Alongside the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Eggs on shelves this year are the new Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Covered Almond Eggs.

They’re not something particularly Easter-themed, as chocolate covered almonds are already rather egg shaped. But they’re still a welcome item, since some chocolate covered nuts sound less sweet than the many other marshmallowy, sugar-crusted and white chocolate items that typify the holiday fare.

They were expensive, as real nut items often are. I picked up this 7.1 ounce bag for $3.29, which is on par with what I’d usually pay for an item from Whole Foods ... yet I bought this at Target.

They look great. Dark and glossy. They varied in size quite a bit, from a peanut all the way up to an almond in the shell. I expected this, because almonds themselves vary.

The chocolate itself is Hershey’s tangy, cheesy, fudgy chocolate ... it’s odd. But it goes well with the almonds, which are well chosen, nicely crunchy and good quality. I ate the whole bag in about two days, so I must have liked them, but I didn’t feel satisfied by any particular element. The chocolate is gritty and has that Hershey’s burp note ... the almonds are good, but the fact that I spent over $3 on less than half a pound of a Hershey’s chocolate product was a little odd.

Hershey’s had a version of these in their Pieces line that had a candy shell which added to the texture experience, but I haven’t see those in stores for a while.

If you’re a lover of the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almond bar and wanted an Easter version, I think these ratios are good.

The allergen warning only says that these may contain traces of peanuts. They are made with soy, dairy and almonds as well. There’s no note on gluten or wheat at all.

Related Candies

1. Ritter Sport Winter Edition Caramelised Almonds
2. Starbucks Salted Almond Chocolate Bites
3. Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond
4. Valor Milk Chocolate with Almonds
5. Trader Joe’s Almondictive Bits
6. Hershey’s Special Dark with Almonds
7. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almonds

Peeps were originally an Easter treat, a small dollop of marshmallow sanded with colored sugar to look like a chick. Now they come in many shapes and are released for all the major holidays. The new Party Cake Peeps are a year round Peep item from Just Born where you get to select the celebration.

I noticed they’re not birthday cake themed, just party, so they could be used for engagements, housewarmings, baby showers, retirement parties, graduations ... the list is endless.

The package describes them as a way to bring home the best part of the celebration—without the cleanup! Enjoy the delicious flavor of the party in each yummy marshmallow bite!

They’re not just turquoise blue, they’re covered in flecks of candy confetti. The confetti is just little bit of transparent, different-colored candy shavings. They come in a set of two trays with five conjoined Peeps in a set. They’re not individually sealed, so once you open the package, the clock is ticking for staleness (which may be good, depending on how you prefer your Peeps).

They smell like a cross between microwave popcorn and coconut tanning lotion. It’s not overpowering, but definitely noticeably different from regular Peeps.

They’re Peep textured, soft and bouncy, easy to bite. The sugary grain was not too much, so it didn’t make a big mess. The inside of the Peep is just lightly creamy colored, like a cake. The flavor is marshmallowy, more vanilla than butter but with that toasted sugar flavor like an Angel Food Cake.

Overall, I liked them, perhaps better than a traditional Peep, except that the blue coloring had a bitter aftertaste.

It’s nice to see a sort of generic, all year Peep on the rotation. I’d like them more if they had that little dip of chocolate on the base like some others, but I haven’t tried the Vanilla Creme to compare. As for its simulation of cake ... there’s nothing baked about this, nothing that tastes like cake at all. They’re not even shaped like little cupcakes. It’s just a fun name.

The next flavor craze they should do: Frozen Yogurt Peeps ... each Peep would be shaped like a twisted dollop of FroYo and you can sprinkle chocolate chips, Cap’n Crunch or crushed Butterfingers on them.

