You’ll see a theme in the coming weeks: strawberry is the flavor of the moment.

The new Dove Milk Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Crisp Promises are for Valentine’s Day. I picked mine up at Target (and they may be a Target-Exclusive item).

The shortcake part is a little odd, conceptually. For a real strawberry shortcake, berries (often in a sweetened syrup) are ladled over a biscuit type baked good. Some folks prefer a spongecake or poundcake but the key here is that they’re all soft and cakey. The cookie pieces in this case are made from tapioca starch, rice flour, sugar, palm oil, baking soda and some salt.

The other odd part of this is that there’s milk chocolate ... so if anything, this is an imitation of a chocolate covered strawberry with a few gluten free cookie bits (this is not, however, a gluten free product as it’s made in a facility that also uses wheat and peanuts and tree nuts).

The pieces are not a swirl of milk & white chocolate, like some other recent versions. Instead this is a solid milk chocolate piece, flavored with some strawberry and dotted with little cookie inclusions.

The strawberry flavor is very strong, but the milk chocolate holds its own with a creamy dairy note and a little toasty cocoa flavor. The strawberry is floral sweetness, no dried berry bits in this version. The cookie bits are odd, since they’re made with starch and not actual wheat flour, they are actually rather starchy, though they don’t get sticky-pasty like some gluten free cookies I’ve had. The overall effect of the crunchy cookie bit is really nice, it aerates the experience because you kind of have to chew it instead of just letting the chocolate melt away, which I think boosts the strawberry notes.

They’re pleasant. The strawberry isn’t too artificial or plastic (it does say natural flavor on the package, though it’s kind of vague). I don’t know if I would buy these again, but I appreciated the effort and novelty.

Related Candies

1. Dove Holiday Mint Cookie Promises
2. Dove Milk Chocolate & Red Velvet Swirl Promises
3. Dove Hazelnut Crisp Dark Chocolate Promises
4. Mike and Ike Strawberry Reunion
5. Meiji Corot - Strawberry Chocolate Drops
6. Peeps Strawberry Creme dipped in Dark Chocolate
7. Ritter Sport Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme

Moon Pies are a Tennessee treat, a little marshmallow sandwich featuring round graham crackers and then a thin mockolate coating. They’ve been around since 1917, though they’re a bit of a regional treat and sometimes hard to find. They’re something between a candy and a snack, because of the graham cracker element. They’re also pretty big, so I can see why it’s an appealing idea to morselize them.

Taste of Nature makes Cookie Dough Bites and a variety of other little morsel items sold in theater boxes. The Moon Pie Bites sound pretty good, “Delicious marshmallow & graham in a chocolatey coating.” Well, until you get to the coating part.

The pieces actually smell pretty good. They vary in size, but most are between the size of a pea and a garbanzo.

The the description says it’s marshmallow, it’s actually just marshmallow flavored and there’s no gelatin in the list of ingredients. So these are fine for vegetarians and they’re Kosher. However, it is a mockolate coating, which is made from sugar and palm oil and whey and some cocoa, among other ingredients. It looks decent, but doesn’t really add a chocolate component to this combination candy.

The overwhelming scent of the pieces is graham. It’s a pleasant cereal sort of smell, kind of like vanilla and digestive biscuits and maple syrup.

The pieces are a bit crumbly and dry inside. They’re grainy and have little crumbly graham cracker bits in them. The mockolate coating is neither waxy or greasy, so that’s kind of a blessing. It’s a little cool on the tongue but doesn’t really ruin the otherwise disappointing candy. All elements are equally bad. The center has little sugary bits, the vanilla flavor is overly fake, the graham bits have little of the crunch of real crackers and the chocolatey coating isn’t chocolatey.

Moon Pie Bites contain wheat, milk and soy. They area also made in a facility with peanuts, tree nuts and eggs.

