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Friday, June 16, 2006

Florida’s Natural Sour Fruit Juice String

Okay, this product has a freakishly long name ... almost as long as the product itself. The Florida’s Natural Au’some Fruit Juice Sour String (henceforth called Sour Strings) is a long string about the same diameter as a thick clothesline and made from all natural ingredients and fortified with good stuff.

image

What I loved about this product is that they’re true to what they say. The first ingredient is fruit puree 64% is fruit ... then sugar. The puree comes from pears and oranges and the real fruitiness is quite evident. It tastes like a zazzed up fruit roll up, but in a little bit friendlier shape.

The roll of string is coiled up and allows you to unravel a little and then clamp the package shut to cut it off. It’s covered in a little granulated sugar to keep it from getting sticky.

It’s super sour. I mean, the outside really is sassy, back of the mouth tingling sour. Once that dissipates it’s a nice mellow orange flavor with both the sour and zest notes to it. As you eat it there’s a slight grain to it, which I suspect is the pear puree - you know those little crunchy bits you get in pears?

Overall, it’s a really nice fruit and candy product that I would buy again. It’s more wholesome than some other gummis/fruit chews and has no gelatin for vegetarians (and it’s Kosher, too). However, my husband, who usually likes gummis and sours was not wild about it at all, so go figure.

The whole pack has 100% of your vitamin C and 30% of your vitamins A, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin and Iron & Zinc. There’s even 10% of your Calcium. However, I can’t see eating this in one sitting. It’s a nice little pick me up because of the super-sourness, but the texture doesn’t quite engage me the way that a gummi bear does.

The pack is kinda cool, easy to share and easy to throw in a bag or stuff in a pocket. From their website it looks like they also come in bags instead of the hard pack coil and in other flavors (strawberry, apple and blueberry). I also picked up some of their Fruit Juice Nuggets, which I’ll also review shortly. The price is a little steep for so little candy, though the easy to share pack is nice. I recommend looking for them on sale, but you know, fruit is far more expensive than sugar.

Name: Florida's Natural Au'some Fruit Juice Sour String
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Au'some Snack Naturally, Inc.
Place Purchased: All Candy Expo sample
Price: $.99 retail
Size: 1.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 87
Categories: Chew, United States, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:21 am    

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Lindt: 60% Extra Dark Truffles

It’s hard to believe that I’ve never really had the Lindt Lindor truffles before this. I’ve always looked at them like they’re some sort of compromise ... they’re not a candy bar and they’re not a product of a fine chocolatier. So they never really fit the bill at any given moment.

But let’s just start with me saying that I’m surprised at how good they are, and how glad I am to find their newest one that was sampled at the All Candy Expo was the 60% Extra Dark Truffle.

I’ve enjoyed the Lindt bars for quite a while, as they were always easy to find and a rather upscale pure chocolate indulgence at a time when it was pretty hard to find such things ten years ago.

image

In order to see how dark this new truffle was, I decided to try the array from white to extra dark.

White Chocolate (yellow wrapper) - sweet and milky smelling with a strong vanilla note. Buttery and light in the middle. No real flavor to it, just sweet and creamy.

Dark Chocolate (blue wrapper) - nice chocolatey aroma, with some fruity notes. The shell is creamy and smooth and of course the filling is buttery light, but perhaps a little greasy feeling. It could use more cocoa solids in it to give it more flavor. A really good, solid performer. I didn’t know what flavors I had, so I checked at the grocery store and these were 44 cents each there (and I’ve seen them cheaper). For a quick, single pick-me-up, they’re quite the bargain.

Extra Dark Chocolate (black wrapper) - rather fruity smelling with a slight note of coconut. The shell was buttery smooth with a rather noticeable bitter and dry bite that really offset the creamy center. Now that I’ve tried them side by side, I much prefer the Extra Dark because the complex flavors of the shell offset the light, creamy, almost-liquid truffle center.

Hazelnut (bronze wrapper - not pictured) - this one got smashed on the way home and I didn’t think it was fair to take its picture in that state. The center was light and buttery and studded with little hazelnut pieces. It was very sweet and light tasting, but missed some of the darker caramelized notes that I enjoy with many hazelnut products.

Overall, I don’t think I’d turn down these truffles as a gift, but the only one I’m likely to buy for myself is the 60% Dark, as the complexity of it balances the rather heavy fat. They’re a good deal as a small indulgence you get at a grocery store since you can buy them as singles. I’m pretty sure if I had a half a pound of them they’d disappear pretty quickly, whether they were my favorite flavor or not.