Or Whoopie Pie Peeps: You’d have a two chocolate Peep disks with another vanilla Peep disk in the center.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Eggs: Carrot Cake, Birthday Cake and Wedding Cake
2. R.M. Palmer Cake Batter Cup
3. Birthday Cake M&Ms
4. Bubble Gum Flavored Peeps
5. Peeps Gingerbread Men
6. Peeps Chocolate Dipped Sugar Cookie & Candy Cane
7. Ritter Sport Fruhlingsspezialitaten 2010
8. Peeps Chocolate Mousse (Bears & Bunnies)
9. Peeps Mash Ups

I’m not surprised that Russell Stover is expanding its cake-themed candies, as they already have a Cookie Dough Egg and multiple holiday version of Red Velvet Cake. This spring they’ve introduced three new eggs all with cake themes: Carrot Cake, Birthday Cake and Wedding Cake.

The thing that’s so odd about them is that they’re eggs. None of these flavors are particularly Easter themed. In fact, I find the idea of a Birthday Cake flavored egg for Easter downright odd. Carrot Cake is the only one that makes a modicum of sense, since carrots are associated with rabbits, which are associated with Easter.

Russell Stover Carrot Cake Egg covered in White Chocolate is only one ounce. It looks the same as the other Russell Stover egg packaging, green foil and a white emblem on the front with a little bow and the Russell Stover logo. There are elements of an amber orange and a slice of cake featured on the lower right.

As with the other cake and dough eggs that Russell Stover started making, it’s an odd sort of bon bon. The filling actually contains cake mix. So inside is an unbaked cake mix that’s creamed together with some milk and butter to create a filling that’s then molded into an egg shape inside a white chocolate shell. Kind of weird.

It smells very sweet with a little note of cinnamon and nutmeg along with some sort of dairy milk. It’s a little flat, so it’s easy to bite. It’s extremely sweet, but the filling has a sort of cookie dough consistency. It’s a little grainy, as I can feel the sugar and the raw flour in the center. It’s not pasty, as there’s enough fat in there to let it dissolve and melt like a bon bon should. The carrot notes are a bit lost, it’s the spice cake flavors that really create the reality.

Overall, aside from its sweetness, it’s pretty good. I can’t say that I’ve ever really wanted a carrot cake bonbon, so this doesn’t fill a hole in my heart. I’d say that some pecans would enhance it, but they’re an unlikely addition at this price point.

Russell Stover Birthday Cake Egg in Milk Chocolate with Sprinkles doesn’t look much like a birthday item. Sure, there’s a bow on it, but there’s a bow on all of them, and they’re not for anyone’s birthday.

This egg feels bigger than the others, though the wrapper says it’s also one ounce. The cake featured in the picture is a yellow cake with a chocolate frosting. Just as the carrot cake version lists cake mix, this one lists Yellow Cake Mix in the ingredients (also white chocolate, even though it’s covered in milk chocolate).

The egg is not molded like the others, instead its enrobed, like the Cookie Dough Egg I reviewed last year. There are little sprinkles stuck to it, though I think there were just as many rattling around in the package when I unwrapped it.

I don’t care for sprinkles, they look pretty and all, but they’re a mess. They don’t taste good and they just leave evidence everywhere that you’ve not only been indulging, but indulging in something with sprinkles on it.

The egg itself smells a bit like dough, it has that uncooked batter note to it. The center is soft and easy to bite, the chocolate stays together, but the sprinkles rarely make it into my mouth. The milk chocolate is merely passable, it’s not strong but does have a sort of malty element that stands up to the otherwise bland battercream. Though I don’t have a cookie dough version right here, I recall this being much different except that the center is a little softer and less crumbly.

If you’re a cake person, sprinkle person or your birthday happens to fall around the time we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, this may be the perfect candy for you.

Russell Stover Wedding Cake covered in White Chocolate is an extremely sweet confection. (I didn’t get a photo of the package, or even a particularly good photo of the candy.)

It’s a white cake center with a white chocolate coating, so the notes are pretty much vanilla and sugar. The center is a bit softer than the Birthday Cake, though still has the sugary grain to it. It’s just slightly fluffed but has an overall milky sweet flavor and a hint of the raw flour.

