It’s fun to see all the kids candy for Halloween, but sometimes adults want something a little special too. Enter Seattle Chocolates Devil’s Delight Dark Chocolate Truffle Bar with Peanut Butter & Pretzels. It’s described as Salted pretzel pieces and creamy peanut butter in dark chocolate that uses Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa. A devilishly delicious combination!. That definitely sounds right up my alley.

It’s nice to see a seasonal bar using ethically sourced cacao, and in this case, it’s no more expensive than other similar bar on store shelves.

Don’t be disappointed if it’s not your cup of tea, there are two others: Bloody Orange Truffle Bar and Dead Sea Salt Truffle Bar.

The bar is compact and uses the same mold as all the other Seattle Chocolates bars I’ve tried. At 2.5 ounces, it’s a bit too much to eat in one sitting and not quite enough for two portions. Basically, it’s perfect for the stingy sharer ... give one section to another person, eat the rest yourself.

The pieces are thick sections that hold the truffle filling.

The bar smells pleasantly nutty with a woodsy chocolate component. The dark chocolate is bittersweet and has a nice, silky melt. The filling is a little odd. It’s very peanutty, which I enjoyed and had some good salty pops. But the pretzel pieces seemed stale, as can happen when mixing with inclusions. I liked the peanut butter part, very smooth and nutty and offset well by the dark chocolate. I think they mix the peanut butter in with white chocolate, which is genius. Overall, I liked it, though I didn’t finish it in one sitting. One of the things I’ve seen that solves the stale pretzel problem is to give them a quick dip in chocolate before mixing them in.

This bar was sent to me as a sample from Seattle Chocolates, but I did see them for sale at Cost Plus World Market.

Related Candies

1. Revisit Reviews: Pretzel M&Ms, Rally Bar and Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road
2. Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars
3. Russell Stover Kris P. Pretzel Bunny
4. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
5. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
6. Seattle Chocolates Perfect Peanut Butter

Necco is an odd company that makes antiquated candies and buys up old candy brands. While the nostalgia is comforting, it’s a little odd when they try to be hip, like when they update their conversation heart mottoes, or came out with a line of Twilight themed candies.

However, for a couple of years they’ve been trying to do more novelty and seasonal candies, many of which I’ve appreciated. They have quite a few zombie themed items and for the first time I was able to find the Necco Skybar Zombie Food. They’re priced well at Cost Plus World Market at 59 cents each, though they were $1.50 across the parking lot at Dylan’s Candy Bar.

I bought two of these, hoping for two different shapes, but ended up with two hearts. The first one I opened was cracked and oozing and sticky. Though that’s probably acceptable to a zombie, I wanted to photograph and eat something a bit more pristine. Luckily #2 was in great shape.

The pieces are exactly one ounce, so it’s a little less than a regular portion and two might be too much.

It’s a striking looking candy. The chocolate mold is well made with an anatomically accurate human heart. My unbroken one looked great, though the packaging does little to protect the candy from getting cracked.

It smelled nice, pleasantly milky and sweet. The chocolate is passable, a little on the grainy side and sweet. The caramel filling is grainy but also not terribly sweet, there’s a cereal flavor to it, not quite a toasted sugar caramel. It’s nicely balanced. Of course the red food coloring left a weird, metallic aftertaste for me, but your mileage may vary.

The whole thing lacks anything else though. For 59 cents it’s passable, but only as a novelty item. If you’re looking for a drug store caramel, opt for the Milky Way Simply Caramel for better chocolate and caramel (though I still wasn’t wild about them either). But if you’re a fan of Cadbury Caramel Eggs, these might be a nice Halloween option. I’d like to say that they’d be great for Halloween trick-or-treat, but I fear that being thrown into a bag with a bunch of other candy is just too rigorous for them, if half of mine were cracked just from the store.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis
2. Original Necco Wafers Return
3. Kraft & Ferrara Pan Caramels
4. Clark Bar Wicked Mix
5. Sky Bar Twilight Saga - Eclipse
6. The Twilight Saga: New Moon Heart’s Desire Sky Bar
7. Mori Ex Cacao Gift Set
8. Necco Hot Stinky Feet

As if Circus Peanuts weren’t enough of an enigma, now they’re branching out into seasonal varieties.

