I was delighted to find this new candy shop in Cambria, CA last week while I was on vacation.

Sweet Offerings is a quaint and well designed shop. It’s on Burton Drive in the eastern section of town, just down from the famous glass shop called Seekers.

The simple interior is classic & clean. A black and white theme with a brick red painted floor, it’s crisp and inviting and allows the chaos of colors of the different candies to pop.

Most of the candy offered is prepackaged. There’s a wide variety of mass-manufactured and hard to find favorites like Sky Bar, Mallo Cups, Chuckles and Fizzies but also higher end items like Marich panned nuts, Vosges & Lake Champlain chocolate bars.

For the most part the candy collection appears aimed at adults. Sure they have some kid-appealing items like some novelties and of course candies for all ages. But many of the items look like they’re just for grown ups, like a collections of caramels, licorice, Jelly Belly confections, Brix chocolate designed to pair with wine or fruit pate and even some honey.

The bulk candy wall was devoted almost entirely to Koppers items - their gourmet Malted Milk Balls and Cordials were prominently featured. The bulk wall was priced at $2.95 per quarter pound, which isn’t too bad for chocolate these days.

They also had a large glass enclosed counter with two cases where they featured several different brands of fine chocolates. Roger’s Chocolates took up one full case and the other had a mix of classic candy items like chocolate dipped orange peels, dipped pretzels, truffles and some novelty shaped candies.

The prices were higher than a drug store, but less than some other tourist traps I’ve been in. The candy I got there was all fresh (I bought my Victoria Creams, a Pecan Divinity Bar and a package of Marich Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews) and in good condition.

While they don’t have everything I could possibly be looking for, the collection of products was well curated - there was something there to satisfy just about every craving, whether it was for sizzling cinnamon, root beer, chocolate, salty sweets, super sours, chewy, nutty, gummi, cracklin’, gum, a lollipop or just something new.

It’s definitely a shop that I’ll make a point to come back to when I’m in the area.

Sweet Offerings
4070 Burton Dr
Cambria, CA 93428
(805) 927-9300

UPDATE 9/13/2011 - I stopped by the shop again last week while vacationing in the area. The first time I stopped by in the middle of the afternoon, they were inexplicably closed, with just a note on the door saying that they would be open the following day. I returned later in the week and they were indeed open. The offerings in the store have changed since my last visit. The inventory did not seem quite as lush or diverse, but they still had the bulk items and lots of nostalgic classics. My biggest disappointment was the fact that they no longer carry Roger’s Creams. Their chocolate counter is now populated with some unbranded chocolates. I purchased some chocolate covered candied orange peels and a couple of pieces of honeycomb. Both were good and at $19.99 a pound I thought they were well priced. I still missed picking up the Roger’s Creams though.

Related Candies

1. Robitaille’s Presidential Inaugural Mints & Turtles
2. Universal CityWalk for Candy Lovers
3. Daffin’s Candies Factory & World’s Largest Candy Store
4. Candy Source: Munchies (Los Angeles)
5. Candy Source: Powell’s Sweet Shoppe
6. Candy Source: Candy Baron - Santa Monica

While on vacation I’m always on the prowl for the local favorites wherever I go.

I’ve been meaning to hit Robitaille’s Fine Candies in Carpenteria, CA for a few years now. They’re in a cute little seaside town just south of Santa Barbara known for its excellent beach. Of course no seaside town is complete without a candy shop. Robitaille’s makes their own fudge and some chocolates along with what they consider themselves most famous for, their Inaugural Mints.

The shop is much larger than I expected, perhaps because I thought that their 400 square foot candy kitchen included the store floor ... instead it’s a large open space that houses three full aisles of pre-packaged bulk candies.

I made a beeline for the mints and had several versions to chose from.

For over 50 years these extra creamy hand made mints have been a Santa Barbara tradition. In 1985, we were chosen “The Official Mint of the 50th Presidential Inauguration.” Today, we still specialize in the multi-colored creamy mints. Each mint is individually hand made and packaged on our premises in Santa Barbara county.

They sell two different sized packages of the mints, eight ounces and four ounces ... all standing on end like little record albums. I chose a box of the classic red, white and blue ones in the smaller four ounce size.

I wasn’t quite sure what they were, since the honor of an official mint for an inauguration made them sound exotic or perhaps even unique.