It was far too sweet with no actual purpose to it. The idea of wedding cake that’s all white with white frosting and no note of raspberry or marzipan is actually kind of foreign to me. This taste more like grocery store sheet cake ... which is not something I think anyone strives to emulate. I’m sure there are some super-sweet-toothers who will enjoy this, but I think it as was just too sweet and one-note.

The cake thing is lost on me. I don’t mind when things go back to the source of why we made it a cake flavor in the first place, like taking the flavor elements of coconut and chocolate and caramel from a German Chocolate Cake ... but yellow cake can stay in the realm of baked goods from no on.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Carrot Cake Candy Corn
2. R.M. Palmer Cake Batter Cup
3. Russell Stover Cookie Dough Egg
4. Russell Stover Red Velvet Santa
5. Godiva Cake Truffles
6. Cupcake Bites
7. Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites
8. Cookie Dough Bites

Candy Corn gets a lot of different flavor treatments for Halloween, but for the most part the Easter versions are all about little spring shapes in the form of mellocreams in light fruity flavors. Brach’s has introduced something new to go with their Pastel Candy Corn, it’s called Brach’s Carrot Cake Candy Corn.

The packaging is simple, just a thick plastic bag. The image on the front depicts a cake with white frosting and a green and orange carrot on it. Down in the other corner is a small basket of the candy corns.

As a side note, Brach’s, the 110 year old candy company, has been going through a lot of changes lately; this seems to have led to an identity crisis. I picked up this bag of candy last month which is also a new product but features a different logo which I thought they stopped using around 2011 (but also appears on their twitter). Brach’s is now owned by the Ferrara Candy Company, which merged with Farley’s & Sathers last year. This is a huge company now that makes mostly sugar candy like Trolli, Lemonheads, Atomic Fireballs, Black Forest Gummies, Now & Later, Rainblo Gum, Jujyfruits, Chuckles, Bob’s and Fruit Stripe Gum. It seems like this constant change and shift of directions is keeping Brach’s from regaining their place in the world of classic American comfort candies.

My first instinct on these, without even eating them, is that the colors are all wrong. A slice of layered cake would be a sort of light brown color with flecks of orange and then the off white cream cheese frosting. There is no green in a carrot cake, unless you make some of the frosting green. If they wanted the candy corn to just look like carrots, then make them all orange with the wide base getting just a touch of green to simulate the carrot top. To simulate a slice of cake, I’d make the top and bottom white and the center orange. Why it’s candy corn is an entirely other matter ... why not make little slide of cake shapes? Brach’s already makes cute little shapes for their Halloween and Easter Mellocreme mixes ... why not a slice of cake or little carrots or a block of Philly Cream Cheese?

While I had some misgivings about the coloration, everything else about these is extremely well done. Unlike my problems with the Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn last fall, which were quite broken and brittle, these looked great right out of the bag. I saw very few malformed or incomplete kernels and they stayed in one piece for the most part.

They didn’t smell like much, and honestly I didn’t think much of them the first few I tried. I noticed, though, that the base had a mild spice cake flavor to it, it’s subtle but there’s a note of cinnamon and nutmeg. The overall piece had a slightly creamier note, with what I can only guess is supposed to be a cream cheese flavor. Again, it’s very subtle.

I had to compare the mild flavor to regular candy corn, naturally, so I picked up the Brach’s Pastel Candy Corn, since they were on sale 2 for $5. These are much more subtly colored, with only the corn base getting a pastel note of green, pink, purple, green, or yellow. I enjoyed these, particularly because there was less artificial coloring in them, so the clean flavor of sugar and a touch of honey came through a bit brighter than in the fall version which has more orange (and Red #40) in it. I did notice that some of the flavors, like the cream cheese twang was missing, so it wasn’t something I dreamed up. I also noticed on the nutrition panel that the Pastel Corn has more salt in it, 100 mg per serving compared to 70 mg for the Carrot Cake.

I liked the Pastel Candy Corn, but I liked the Carrot Cake Candy Corn better, perhaps because there was a vague flavor to it. Is it a successful simulation of cake? Not by a long shot, but taken as a candy on its own without its bakery reference, it’s quite pleasant.