Related Candies

1. Annabelle’s Rocky Road S’Mores
2. Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn
3. Sugarfina: The Chocolates
4. Russell Stover Big Bite Dark Chocolate S’Mores
5. Cookies ‘n’ Cream Bites
6. Cupcake Bites
7. Cookie Dough Bites

I have a soft spot for Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies. Mostly the soft spot is in my memory, because I don’t find the current day item meets my pickier standards. It shouldn’t be that hard to make a chocolate cookie with a minted chocolate coating.

So, if I can’t get my itch scratched with Thin Mints, perhaps I should turn it on its end and have something chocolate with cookies, instead of cookies with chocolate. Mars’ new Target-exclusive Promises for Christmas are just that: Dove Milk Chocolate Holiday Mint Cookie Promises.

The idea is simple, and certainly not original. They’re milk chocolate, lightly flavored with peppermint along with some crunched up chocolate cookie pieces.

The milk chocolate is fudgy and sweet, but definitely smoother than many other brands like Hershey’s and Nestle that are on the shelves at the moment. The little cookie bits are sandy and crunchy with a bitter note of charcoal and cocoa. Mostly they just sit in the crevices of my molars. The effect is a nice textural change from the smooth melt of the chocolate and a slight note of salt.

The ratio of chocolate to cookie is very good, definitely more chocolate, but they weren’t stingy with the cookie bits, they were in every bite. They were a little on the sweet side, which is really the profile of the Dove Milk Chocolate. Still, I’d love it if someone would do these in dark chocolate.

I hope Target brings these back next year and hopefully they’ll get wider distribution so everyone can enjoy them. But now I’d like someone to explain why I can’t have them all year, like the long gone Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Mint bar.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Girl Scout Cookie Bars - Thin Mints
2. Christmas Bars: Hershey’s, Niederegger, Ghirardelli & Hachez
3. Wonka Exceptionals Peppermint Shortbread Chocolate Pieces
4. Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites
5. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
6. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint
7. Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Mint

I have often desired a better version of the Almond Joy. I love the combination of chocolate and almonds and coconut, but the classic Almond Joy is just a little too sweet and well, has a lot of unnecessary ingredients.

Theo Chocolate of Seattle has been making organic and ethically sourced chocolate for quite a while, and even make one of my favorite bars, their Salted Almond Dark Chocolate. Their newest product expansion has been in the arena of traditional candy bars made with better ingredients (liked their peanut butter cups). The newest is Theo Coconut Salted Almond Bites. They’re part of a full line of coconut bites that come in milk or dark chocolate as well, but the twist here that combined an already well-loved bar was too enticing to resist, even at $2.39 for a scant 1.3 ounce package.

The ingredients are non-GMO, fair trade, palm oil free, soy free and organic. It’s also vegan (but made on shared equipment, so not necessarily for folks with dairy or egg allergies.)

The little squares do not look like Almond Joy. The almonds are actually little slivers and chips within the coconut filling, not a couple of whole almonds on top with the chocolate coating.

The smell is comforting, a clean coconut scent, but not quite as sweet and perfumey as suntan oil. The bite is soft, the filling is chewy but not at all sticky. The coconut is moist and distinct. The best part of the whole thing though is the dark touch of the chocolate shell. It’s deep and has a light sweetness that really isn’t found in the coconut. The salt really isn’t evident as a discrete element, but the whole thing isn’t sweet or cloying. The almond provide a different crunch over the chewy coconut.

It’s a very light treat, with really strong flavors and textures. This could become a regular habit ... actually, it has, this is the third bar I’ve purchased since they came out. It took me a while to control myself long enough to take photos.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Coconut Minis
2. Ritter Sport Winter Edition Caramelised Almonds
3. Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond
4. Adams & Brooks P-Nuttles plus Coconut
5. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
6. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
7. Sunspire Coconut Bars
8. Almond Joy

The package for Nestle Toll House DelightFulls - Dark Chocolate Morsels with Mint Filling says that they’re a baking product. But we all know that chocolate chips are just candy you put in baked goods.

Nestle’s new twist, introduced last year, are filled morsels that come in a variety of combinations for baking. The pieces are just slightly larger than a standard Toll House Dark Chocolate Morsel, so they easy to add to cookies or just eat as candy. The current varieties are dark chocolate with cherry flavored filling, milk chocolate with caramel or peanut butter filling. And then of course, the version I picked up.