It turns out they’re not. It says on the website Do not let the colors fool you. These are all made from white chocolate. Sadly that’s not quite true. Maybe it was at one time, but the ones I picked up are sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil and then some cocoa butter followed by some milk products and other things like sorbitan monostearate that sound like they don’t need to be in there. So at least there’s some white chocolate in there. (And a heavy heaping of food coloring, as you might imagine.)

I admit, I was still enchanted with them. They look like glossy, patriotic tiddlywinks

Though they boast about being handmade, they’re really just little puddles of peppermint flavored white confection (see Smooth n Melty Mints) which probably taste just as good spewed out of a machine.

That said, I liked them! They’re smooth, they’ve very sweet and minty and have a good silky melt on the tongue. I appreciated that they weren’t covered with little nonpariels so at least there was something unique about them.

They come in a few different color variations - pastels, harvest colors and red, white & green for Christmas. I would probably prefer just plain white ones if I could.

The store itself has a huge selection of other candies, something for everyone. There is a whole display of items between the fresh fudge and the house-made candy case of sugar free candies. Then there are many aisles filled with shelf after shelf of items. There’s a good selection of licorice including salted from Europe and Australian style along with German (Haribo wheels) and American version of allsorts. There were flavors and flavors of salt water taffy, lollipops the size of your head. All colors of M&Ms (in single color packages), rock candy in all colors, compressed dextrose candies (Runts, pacifiers, little stars, little daisies) and then jelly beans and all sorts of chocolate coated things like pretzels, honeycomb, marshmallows & graham crackers.

The prices of the candies varied and were by and large decent. Some chocolate candies were $12.95 a pound and the sugar candies were usually about $5.95 a pound with others somewhere in between. Most prepacked items were 4-8 ounces, so the choice of sizes wasn’t that great.

There were also shelves and shelves of candy favorites especially hard to find independent companies like Annabelle’s, Necco and Tootsie. No vacation destination is complete without a selection of a few dozen candy sticks, which are right up by the check out counter.

One of the other items I picked up in the candy case was something I saw on their website and was even more impressed with in person. The Dark Chocolate Turtle (they also come in milk and white chocolate).

This sizable patty is 3.5 inches across and exquisitely formed in layers. A dark chocolate disk as a base, glossy caramel, then a few pecans then another dollop of dark chocolate.

The caramel had a nice pull, good chew and excellent burnt sugar & butter flavors. The dark chocolate was semisweet with good fruity & toasted flavors to go with the woodsy pecans. Some spots seemed to be mostly chocolate but the whole effect was a satisfying candy. The price was pretty decent as well, each piece was about $1.50 each and might I say they were just slightly too big for me. (I cut most of them in half and shared.)

Robitaille’s Fine Candies
900 Linden Ave
Carpinteria, CA 93013
(805) 684-9340
Hours: 10:00 AM - 5:30 PM (call to confirm)

Related Candies

1. Christopher Elbow: No. 6 - Dark Rocks
2. Sweet Earth Chocolate Cups
3. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
4. Disneyland for Candy Bloggers
5. Nestle Turtles
6. Mint Aero

The idea of this candy is more than puzzling. Sour Patch Kids are basically a sour coated Swedish Fish. Sour Patch Chillerz say that they’re a soft & chewy candy with a surge of cooling.

I didn’t really know what that meant. Maybe it’s like menthol or mint added to a sour candy?

When I got the sample back in May in my box of stuff from the All Candy Expo folks, I dutifully logged them in and took a photo of the package and then ignored them. But then I got a few comments from some readers about them ... so I was intrigued.

The front of the package of new Sour Patch Chillerz shows three smiling, waving & scarf-sporting, mitten-wearing Sour Patch Kids. Purple, Yellow & Red. On the back of the package is lists the flavors/colors ... and there’s some blue child, completely missing from the front. I guess he missed the photo shoot.

They come in four trademarked flavors:

I found them quite odd, but not bad really. My bag was pretty heavy on the grape but light on the berry punch, so it worked out pretty well. My favorite was the lemon, but that could have been that it was the most readily related to something I already found pleasant.

It’s a fun experiment and I can actually see myself craving these during a cold since they have some of the same elements and so much of the flavor doesn’t depend on the nose, instead it relies on the taste buds and textures.

Note: The package I reviewed was marked “sample - not for retail sale” so I cannot be certain that the package is exactly as sold at retail, though I’m pretty sure the product on the inside is.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2009 # 1
2. Mike and Ike Italian Ice
3. Peruvian Candies
4. Mentos Ice Pomelo
5. Starburst Icy Bursts

I got an email recently pointing out that I’d not reviewed Haribo Happy Cola gummis before.