If you’re not familiar with Circus Peanuts, they’re a fluffy, grainy, marshmallow shaped like a peanut, the same color as an orange creamsicle but flavored like bananas. Every once in a while you see other holiday shapes, like bunnies for Easter. Though I’m only a fan of Circus Peanuts by concept, because once I actually eat one I wonder what I was thinking. They have some sort of hypnotic amnesia field around them, and I often forget I don’t like them and eat them. (I think there’s a genetic component to this, there are some people who are immune to this and know they hate them and can avoid them, then there are others who actually like them so there’s no need for the amnesia.)

Melster Marshmallow Candy Corn Circus Peanuts are basically not banana flavored, but candy corn flavored ... and not just orange, but also yellow and white.

Here are the things that recommend them:
- They’re Fat Free
- They’re Free from Major Allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, milk, shellfish, eggs, fish, wheat and gluten)
- They’re Made in the USA

Here’s the top reason to buy them: You’ve always wanted to like Circus Peanuts but you were turned off by the flavor. Don’t worry, Candy Corn Circus Peanuts have no flavor. (I’m just going to call them CCCP now.)

If you’re a fan of marshmallows in your cereal, like Lucky Charms, these are actually a pretty good version of that as a candy. The original Lucky Charms marbits were Circus Peanuts, but I think these match the flavor better.

These were fresh and do smell lightly like vanilla and sugar. It’s comforting. Rather clean and bright. The bite is soft, but the texture is grainy. They’re like a marshmallow, but much denser ... but not quite a nougat. Really, they taste just like a very sugary marshmallow. If you’ve ever wanted Campfire Marshmallows with more sugar in them, this is for you.

These can’t even muster being divisive like the banana Circus Peanuts, that’s how ineffectual they are. That said, there’s a Peppermint version for Christmas ... Candy Warehouse (who provided these) also sent some of those, I can’t wait!

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Carrot Cake Candy Corn
2. Charms Candy Corn Pops
3. Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn
4. 6 Candy Corn Candies That Aren’t Candy Corn
5. M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn
6. Melster Peanut Butter Kisses
7. Circus Peanuts
8. Brachs Bunny Basket Eggs

There’s a new term for what happens this time of year, it’s called Pumpkinundation: The proliferation of pumpkin and pumpkin spice products. (I discovered the term on Chowhound.)

Salted Caramels were also a trend, but apparently every trend either dies out or simply becomes an everyday item. So, it has happened with Salted Caramel and so now they must be trendalized with the newest flavors of the season. These are Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Salted Caramels.

Trader Joe’s makes a version of these for Christmas with white flake sea salt. They’re sold in the same box with a different design. They’re wildly popular, as they’re returned to shelves for more than six years in a row. Since Trader Joe’s will pretty much make a pumpkin spice version of every product they sell at some point, it was just the salted caramels’ turn. (I could list all of the items, but suffice to say that they’ve done tea, coffee, macaron, granola, ice cream, and actual pumpkin pie spice. Here’s a taste test from Serious Eats from a few years ago.)

They’re described on the box:

Dark Chocolate with a Smooth Pumpkin Spice Caramel Filling Sprinkled with Red Hawaiian Sea Salt

The ingredients are all natural, but insanely long. The chocolates are made in Ireland (I suspect by Lily O’Brien). The filling isn’t just caramel, according to their list, but actually Sticky Toffee Caramel. There’s no list of what the spices are for their pumpkin spice.

They’re lovely looking caramels, they do well in their package and emerge very shiny and with most of the salt still attached to the squiggle of milk chocolate on top of the 55% dark chocolate.

Though I often find sea salt to be a bit over-hyped, as it’s used in such small quantities that it’s hard to tell different salts apart. In this instance I could tell it was Hawaiian Sea Salt ...and I did not like it. I can’t quite put my finger on it, a friend called it Spaghetti-Os flavored, I thought it was more like carrot, but there’s definitely an additional note to this salt. It was notable enough that for some of the pieces that I ate, I actually scraped the salt off completely.

The spice smell is quite clove-heavy, even before I bit into it. The chocolate is earthy and sweet with a very good bitter note towards the end. It’s smooth and wonderfully tempered. There were no cracks or oozing spots on any of the caramels. The caramel has a light grain to it, which is probably the spice. There’s also a cereal sort of wheaty flavor to it as well. The other spice notes are earthy, with some ginger and black pepper notes and some cinnamon. Not really the best combination for me, if it were a pie, but it goes well with the chocolate.

In the end, this was not a great combination for me, I didn’t like the plain version of these that much and the addition of the spice doesn’t do much for me either. I’ll stick to the individually wrapped Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramels or the panned Butterscotch Caramels.

