Brach’s has introduced over a dozen flavors of Candy Corn in the past five years. There are the more traditional flavors like Harvest Corn and Pastel Corn, but also some more trendy flavors like Carrot Cake, Caramel Macchiato and Red Velvet.

Though I find myself a purist when it comes to certain candies, I think that the fondant candies are ripe for this sort of flavor exploration. I also think a lot more could be done with shape. I’m not sure why we’re hung up on the layered corn. Perhaps it’s just economical to use the same mold for all new variations and use color to distinguish them. So, I welcome these new Candy Corn shaped flavor experiences.

Last spring Ferrara Candy announced the new Brach’s Peanut Butter Cup Candy Corn and I was immediately intrigued. It’s a great idea, peanut butter cups are already layered and the flavors might translate well. Might.

The pieces look like a lot of other Brach’s candy corn pieces. They’re large and narrow and have a little notch that goes across the bottom layer and the middle of the center layer. The layers appear to be distinctive flavors, the base is cocoa, the center beige is peanut and the top is “white.”

The candy corn has an odd but convincing peanut aroma. It smells more like boiled peanuts than roasted peanuts, there’s a thinness about the scent that becomes more obvious when I ate them.

The ingredients list no peanuts or peanut butter. The only thing close is some sesame oil. There is cocoa in the ingredients list, in fact it’s the third item after sugar and corn syrup. I guess the peanuts are all in the natural and artificial flavors. I actually assumed they used defatted peanut powder in this, but sadly no.

The peanut layer is bland and has an artificial butter note to it and a sort of diluted peanut flavor, kind of like a cheap frosting. The cocoa base is decent and at least isn’t as sweet as the other layers.

I didn’t despise the Peanut Butter Cup Candy Corn, but I didn’t find it as good as I thought it could be. It’s still munchable, just not terribly distinctive. Throw it in with some popcorn or nuts for a snack, and it becomes more than passable.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Candy Cane Candy Corn
2. Candyology 101 - Episode 2 - Peanut Butter
3. Sweet’s Naturally Flavored Candy Corn
4. Brach’s Apple Pie Candy Corn
5. Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn
6. Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn
7. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix

I picked up Werther’s Original Soft Creme Caramels on sale at Rite Aid, suspicious that I’ve had these before even though it says new on the package.

Werther’s does an excellent hard caramel (or toffee) and the parent company, Storck of Germany, makes one of my favorite mass-produced caramels, the Storck Chocolate Riesen. But I was a little confused how these were different from the other caramels that Werther’s already sells.

The pieces are small, narrow and wrapped in waxed paper with a foil label around the center. They were easy to twist open and didn’t stick to the wrappers.

So, I also purchased the Werther’s Original Chewy Caramel for comparison. The bag looks nearly the same, and inside, the candies are wrapped identically. Opening them, though, it’s clear what the difference is.

The Chewy Caramel (on the right) is stringy and chewy, smooth and pleasant with a balanced milk and caramelized sugar flavor. The Caramel Creme (on the left) is what I would call a “short caramel”, a caramel where the sugar has been caramelized, but allowed to create a bit of a crystallized matrix instead of a silky but stiff chew. It’s sort of like penuche, or like the Krowki Cream Fudge from Poland.

The flavor is fresh, not like some fake buttery flavored toffees. The texture is chewy but still a little gummy. It dissolves well and though there’s a detectable grain, it’s not crystallized or gritty.

It’s pleasant, and I enjoyed eating them, but I preferred the Chewy Caramel version, especially since the bag I purchased for this comparison was especially fresh and chewy. I do prefer this to the flavor profile of Kraft Caramels, though I can’t attest to how they would perform in recipes.

Related Candies

1. Werther’s Original Hard Candies
2. Eat with your Eyes: Cows
3. Storck Merci
4. Krowki: Polish Cream Fudge
5. Storck Toffifay
6. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
7. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels

Candy Corn is brilliantly simple and captures the essential nature of corn itself very well. Corn (I mean dent corn, not the fresh-eating sweet corn) is ubiquitous and exceptionally versatile; it can be used to create oil, sweeteners, cereals, starches, feeds and even plastics.

Candy Corn reflects that versatility well, in that it looks like food, but it is much better at boosting the appeal of other foods as a decoration or merely a side dish to more appealing things. Like corn in our everyday lives as North Americans, it’s everywhere at Halloween. Candy corn is a fondant, and fondant is basically a butterless, chocolateless fudge. It’s just sugar and corn syrup, sometimes flavored with a bit of honey and sometimes held together with a bit of gelatin or egg white.It’s kind of sad that candy corn has become some sort of punchline to jokes about reviled foods, but it must have lovers or at least likers, or else candy companies wouldn’t make so much of it.

