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CoconutFriday, September 20, 2013
Russell Stover Pumpkin PieRussell Stover is often up on flavor trends with their seasonal single serve shapes. Their most recent introduction was the Red Velvet, which is now available in a Halloween version. I spotted the listing for the Russell Stover Pumpkin Pie on the Russell Stover website about a month ago and I went on the search as soon as the stores in my area started putting out their Halloween candy. The package looks generally the same as all the other Russell Stover pumpkins, of which there are at least a dozen now. It’s a mylar wrapping with a generic pumpkin illustration on the front an simple lettering to depict the contents. The pumpkin is interesting to look at. I like enrobed candies and this one looks rustic and handmade. The shape isn’t specifically pumpkin though, as it has no ribs, so I can imagine this being sold as an ornament in different packaging later this year. This is the first time, though, that I’ve found the shape of the candy to actually reflect the candy flavor. Note that this is pumpkin pie, not pumpkin spice. I wanted to know what made this different from a regular spiced cream center and the ingredients list brought the answer. It’s like pumpkin pie, including the crust. There’s wheat flour in the ingredients. In fact the ingredients list “spice cake mix” which includes wheat flour, egg whites and nonfat milk in addition to the spices. So the center here is more like cookie dough than a cream, rather like the Red Velvet piece they’re also making now. So, after I got my head around that weirdness, I just adjusted my expectations. This is like a chocolate covered cookie dough, but instead of those lackluster Cookie Dough Bites, these are actually made with pretty good milk chocolate and some nice proportions. The milk chocolate is creamy, the center is a bit doughy and has a slight sugar grain to it. It’s dense but not too sticky. The spices are light, not overwhelming but also not terribly distinct. It’s a generic background of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg with a touch of clove. I appreciate that it’s different from other sticky cream candies right now. I would have preferred a dark chocolate and maybe a little more powerful spice, but overall, for a 50 cent candy, it’s pretty good. Russell Stover Dark Chocolate Orange CreamThe Russell Stover Dark Chocolate Orange Cream is also new, though I couldn’t find it on the Russell Stover website. This pumpkin is a bit thicker than the Pumpkin Pie version. The glossy dark chocolate looks great, with robust swirls on top. It smells like dark chocolate with a hint of orange zest. The cream filling is actually something like a meringue. It has egg whites in it, though I ended up calling it a marshmallow, it’s actually okay for vegetarians. The texture is wonderfully smooth and though it tastes like it’s creamy, there’s far fewer calories in this treat than the other creams that Russell Stover sells. (120 calories per ounce, so this is a pretty slim little candy if you’re watching calories but want something fulfilling.) The filling has a sweetness, but it’s not as cloying as some of the more fudgy creams. There are bits of orange zest and an authentic orange flavor to the whole thing (though some artificial coloring which I thought was unnecessary). The chocolate is thick and stands up well to the center and doesn’t fall apart as you eat it. Russell Stover Coconut & Almond is also a new twist on an old favorite from Russell Stover. The center is coconut cream and the milk chocolate enrobing includes lots of crushed almonds on top. Think of it like an Almond Joy, but without the large lumps on top. This is also a new item, and unfortunately doesn’t seem to come in dark chocolate right now. Russell Stover makes two coconut seasonal candies right now. There’s the Nest, which is just coconut and milk chocolate. They also make their coconut creams, which are covered in either milk chocolate or dark chocolate. Each of these elements is well balanced. The coconut is soft and chewy, a bit sweeter than I care for, but still fresh and tasty. The almonds, though not spread evenly are crunchy and big enough to provide the added texture to the experience. The milk chocolate, though also sweet, is far and away better than the Hershey’s version on Almond Joy bars. This is a bit on the milky side, but creamy and fudgy. I would definitely buy this again, but what would put it over the top would be a dark chocolate version. It’s a good value at 50 cents for a one ounce piece made with real chocolate right here in the United States. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:52 am Candy • Review • Halloween • Russell Stover • Chocolate • Coconut • Marshmallow • Nuts • 7-Worth It • United States • Walgreen's • Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Ritter Sport CoconutRitter Sport is the brand of German chocolate bars that come in a square format and more than a dozen different varieties. The newest is Ritter Sport Coconut in milk chocolate. The package says it’s with tropical coconut flakes in a coconut and milk filling. I like how inexpensive Ritter Sport is compared to other consumer brands from Europe, like Cadbury Dairy Milk or Lindt, and balances quality and munchability. No, it’s not exquisitely fine chocolate, but it’s fantastic chocolate candy. I tried another version of a coconut bar from Ritter Sport a few years ago, a sample bar from their store in Waldenbuch, Germany called the Ritter Sport Kokosmakrone which also had some corn flakes in the coconut cream. The cream center is a common format for Ritter Sport, in fact, a lot of German candy bars like those from Milka also use this style. The ingredients were a little disappointing. Ingredient #1 is Sugar and ingredient #2 is Palm Oil. This is similar to the Amarena Cherry I had earlier this year, which is also a filled bar. The saturated fat content is 45% of your daily RDA in 6 pieces. The other interesting ingredient, though far down the list, is hazelnut paste. The milk chocolate is rich, sweet and smooth. The coconut center is interesting, because the coconut is actually crunchy and the filling with it is quite smooth and creamy, unlike the moist and chewy Mounds bar filling. I liked the filling quite a bit, and had no trouble finishing the bar. Coconut is not my favorite of all of their inclusions and I don’t usually like their white cream filled bars either. So I’ll probably stick to the Corn Flakes bar over this one. Though Ritter Sport has a sustainability pact for their cocoa, there’s no mention of the source of their palm oil. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:57 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Ritter Sport • Chocolate • Coconut • Nuts • 7-Worth It • Germany • Cost Plus • Monday, August 26, 2013
Boyer Dark Chocolate Mallo CupThe Boyer Candy Company may be best known for their Mallo Cups, which they’ve been making since the 1930s which they claim is the first “cup candy”. (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were introduced in 1928, but were not actually sold in little fluted paper cups at first.) It’s natural for there to be other versions of the chocolate cup with a marshmallow filling and coconut topping. The Boyer Dark Chocolate Mallo Cup is really just the same, even the simple packaging looks like they’ve been making this version for 50 years. The bumpy top of the cup shows that there is actually some coconut underneath. Like every Mallo Cup I think I’ve had in the past 20 years, the bottom stuck to the wrapper (I think freezing them prevents this, but changes the textures). It smells a bit like coconut and of course chocolate with a strong whiff of vanilla. The interesting thing to note about the Mallo Cups is that they’re not actually marshmallow. (Though the name is Mallo Cup, the description on the package says that the center is whipped creme.) Marshmallow, for the most part, is made with gelatin. The Mallo Cups are made with egg whites. That would mean that these are really a meringue creme. The center is a great texture, it’s soft and creamy without too much stickiness and no grain whatsoever. The dark chocolate has a decent flavor to it, though not complex or overpowering, it has a nice chocolate candy contribution to the whole. The coconut flakes within give some texture ... overall, it’s a good modernization of the classic candy cups. I’d love it if they spent a little time fixing the production issue of the oozing and insufficient base. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:00 pm Candy • Review • Boyer Candy • Chocolate • Coconut • Kosher • Marshmallow • 7-Worth It • United States • Friday, March 29, 2013