UPDATE 10/5/2009: I’ve had more opportunities to try these over the past few years. Lately I’ve been finding the flavor to be a bit “empty”. There’s a wonderful texture, but the slick & oily center seems to dilute the rich chocolate flavor I expect. I’m downgrading them to a 7 out of 10, as I’m finding I’m more likely to give them away than eat them myself.

Related Candies

  1. Guylian Twists
  2. Trader Joe’s French Truffles
  3. Lindt Chocolate Carrots
  4. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
  5. Caffarel Chocolate Truffle Mushrooms
  6. Caffarel Gianduia 1865
Name: Lindor Truffles: Dark, White, 60% Dark & Hazelnut
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: All Candy Expo samples & Bristol Farms Market
Price: $.44 each
Size: 12 grams each
Calories per ounce: 165
Categories: Chocolate, White Chocolate, Nuts, Lindt

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:59 am    

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Smarties Bubble Gum

Smarties had a huge booth at the All Candy Expo, which kind of surprised me because they’re pretty much a one product company. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product, but there’s only so much you can do with it (as far as I knew). They do make some other related products out of their compressed dextrose mix, like the lollies and candy necklaces.

image

Bubble Gum Smarties are a huge departure then, from the chalky little bites in rolls they’ve built their empire on.

They look pretty much like regular Smarties, but the colors are a little more vivid and they’re not chalky or crumbly.

On the tongue they feel different. They’re heavier and of course they don’t dissolve. You have to chew them. Instead of an intermediary step like Razzles have, these turn to gum immediately.

There’s a little flavor to them, and the colors do have slightly different flavors (maybe ... I’m not sure).

It seems to take a whole roll to make a decent piece of gum. I started with four little tablets and then added others to it in pairs as the flavor dissipated. The chew is satisfyingly soft but the flavor is of course all over the map. There’s also a strong sweet aftertaste but it’s all sugar an in there.

As for the bubbles, well, they were pretty good! The gum lost its flavor quickly, and with the combination of colors it turned out to be a slate blue when I tossed it out.

Overall, I didn’t need a Smarties version of bubble gum. I like Smarties just fine the way they are and these aren’t really very Smartie-like except for the look and packaging. They’re a fun giveaway item, for Halloween or keeping in a candy jar. The novelty is great, but the flavor just doesn’t pop enough for me to pick this over a bubble tape or Chicklets. For the record, the original Smarties are a 9 out of 10 ... I love them, but as a pure sugar they’re horribly dangerous to my blood sugar levels, so I try not to eat them on an empty stomach.

James of Chicago Conventions Blog also tried them and wasn’t impressed.

Name: Smarties Bubble Gum
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Smarties
Place Purchased: All Candy Expo sample
Price: unknown
Size: .23 ounces per roll
Calories per ounce: 100 (4 rolls)
Categories: Gum, Ce De Candies, China

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:32 am    

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The Key to Special Dark

imageMy husband happened to be in Chicago at the same time I was (it’s a long story) and stayed at the Hyatt at McCormick place.

What was cool about it was that all the keys cards looked like this: Hershey’s Special Dark bars.

I don’t know if the other hotels had other candy-themed key cards. But I’d love to have a Lemonhead hotel key!

It’s the little touches, right?

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:12 am     All Candy ExpoNews

Navigating a Candy Expo

Just in case you’ve never been to a trade show, this is kinda what my days were like:

I’d get up in the morning about 90 minutes before I was due at the convention center, get showered and dressed and check my internet thingies.

Then I’d walk over to the hotel nearby where the free shuttle would take me to the convention center. I was kinda cheap (it was my dime, after all) and got a nice hotel near the Hilton and saved myself about $45 a night. And by being close enough to the shuttle to walk, I saved myself some taxi fares too. (I did take a taxi on Tuesday morning because it was too early for a shuttle. It cost me $8 with tip.)

Once at the convention center, the first day I had to register. Registration is usually a large ordeal, kind of like checking in at the airport without the metal detectors. Because I was press I had a separate process that meant that I reported to the press room and showed them something to prove that I really was press (a print-out of a blog page with my name on it and a business card I had made).

imageAfter I was credentialed, I got a name badge. Mine was green, which meant press. The pink ones meant exhibitor ... white was buyers. I can’t remember the other versions, but some people had “flair” on their badges depending on sponsorships and associations. The green badge was not all access. I could get onto the show floor, the seminars and the shuttles. I wasn’t allowed on the “Very Important Buyers” boat, which was a catered boat that was moored at the edge of the convention center were buyers could go and get sated.