Wrigley’s seems to have latched onto the seasonal quality of candy corn for their new Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn but discarded most of the other qualities of candy corn. They’re brightly colored, fruitly flavored unlike normal candy corn. The only thing that remains is the triangular shape and layering of colors.

Each candy is three tiers of one of the Original Starburst flavors: cherry, strawberry, orange and lemon. All have white tips, light centers and dark bases.What’s particularly odd about them is that they’re flavored the same on all levels. At the bottom of the bag was a bunch of the little white tips that had broken off and they were absolutely just as flavorful as the colored bottoms. The other thing is they’re not a traditionally “flavored” mellocreme. The others that I’ve had are usually light - maple or cocoa flavored perhaps, or with mild fruit essences. The Starburst Candy Corn is going for true Starburst juicy flavor - sweet, fruity and tart.

Cherry was the darkest red. It tasted quite strongly of that artificial cherry that Life Savers and Starburst share. There’s a sharpness towards the end and an overall pleasant tartness. The texture is good, it’s soft and though it doesn’t quite melt in your mouth, it’s smooth. The flavor lingered, again, medicinal and artificial.

Strawberry was pink and had a similar sort of medicinal quality like the cherry. It wasn’t floral or jammy, just artificial tasting.

Orange was like a creamsicle, sweet but tart enough that it had a sort of aspergum finish to it. This too had a lingering aftertaste, kind of like yogurt or soured milk.

Lemon was probably the most successful, but that’s not saying much. The lemon had a hint of zest but mostly was like a lemon sherbet flavor.

On the whole, I found them a pleasant experience, but I was left wondering why I was eating them. I didn’t like the flavor variety, the aftertaste was odd and the tartness distracted from what is usually a very mild and comforting candy. I think to celebrate the season, I’ll just form my regular Starburst Chews into little triangles and enjoy them that way.

Starburst has really extended their fruit chew brand in a lot of ways. There are or have been jelly beans, lollipops, drinks, gummis and now mellocremes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Starburst gum, red licorice type chew or chocolately Tootsie Roll styled product. Only time will tell.

The ingredients do not list any eggs or gelatin, which I found surprising. It does list confectioners glaze, which usually means shellac so it’s not a vegan product.

Related Candies

1. Starburst Minis (Original)
2. 6 Candy Corn Candies That Aren’t Candy Corn
3. Starburst Crazy Beans
4. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
5. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
6. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
7. Starburst GummiBursts
8. Starburst and Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

Chocolate covered nuts are one of the simplest candies. They’re a hybrid of wholesome snack and decadence.

They’re also usually expensive for anything other than plain old peanuts. So the decadence comes with a pricetag that helps to moderate any overindulgence. But I saw this box of Superior Nut & Candy Chocolate Covered Cashews not in the candy aisle at RiteAid, but their “bargain” aisle. It was only a buck and looked to be of good quality.

The bargain price can be explained by the miniscule portion. I knew when I bought it that the box was only 2.75 ounces. The box is 6.5 inches long, 1 inch thick and 3.5 inches wide.

The large volume of the box is wasted. There is no “product may have settled during shipping” notice. The little packet inside is little, was always little, was made little. It rolls around in the box, can stand up, turn around and perhaps even invite two friends over.

But amounts aside, they look good. The packet protected them well, they’re sealed and smell fresh and look glossy when opened.

The cashews are good, they’re large and well chosen. Some are over one inch long, though most are slightly less. Some are whole, some are halves and a few are pieces.

The chocolate is sweet and has only the thinnest veneer of confectioners glaze to keep them from sticking together. It’s rather fudgy and though not grainy, I wouldn’t say it’s a silky smooth melt either. The nuts are good quality, fresh and only lightly toasted.

Overall, they’re good and it’s uncommon to find chocolate covered cashews at the drug store. The price is actually pretty good if you ignore the expectation of more candy because of the size of the box.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Whoppers
2. Cupcake Bites
3. Vosges Bombalinas - Black Pearl Cashews
4. DeMet’s Turtles: Pecan & Cashew
5. Marich Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews
6. Meiji Gummy Choco
7. Sanders Caramels & Titans

Sugar Daddy was introduced in 1925 but originally called “Papa Sucker”, it took on the name Sugar Daddy in 1932. The pop is a simple, but large caramel slab on a stick.

Like many candies over 50 years old, this one has a long history of changing hands. It was created by the James O. Welch Company, which also made fudge and later invented Pom Poms, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. Later in 1963 Welch was sold to Nabisco. Nabisco continued making the line of Sugar Daddies, Sugar Mamas and Sugar Babies. Nabisco sold their candy lines to Warner-Lambert (known mostly for drugs) in 1988 and then Tootsie acquired them in 1992. The package design changed little over the years. Here’s a wrapper from the 50s and a later one from the 70s when it was made by Nabisco. The only functional difference is that the top end is sealed now, instead of folded.

