It’s coffee day here at CandyBlog.net. Yes, I’ve got jetlag and I need lots and lots of caffeine. So in between sips of the regular liquid kind and some Black Black gum, I thought I’d review some coffee flavored chocolate candies.

I found this bar at the checkout counter at Target. There are a few varieties of the new Mauna Loa foray into consumer chocolate, but I thought that they knew their macadamias and of course Kona is known for their coffee. How could I go wrong?

This is a smooth and sweet dark chocolate bar with macadamia nuts and coffee. The bar has four domed segments each with some nice small bits of macadamias scattered evenly on the bottom of the bar. In this form I get the macadamia taste, but the texture is more like coconut. That’s not a bad thing. Then the coffee kick comes in. It’s mostly a chocolate flavor, but when you hit the coffee grounds, it’s definitely a good mellow coffee flavor.

But here’s the thing, and I mentioned it yesterday when reviewing the Dolfin cafe tasting squares ... I don’t want the coffee grounds. I don’t put up with coffee grounds in my actual coffee, why do I want them in my chocolate? Well, they do add fiber. This bar has 3 grams of fiber. (It also has 9 grams of saturated fat.)

Overall, it’s too sweet for me. I want a little darker, richer chocolate with my coffee essences. The macadamias add a great nutty flavor and texture to it, and though I’d never drink a macadamia/chocolate flavored coffee, I will eat a macadamia and coffee studded chocolate. I’m vaguely curious about their milk chocolate and might pick that bar up at some future visit to Target. I do actually appreciate Target’s wide selection of candies at the check out that include more than the standard fare of Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle and at 99 cents, it’s only slightly more expensive than the regular bars.

These were a revelation when I had them as a kid. It was one of the earliest recollections I have of considering product design from top to bottom. (Well, that and AIM toothpaste which was a big deal back then.) The name of the product, the shape if the candies and of course the flavors all seemed to indicate that there was someone behind all this. Before that, I think I just though that kindly cooks slaved away in “test kitchens” to come up with new candies, or everything had just always been that way.

Bottle Caps are little crumbly, chalk-like candies flavored like sodas. They come in cherry, root beer, cola, orange and grape. I’m not sure if there was ever a Dr. Pepper/Mr. Pibb flavor, but it certainly doesn’t exist now.

The packaging varies, sometimes you can find them in packets (like the Razzles) and sometimes in rolls like this. I like the rolls because they’re compact, but it does make it hard to avoid the colors you don’t want to eat (that’d be Cherry for me).

Seeing how there are so few Root Beer flavored candies, this is one that always calls to me. The root beer of a Bottle Cap is vastly different from a Root Beer Barrel hard candy. A hard candy relies on the herbal/balsam qualities of the flavor along with a fair dose of sugar. This candy has a bit of a sour bite, I think to mimic the acidic carbonated drink and has a slight cooling quality on the tongue. It’s plenty sweet and has that root beer essence to it, but misses on the more complex flavors of the actual root beer flavor. The orange and grape are nothing to write home about, they’re just a fruit flavor with the sour/cool bite to them. The Cola flavor is equally interesting, with its earthy acidic bite and unique flavor. I like the flavor of cola, though I really don’t like soda (I wish other things came in cola flavor, like Root Beer Barrels).

I can’t say that I feel like buying them again. I don’t think I’d had them for about 15 years and I could probably go another. I think I like the idea of the little snack packs better, maybe I’ll have to get some for Halloween this year and then have two or three to satisfy that wee craving. I know Bottlecaps have their feverish defenders and that’s cool. I’m not saying it’s a bad candy, I think it’s delightful and original. Just not for me.

Note: this candy was manufactured in the United States.

I think it might be marshmallow day here at CandyBlog.net.

Last week I was at the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax to meet up with some other bloggers and I knew I had to stop at Littlejohn’s Candies because a reader told me they had the best toffee. Of course once I got there my eyes were drawn to these plump caramel kisses - soft caramel drenching a puffy marshmallow. I completely forgot about the toffee.

So, I got two, one in chocolate and one in vanilla. (And a pecan praline which was divine and I ate before I could take a photo of it.) I figured I can always go back for more toffee ... and another pecan praline.