First thing in the morning I usually attended a seminar, usually at 8 AM. They had continental breakfast! Each seminar was sponsored, and to remind you who sponsored them, there’d be a bowl of candy at each table in the small ballroom where they held the lectures that had their candy in it. I picked up some bags of Coffee Rio this way and ate some yummy snack-sized Take 5 another day.

Then there was the show floor. It was huge, as you can imagine. You can see a map of it here.  The main exhibit hall is 300,000 square feet. Just walking the perimeter of that space is more than a third of a mile ... now imagine that there are ten rows ... seeing everything is a lot of work. Over 400 exhibitors and two and a half days to do it all.

Next year I’ll wear a pedometer!

imageAfter my seminar I’d visit the press room to check my email and blog if I could. There were internet kiosks out on the show floor, but they didn’t have chairs. They also didn’t have free coffee and water.

Out on the floor it was a little overwhelming the first day or so. There were a lot of booths and a lot of stuff being promoted. Things didn’t look like I imagined them and things that were heralded in press releases weren’t always displayed front and center.

The first day I didn’t have a list, per se, of things I wanted to see. I just took it all in. I did have a list of people to connect with though, as this is the most popular day of the show, so I made a point of hooking up with them.

Out on the show floor you’re not supposed to bring your own bags, so they issue you a small gift bag to pack your samples and literature in. I tried to be conservative in actually eating out on the floor, only sampling things that didn’t have take-away samples, and of course taking advantage of any nuts offered for more lasting energy. My bag, however, was usually stuffed to the gills within the first two hours.

Grabbing a bite to eat at the convention center, if you’re not a buyer entitled to the catered boat, was a little tricky. There were a few vendors on site in the “food court” out on the main patio section by Lake Michigan. There were other places to eat, but walking was an issue after a while. Just walking up and down the aisles, to and from the press room and of course to and from the hotel shuttle meant I was probably clocking about 6-8 miles a day.

So I skipped most meals. I did bring along some Lara Bars, which are basically a compressed bar of dates and almonds, which is a pretty good meal replacement for me.

I really didn’t eat that much candy while at the Expo, which is kind of surprising. I was always saving my calories for something better, and then when I’d find something I was really interested in, I’d put it in my bag to bring home.

imageAfter the Expo floor closed at 5PM each day, I’d head back to my hotel. The shuttles were absolutely fabulous. Nice busses equipped with little buckets of candy. The Hilton was really close to McCormick, so it was usually about 15 minutes from door to door. What was also great was talking to folks on the bus. Everyone was so friendly and happy to discuss whatever they were there for, it was a great way to make contacts. I got to talk to both brokers and marketing people. I don’t know if I would have made any inroads with Just Born without having a fab chat on the bus with one of their Chicago-based staff.

Back at the hotel I’d put my feet up and do a little blogging and answer some emails and make phone calls. The wireless internet at the hotel made it easy for me to sit on the bed with my laptop and write or sit at the spacious desk with real desk chair (it’s important!). Every night had a different event, most starting after 7PM. Monday was a reception at the Hyatt by the river, Tuesday was the party hosted by Ferrara Pan at Fulton’s and Wednesday was the House of Blues thing. I’d usually have someone to hook up with at those things, which is good because I am kinda shy when I’m solo. I’d try to grab something resembling dinner at these things, but never really succeeded at any of them.

When the festivities ended, I’d walk back to my hotel. Usually not more than a mile and half and because of the time difference between Chicago and Los Angeles, it was a chance to talk to my husband about our respective days.

Each evening meant that I’d have a new set of contacts to catch up with on the floor the next day or follow up on email when I got home.

If I’ve learned anything from all of this, it’s to travel light on the show floor (which I did, and I’m grateful for) and wear sensible shoes (which I did, for the most part). The one thing I can improve is my sleep. I was really, really tired. Next time I’ll try coming in a day early to get my bearings. And I probably needed to eat more regularly. Well, that’s the constant struggle in my life!

Next year’s Expo will be a little different. They’ve pushed it to September 2007 and it will be larger than ever, this time incorporating snack foods (chips, savory nuts, jerky). They’re still calling it All Candy Expo.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:14 am     All Candy ExpoNews

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