The caramel pop is very simple. Perhaps my memory is hazy or idealizes the candy of my youth, I remember Sugar Daddy as a very dark, glossy and smooth caramel bar on a stick. While the pair that I bought were in good condition (no sign that they’d melted & reformed or were sticky and crystallized around the edges), they just weren’t as awesome as I recall.

The ingredients look functionally the same as ever: Corn syrup, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, dry whole milk, whey, natural and artificial flavors, salt, soya lecithin.

The slab is sturdy and thick. It’s pliable but not exactly chewy. I found it possible to bite some off, but not without a lot of bending and wiggling to cause some sort of equivalent of metal fatigue.

The dissolve is smooth and the flavor is creamy with a distinct caramelized sugar flavor with a pleasant buttery note. I prefer the Sugar Babies, I feel like the centers have a little bit more pronounced burnt sugar flavor that’s balanced with the sugary shell. The Sugar Daddy is just difficult to eat without making a mess, though I think the slightly smaller pop would be better for those who aren’t tempted to chew on it, because it fits better in the mouth.

I’m glad this around for a newer generation. I credit Tootsie taking over this line with the very popular invention of the Tootsie Caramel Apple Pop.

Related Candies

1. Slo Poke Caramel
2. Walkers Nonsuch Roasted Hazelnut Toffee
3. Necco Slap Stix Caramel
4. Nips: Caramel & Dulce de Leche
5. Caramel Apple Sugar Babies
6. Sugar Babies
7. Sugar Mama
8. Chocolate Covered Sugar Babies

Ferrero Hazelnut Eggs are new in the United States for Easter. They’re based on the popular Ferrero line of Rochers, not their Kinder Eggs (which are illegal in the United States).

The bag is expensive. It was 3.5 ounces and cost $3.99. There are only 10 little eggs inside. However, I liked the spare packaging which did the job of protecting the foil wrapped eggs as they were all fresh and unmarred.

The package says that they’re Crispy bite size eggs smothered in milk chocolate with luscious cream. Each egg is about 1.5 inches long.

The chocolate shell is extremely light in color, the ingredients bear this out, with sugar as the first ingredient in the shell and milk as the second with cocoa butter and cocoa mass pulling up the third and fourth slots.

It smells extremely sweet, a little like pudding and nutella. The bite is soft, the construction is similar to a Ferrero Rocher. There’s a nearly liquid hazelnut cream center, a crisp cookie shell and then the chocolate coating on the outside. (There are no crushed nuts in this item.)

The creamy center is sweet, sticky and quite slick. The smoothness gives up the roasted hazelnut flavors easily, and matches the sweetness of the chocolate shell very well. The light wafery crisp of the inner shell is the only thing that breaks it up and gives a little malty corn flake note to it (it’s made with wheat flour).

Ferrero Cocoa Eggs are like Ferrero Rondnoir. There’s a dark chocolate shell, a wafery light shell under that and a creamy dark chocolate filling. There’s only a touch of hazelnut in there, according to the ingredients, and I really didn’t catch any of the flavors.

Like it’s hazelnut buddy, there’s also a bit of palm oil in the center, which is a little disappointing, but expected. The Ferrero group has pledged to sustainably source their cocoa and palm oil by 2015. They also say that they don’t purchase cocoa from slave farms, but don’t have a formal certification process yet.

The dark chocolate is well rounded, with a strong fudgy flavor like brownies. There’s even a slight bitter note to it that’s balanced out by the much sweeter creamy filling and more bland wafers.

I liked the Cocoa Eggs a bit better than the Hazelnut. They’re both different from their year round versions as well, which means that they are a little more “special” than just a reshaping and some pastel packaging.

They contain nuts, milk, soy and gluten. The only artificial ingredient was vanillin. They’re filled with fat (delicious fat) and clock in at 163 calories per ounce, on the very high side for candy.

I found them expensive for the amount and quality of the product. They were good, but not fantastic. For the same money, I’d probably be happier with See’s Scotchmallow Eggs.

Related Candies

1. Aldi Choceur Flame Egg & Chocolate Rabbit
2. Tony’s Chocolonely Chocolate Easter Eggs
3. Milka L’il Scoops
4. An Easter Dash - Reviews in Short
5. Godiva Spring Pearls
6. Ferrero Prestige (Ferrero Garden)
7. Ferrero Raffaello & Rondnoir
8. Ferrero Rocher

Hershey’s has been chugging along with their Pieces line, the long-overdue expansion of the Reese’s Pieces product into other pelletized versions of popular Hershey’s candy bars.