Once I opened the wrapper it was obvious that these caramels were made with lots and lots of butter. They were creamy, very smooth and exceptionally sweet with a slight hit of salt to it. The marshmallow center was smooth and light without being too foamy. The center also wasn’t very sweet, so it gave a nice backdrop to let the caramel dominate the flavor stage. The chocolate caramel wasn’t as tasty to me, there wasn’t enough chocolate to set it apart from the regular caramel and I plan on sticking to the vanilla in the future.

These are messy candies. They stuck to the cellophane wrapper and to my fingers as I held it. They’re too big to put in your mouth all at once (about the size of a squashed golf ball), so eating them posed a challenge. I ended up with sticky fingers. In the future I think I’ll leave them in the cello and scrape them off with my teeth.

Since the Farmers Market and the adjacent Grove shopping center are such a tourist destination in Los Angeles, if you do come to the city be sure to seek this place out for something a little different from the tourist fudge that you find at many places. (Though they certainly have fudge.) It’s a classic, working farmers market and they actually make the candy right there with big plate glass windows so you can learn all of their sugary secrets.

There are a couple of other iterations of the famous red foil Rocky Road. One is Mint, which I found only recently but was in such bad condition, I could hardly give it a fair review. The second is this one, which I found at the Rite-Aid which is Dark Chocolate.

This bar comes in a pleasant, lightly gold-tinted wrapper. I’ve decided that all Rocky Road bars are dented and cracked as a consequence of the scant packaging. No matter, it doesn’t seem to affect the taste at all. This bar doesn’t smell quite as chocolately as the milk chocolate one does, but does have a very sweet aroma.

The marshmallow is thick and foamy, but not very moist. It has some good give to it without being too rubbery and a not-too-fake vanilla taste to it. There’s very little contribution from the cashews in the chocolate coating except for some texture. I think the bar might be better served without them, but then I’d probably notice that the quality of the coating chocolate isn’t really that good.

Overall, I liked it quite a bit better than the traditional milk Rocky Road, but its rarity is an impediment to purchasing it again. I’ve been in plenty of Rite-Aids in Los Angeles and this is the first time I’ve seen this there and it’s not good enough for me to keep going back to that particular Rite-Aid (Santa Monica Blvd. & La Brea).

I know there are times when I’m thinking about the future of candy and I say to myself, “why can’t red vines be more like string cheese?”

Well, Twizzlers has answered the call of curiosity: What would happen if you made red licorice in the string cheese format?

First, it’d be pretty. That’s part of why I bought this, it was so cute. It looks like telephone cable! But it doesn’t taste like it. Second, it’d be interactive. The candy is basically red licorice laces twisted together and lightly fused into short ropes. There are three colors of the laces: red, orange and yellow.

This flavor is called Paradise Punch. I was hoping that each of the strands would be a different flavor, but it didn’t taste that way. They were all that typical red fruit punch flavor. What was rather overwhelming was the chemical taste, like plastic or some sort of volatile compound. The lingering chemical smell and taste just left a bad taste in my mouth. They were soft and chewy, just not tasty.

I tried taking it out of the package (in case it was the wrapper) and leaving it out for a while, but that didn’t seem to make the flavor dissipate. Which makes me wonder if that’s how it’s supposed to taste. I actually do love Twizzlers and maybe if I see the regular red flavor (or a Twizted red and black) I’ll give it another try. For now, I’ll have to pass on the chemical cocktail.

I bought this tin of Java Bark on sale just after Christmas from Crate & Barrel. At only $4.50, marked down from $15.00, I couldn’t resist. Besides, I was buying some Mint Cookie Joys, so the shipping was a done deal.

I wasn’t quite sure what Java Bark was going to be, and it’s not quite what I was expecting. I didn’t know if was going to be chocolate or toffee or good. And it was none of those things.

Basically it’s a sweet coffee flavored “chocolate” with chocolate cookie chunks in it sprinkled with a coffee powder and then drizzled with some white chocolate. They’re cut into squares (about 2”) and individually wrapped. Then they’re tucked into a pretty oval tin.