Like other Brach’s candy corn, this is made in Mexico. It does have honey as an ingredients, as well as gelatin, so this is unsuitable for vegetarians. It’s made in a facility that also processes milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat and soy.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn
2. Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn
3. Brach’s Ice Cream Conversation Hearts
4. Jelly Belly Peas & Carrots Mellocreme Candy
5. Brach’s Fiesta Malted Milk Eggs (2012)
6. Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy Corn
7. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
8. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix

The R.M. Palmer Giant Cake Batter Cup answers a need no one has addressed before. It’s a fake chocolate cup filled with a solid oil-based confection that emulates raw cake.

The wrapper is pink and the launch of the product coincides with spring, so I’m going to call it an Easter candy even though there are no rabbits on the package, just a couple of pasty kids in chef’s hats making some sort of bowl of batter.

It weighs a quarter of a pound, which is giant compared to the mini foil wrapped peanut butter cups R.M. Palmer usually makes, but it’s not as large as the half pound peanut butter cups that Reese’s sells in pairs around Christmas. But this isn’t peanut butter, where most of us think more is better. This is cake batter, which is pretty much a room temperature cookie dough smoothie.

The cup is huge, at a quarter of a pound, it’s the size of a small saucer and weighs, well, four ounces. This is not R.M. Palmer’s first attempt at a quarter pound cup, they make a passable Peanut Butter Cup version. The package says that it’s two servings, but that’s a staggering thought when I looked at the ingredients:

Sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel, coconut and/or palm oil), whey, cocoa, lactose, skim milk, corn syrup solids, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors

The chocolate flavored coating looks like bad chocolate, but that’s about the only thing that it succeeds at. There are no chocolate notes in it, it has no chocolate texture, it’s filled with sugar, milk by-products and oils. The filling isn’t like the Russell Stover cake fillings, there’s no flour in there; it’s just more oil and sugar and fake vanilla.

I’ve never been much for eating cake batter, so the idea of a candy that re-creates this is not up my alley. Add to that, vanilla cake is the least interesting kind of cake. Why would I want to eat that batter? Spice cake, lemon pound cake, devil’s food ... these are interesting. Vanilla cake batter is not.

Related Candies

1. Birthday Cake M&Ms
2. M&Ms Milk Chocolate Red Velvet
3. Russell Stover Santas: Gingerbread, Peppermint and Maple
4. Russell Stover Red Velvet Santa
5. Godiva Cake Truffles
6. RM Palmer Giant 1/4 Lb. Peanut Butter Cup
7. Cinnamon Bun Bites
8. Cupcake Bites
9. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky

One of the favorite Easter candies is the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs. They’re unlike any other candy on the market, they’re not quite M&Ms, as the candy coating is soft and has a flavor of its own. A Dark Chocolate version came out a few years ago and though hard to find, returned again this year.

The big news is the new Target Exclusive version of Cadbury White Mini Eggs. Notice that they’re just called white, not white chocolate, just white. Though there is cocoa butter in the ingredients list (which is in real white chocolate), there are also other vegetable fats. I picked up a 9 ounce bag, which was helpfully on sale.

The eggs were not the shape I expected. The standard Cadbury Mini Egg is egg shaped, truly egg shaped, with a wider bottom and almost pointy top. The White Eggs are not, they’re symmetrical ovals. What occurred to me when I saw them was that they were actually a resurrection of last year’s Hershey’s White Chocolate Flavored Eggs.

So, I looked up the ingredients:

Hershey’s White Eggs 2013: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, corn syrup, milk fat, contains 2% or less of the following: cornstarch, artificial color (yellow 5, blue 1, red 40 and yellow 6), soy lecithin, resinous glaze, gum acacia, carnauba wax, vanillin, tocopherols (preservative) and PGPR.