Eli’s Earth Bars - Celebrate BarThe world of candy bars has changed a lot in the past 100 years, since the first mass-produced combination bars appeared in stores. At first local candy companies made bars that were distributed regionally. Eventually, after World War II, candy bars became national brands. You could find a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, Snickers bar or a Butterfinger at most candy stores though there were still plenty of local brands. Today the candy landscape is dominated by just a few international brands, and the new upstarts that are found on the fringes fit into a different niche now. They’re special interest bars. These are the bars that incorporate local ingredients, fit into special manufacturing concerns like allergens, or in the case of the Eli’s Earth Bars from Sjaak’s Chocolates, they’re vegan (made without any animal-derived ingredients). The new line of bars is interesting, because they’re not quite versions of already-popular candy bars. The Celebrate Bar is A delicious coconut caramel topped with whole almonds surrounded by chocolate. That doesn’t sound like any other candy bar on shelves today. How did they make it vegan? Well, here’s the pretty short list of ingredients:
I’ve had two of these bars now. The first one I photographed and ate. Then I searched months and months to find them in stores again. Both bars looked the same, a long chewy plank of coconut caramel topped with whole almonds and then covered in a vegan milk chocolate. The milk chocolate is made without any dairy ingredients (but in a shared facility, so not appropriate for those with allergies) but uses real cocoa butter. The chocolate itself is chalky and has a soft cereal note to it. The cocoa flavor is lacking, but overall it’s a pleasant coating. It’s kind of like how I feel about hot cocoa made with water instead of milk; I’ll drink it but I wouldn’t choose it. The chewy center is quite good, a very dense coconut and caramel combination. The caramelized sugar notes are missing, but the texture is great. It’s an interesting bar and I had to throw my expectations about the milk chocolate out the window. This is not really a vegan milk chocolate, it’s just a very mild chocolate - the rice milk makes it something different in both intensity (which is what milk does to chocolate) and texture (which is kind of sad). I would probably prefer this bar with a true dark chocolate coating, but I understand the goal here was to make it with a milder chocolate. It still doesn’t match up to the expectations I have for milk chocolate, but if I toss those out and just experience this, I was surprised at how much I liked it. (It’s similar to how much I like Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, even though they don’t use a real chocolate coating.) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:35 am All Natural • Candy • Review • Sjaak's • Caramel • Chocolate • Coconut • Ethically Sourced • Organic • 7-Worth It • United States • Whole Foods • Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Wow-Wee Maui Candy BarsI went to Hawaii last month on vacation and picked up a few locally made candies. There aren’t many candies made on the Hawaiian Islands, but I found a few, including a set of four of the chocolate bars made by Wow-Wee “Maui’s Candy Bar”. All of the bars are made on the island of Maui by hand and include flavors and inclusions that reflect the flavors of Hawaii. The bars weren’t that expensive, I think I paid $2.50 each for them. They’re 1.75 ounces each. My bars were: The packaging is simple, a foil wrapper with a paper sleeve over that. The bar molding includes a nice version of their logo. They’re not scored to break into specific portions, but breaking the thin and long bar was easy. Folding the foil back up and resealing the bar was also pretty simple (a lot easier than the plastic wrap that comes on most bars these days). The Wow-Wee Dark Chocolate - Hawaiian Coconut is a simple bar that’s a very easy to eat treat. The dark chocolate is mild, on the semi-sweet level, like some nice chocolate chips. I found it a bit sweet, but it had a nice texture. The coconut flavor dominated the chocolate and the coconut shreds were quite dense. The coconut flavor was tropical but had a fresh grassy note to it that I enjoyed. It tasted real, instead of like it had been soaked in sugar. The dark chocolate does contain some dairy products and the coconut has the preservative sodium metabisulfite in it. So it’s not appropriate for people with allergies to milk, soy, coconut (obviously) or sulfites. The Wow-Wee Milk Chocolate - Hawaiian Macadamia Nuts is very simple, it’s just milk chocolate with chips of macadamias in it. The macadamia nuts are dry roasted, and though the ingredients don’t say they’re salted, I detected a little hint of salt in this bar (and the label confirms that there’s 48mg). The milk chocolate is slightly grainy but pleasant in a fudgy way. It has a woodsy note to it that goes well with the sharp nutty flavor of the macs. It’s a tried and true combination and I can see this being a local favorite over the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds. The Wow-Wee Chocolate - Kona Coffee - Caramel was the most interesting bar for me just by the listing. It