Name: Bassett’s Jelly Babies
Brand: Bassett’s (Cadbury)
Place Purchased: Sainsbury’s (West Los Angeles)
Price: $4.29
Size: 215 grams
Calories per ounce: 335 calories/100 grams
Type: Jelly

I reviewed a knock-off version of Jelly Babies a few months ago, because that’s all I was able to find here in the States and I was lead to believe that Bassett’s are illegal for import because they contain non-FDA approved food dyes. Of course when I saw them at Sainsbury’s a few weeks ago, no carcinogens were gonna keep me from trying the real thing!

What these Jelly Babies offer that the others don’t is personality. Each of the little babies has a name and a different persona. The pink (according to the package) is Baby Bonny who is sitting with a diaper on. Black is Bigheart, who has a little heart shape on his chest. The orange is called Bumper and has some sort of innertube or fanny pack around his middle to keep him from hurting himself. I think I’d like to see a helmet too. Brilliant is the raspberry one with a big B on his middle. Bubbles is yellow and has a little bead necklace on. Boofuls is the light green lime one who is crying.

(You can see a full detail about them and what they supposedly look like here.)

While the Bassett’s is not as grainy as the Norfolk Manner I tried before and the Bassett’s do have a bit more flavor, I still find them a little perfumey, a little bland. The best one to me, suprisingly enough, was the raspberry one (I’m not overly fond of fake raspberry candy). I don’t think I could eat very many of them in a sitting, which is what makes sweets “candy” in my book. It has to be positively difficult for me to NOT keep shoveling them into my mouth if they’re sitting around. For pure addictive jelly-type candy I will always prefer Swedish Fish, Gummi Bears, spearmint leaves/orange slices, gumdrops or plain old Jelly Beans.

Rating - 5 out of 10

Name: Barley Sugar
Brand: Pascall (Monkhill Confectionery now part of Cadbury)
Place Purchased: Sainsbury (West Los Angeles)
Price: $3.99
Size: 185 grams
Calories per 100 grams: 380 calories
Type: hard candy

Some folks look down their noses at hard candy. Like it’s not candy or it’s a last resort. What’s great about hard candy is that it’s incredibly portable and comes in huge varieties and is generally pretty cheap. And for the most part it’s pure sugar. While I don’t buy a lot of hard candy, I do enjoy it for particular tasks, like high-velocity noveling, whale watching excursions and long car trips.

When I was a kid we used to get barley sugar pops. They were lollipops shaped like old fashioned toys like trains, teddy bears, little dollhouses and animals. The flavors were delicate, not like a Charms sweet & sour pop, but more like a dreamy honey flavor with a touch of lemon or orange. Some have no flavor at all, like the Valentine’s hearts pops. For some reason most barley sugar candy seems to come in lollies. I have no idea why.

Barley Sugar is kind of like molasses, it’s a rather raw syrup made from germinated grains (usually barley) and is often used along with cane sugar and corn syrup to both add flavor and color to boiled candies.

These little sweets look a little like Clementine orange slices, a rich amber orange hard candy. The flavor is sweet with a nice touch of orange essence and no hint of sour. The candies are very solid and smooth with no voids or bubbles in them. The dissolve evenly and have a nice crunch if you’re one of those (I am, I can’t just let a candy dissolve in my mouth, I will chew it up).

They’re a little ordinary, but sometimes I like that ... sometimes I don’t want screaming green apple or supersour lemon drops. Sometimes I want a cup of Earl Grey tea and a few demure sweets. They’re not attention grabbers, but they’re a wonderful background music for my other pursuits.

Rating - 8 out of 10 (a little pricey for sugar)

Related Candies

1. Regennas Clear Toys
2. Hard Candy: Juntsuyu

Name: Turkish Delight
Brand: Fry’s (Cadbury)
Place Purchased: Cost Plus
Price: $1.79
Size: 1.8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 103
Type: Chocolate/Jelly

I’ve included a couple of reviews here for Turkish Delight (or Turkish Paste), which is a rather obscure kind of candy in the States. I found this chocolate covered Turkish delight bar at Cost Plus. It’s a little smaller than a deck of cards.

What intrigued me at first was the quote on it that said that it was “Full of Eastern Promise.” At first I thought it said Easter, so I was confused enough to pick it up and look closer.