The pieces are actually better looking than regular morsels, they were less scuffed up, some were downright glossy. The package only holds 9 ounces, not the usual 12, but for 3.29, I thought they were a pretty good price. The chocolate is real, but the mint filling is made with palm oil, milk, sugar, peppermint oil and food coloring. I was hoping they’d be a better version of Andes Mints, which I love but really aren’t very good quality.

The dark chocolate outside isn’t very complex or even very dark. The cacao content isn’t listed, but it’s pretty sweet. The filling is a little fudgier, a little grainier but also lightly salty. The mint flavor is clean and I didn’t get any notes from the artificial coloring.

The difference between these and any old mint flavored dark chocolate morsel is that the filling makes these a softer bite. It’s not really obvious when I eat them that they’re filled, per se, but there’s definitely a change in the intensity of the flavors based on melting them on the tongue (lots of chocolate, then lots of mint) versus chewing them to get a balance of chocolate and soft mint.

I haven’t seen anyone I know use these in baking yet. But as a candy on their own, this is a great item for snacking at the movies, mixing into a trail mix or perhaps a strange after dinner mint. I think the other flavors are quite interesting, especially the caramel and cherry, since there aren’t other morsels like that already.

Related Candies

1. York Peppermint Pattie Minis
2. Nestle Girl Scout Cookie Bars - Thin Mints
3. M&Ms Mint Dark Chocolate
4. Hershey’s York Pieces
5. M&Ms Premiums
6. Nestle Toll House Mint Holiday Gems
7. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
8. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane

Have you ever wished that you could get American-made Ferrero Rocher? You know, a whole hazelnut with some crispy crunch and milk chocolate? Well, keep wishing, because Hershey’s Kisses Deluxe do not fill that hazelnut-flavored hole in your heart.

The new Hershey’s Kisses Deluxe are definitely a step above the regular Milk Chocolate Hershey’s Kiss. They’re twice the size of a regular Kiss and feature a whole roasted hazelnut, creamy layers and delicate crisps. They’re just as expensive as Ferrero Rocher and come in little gold foil wrappers. This goofy plastic tray that I picked up at Walgreen’s holds four pieces, cost $1.59 but is only 1.2 ounces. That comes to $21 for a pound. And like many Hershey’s products, they’re also made in Mexico.

So, I went into this with very low expectations because of the price and the packaging and the reputation of the brand.

Out of the flimsy tray the bronzy gold foil is quite nice, and the grand size is actually very appealing. The chocolate shell is glossy and has a balanced sweet and nutty scent.

The bite is quite nice, the milk chocolate is much creamier than the standard Hershey’s Kiss and the whole hazelnut in the center was perfect. The light crispies are not a huge flavor component, but a very good addition to the texture. The sweetness is a little strong, but because the pieces aren’t very big, it didn’t seem too cloying. The overwhelming note afterwards was the roasted hazelnut.

The package says there’s only 170 calories, which is easy to explain when it’s only 1.2 ounces, but they’re still only 142 calories per ounce ... or 43 calories for each deluxe Kiss.

I didn’t think I was going to like these, I was prepared to mock them, but they turned out to be pretty good candy. However, as far as hazelnut candies wrapped in foil goes? I’m still going to pick up Perugina Baci if it’s an option (and it seems they’re similarly priced). I’m most curious to see if Hershey’s will introduce a dark chocolate version, or perhaps expand with some other varieties, such as marzipan or pistachio.

These are made with milk, soy and hazelnuts and also may contain pecans and almonds. The package states that Kisses Deluxe are gluten-free.

Related Candies

1. Dove Hazelnut Crisp Dark Chocolate Promises
2. Lindt Gold Bunny Hazelnut
3. Hershey’s Kisses with Macadamia Nuts
4. Perugina Baci
5. Hershey’s Kisses Air Delight
6. Caramel Apple Kisses & Caramel Creams
7. Ferrero Rocher
8. Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses

Next month Mars is introducing a new Snickers variant, the Snickers Crisper. The new bar boasts multiple textures and “delivers on [Snickers] satisfaction pledge with the chew of caramel and the crunchy crispiness of rice and peanuts.”

