very kind to list the caffeine content: 22 mg for a serving of 4 pieces. Compare that to a small cup (6 ounces) of brewed coffee which has 100 mgs. Sleep easy and have one in the evening!

Notes from the box:

Need a pick-me-up? Try our Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolates. We’ve taken real espresso coffee and surounded it with rich dark chocolate. Other coffee candies have a cream center or bits of coffee beans. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolates have a real liquid espresso center. We recommend eating each piece in one bite to avoid dry cleaning bills.

While it recommends one bite, I like biting off one end and holding it upright, drinking the syrup center, then eating the chocolate. Melting them in your mouth is a completely different experience, because it reverses things and you get your chocolate first and an espresso chaser.

Here’s the top ten search strings that brought folks to Candy Blog in June.

1. carnival skittles
2. japanese candy
3. skittles carnival
4. maya gold
5. m&ms
6. figamajigs
7. choxie
8. fda chocolate
9. bonkers candy
10. oriental trader

I’m beginning to suspect that people searching for “Maya Gold” on the internet are sorely disappointed when they click over to candy blog and find a review of a chocolate bar.

This is just a bunch of candy that I photographed but never got around to reviewing. I ate it and everything, but I couldn’t come up with more than 50 words about it and that seemed like a slight for regular readers. (Okay, now that I’ve finished writing this very long post, it seems that I am able to come up with more than 50 words.)

Chocovic is one of my favorite brands of Single Origin chocolate. They’re not even that expensive when you find them at Trader Joes and the Ocumare is smooth and buttery. I was excited that they were adding milk chocolate to their line with the Jade 40% Cocoa Solids Milk Chocolate Bar. The bar was nice, a little acidic and maybe tasted a bit like raisins. It was not as smooth and creamy as I’d hoped but really rich. I loved the package.

This one got a little broken when I brought it back from Chicago, so I thought I’d wait around until I saw another one before I gave it a full review. It’s been a full year and I havne’t seen them anywhere.

These are just a wee little treat from Fauchon that Santos at Scent of Green Bananas gave me last year. They’re so cute!

I was going to review them, and then Sugar Savvy did, so I thought I’d wait and well, here it is, July.

They’re little guanduias, just hazelnut chocolates. They’re rather like the Caffarel ones I reviewed, and I’ve since found that this little “hat” shaped chocolate is pretty common in Europe.

There were two little candies in each pink “purse”. While I thought these were adorable, they’re also fantastically expensive. This is something that’s confused me for a while. Guanduia was invented as a way to “extend” chocolate supplies, so while hazelnuts themselves aren’t cheap, they aren’t that expensive either. But these are. ($6.50 for two pieces of chocolate?)

It’s all in the packaging. The price and branding led me to believe that these would be top notch. Sadly they weren’t. I found them a little chalky. Now, I’ve had plenty of bloomed chocolate, but this wasn’t like a bloom, it was just like it was a little dry.

But the nuts were fresh and crunchy. If you’re really in the mood for some guanduia, just pick some plain old stuff up. Or get one of these and a big bag of Caffarel and keep refilling the pretty pink purse for portion control and fashion.

Last year at All Candy Expo I came across a company that was showing off some really nice candies. They had several lines, they included all natural gummies and some little fruit chews called Gazillions that I really loved. Their booth was pretty cool too, spacious and inviting and pretty sassy with the candy displayed in giganto martini glasses.

The company is called Value Quest Foods ... no website, really, no info out there.

It’s a shame, because I could see a lot of their products going places if they were packaged for the North American market a little better. Candy is really a tough business.

Gazillions are little chewy candy morsels that look like itty bitty pieces of popcorn. They’re about the size of a lentil. They’ve got a slight crackly shell and inside it’s a chew. They came in a bunch of different flavors but I liked Pineapple best. Kind of like an itty bitty Starburst or fruit Mentos. I didn’t care much for the box, which was about the size of a box of matches. I think they’d do better in a little tin or a more appealing box.

They come in Green Apple, Pineapple, Orange, Lemon, Fruity Punch, Raspberry and Strawberry. But that doesn’t matter because I’ve never seen them for sale. Great name though.