contains real Kona coffee, which is always rich and flavorful. It also contains a different twist, with the addition of caramel. Again, this is the semi-sweet chocolate, which has a bit of milk in it. The bar smells dark and buttery and whole lot like coffee, kind of like walking into a Starbucks in the morning at the height of the rush. The chocolate has bits of coffee beans mixed in. They’re crunchy and not at all fibery, but still bitter and a little on the oily side. Then scattered throughout the bar are long strips of caramel. The caramel is chewy and stringy and has a distinct toffee note to it. There wasn’t quite enough of it, for my tastes, but I loved the texture. I’m not usually keen on the coffee beans being mixed into my chocolate, and this bar was no exception. I couldn’t eat much of it in the afternoon or evening because of the caffeine effects, but the balance of flavors and textures was good. It could benefit from darker chocolate, but sometimes you really want something sweet. The Wow-Wee Maui Kitch’n Cook’d Potato Chip & Milk Chocolate is the last bar and a bit of comfort food. You can see from that cross section that the potato chips are thick crinkle cuts. The potato chips are made in cottonseed oil and have a little touch of salt on them (only 42 mg per serving). The bar does have that chip smell to it, kind of earthy. The chips are crunchy and have a lot of potato flavor to them. The milk chocolate is very sweet but smooth and well balanced to the chip flavors and textures. I wanted more chips in my bar, but I think that’s how I am with inclusions. They definitely lend a lot of flavor to the bar even when you might not get a bit in every bite. Wow-Wee Maui makes nine bars in total and all sound like they fit in well with the flavors of the islands. I think they’re a great, inexpensive gift for a friend and a nice treat to eat while you’re visiting. Related Candies
Monday, March 18, 2013
Short and Sweet: Easter BitesHere are a few Easter candies I bought but I’m not going to get around to doing a full review. Ghirardelli Milk & Coconut Chocolate Eggs come in a little 3.5 ounce bag and like the other two versions available for Easter, they’re a bit on the pricey side. I paid $3.99 for this little bag. I was actually out at CVS looking for the Cadbury Hollow Bunny that I noted in my roundup of products for 2013. (I was hoping it was on sale, because the first time I saw them, they were $4.79 for a 3.5 ounce bunny and I didn’t really want to fork that over for Cadbury chocolate.) While looking though I spotted this bag, which reader Kate mentioned was available last year. They’re pretty and feature good quality milk chocolate. These were a little softer in texture and had a silky melt. The coconut mixed into the chocolate is crispy, though it does become chewy after a while. It’s a nice combination of textures and flavors. I found the coconut a little too, I don’t know, difficult to get out of my teeth. Still, I manged to finish the bag within 24 hours, so I must have liked them. I’ll still go for the Milk Crisp version over this. Rating: 7 out of 10 I found Ferrero Tic Tac Bunny Burst at Target with all the other little Easter Basket stuffers. I didn’t see a press release on this, so I didn’t know it was coming out. Further, there’s no listing on the package or anywhere I can find on the internet that says what flavors are actually in the Bunny Burst. The green is pretty easy to figure out. It was green apple. They’re sweet and tangy, with a very sweet, odd aftertaste. I didn’t care much for it and was hoping for better in the lilac colored ones. The soft purple is a bit of a mystery flavor. The ingredients list dried apple, dried grape, dried acerola (West Indian Cherry) and dried lychee. So I’m going to call this one tropical. It has a light green grape note, I also tasted violets along with a floral melon and vague medicinal cherry note. At one point did think about lychees, as well. It’s interesting and unique. Not really what I’d call good or refreshing, but I didn’t notice the weird sweet and metallic aftertaste with this one. They’re made in Canada and contain carmine, so they’re not suitable for vegetarians. Rating: 6 out of 10 I bought this pair of Cemoi Classic Creamy Egg (Milk Chocolate) at Cost Plus World Market. I was actually hoping to find a dark chocolate version, perhaps more upscale, of the classic Cadbury Creme Egg. This is not that. I can’t give it a full review because I didn’t actually eat it. Both were sticky and oozy under the foil wrap, though I made my choices from the box at the store very carefully. I opened both and found overly sweet, grainy fondant. The chocolate was