Related Candies

1. Ovation Mint Filled & Pumpkin Spice Oranges
2. Russell Stover Pumpkin Pie
3. M&Ms Pumpkin Spice
4. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Salted Caramel Truffles
5. Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy Corn
6. See’s Pumpkin Spice & Root Beer Lollypops
7. Das French Salted Caramels

Last year Jolly Rancher introduced Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Lollipops for Halloween. They’re back again, along with a version of the more recent Crunch ‘n Chew in the same flavor.

The Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Crunch ‘n Chew is available in large lay down bags and even this little individual portion size. The individually wrapped candies are quite different from the traditional Jolly Rancher hard candies.

In this case the candy features a hard candy shell in two flavors, caramel and apple. Then there’s a soft chewy filling in a caramel flavor.

Crunch ‘n Chew were introduced in 2012 and come in the standard Jolly Rancher flavors (green apple, blue raspberry, watermelon and cherry). As I noted in my original review, they’re interesting but lack some of the great features I love about Jolly Rancher hard candies, which is the smooth dissolve without any voids and the light pliability of the candy as it melts. All that Jolly Rancher brings to the table here is the name recognition that basically invented the green apple flavor.

The image on the front of the package isn’t quite accurate (it’s also enlarged to show detail). It shows that the candy filling is a large portion of the mass of the candy, and that the caramel and apple portions are equal. Cleaving a piece in half showed that the caramel is actually a thin layer on top of the apple (which is fine, really, because that’s the way actual caramel apples are), but it’s the relatively small amount of chewy filling that’s revealed here.

The brown layer is polite and has a sweet brown sugar flavor. The green part is green apple, which is tart and artificial and mostly tasty. The crunch takes a little while. I don’t feel confident crunching right away, I usually let the candy dissolve for about 30 seconds. The filling is quite stiff and hard to chew, though the work is worth it. The center isn’t really much, it’s sweet and has a note of butter flavor to it. But the combination of all the elements chewed together is, well, impressively original.

It’s probably not a candy I would buy in the large 10 ounce bag, but this little 1.55 ounces was fun and I’ll probably finish the bag. Of the three candies I’ve tried now: the classic flavor Crunch ‘n Chew, the Caramel Apple Lollipop and these Caramel Apple Crunch ‘n Chew, I think these are by far the most successful.

Like the Caramel Apple Lollipops, these contain no dairy ingredients, so they may be a good option for someone who wants a caramel experience but is lactose intolerant. (There’s no actual allergen statement though, so check with Hershey’s if you have any allergy issues.) The candy also contains soy and gelatin (so it’s not vegetarian). They’re made in Brazil.

See’s Candies is a classic American confectionery company that makes good quality chocolates. They’re sold almost exclusively at See’s Candies stores, which are mostly found in malls, and mostly in the Western US but they’re also available online and from the occasional educational fundraiser.

Though See’s is known for their chocolates they also make a unique line of lollipops that are like a hard caramel on a stick. Over the past five years they’ve created seasonal varieties with more trendy flavors like Pumpkin Spice and Orange Creme. I wasn’t at all surprised to see the announcement that in additional to their Pumpkin Spice and Orange Chocolate this fall, they were also bringing out See’s Caramel Apple Lollypops.

Their pops are available singly at the stores or in bags of 8 online. If you’ve never had a See’s lollypop, they’re about 3/4 of an ounce block of hard caramel with a stick. The shape is blocky, about 1 inch wide and 1.5 inches tall.

It smells like apples, not the green apples of Jolly Rancher, but more like apple cider.

The flavor is immediately caramel and a little dash of salt with a note of apple peels. There’s no tartness, no tang; the apple flavor is less of a caramel covered apple and more like an apple pie with caramel sauce. The wonderful part of these lollies is that the dissolve is so smooth and it feels a lot more filling that its 70 calories might have you believe.

I enjoyed them quite bit. The items that detracted are the same problems I always have. The paper stick gets soggy and more often than not, the caramel block comes off the stick while the piece is really too big to hold comfortably in my mouth. Often there is a series of holes within the candy running its length which makes sucking on the pop problematic because it’s more like a straw where you suck in air than speed up the dissolve of the candy. See’s makes mini versions of their classic flavors, but not of the seasonal, limited edition ones.