The bar is basically a delicately rose flavored jelly center covered with sweet milk chocolate. I happen to like flowery flavors, so it’s a big hit with me. It isn’t heavy and cloying like some fruit, minty or nut flavors can be and it has a pleasant aftertaste that lingers, like I’ve eaten a bouquet.

Being chocolate covered it also solves a common problem I have with Turkish delight, in that it’s usually covered in corn starch, which is just freakishly messy. I just wish it weren’t so danged expensive. Turkish Paste is usually about $8.00 a pound, but this stuff would end up being over $15 a pound. But the cool thing is that most other Turkish Paste is sold in 1/2 pound boxes and I don’t usually want that much, so I guess there is a middle ground in there.

Rating - 8 out of 10

Some folks have written or commented that I try other candies and ask why some haven’t been covered here. With only a few exceptions this blog contains candies that are new to me. But I recognize that not only is the world a finite place but that I’m also excluding a lot of fine candies that you may not be familiar with on the blog.

So, I’ll try to catch up with some tried and true candies or just new iterations of old favorites with this new feature: Short & Sweet. Just a brief on the candy and my rating and hopefully a photo.

Name: Caramello
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: 7-11
Price: $.85
Size: 1.6 ounce
Calories per ounce: 131
Type: Chocolate/Caramel

After the recent introduction of the Nestle Crunch with Caramel and the Hershey’s with Caramel, someone suggested this bar. I hadn’t had one in years, so it was back to the store. The bar is a European style milk chocolate with four creamy caramel filled sections. The chocolate is very sweet and milky and the caramel has a good burn sugar/salty taste to it. Not a true chewy caramel, it’s a good balance for the sweet chocolate.

Rating - 6 out of 10

Name: Mega M&Ms
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: 7-11
Price: $1.25
Size: 2.87 ounce
Calories per ounce: 139
Type: Chocolate

Just a larger sized morsel of chocolate, the Mega M&M also sports a different range of colored shells. The oddest part about these candies is that the colors reminded me of 1986. I don’t know why, I’m not sure that they were fashionable colors then or not, but they remind me of college. My college colors (they were Green & Gold) aren’t even among these, so it doesn’t even make sense.

Aside from that they’re just big M&Ms. Imagine a Peanut M&M without the peanut and you’ll have a mega. The thing I miss in these megas is the ability to cleave the shell off with my eye teeth. Maybe I just need more practice.

Rating - 8 out of 10

Name: Orange Cream Kisses
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: found them on my desk
Price: unknown, but probably the same price as other Kisses
Type: White Chocolate

These are quite the little cuties and fill a niche that I’ve not really seen before in mass-consumer candies. You know, flavored white chocolate. The only other flavored white chocolate candy I can think of are those pastel misty mints. They smell a bit like aspergum (I’m sorry, I compare a lot of orange flavored things to aspergum, I blame my mother for giving me the dastardly stuff when I was a kid), but have a good approximation of a creamsicle - creamy white chocolate with a hint of orange essence.

I think they’d be fun to eat with cookies or within a mix of other Kisses, but I can’t imagine eating a whole bag of them.

Rating - 6 out of 10

Name: Malted Milk
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 48 grams
Calories per ounce: no info on wrapper
Type: Chocolate/Nougat

On the outside the package promises malt. On the inside of the chocolate bar delivers sweet and bland, fluffy nougat. If you’re someone who likes Milky Ways or 3 Musketeers, this’ll be a good bar for you.

The bar is built like this: a foamy nougat that’s slightly malty with a strip of caramel on top and then the whole thing is covered in sticky sweet milk chocolate. I know, you’re thinking Milky Way. So am I. The nougat is actually more malty, a little more flavorful than an American Milky Way, but not enough that I’d go branding it with the word MALT on the package.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all that bad. The best part about this bar was the caramel. It’s slightly salty and was a good balance to the sweetness of the center and the chocolate coating.

If you’re looking for another version of a Milky Way bar, you’ll probably feel very at home with this bar. If you’re looking for a bar like a malted milk ball, this ain’t it.

Rating - 6 out of 10

Name: Galaxy
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices (Los Feliz)
Price: $1.49
Size: 47 grams
Calories: 543 calories /100 grams
Type: Chocolate (Milk)

Much like the Cadbury bar, this is a pure milk chocolate bar. It’s hefty and the little bite size chunks that break off are the perfect size for your mouth. The color is pretty and the smell is mostly of vanilla.