I’ve been fascinated with Japanese cola candies for a while, and I think I completely forgot about the German cola candies. (I did review the Haribo Fizzy Cola a few years back.)

The great thing about Haribo is that they make an incredible variety with a huge variation of flavors and shapes. The bad thing about Haribo is that the quality varies depending on which factory they’re made in. These were made in Spain.

The bottles are nicely formed, they’re plump and have the shape of a soda bottle. The candy is created using two different colors - a dark amber and a clear, the bottom of the bottle is the darker color and gives the impression of a glass bottle filled with cola. So simple, but so convincing.

These are rather firm but still have a pleasant cola scent when I stick my nose in the bag and inhale. It’s a little lemony citrus and a bit of spice.

The firm bite doesn’t burst forth with much flavor. It’s at first citrusy ... a little tangy. Later I get the cola notes, which is a little woodsy and mellow spice. But it’s very bland. It’s like lemon soda with a splash of cola instead of a cola splashed with lemon.

I want something a little more intense, something that gives me a lot of cola flavor. Maybe I’m spoiled or impatient ... these are still fun though, a great summer vacation candy to munch on while on long drives.

Related Candies

1. Fresh Cola Mentos
2. Haribo Saure Dinosaurier
3. Ramune & Cola Bubble Ball
4. Haribo Fizzy Cola
5. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

I’m on vacation. Or on my way to my vacation.

So this review will contain slightly more photos than normal ... so you get all your candy goodness for the day and I get a little bit of a rest (since I’m writing these reviews in advance).

In Europe folks get to enjoy different versions of the Terry’s Chocolate Orange quite regularly. In the United States we get a novelty version about every two years (I had the white chocolate version before). I heard about the Terry’s Chocolate Toffee Crunch Orange at the Fancy Food Show earlier this year and was hoping that I’d see it in stores in advance of Christmas (which is high season for chocolate made into slices of of fruit & reassembled into a sphere).

I picked out a smashed box in my haste, but was happy to see that it didn’t matter to the product inside, which was well protected with a plastic form.

Inside the plastic form, inside the box, is a plastic wrapped sphere that includes directions: WHACK & UNWRAP.

I’ve been around enough to know that’s a bad idea. Either that or I whack to hard and end up with a big handful of crumbles. Instead I just open the package and insert a knife and pull out a few slices.

This particular orange was very nice looking. The slices inside were glossy & had a good snap.

What surprised me was the orange scent. Honestly, I thought the “orange” part on this particular orange was just going to be the shape, not the flavor. For some reason I didn’t think they’d do toffee and orange.

It smells like orange frosting ... very sweet.

The first ingredient on the list is sugar, the second is milk ... so this is a very sweet & milky product.

The texture of the chocolate is smooth, but a little on the fudgy grain side. The milk was a bit overshadowed by the orange flavoring. Within the chocolate were little salty toffee chips. The texture combination is great - the chips were crispy and crunchy. However, the whole thing was just throat searingly sweet. I liked it, but after two slices my throat just ached. Better with some black tea or in combination with something like pretzels or nuts.

Since I picked this up in the off season (though it was very fresh), it was pretty expensive for what’s otherwise rather cheap chocolate. The novelty of the shape is great, and really helps with the portion when sharing, but of course a big 3 or 5 ounce bar is a much better deal. In this case the flavor combination was the unique selling proposition. For gifting chocolate, these are great ... for eating on an every day basis I think I’ll stick to a Scharffen Berger Milk Nibby or for a toffee chip experience I’ll review a new Lindt bar soon.

(Okay, so this review didn’t end up being as short as I thought it was going to be.)

Related Candies

1. Seeds of Change: Dark Chocolate with Mango and Cashew
2. 3400 Phinney: Fig, Fennel & Almond and Hazelnut Crunch
3. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
4. Terry’s Peppermint Orange
5. Terry’s Chocolate Orange

Sometimes I pick things up to save you the trouble. Because I know that you’re the babbling ill-nurtured ingested-lump that’d be tempted to buy Shakespearean Insult Gum. The little “shelf” of “books” is actually a set of boxes that hold two gumballs and a line from one of the scribe’s plays.

William Shakespeare was the master of the witty insult and now you can amaze your friends with these highbrow putdowns!

It’s like an episode of Frasier, but with gum!

