Candy Blog

Oh dreadful day, I’m gonna just relieve you of any curiosity about these. They’re just bad.

Necco Smoothies are a new set of flavors of the good old fashioned Necco wafers. Smoothies, I’m guessing, are supposed to be fruit shake flavors. The package says: Blueberry, Banana Caramel, Tropical, Peach and Strawberry Creme.

They smelled really bad. I don’t think they would smell bad individually, but as a group the combination of the sweet, artificial fruit scents was just nauseating. Like a set of cheap candles.

The colors just weren’t doing it for me either. The chalky tablets looked more like antacids or perhaps some barrettes I had when I was in middle school. But I closed my eyes and went for the taste test:

White = Tropical: What does that mean? I think it was supposed to be pina colada or something with coconut in it. It was mild and pleasant. Not overtly flavorful, but simply sweet.

Yellow = Banana Caramel: Hey, this one’s pretty good, it reminds me of the long-lost Wacky Wafers. It’s not all banana, there’s a little hint of the caramelized sugar in there.

Orange = Peach: I know I mention my feelings for cherry flavored things from time to time, and this means that I’ve neglected my detestment for all things peach flavored. Don’t get me wrong, I love peaches. I just don’t like peach flavored things.

Blue = Blueberry: things flavored like blueberries never taste like blueberries. In fact, blueberries have very little flavor to me; they’re all about the texture. Sure, they’re sweet and tangy, but when you close your eyes and forget about what you’re eating, they taste kind of like iced tea. Maybe it’s the antioxidants or polyphenols or whatever in there that tea and blueberries have in common, but I’m happy to eat fresh blueberries but I don’t want blueberry flavored things.

Pink = Strawberry Creme: The strawberry flavor is very strong and has a slight tang to it, like a yogurt. It wasn’t offensive or off balance like the peach, but it wasn’t really that pleasant either. The chalkiness of the candy itself and the attempt at a creme flavor just reek of insincerity.

Now, I might be alone here in my estimation for these. Amy, my neighbor and co-worker seems to think that these are pretty good. She liked the Peach, she liked the Blueberry! Hey, that makes me the best next door neighbor ever ... all the flavors I don’t like, she’ll eat.

What I’ve always liked about the original Neccos is that I will eat all the flavors (except clove). So there’s value there. Same with Lifesavers, SweeTarts, Skittles and Starbursts. Sure, there are flavors I don’t like, but it’s usually one. If I’m not going to eat 3/5 of the flavors in a roll of Smoothies, it’s a total loss as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, so you can see from the photo what the color/flavor distribution in this roll was. So I’ve eaten all the Banana and the Tropical, and I’m left with this huge pile of Strawberry, Peach and Blueberry. I wonder if they’ll make good sidewalk chalk?

Note: Do take a moment and visit the Necco website. It is a little behind (highlighting Easter candies, but maybe they’re just letting people come look at the stuff because they’re still buying it on sale) but it’s nicely done and provides a lot more information about their history and candies than many other sites run by bigger companies. There’s even a section that shows how Necco Wafers are made.

You know if I’m not eating candy or writing about candy, I’m out on the internet reading about candy and looking at candy photos.

Last week I stumbled across two incredible sets of photos on Flickr, here’s a small sample:

Joshua has over 175 photos of individual pieces of Halloween candy, both wrapped and then unwrapped.

I emailed him, and he gave me the story behind it. He collected a barrel of candy (50 gallons!) for Halloween as part of his work as a youth pastor. They did a huge challenge called the Pumpkin Hunt for middle and high school aged kids, kind of like a treasure hunt:

We divide kids up into teams of like 4-6 each and they race through different clues that send ‘em all over the place in our community and the first one to make it to the candy wins. There’s also a combination lock on the candy, and along the way they pick up 3 numbers to the lock and have to get ‘em in order and unlock the padlock to actually win.

Wow, way harder than Trick-or-Treat, but it sounds a lot more fun. I wonder if the winner got the whole 50 gallons?

About a month ago a friend went to Seattle. Being a good friend she asked me if I wanted anything (knowing it would be a candy request). I told her that several people recommended Fran’s Chocolates, specifically their salt caramels. I even emailed her the locations of their shops to help her find the place.

Well, as luck would have it, she was up there for a panel discussion and one of the hospitality gifts was this package of Gray Salt Caramels ... so they must be famous!

The side of the package heralds them as “Award Winning! Soft butter caramels sprinkled with flavorful gray sea salt harvested off the Brittany Coast.”

I had to do some digging, I saw on their website that the caramels won the 2003 NASFT Outstanding Confection award, but I had no clue what NASFT was. Turns out it’s the The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, so I guess it’s like the Oscars (tm) for fancy food. (The run the fancy food shows in San Francisco, Chicago and New York ... something for me to put on my list o’ things to do.)

The caramels are covered in dark chocolate which helps to highlight the flavors. The caramel is sweet and the chocolate is smooth and creamy and the salt make it all pop. If anything, the salt makes it all taste creamier and richer. The salt itself had a more musky, deep flavor to it than regular table salt (yes, I tried the salt grains alone).