marginal, it was all just very sweet and unappealing. So into the trash they went. Rating: 3 out of 10 I reviewed the Snickers Peanut Butter Squared before when they came out. The Snickers Peanut Butter Egg is the same construction, only in hemispherical ovoid shape. It’s a little different because it’s molded instead of being enrobed. Of course the domed shape also means different bites have different ratios. But overall I noticed more caramel in it. The chocolate and caramel and peanut with peanut butter is a nice combination. The salty peanut butter keeps it from being too sweet. I enjoyed it more than the Square thing. I also reviewed the Santa version of this which also has different proportions because of the shape of the mold. Rating: 7 out of 10 Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:19 pm Candy • Review • Easter • Ferrero • Ghirardelli • Mars • Chocolate • Coconut • Compressed Dextrose • Fondant • Kosher • 6-Tempting • 7-Worth It • Canada • Germany • United States • Cost Plus • Sav-On/CVS • Target • Monday, March 11, 2013
Zitners: Butter Krak, Peanut Butter, Double Cocoanut & Butter Cream EggsZitner’s Butter Krak Eggs are a local favorite in Philadelphia. Their Easter egg selections have been made since 1922. Like many candy companies, it started with a family recipe, sold to friends and neighbors at the holidays and expanded from there. I don’t remember eating them when I lived in Pennsylvania, and I’ve never seen them in stores anywhere else. One of my fellow candy bloggers did send me a couple about five years ago (but it was after Easter, so I didn’t post a review) so I have had them recently. I was looking forward to trying them again, so I put in an order from a webstore called PA General Store that sells Philadelphia favorites. I ordered a mixed box of 24, which included a selection of their four single serving sized eggs: Butter Krak, Peanut Butter, Double Cocoanut & Butter Cream Eggs. Zitners Butter Krak Egg is one of those names that sticks with you. The odd thing is that the actual description of the egg was a mystery to me. They’re a coconut butter cream covered in dark chocolate, but the chocolate also has toasted coconut in it. (Well, they call it cocoanut. More on that later.) All of the eggs are about the same size, about 2.5 inches long, about 1 inch in diameter and weigh 1 and 1/8 of an ounce. So they’re nice portions, about double the size of a boxed chocolate. The dark chocolate has a lot of the crispy toasted coconut in it, it gives it a nice texture and is actually toasted and crispy (which is hard to balance without them becoming too hard and difficult to chew). The center is soft and creamy, like a buttercream frosting. It’s sugary but has an overall smooth texture. There’s a lot of coconut in there, though it’s shorter minced bits, so not too chewy. The dark chocolate isn’t bitter but still balances the sweetness of the center well. This is one of those candies that I would like once or twice a year and I can see why it’s a local favorite. I’m not sure if I’ve had another version quite like it.
Now, if no one told me the names of these eggs, I would have thought the Butter Krak was double the coconut, because it has coconut in the center and the chocolate. But the reality is that the cream center of the Double Cocoanut Egg actually has twice the coconut than, well, I guess the Butter Krak center. It is dense. It’s not as buttery, sweet or moist as the Butter Krak. But it is coconutty. The center barely holds together. I liked how it was so much less sweet than all the other eggs I’d tried, it was far more satisfying. Still, it was just a chocolate covered coconut egg, though it was fresh and I generally like them, this one didn’t blow me away. Zitners Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Egg was my favorite. It’s not really that hard to make a good peanut butter egg and they’ve done a great job. The peanut butter center isn’t too dry and not too sticky smooth either. The texture is very similar to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with a noticeable grain and fair amount of peanut butter oils. The tops of my eggs were a little soft, a hazard when coating peanut butter with chocolate. But they held together well. The peanut butter has just the right hint of salt and has a peanut butter cookie dough texture. They don’t quite top the Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs but if you want to go for something locally made (if you are on the Eastern Seaboard) this is a nice option. (Though I don’t know where their milk chocolate comes from.) Zitners Butter Cream Egg was my least favorite of the bunch. It’s extremely sweet. The center is