The assortment of boxes feature names of Shakespeare’s tragedies on the spines: King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III and Othello. My fobbing idle-headed whey-face couldn’t remember that many insults from the great dramas, figuring that just a transcription of The Taming of the Shrew is probably all the insults one would need for any novelty product. (You remember the wildly popular Katherina doll called the Spewing Shrew that you pulled the little cord on the top of her head and she would animate and push you out of your chair and call you names ... they were pulled from the market pretty quickly so they’re quite the collector’s item.)

Each little box contains two gumballs. They came in a variety of colors, though four of the boxes had one green and one white. I feared, knowing they were made in China that I would end up with spongy long-tongued botch.

The gum itself are solid little balls (though not quite spherical), not those hollow ones that slanderous flap-mouthed skainsmates try to pawn off on unsuspecting gum-chewers. They were pretty small, so it’d probably be more of an engineering issue to make them any lighter. Even two pieces didn’t make a decent chewing amount.

Pink was cherry. A little tangy, rather soft but mercifully free of bitterness. Yellow was lemon which was a soft flavor that dispensed some tartness as I chewed it. Green was probably supposed to be apple, but it didn’t taste like much. White was watermelon, and while it was no spongey hell-hated odoriferous stench it did remind me of an Avon lady’s neck.

Really, it wasn’t bad so much as it was pointless. What do gumballs have to do with Shakespeare?

There are quite a few things wrong with this, besides the price of $1.99 for 14 Chinese gumballs.

First, I’ll spoil the surprised and show you 7 out of the possible 25 quotes you could get:

Macbeth = Dissembling harlot, thou are false in all (Comedy of Errors)

King Lear = How foul and loathsome is thine image (The Taming of the Shrew)

Henry V = Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at the door (King Henry VIII)

Richard III = A plague on both your houses (Romeo and Juliet)

Romeo & Juliet = Base dunghill villain and mechanical, I’ll have thy head (Henry VI Part 2)

Hamlet = Thou art likest to a hogs head (Love’s Labour Lost)

Othello = Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets (Romeo and Juliet)

Two of them, I’d reckon, are not insults but actually curses.

What’s sad about this is how completely hobbled it is by its own parameters. Only 25 insults? They’d better be the best ... but they’re not! Here, have some fun with this random Shakespeare insult generator (where I got the ones peppered in here ... you don’t think I actually remember that much from college, do you?).

Why are they tucked into these little volumes like this? They don’t match the spine, so there’s no way to even chose what you think might be the right one for your occasion.  And then, why do I have to tear the little boxes apart to get at the insult?

The website says Sure to offend the intellectuals and confuse the dimwitted!. Yeah, I’m not sure I’m an intellectual, but I’m certainly offended that this was such a dimwitted product. What do they take me for? An unmuzzled tardy-gaited hedge-pig?

Related Candies

1. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky
2. Big Bite Gummy Bear
3. Bratz Candy Cosmetics
4. Gummy Fishies
5. Gold Mine Gum
6. Bear Bubble Gum

Sometimes house brands can be a little mystifying, but this one really caught my eye. Walgreen’s Candy Classics Australian Traditional Black Licorice Smothered in Real Milk Chocolate.

The matte beige & powder blue wrapper does give it that classic look, though the mylar/plastic packaging made it feel modern (as did the presence of a web address on the back of the package).

It also comes in a raspberry licorice version, which I also bought but was disappointed to find it crumbled to bits (so I’m not reviewing it now).

The bar is attractive and looks like it could easily be an unsalted pretzel rod covered in milk chocolate.

It smells nice, a bit like anise and chocolate cake.

The bite is soft, the chocolate barely flakes, which is a great relief after the red licorice catastrophe.

The licorice at the center is quite soft and has a strong molasses flavor - the chew is almost jelly like, but has the satisfying rib-sticking of a wheat-based confection. The anise and licorice notes are rather mild and more of a generic spice cookie feel. The chocolate is sweet, not terribly chocolatey but seems to seal in all the flavors well.

It’s nice to see an Aussie licorice being sold at American candy prices. It was a nice change up from Twizzlers, Good & Plenty or Crows, which are really the only plain licorice products sold in single serve packages any longer.

My big hesitations are why they put artificial colors in a chocolate covered item. But my guess is that this licorice is available bald.

Aussie readers, do you recognize this bar? (I was thinking it was RJs but those aren’t real chocolate.)

I’m eager to try the raspberry again and see what else Walgreen’s is going to put in their Candy Classics brand.