The new Hershey’s Pieces - Milk Chocolate with Almonds isn’t as innovative as some of the other candies, such as the Almond Joy Pieces or the initial Reese’s Pieces. But they fill a void in Hershey’s offerings and I was looking forward to them.

The first big stumbling block I had, though, was the price. 8 ounces for about four dollars. Other stores sell them for $4.50. I have a hard time paying 8 or 9 dollars a pound for Hershey’s candy in bulk quantities.

They also don’t reinvent the niche with some new quality. They’re not low in allergens, the list on the back says that they may contain soy, wheat, other tree nuts and peanuts. A great selling point would have been a nutty candy that is actually peanut and/or gluten free.

The Pieces look like the package illustrates. They come in three colors: dark brown, brown and cream. They vary widely in size, based on the core of almond. Some are as small as a Peanut M&M, others are huge, sometimes over an inch long.

They’re a standard construction of a well-roasted almond, a milk chocolate coating and then a colored candy shell. The colors are pleasing. I actually enjoyed their muted tones more than the loud and artificial M&Ms Almond. Of course these are also artificial, with Red 40, Yellow 6 and Blue 1 & 2 ... just less bang for the coloring.

The almonds are roasted to a very dark color, roasted in cocoa butter and/or sunflower oil). This is a good choice. I found them all crunchy and fresh tasting, not a single fibery or bitter one in the bag.

The shell is thin enough to crunch easily and provide only a modicum of sweetness. The milk chocolate is only marginally acceptable. It has the Hershey’s sour note to it, which I actually like sometimes, especially when mixed with more savory elements. Here it was such a back seat to the large almonds, it worked.

I prefer this, by far, to the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds bar. But I don’t like it better than M&Ms Almond, because of the difference in the chocolate flavor. What I’d really like to see is a Heath Pieces at this point, that’d really set the Pieces line apart from their current iteration as an M&Ms clone.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
2. Hershey’s York Pieces
3. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
4. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almonds
5. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
6. Reese’s Pieces
7. M&Ms Line
8. Reese’s Pieces with Peanuts

R.M. Palmer makes charming and cheap candy for the holidays. Their Christmas candies are never as appealing as their Easter goods but I was intrigued by their new RM Palmer Giant 1/4 Peanut Butter Cup.

Giant candy is pretty common as a holiday gift, especially as a stocking stuffer or Secret Santa item. This one isn’t quite as amazing as the Snickers Slice n’ Share or 1 Lb Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but it’s certainly affordable at only $1.00.

The package is simple. There were two designs, the red wrapper I picked out features an elf on a snowboard. There’s a green version that had a Santa on it.

The packaging is spare, it’s just a plastic sleeve, there’s no cardboard tray or even a fluted cup. However, this was more than sufficient, my cup came out the wrapper looking nearly flawless.

Like nearly all R.M. Palmer candies, this is a very nicely made product. The mold is well designed and attractive. The large cup has some attractive design details, including a little inset bevel and texture on the bottom of cup. The fluting is crisp and the mockolate coating is shiny.

The cup is three and a half inches in diameter and just a smidge over a half an inch thick. The package says that it’s four servings, which would be one ounce each. It’d be pretty easy to divide this up, it cuts easily with even a butter knife. However, one ounce is a rather small portion for candy. The typical is about 1.5 (which is what a pair of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are).

The first ingredient on the list is sugar, which I fully expected. The second is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil made from palm kernel and/or palm oil. It’s pretty widely known now that partially hydrogenated oils contain trans fats. And trans fats need to be reported on the nutrition facts panel. However, if it’s less than a half a gram of trans fat, it can be listed as zero. So it’s entirely possible that a “truer serving size” of 1.5 ounces would have a measurable amount of trans fat. Or it could be that RM Palmer figured that people could quarter things easily but probably couldn’t cut them into 3/8 as easily. (Well, you’d just cut it into 8 pieces and take a serving of three of those, but I don’t think they’d be structurally sound.)

The cup smells good, like sweet peanut butter. The bite is soft and the peanut butter is smooth. It’s an odd cup, I was fully willing to hate it based on the ingredients. However, the peanut butter center is really good. It’s soft but not greasy, smooth but not quite silky. There’s a slight coolness to both the mockolate and the peanut butter on the tongue. The flavor of the peanut butter center is sweet, not quite as salty or crumbly/dry as a Reese’s, it’s more like eating peanut butter cookie dough.

For kids or the not-too-picky, it’s a fun little treat. It’s far from gourmet, but it fits in as affordable and over-the-top little gift.

Related Candies

1. The Joycup Co. Peanut Butter Cups
2. RM Palmer Peppermint Patties
3. Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
4. RM Palmer My Little Bunny
5. World’s Largest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
6. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky
7. Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups
8. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line