It’s very sweet, that’s the first thing I notice. However, the creamy melt is very smooth though a little sticky. The thing that I rejoiced in, though, is that there is no “powdered milk” flavor, which I associate with Cadbury chocolates. It’s too sweet for me, as the sugary notes overwhelm the milk and chocolate flavors, I found it to be very pleasant. It was pretty good with my coffee this morning.

Name: Bournville
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices (Los Feliz)
Price: $1.49
Size: it’s hard to find weights on UK candies
Calories: 500 calories / 100 grams
Type: Chocolate (Dark)

As a solid dark chocolate bar, I was hoping for more chocolate. I didn’t read the package ahead of time so I was surprised to see now that the first ingredient on the label is sugar. Called “The Original Plain Chocolate” on the label, it is rather plain. Since it’s so sweet, the chocolate notes don’t really come out readily.

I was about four chunks into it before I started tasting the notes. It’s a very consistent cocoa flavor, hardly any trace of bitterness but some slight smoky, woodsy notes. The package says 39% cocoa mass, which probably explains my disappointment. I’m not saying it should be 70%, I’m just thinking that a little more cocoa butter and less sugar might make for a smoother bar with more flavor. As a mass market consumer bar it’s on par with the American Hershey’s Special Dark.  Nothing fantastic but probably very dependable. Too bad it’s not even vegan, the ingredients list butterfat.

You might wonder why the bar is called Bournville - it’s where Cadbury put their first large production facility in the 1870s.

Ratings - Galaxy - 6 out of 10
Bournville - 5 out of 10

Name: Wine Gums
Brand: Maynards (Cadbury)
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 44 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Gummi

Imagine a gummi candy that smells like Elmer’s Glue. It took me a couple of days to figure out what they smelled like, but it was one of those non-toxic smells that kind of get under your skin.

There are a variety of colors/flavors in this package:

yellow = lemon
orange = orange
green = lime
purple = currant?
red = cherry or maybe strawberry.

They’re random, not the systematic stacking that you can count on in a roll of Lifesavers. The flavors are smooth, not terribly tart, not terribly sweet. There is a definite musky taste to it, which is what I guess the “wine” part is. This is most noticeable in the purple one. The flavors kind of grew on me - at first I didn’t care for the purple one so I ate them first, then I was sad that I didn’t have any more.

What really suprised me is how much I liked the red ones. I’m not a fan of red candies but these weren’t too cherry or strawberry and had a nice sort of sizzly flavor to them. The only flavor I didn’t like was the green one, which tasted just like floor cleaner smells.

Next time I go to Canada or the UK, I’ll be sure to pick a roll of these up. They’re easy to carry and a good little zesty pick-me-up.

Rating - 7 out of 10

Name: Twirl
Brand: Cadbury (UK)
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices
Price: $1.49
Size: 43 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Milk Chocolate

I think someone needs to start keeping a list of candy bar names that would also make good names for cats.

I posted earlier this month about the Flake bar, which I only kinda liked. I’ve decided that one wasn’t particularly fresh. The Twirl, as near as I can figure it, is just a paired version of Flakes. Only slightly smaller in diameter (about the size of my finger ... I have no idea how big your fingers are) than the Flake, they’re about an inch shorter. Think Twix bars - but with a different center.

Inside are curled flakes of chocolate, then they’re dipped in more milk chocolate to hold it all together. What you end up with is a lot of air, which means that it all melts much quicker and seems to emanate a chocolately aroma. It’s basically more fudgy than creamy.

Name: Flake Snow
Brand: Cadbury (UK)
Place Purchased: India Sweets & Spices
Price: $1.49
Size: 37 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Milk Chocolate/White Chocolate

Revisiting the Flake, this version is filled with white chocolate curls coated in milk chocolate. I’m so glad it wasn’t coated in more white chocolate. Upon opening it I could definitely smell the sweet white chocolate and then a hint of the milk chocolate. It all had a dried milk tinge to it. The bar was much fresher than the one I got from Cost Plus, so that’s a plus. But it was sweet enough to make my throat hurt. It wasn’t really chalky, but it wasn’t really smooth. For some reason the Twirl bar was much more creamy. This one was definitely not old and the store kept them in the fridge ... so I’m guessing that this bar is just like this.

Ratings - Twirl - 7 out of 10
Flake Snow - 5 out of 10