Cadbury White Mini Eggs 2014: Sugar, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), nonfat milk, milk, reduced protein whey, lactose, milkfat, contains 2% or less of corn syrup, artificial colors (includes yellow #5, blue #2, red #40), cornstarch, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors, tocopherols, salt

The difference, as far as I can tell is in the very last ingredients, that make up the shell. The white confection center is made of the same stuff. I didn’t care that much for the Hershey’s version, as I found them to be a bit too sweet and not creamy enough. Especially when compared to the pre-existing real white chocolate M&Ms.

I picked up a back of the M&Ms since I was already at Target for comparison. (And here’s the ingredients, as long as I’m transcribing.)

White Chocolate M&Ms: White chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, natural flavor), sugar, less than 2% of cornstarch, corn syrup, dextrin, colorings (includes yellow #5, blue #1, yellow #6, red #40), gum acacia

Ultimately, the coating on these really gives them a different dimension. The soft and matte shell that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs and the Cadbury White Mini Eggs share is unique and holds a special place in the textural world of Easter. I like the soft scent and interesting slick dissolve on the tongue. The vanilla pudding flavor is also pleasant and goes well with the lightly salty white center.

The one thing that was missing was that sticky, fudgy melt that the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs have.

I liked them better than the Hershey’s version, which is weird, because I do actually like the shell a lot on the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Eggs. However, they’re extremely sweet and I found that after five or six I had a raging headache ... so enjoy in moderation.

Related Candies

1. Justin’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
2. Hershey’s Candy Coated White Chocolate Flavored Eggs
3. M&Ms White Chocolate (Easter)
4. Dove Promises White Chocolate
5. Whitman’s Marshmallow Eggs & Carrot
6. Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway Bliss
7. Green and Black’s White Chocolate

I have a few more Easter items I wanted to include before Sunday. They’re not extraordinary products, but I didn’t want to pass them up.

This year was, I felt, the best we’ve had so far this decade for Easter candy diversity. It was a nice mix of classic products, new flavor twists on existing items and then some exciting new diversions. The stores seemed well stocked, better than I saw them two years ago, for example. It’s an encouraging sign for the economy and for our tummies.

Just Born is celebrating 60 years of their iconic Peeps marshmallow candies. They’ve come a long way from the early years when they came in plain yellow. Now they’re available in all the colors of the rainbow and special flavors.

To mark the anniversary, they’ve created a 60th Anniversary version in Vanilla Creme flavor. They’re the individual Peeps (not a conjoined row) and feature little sparkly flecks of multi colored candies, like edible confetti.

I prefer an uncolored Peep, as I think the artificial colorings get in the way of the pure sugary flavor. (Ghost Peeps, for that reason, are the best.)

The Vanilla Creme is a soft flavor, artificial and lacking in the complexity of a nice Tahitian vanilla pod, but still it has a soft and comforting flavor that cuts a bit of the sugary sweetness. They’re bouncy and fluffy and grainy. The little confetti add a little bit of a crunch, but mostly they dissolve quickly on the tongue.

These would be a fun version available all year round. I also heard that they’re releasing Birthday Cake Peeps which are a turquoise blue and yellow cake flavored. (Which is also a great idea for a year-round Peep.)

Rating: 7 out of 10

I admit that I bought these because of the package.

They’re just egg shaped gumballs.

Smarties Bubble Gum Eggs are made by Ford Gum in the USA with real sugar, there are no artificial sweeteners in there. I bought them for $1.49 at Cost Plus World Market, but then I saw them at the 99 Cent Only Store for a dollar.

They’re passably good. They come in different colors, but I really didn’t get a sense that they were different flavors, all vaguely and pleasantly fruity. They were soft enough to bite but have a satisfyingly crunchy shell. Each piece is a good size for chewing, two make for a little too much. The sugar takes a while to be dissolved, so there’s no bubble blowing right away. Even after the sugar is gone, they’re a little too stiff and snappy to blow a good bubble with.

At other times of the year, they’re also available as plain old gumballs. I bought them before and feel the same way about them. They’re okay. Mostly I like them because they’re pretty. I just chew the sugar out, spit out the gum and start up with a new piece.