Like the recent Snickers Peanut Butter Squared that came out five years ago, these are actually two squares in one package instead of a single bar.

The new bar is supposed to be in response to consumers wanting healthier options. I’m not sure what would make this bar healthier than a regular Snickers, though this one has crisped rice in it, instead of nougat and is actually 12 grams lighter, which means fewer calories per serving.

Each square is about 1.25 inches on each side. They’re about two or three bites.

The bar smells well roasted and a bit like toffee. The bite is very soft, the caramel on top has a lot of give to it, but not much pull. The chew has a nice texture, with the peanut butter coated crisped rice as a highlight. It’s quite sweet though there’s also a hint of salt. I don’t get much more peanut butter or sort of thick satisfaction that I find in a regular Snickers. I do enjoy the malty notes of the rice though as well as the few peanut scattered about. I think I just wanted more peanut butter and less sweetness.

About ten years ago there was another bar called the Snickers Cruncher, which was similar: it was a peanut butter coated crisped rice bar with caramel coated in chocolate. It was all one bar and actually really good. When they disappeared in the United States, I was still able to find them in Europe (and a few sellers on eBay would import them).

Related Candies

1. Snickers Mixed Nuts
2. Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars
3. Snickers Unwrapped Bites
4. Hershey’s Whatchamacallit & Thingamajig
5. Crispy Cat
6. Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road Bar
7. Snickers Nut ‘n Butter Crunch
8. Snickers Cruncher

Trader Joe’s Toffee Chips come in a pretty simple little box packed with a half a pound of toffee planks covered in either milk or dark chocolate.

It’s a pretty good deal for a half a pound of candy made with all natural ingredients, though Trader Joe’s doesn’t say where the chocolate comes from.

The product popped up at my local Trader Joe’s about a week before it was listed on the website, so I bought a box. Then I ate it all, so this is my second box. (You’d think it would get a better rating than a 6 out of 10 if I’ve eaten a full pound.) After the first box I figured I’d pick up another, but it disappeared from the three Trader Joe’s I frequent for nearly a moth.

I think this is intended as a hostess gift item, or perhaps something you’d buy to put out for guests at a party or after dinner.

The tray holds 8 pieces of each variety, so I’ll go ahead and calculate that each is a half an ounce (and about 75 calories). The tray is rather flimsy, and the box doesn’t reseal after you open it. The whole thing, oddly enough, felt a little like a See’s item (they also use a lot of black and white in their packaging, but this has some brown elements and the full product image).

They’re very attractive. The first box was unphotographable because the heat got to it, though it was still edible. The little planks have a squiggle of chocolate across them, making for a lot of chocolate heaped on the top.

The milk chocolate variety is very sweet. The milk chocolate is milky and creamy, the toffee inside has a salty note and an excellent crunch but it falls apart into a bit of a grainy mess, like eating brown sugar towards the end. (I love eating a pile of brown sugar, but not when I think it’s supposed to be toffee.)

The dark chocolate version had the same crunchy then grainy texture and excellent butter flavor, but the dark chocolate really meant nothing. The flavor of the dark chocolate was so non-descript I really kept wondering what it tasted like. If I shaved it off with my teeth, it was like a creamy dark chocolate baking chip, but eating with the toffee it just became a texture.

I don’t think these are bad, mostly I ate the whole box because I was trying to figure them out, but I never really liked them much. They’re better with something else, like crushing them up on ice cream or with some strong coffee. As a hostess gift, they’re probably acceptable, especially for the price point. I don’t see myself buying them again though.

They’re made with milk and soy and may also contain traces of wheat, eggs, peanuts and/or tree nuts.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Magic Beans
2. Lindt Hello Toffee Bites
3. Trader Joe’s Almondictive Bits
4. Poco Dolce Popcorn Toffee
5. See’s Double Caramel
6. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
7. See’s Lollypops
8. Valerie Toffees & Nougats