Salted Caramels are all the rage now, I’ve seen quite a few varieties in the past year or so, but I guess Fran’s was one of the first to present them. The large salt grains give a good textural addition besides the obvious salty pop. They’re very satisfying and vibrant on the tongue, but they don’t beg to be eaten over and over again. I had the package for quite a while and didn’t eat them all in one sitting, nor did I want to.

They’re fantastic, but they feel very special. I wouldn’t want a whole box of them, but I’d like a box of Fran’s candy and have a few of these sprinkled in (like this mix).

I’m definitely keen on trying other chocolates in Fran’s line. You can read more about the history of this Seattle Chocolatier on their website.

Kate at Accidental Hedonist also posted about these last week! So at David Lebovitz’s suggestion, I ate the last one upside-down, so that that salt hit my tongue first ... quite intense!

I was overwhelmed by the number of entries and folks de-lurking on the blog. I can’t tell you how much your praise, appreciation and return visits means to me. It’s good to know that my obsession is not uncommon and certainly not as secret as I thought. It made me smile each and every time someone left an enthusiastic entry or a wonderful compliment.

But you’re just here to see about the winner, aren’t you?

First, how I did the drawing: I exported the comment list that includes the name, email address, date & time and IP address of each comment to an excel sheet. Then I sifted through and vetted the obvious, such as if a person commented more than one time, I only used the first comment. This was as good as I could do to keep things on the up-and-up.

Instead writing on slips of paper and picking them out of a hat or something, I went high tech. I sorted the sheet (by one of the fields, I’m not going to tell you which) and then I went to Random.org and used their random number generator to give me a number between 1 and 154. The winner was #13 (hey, I can’t make stuff like this up!).

So, congratulations to Jenna! Her package will go in the post tomorrow. Stay tuned, I’ll be running another giveway (but this time I’m asking something of you!).

One of the must-see chocolate places in NYC is Jacques Torres. Even if you’re not a fan of their chocolate or have little money, it’s still an event. There are two locations in New York, one in Brooklyn and one on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Billed as Chocolate Haven, it truly is a delight for the eyes. The factory is wide open to witness from the street as they craft their handmade chocolate bars and when I was there they were packaging all of their hand-cast Easter goodies. From inside the store you get more than a view, you also get the scents and sounds.

But the best way to appreciate the innards of chocolate making though is from the Chocolate Haven shop. The glass walls enclose this little slice of sweetness and there’s ample room to move around and stop for a cup of hot chocolate at the chocolate bar.

I had a cup of custom blended Wicked (spiced chocolate) and Orange. It was smooth and sweet but not at all sticky. However, it was so rich and the portion (the smallest) was far too much for me to finish. As much as I tried, I couldn’t manage more than half of it.

Again, a little cup of hot chocolate helps me to keep my wits about me in such a place, it satisfies the chocolate craving and keeps me from going nuts and buying everything or gobbling it up as soon as I get away from the cash register with my purchases.

These little bunnies are just cute as bunnies. They’re each a little bigger than my thumb (which is kinda small) and were a good sampling of the Jacques Torres chocolate. The package was very light and as I guessed, they’re hollow ... so the whole thing weighed about 1.4 ounces. It cost $5.

The Dark Chocolate bunny tasted much like the hot chocolate. Smooth and rich with a slight dry finish, it wasn’t terribly complex but had some good woodsy/smoky qualities. I’m guessing this was the house blend variety of their chocolate which is 60% cocoa. The Milk Chocolate was quite sweet and has the European flavor to it, it was also very smooth but with a more fudgy quality to it. It’s one of those milk chocolates that begs you to eat more of it. The White Chocolate was really quite nice too. It’s true white chocolate in the sense that it’s made with cocoa butter and not tropical oils. It smelled very sweet and in fact tasted that way too, but had a slight caramel/vanilla note to it that made it much better than a bowlful of sugar.

They were all very nice, but for the price, first, I’d want solid chocolate. At this rate a pound of little bunnies would be over $50. I understand that more intense products like truffles demand a higher price, but these hardly qualified for such a premium. Not when the single bars of 3.5 ounces sell for $4.

This was my favorite purchase. I almost missed these too, they were placed up at the register and if I hadn’t already picked out the bunnies, I wouldn’t have even bought anything.

These are candied slices of orange that are then dipped in dark chocolate. They are absolutely gorgeous confections. I just couldn’t resist buying them because I knew they would photograph well. Luckily I love candied citrus peel, so I was really looking forward to these. They were just as dense and rich as I’d hoped. The orange slices were soft and juicy and not too sweet. The rind carried strong orange essences without the slightest bit of bitterness. A well-candied citrus rind bears more fruit flavor than a marmalade, which often tastes of sugar syrup.

I’ve not tried the rest of the Jacques Torres line of chocolates, so I can’t comment on the truffles or other chocolate covered goodies. They’re pricey though, but the visit to their shop provides a bit more value to the brand. I give them higher marks than the sole merits of the chocolate in the bunnies, the orange was extraordinary and gives me the confidence to recommend the other chocolate covered goodies I saw. There were fun items like chocolate covered corn flakes, graham crackers and cranberries and traditional fare like apricots, ginger and pretzels. Where the Scharffen Berger line has always been rather traditional in its expression (and I love that) I don’t care so much for the chocolate, just for the filling. Here the chocolate worked as the perfect complement to the orange and I reckon it would make even pedestrian items like corn flakes tasty.

Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven
350 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 414-2462