Rating: 5 out of 10

I noticed this new Hershey’s chocolate bunny introduced in 2011 called Snapsy Snap-Apart Bunny.

The concept is that the bunny is flat instead of dimensional, and pre-sectioned to break apart easily. The version I purchased, for a buck, is 2 ounces, or about the size of a King Size bar. It comes apart into five pieces. Each is a good size for dipping into peanut butter, which was always my favorite way to eat my Easter Rabbit.

This is one of those products that solves a problem you didn’t know you had. I’m sure if this were sold on infomercials, the first part would demonstrate all the frustrating things about a sumptuous solid chocolate bunny and how hard it is to eat, how children fight over it and what it should be named.

I don’t have much to say except that it’s a rabbit shaped Hershey’s bar. It’s made from Hershey’s marginally satisfying chocolate, the same stuff in Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Miniatures and those addictive little Hershey’s Candy Coated Eggs. While I don’t think Hershey’s Milk Chocolate is good chocolate, it’s mighty fine candy. It’s fudgy, grainy and tangy and comforting.

It’s also made in Mexico. (The Candy Professor had a bit of a rant about Snapsy.)

Rating: 5 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Short and Sweet: Easter Bites
2. Easter Candy Spotting 2013
3. Twix Egg
4. Ferrero Eggs: Hazelnut & Cocoa
5. Wonka SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2012)
6. Milka L’il Scoops

There’s rarely anything new to report in the world of chocolate rabbits for Easter. There’s plenty of variation: They come in flat styles and three dimensional. Sitting and standing poses. Hollow and solid. Milk, white or dark chocolate (and sometimes flavored solid confection). The chocolate can also have some inclusions. Until recently this was rather rare, and mostly crispy rice. This year Russell Stover, which already makes a white confection Cookies ‘n’ Creme version, came out with the Russell Stover Kris P. Pretzel Bunny.

I learned of the existence of this tasty sounding bunny on Rebekah’s Obsessive Sweets blog. I did find it at CVS but it was a full 7 ounces and four dollars, I just wanted to taste it. So off to the Russell Stover’s website I go and found out that there’s a 1.5 ounce version out there, so I checked out the 99 Cent Only Store. Success ... and only a buck. (Though the large version is a better value.)

The bunny, at only 1.5 ounces, is not particularly large, but compact. It’s quite thick through the middle, and if it were solid (without the pretzel bits), it would probably be more difficult to bite.

Suspended within the milk chocolate are little bits of pretzel. They’re not chunks, they really are teensy bits. My guess is that they have to be in order to get the molding process to work.

The bite is wonderfully grainy, there are a lot of little bits in there. They don’t create the dry crunch that a whole pretzel piece would. Instead there’s more the malty and salty flavors in there and of course the slight grit of a pretzel dust. The chocolate is creamy and sweet, with a light smoky note. Sadly, it’s very salty. There are 240 mg of salt in there, which the package says is 10% of your RDA, but I think, for me, it’s more like 25% since I eat so little salt. So it could easily be cut in half and I think most people would find it still has that zap.

I liked it and would probably buy this variety again. It’d be nice if it came in a dark variety, but the chocolate here was sufficiently strong enough to stand up for itself with the pretzel flavors and textures.

The packaging is excessive. It’s not a large rabbit, but the box is big and has a useless tray inside. I understand needing to box up hollow bunnies, but the solid variety shouldn’t need more than some foil and/or a box, not the tray as well.

Since this has pretzels in it, it’s not gluten free. The bunnies contain soy and dairy. It’s also made on shared equipment with peanuts, tree nuts and eggs. There’s no statement on the package or on Russell Stover’s website about the sourcing of their chocolate or other ingredients except that their chocolate sourcing partners are members of the World Cocoa Foundation.

Related Candies

1. Aldi Choceur Flame Egg & Chocolate Rabbit
2. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
3. Pretzel M&Ms
4. The All American Chocolate Bunny Battle
5. Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers Almond
6. Asher’s Milk Chocolate Covered Things
7. Men’s Pocky