Related Candies

1. Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Apple and Caramel Coffee
2. Wonka Laffy Taffy Caramel Apple (Limited Edition)
3. Twizzlers Caramel Apple Filled Twists
4. Charms Super Blow Pop Caramel Apple
5. Russell Stover Big Bite Caramel Apple
6. Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops
7. See’s Lollypops
8. See’s Pumpkin Spice & Root Beer Lollypops

Wonka Laffy Taffy Caramel Apple (Limited Edition) is part of the new flavor craze for Halloween. The package is loud and strange, as are many Wonka designs. It features the purple Wonka branding around the sides, but the center is a banded swirl of browns on the top and greens on the bottom. It speaks more of wood grain than apples and caramel to me, but at least it did stand out on the shelves.

For those who have never had it, Laffy Taffy (once known as Tangy Taffy) is simply a taffy chew. Instead of the nuggets or rods that come in twisted waxed paper wrapers that you’d get on vacation, Laffy Taffy comes in little bars that form fit the candy. They come in a variety of fruity flavors, but the key aspect of Laffy Taffy is that it’s tangy. Instead of just sweet and flavor, there’s also a tart note to the chew.

For the actual taste of Tangy Taffy ... imagine if you will, a fruit flavored caulk. Add some citric acid. Add some coloring. You’re getting close…
Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond

The little snack sized bars are larger than a regular taffy piece, they’re really two bites. Each clocks in at about 35 calories and doesn’t take into account the energy you expend chewing. The wrappers feature bad jokes, usually two, depending on how well the wrapper is glued together.

The pieces are soft and easy to remove from the package, though you have to destroy the wrapper completely in order to do so. The color is strange, like hot chocolate and not at all what I would have expected.

It does smell sweet and creamy. The flavor on the tongue, though, is immediately tangy with a rather authentic, if overly tart, apple flavor. The caramel part comes in as the chew goes on and the sour fades as a real caramel note, a sort of toffee/toasted flavor.

What I was hoping for was a stripe of apple taffy and a stripe of caramel flavored taffy, and you’d mix them together as you chewed them. Instead it’s a fully mixed experience, like the kind a baby bird would get if momma birds at caramel apples.

The most successful candy I’ve had to date that emulates a caramel covered apple are the Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops - which are an apple flavored lollipop covered in actual caramel.

There’s no statement about gluten, nuts or peanuts, but the wrapper does say that the candy contains soy.

Related Candies

1. Twizzlers Caramel Apple Filled Twists
2. Charms Super Blow Pop Caramel Apple
3. Werther’s Original Caramel Apple Filled
4. Mehlenbacher’s Taffy
5. Wonka Laffy Taffy
6. Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops
7. Bonomo & Doscher Banana Taffy
8. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn

As the seasonal flavors hit the store shelves, Caramel Apple seems to be all the rage this year. Hershey’s has introduced Twizzlers Caramel Apple Filled Twists.

The candy comes in a few formats. I saw them in the stores as a full sized bag of Twizzler Twists and saw some photos online of the King Sized package. I found this Snack Size package at the grocery story and liked that they were individually wrapped pairs of twists. Each twist is about 2.25 inches long, and each package is about a half an ounce and 50 calories.

Twizzlers Filled Twists are ready for fall festivities with our take on a seasonal favorite: Caramel Apple. They’re a delicious treat that’s easy to eat.

The color of the candy is quite striking. The pair of short twists are joined together, but easy to pull apart. The green twists are very green but slightly translucent and shiny. The filling is a creamy camel color, not gooey enough to spill out even when the pieces are cut or pulled apart. (So it’s not a real caramel, just a caramel cream filling ... sort of like an Oreo center.)

They smell like green apple Jolly Ranchers. The bite is very soft, the chew is also soft. The flavor is odd. After the smell, I expect a tangy bite to it, but it’s not. It’s sweet and tastes like fake apple with that light note of PlayDoh that red licorice often has ... but there’s no tartness to it at all. The caramel filling is grainy, like frosting with a little buttery toffee note to it.

Overall, it’s not a bad candy. It’s not as artificial as I’d expect, without any overtly weird green apple bitterness or too-much-fake-butter flavor. I question the need for a red licorice version of caramel apple flavors, but I think it’s a nice take on the idea.

Related Candies

1. Charms Super Blow Pop Caramel Apple
2. Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Lollipops
3. Russell Stover Big Bite Caramel Apple
4. Limited Edition Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis
5. Werther’s Original Caramel Apple Filled
6. Twizzlers Sweet & Sour Filled Twists
7. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
8. Caramel Apple Sugar Babies