The other cool item that they later sent me as a sample was something called Fruities, which I have to say are stunning to look at. They’re also like the Gazillions in that they’re a fruit chew, a little latexy, kind of like HiCHEW with a hard, crunchy shell. And of course the selling point is that they look like real fruit, down to the variations in the colored candy shell. The scale is a little weird, that the limes are bigger than pears ... but hey, they were lovely.

Tasty? Not quite as flavorful as I would have hoped and not really in the flavors I would like.

Last year in Chinatown in New York City I found these things called Fruitips. They’re a long tube, almost as long as a paper towel core and filled with sugar sanded jellies and weighs about 5 ounces. That’s it. They’re fruit jellies. They’re nice and come a few different varieties, I chose the mixed fruits. I like all of them except for purple, which is blackcurrant.

I mention this one because I actually saw these for sale at Big Lots. I can attest that even stale as they are now, these were pretty good, so if you can get a tube for less than $1.50 (what I paid) then I say give them a whirl.

Everything here gets a solid 6 out of 10 for whatever reason. If you’re ever curious what I have sitting around that I might be preparing to review, check out my Flickr set of photos called “Unreviewed”.

Sour Patch Kids were developed in 1970s by a candy sales manager named Frank Galatolie who was chasing the sour fad. They were first Martians, to take advantage with the consumer fascination with all things space related. They were later changed to little children and called Sour Patch Kids (to capitalize on the Cabbage Patch Kids fad) and introduced in the US in 1985. A lot of the super sour items from that time period are long gone, so who could have expected that some sour sanded Swedish Fish would be so enduring? Sour Patch Kids are now made by Cadbury Adams in Canada.

Sour Patch Kids are a soft jelly candy sanded with a sweet & sour coating. The candies are supposedly in the shape of little frizzy haired kids. They look rather like little feet to me or maybe rabbits with very puffy tails.

Sour Patch Kids come in the traditional four flavors they always have: Raspberry (red), Lime (green), Orange (orange) and Lemon (yellow). Yes, these are also the same flavors as the Swedish fish array that Cadbury Adams makes.

They’re billed as “Sour then Sweet” and it’s true. Some folks like to suck the sour coating off, which makes them bitingly sour (with an odd salty tang to it as well) but I prefer to chew mine, to combine the sour and sweet and get a little flavor at the same time.

Though the flavors aren’t really that strong, as is the same with Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids are good whether they’re soft and fresh or hard and tacky.

I don’t buy them often, but they’re a good “keep me interested” candy, which is great for movies, traveling or a little munching while at work. I see adults eating them as often as kids, which is nice that there’s a sour candy that generations can share.

Note: there’s a little fad going on YouTube where kids collect the sour sand from candies like Sour Patch Kids, Sour Skittles or Pixy Stix and then snort it. Please, don’t do this. It really hurts ... you’re not gonna get high, but you’ll probably make some silly faces and your friends will laugh at you. There’s a reason our tastebuds are on our tongues and not in our sinuses. Sour Patch Kids are meant to be ingested orally ... not nasally. PSA over.

Sour Patch Kids contain no gelatin (they’re a jelly candy that uses corn starch as a jelling agent) and use all artificial colorings so they’re suitable for vegetarians. There’s no word in the label about gluten status.

I had really high hopes for the new Nestle Crunch Crisp bar. I found it on Friday while I was filling my gas tank and wandered into the convenience store because it was so freakishly hot. (Okay, maybe it’s not freakishly hot, it was the end of June in Southern California, what should I have been expecting at four in the afternoon?)

The blue metallic wrapper is promising and describes this as “Crispy Wafers, Chocolate Creme.” Sadly, it also doesn’t list chocolate as an ingredient. Which leads me to wonder what the essential element is to be called part of the Nestle Crunch line of products ... apparently it’s not chocolate, it’s crisped rice. I’m sure there are volumes of marketing research that prove this.

The bar consists of sturdy planks of bland wafers filled with a greasy and grainy chocolate cream, topped with some crisped rice and a slurry of thin mockolate (63% of your daily value of saturated fats!).

Here are the ingredients:

Sugar, Wheat Flour, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Alkalized Cocoa, Nonfat Milk, Crisped Rice (rice flour, sugar, barley malt, salt) and 1% or less of High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Vanilla Flavor, Salt, Baking Soda, Lactic Acid Esters, TBHC and Citric Acid, Ground Peanuts.