Did I mention the tin is really pretty?

The little plastic wraps are incredibly hard to open for some reason, which leads me to believe that these are not made by Harry London, who made the Mint Cookie Joys, because those little cello sleeves were easy to open.

Once open the squares have a very sweet, coffee smell to them. The “chocolate” has a rather graham flavor to it, a bit grainy and after looking at the label, I see that it’s not really chocolate at all. The cookie bits are firm and crunchy and actually really good, mostly because they add a dash of salt to the sweet and chalky combination. The coffee powder (coffee grounds) gives the whole thing and unpleasant grain but a good boost of flavor.

The nicest thing about these is that I can bring them to work and set the tin out and no one will think I’ve pawning off Christmas candy on them. And that’s just what I’m going to do. I’ve gotta make room for the Valentine’s sale candy.

There are a lot of new Hershey’s Kisses out. Some of them are natural progressions of the classic milk chocolate morsel. Dark Chocolate and their sassy purple foils are one of those and of course Hugs with their almond centers. Some of the new Hershey’s Kisses sound like pre-existing products in the Hershey’s repertoire. When I heard about the Caramel Kisses, I thought, “Aren’t those just Rolos?”

Rolos have been around in the United States since 1971 and I think I remember their introduction. I also remember some of the other advertising campaigns, including the Rolo song (You can roll a Rolo to your pal/it’s chocolate covered caramel ...  you can roll a Rolo to your friend/it’s chocolate covered caramel from end to end). They’ve never held much interest for me, I enjoy eating them with other things, like pretzels or apples, but not just as a treat by themselves.

The Caramel Kisses are soft, flowing caramel in a molded chocolate shell shaped like a Kiss. Rolo is a soft but chewy caramel in a molded chocolate shell shaped like a tall disk.

The chocolate on the Caramel Kiss is sweet and likable, with a fair amount of grain and that inimitable Hershey’s tang to it . The caramel is flowing and sweet with only a slight toasted sugar note to it. The vanilla is rather chemical in nature. They’re a good size and have a good proportion to the elements.

The Rolo has a very sweet chocolate outside, with a fair amount of grain and a sort of “graham” taste to it. The caramel inside is pleasingly soft but not messy and flowing. It’s chewy without pulling on the teeth. It doesn’t have much flavor to it, not much of a toasted sugar note, but it’s smooth and milky. They smell of sugar and fake vanilla.

Frankly, neither of these candies float my boat. I know that in a Head-to-Head the battle is supposed to be fierce and the winner takes a huge prize, but I’m just not fond of either of these candies enough to purchase them again. Instead it’s one of those board games that you start and it gets so complicated or boring that you just agree to wander away.

Sometimes it’s packaging that keeps me coming back to a product line.

I just love these little cans and medallions of chocolate. I’m not fond of the price, but in this case it was a gift. It’s the last of the flavors from Splendid Specialties that I needed to try. Tea is pretty high up there as a flavor in my Pantheon.

The disks of chocolate are wrapped in orange foil and stamped with a little leaf emblem. The chocolate is sweet and milky and has a strong but still soft orange component. The black tea flavors come from actual black tea leaves in the chocolate. These aren’t terribly distracting from the smooth quality of the chocolate but they do provide a fair amount of grit from time to time.

What I appreciate about this combination is that there’s no clove in there. Most orange/tea combos end up with clove in the mix, which I just don’t like.

The tea flavors linger in the mouth in a good way, but I think I still prefer the Jasmine one I tried first last spring. The packaging makes it ideal for carrying on trips because it can’t get crushed easily. Or perhaps put it in a picnic basket - there are six pieces in each little can and it’s resealable. I wish Splendid Specialties would tackle dark chocolate. I think all their flavors would be equally compelling mixed in some smooth and bitter Belgian chocolate. But let’s face it, this is special occasion chocolate, at $3.00 - $3.50 for ounce and a half, I’d rather get a Dagoba bar.

For reference I tried Jasmine Green Tea Chocolate (8 out of 10) and Emperor’s Ginger Tea Chocolate (7 out of 10).