pure mushy sweetness. I was hoping it was going to have a defined butter flavor, or perhaps a brown sugar note. Instead it’s like a log of frosting covered in dark chocolate. The dark chocolate, though thin, does moderate the overt sweetness (as does a little bit of salt) but it’s still too insanely sweet with no other flavors or textures to provide a respite. On the other hand, Easter is always the most insanely sweet season, the time of year when I yearn for white chocolate, so I know there must be plenty of people out there who must have these. If I lived in an area where I had a choice between these and Russell Stover, I’d probably go for these in Peanut Butter or the Butter Krak over any of the Russell Stover varieties. (Except for the Pecan Delight.) But I live in a See’s area, and though they don’t offer them at the drug store in individually wrapped pieces, I would make the trip to get their Scotchmallow Eggs or mix of Egg Quartet (though they cost about 25% more). Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:16 pm Candy • Review • Easter • Zitners Candy • Chocolate • Coconut • Fondant • Peanuts • 6-Tempting • 7-Worth It • United States • Tuesday, January 22, 2013
The Grown Up Chocolate Company Crunchy Praline Wonder Bar & Glorious Coconut Hocus PocusThe world of gourmet candy bars is not limited to North America. The United Kingdom has The Grown Up Chocolate Company which currently makes four upscale and unique candy bars. I was able to procure two of them on my trip to New York City late last year. They’re packaged well in boldly graphic boxes with fun typography. Inside the box is a rather large candy bar, made with all natural ingredients. The bars are 65 grams, which is about 2.29 ounces. Inside the box the bars are held within clear trays and then sealed in cellophane. Each had expiry dates of late January 2013. The bar that I found most intriguing was the Crunchy Praline Wonder Bar. The package said: Caramelised wafer enticingly slathered in sumptuous praline encased in real milk chocolate, a true wonder bar! The package had two of these little bars, which is great for me, because a little over an ounce is a perfect portion especially for something that seemed so decadent. The little bar has an interesting center. It’s a milk chocolate ganache filled with crunchy, flaky and malty bits of wafer. There’s a little hint of hazelnut paste in the filling, but there’s not much to it. It’s the kind of wafer that would make up an ice cream cone. The cereal taste to the bar and the milkiness of the chocolate makes the whole thing taste an awful lot like a chocolate ice cream cone. One little bar is extremely filling. I liked this quite a bit and would likely buy it again if I ever saw it, even though it’s about $6. The Glorious Coconut Hocus Pocus is a rather interesting bar. It’s not merely a retread of an Almond Joy, instead they’ve done quite a bit of work to create something a bit more uncommon. The description is: Creamy coconut ganache luxuriantly topped with an indulgent fruit and nut jumble enrobed in decadent milk chocolate. The milk chocolate then has a little zig-zag drizzle of dark chocolate as well. The first thing I noticed after biting into it, aside from the coconut flavors, was the lemon zest. It’s quite a different profile, it’s sophisticated and cuts the sweetness of everything else. The ganache center is dry, it’s not a chewy coconut but has a good balance of milky and coconut luxury. The jumble of nuts and fruits is truly that. I got a lot of almonds and a few pieces of zest as well as a piece of apricot at one point. It’s odd and inconsistent. I wanted more of the fruit and for the nuts to be chopped up just a little more. Biting into a big almond just made a mess. The milk chocolate is sweet, but doesn’t have enough counterpoint for all the other sweet things. I would have preferred a little dark chocolate contrast and actual chocolate flavor. Still ... it’s a really promising bar. I had to pick the right time to eat it, late in the day the sweetness was overwhelming and made me sleepy. Mid morning seemed to work better for the second half of it. According to their website they have mini bars, which are probably more my speed. I don’t know much about the sourcing of their cocoa or other ingredients, as they don’t say on their website or the packaging. The bars contain wheat, soy, dairy and nuts and may contain traces of peanuts. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:28 pm Candy • Review • Chocolate • Coconut • Cookie • Nuts • 7-Worth It • 8-Tasty • United Kingdom • |
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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