While this all comes off as rather negative, I think I might find this tasty when the ambient temperature is below 90 degrees. Even at 85 degrees, however, the bar was a slippery mess (this is one of the differences between mockolate and most chocolate). It was certainly creamy and the crispy wafers were distinct and crunchy. But the mockolate and chocolate creme just weren’t up to delivering any flavor to the mix. It wasn’t too sweet though, as the bland wafer and crispies were a good counterbalance to the mockolates. Honestly, the crispy wafers were good.

This would be an awesome bar if it were real. If there were some sort of real chocolate on there, something with character and depth, I could completely get behind it. In the mean time, I’m going to stick to my also-high-in-full-hydrogenated-oils Chocolatiers.

Candy companies are still getting the hang of this internet thing, so you can go to the website listed on the package, ForTheKidInYou.com, but I couldn’t find any mention of this bar there. On a slightly related note on the mockolate front, here’s an article from Reuters ... that Cebele May they mention, that’s me (plus Emily from Chocolate in Context!).

Related Candies

1. Baby Ruth Crisp & Nestle Crisp Bars
2. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
3. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
4. Nestle Milk Chocolate
5. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
6. I Miss: Bar None

I was running a little slow over the weekend, so here’s TWIC a little late. I’ve got some fun links of candies I’m eager to try but haven’t found yet:

Okay, weigh in on where you found the Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Creme cups!

I’ve seen them at RiteAid in Los Angeles in both the regular size two packs and the miniatures. (Original review here.)

Here’s an article from today’s Baltimore Sun on the subject (with some other interesting suggestions for Elvis-themed candy combinations as well).

Twix is one of the most popular candy bar brands in the country (and mighty popular in Europe, to boot). About 43 million are sold each year (source). There are quite a few different versions and limited editions that have come and gone over the years.

Twix recently released the new Twix PB ... this new product replaces the Peanut Butter Twix (shown) that has been around on and off since 1983. I contacted Mars regarding this change.

It was kind of an odd process. I submitted an email through the Contact page on the Twix website and two days later I got an email (referencing Peanut Butter M&Ms, which really confused me, because if I asked a question about PB M&Ms, it had to be over a year ago when I was trying to find out if they still made Crispy in the States) with a reference number and their toll free hotline. I called the number and gave them the number and they confirmed that there will be no more Peanut Butter Twix once supplies currently in stores and warehouses run out. (This would be the appropriate time to pick up a box at your local grocer when they go on sale for three for a dollar and then sell them for $2 each on eBay.)

The only difference between these two products is the cookie in the center. The original Peanut Butter Twix has a vanilla cookie (like the regular Twix) while the new PB Twix has a chocolate cookie (like the Limited Edition Twix Triple Chocolate).

This is how I feel about this bar ... it’s trying too hard.

I got a hold of the classic Peanut Butter Twix and did a side by side comparison.

I like the Peanut Butter Twix, not a lot, but enough to finish the bar on hand. The peanut butter is definitely the main attraction here. The bar isn’t very sweet and the cookie gives it a nice texture without doing much else. The chocolate, well, keeps things together.

The Twix looks the same from the outside. The cookie isn’t quite as crispy and satisfyingly crunchy. The peanut butter seems to be lost in the Hydrox-style cookie (no, not Oreo, I’m saying Hydrox for a reason). It all tastes like bad frosting. Not like peanut butter, not like chocolate. It has a nice salty balance and isn’t too sweet, but it just doesn’t have much going for it as a candy. I hate to say it, but when I eat this, the word that comes to mind is unctuous. I mean this in both senses of the word ... it’s kind of oily and it’s also kind of insincere and smug.

Now, if you’re a Twix fan, you’ll probably want to ignore everything I’ve written here. I’ve never actually cared much for Twix. Sometimes I’ll eat a miniature as a reminder to myself that I really don’t like them. I don’t know why. All the elements seem like a good idea. Is it just me, or do Twix always become a melted mess in your fingers too? I don’t have that problem with most other bars.

If you’re a fan of the traditional (and you should really try this one before you go getting in an uproar) then you should probably call Mars or send them an email to let them know how you feel.

Related Candies

1. Candy Source: Jelly Bean Factory
2. Disney Branded Chocolate Candies