Note: The calories made no sense on this package. 220 calories for 1.4 ounces is insane for a chocolate covered licorice. It says 2.5 grams of fat, 22 grams of carbs and 2 grams of protein (that makes 120 calories or so) ... I can’t figure where the rest of the calories are coming from. The ingredients are Sugar, Treacle, Wheat Flour, Molasses, Chocolate, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Licorice Extract and then a bunch of less than 2% things.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps
2. Kookaburra Choc Coated Liquorice
3. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
4. Kookaburra Licorice
5. Panda Bars

Starbucks Chocolate is a study in short attention spans.

It was launched barely more than a year ago with little promotion to support it, no website (just a page on the Starbucks site) and a baffling retail plan where it was sold everywhere except Starbucks.

The line included coffee & tea infused chocolate bars, tasting squares and truffles. The packaging echoed Starbucks strong image, was all natural and made no direct mention of Hershey’s as the manufacturer. For Christmas special flavors were created that echoed the seasonal coffee drinks. However, the new brand was a tad on the expensive side and entered the mass-manufactured upscale chocolate market just terms like staycation entered the vernacular.

So last week as Hershey’s announced huge second quarter profits, it also formally announced that they were discontinuing the Starbucks Chocolate line.

CNN Money summed it up pretty well:

But that new line was badly timed because the economy started slowing soon after. Consumers slashed spending last year and early this year, turning away from most extravagances, including pricey chocolate. “The timing of the launch of the Starbucks proposition, frankly, we just missed the window,” said Hershey Chief Executive David West during a Thursday conference call. “Our partner obviously had some other business challenges and the consumer at that price point wasn’t sustainable.”

Added to that happy news about their profits (which were the result of cutting manufacturing costs by closing factories in the US, moving to a Mexican facility, raising prices and using cheaper ingredients), Hershey’s also formalized the discontinuation of Cacao Reserve, Hershey’s own branded high end chocolate line. (Hershey’s also closed Joseph Schmidt, a chocolatier line based out of San Francisco earlier this year and moved all production for Scharffen Berger to Illinois.)

With this news, I grabbed the last Starbucks product in their line that I hadn’t reviewed yet (and as illustrations for this little death knell post).

The Caramel Macchiato Truffles come in a nicely packaged pair at the ghastly price of $1.39 at the drug store. Honestly, if this sort of truffle pair was available at an actual Starbucks to accompany my plain coffee, I might have gone for it more regularly. With the “startling news” that coffee drinks contain huge amounts of calories which cause cancer, a simple cup of coffee with cream and two truffles would actually be a smaller indulgence than an actual Caramel Macchiato.

I’ve never had a Macchiato (I’ve never actually had anything fancier than a latte or mocha in all my years), so I can’t comment on how well it mimics the frothy creation described thusly by Starbucks:

A signature Starbucks(r) beverage. A creamy mix of vanilla and freshly steamed milk marked with intense Starbucks(r) espresso, topped with velvety foam and our own proprietary buttery caramel sauce.

The milk chocolate shell is nicely molded. It holds a fudgy, smooth cream that tastes a bit like a mocha cheesecake. Sweet, a little tangy with a light coffee taste and maybe, just maybe a hint of toffee (caramel).

It was pretty sweet but with coffee it works ... though the actual coffee overpowers the not-much-coffee-taste.

In the end, I don’t think it was bad timing that sunk this line. I think it was bad merchandising - it should have been available at actual Starbucks. And a year is far too little to decide the success of a new line of chocolate. My view is that Hershey’s is uninterested in building brand loyalty through quality.

The only thing that makes sense about this is the statement on the side of the box:

Starbucks is committed to purchasing cocoa and coffee that are grown and traded in an ethical, transparent and sustainable manner.

To learn more about our cocoa-purchasing practices, please visit us at www.starbucks.com/cocoa

Watching Cadbury & Mars move more and more towards ethically traded and sustainably grown & harvested cacao, I’m not seeing much for Hershey’s except from their Daboga arm. I can see where this Starbucks line is just a liability for profits. Hershey’s has shown itself to be more concerned with profits (and high profits, not just tidy ones) than the quality of its products and place within the economies it locates itself.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s announces closing of Joseph Schmidt & Scharffen Berger Bay Area Facilities
2. Starbucks Chocolate: Eggnog Latte Truffles
3. Rising Cost of Candy - A Brief Study of Hershey Prices
4. Starbucks Truffles
5. Starbucks Chocolate