Friday, May 29, 2009

Nestle Cranberry Raisinets

Cranberry RaisinetsA couple of years ago Nestle finally expanded the Rasinets line by creating “dark chocolate” covered Raisinets.

Now they’ve delved into mucking with the inside of the Raisinet ... the raisin.

In the new Cranberry Raisinets they’ve swapped out the dried grape for dried cranberries.

While the classic Raisinet is pretty simple & pure (just raisins in the center covered with some mediocre milk chocolate then coated with a sealing confectioners glaze), the new Cranberry version is a bit more complicated with a complicated package to match.

Nestle Cranberry Raisinets

First, they’ve gone to a 100 calorie package which is priced the same as a standard serving package. Regular Raisinets currently come in a package with 1.58 ounces in there. The new 100 Calorie Cranberry Raisinets are .81 ounces. (If a package is 75 cents, that’s over $14 per pound.)

The front of the package says: 100% chocolate covered cranberries. I don’t know if that means that each cranberry is completely covered (which isn’t quite true, since some of mine had little bald spots) or that there are no raisins hiding in there ... but what’s really certain here is that there’s more than cranberries in the center.

The centers are “sweetened cranberries” with their ingredients listed as cranberries, sugar and sunflower oil. The little factoid box on the back of the package says: Good to Know: Dried cranberries are one of nature’s best sources of fruit ANTIOXIDANTS. Yes, that’s a nice thought, but there’s less than a half an ounce of cranberries here (I’m being generous with that estimate based on how much of the product is chocolate), so little that there’s no measurable amount of Vitamin C listed in the dietary specs.

Nestle Cranberry RaisinetsAll that prefacing aside, I love dried cranberries. I buy them often and eat them quite a bit (I love them mixed in with raw almonds). I’ve only been able to find the sweetened cranberries, no unsweetened ones seem readily available.

The Cranberry Raisinets are big and plump, usually flat and some of them were conjoined.

The chocolate is sweet, milky and flaky. The flavor is bland with a slight musty & cocoa note to it. The cranberry centers are chewy and tangy but also sweet. The overall effect is, well, sweetness without enough texture variation.

I’ve had quite a few different brands of chocolate covered dried & sweetened cranberries and think they’re just too sweet for the flavor profiles of the chocolate & cranberries to come through strongly.

I don’t see any reason to pay the same amount of money for basically half as much candy, even if it is some sort of portion control. 100 calories of something really tasty might be worth it, but this is simply not worthy of my limited calorie allotments for confections.

Related Candies

  1. Candy Tease: April 2009
  2. Nestle Milk Chocolate
  3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
  4. Trader Joe’s Figments
  5. Figamajigs
Name: Cranberry Raisinets
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: sample from All Candy Expo
Price: $.79 retail
Size: .81 ounces
Calories per ounce: 123
Categories: Chocolate, United States, Nestle, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:57 am Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. Cranberries are too sour to be eaten without sweetening so you won’t find dried cranberries without added sweeteners.  Ditto cranberry juice.

    Comment by maureen on 5/29/09 at 8:48 am #
  2. Cybele's avatar

    maureen - I’ve had unsweetened (and unfiltered) cranberry juice - it’s actually pretty good with a bit of club soda added.

    I wouldn’t advocate eating plain dried cranberries but the sugar content of the chocolate might be fine for offsetting ... or just less sugar added to the cranberries ... they’re really quite flavorless when they’re oversweetened.

    Comment by Cybele on 5/29/09 at 8:50 am #
  3. hmmm, I wondered about those.  I think I will pass. 
    (I love all your reviews btw)

    Comment by dawn on 5/29/09 at 10:36 am #
  4. These look so delish!  My family loves craisins, we eat them all day long.  How much better would they be wrapped in chocolate!  What a brilliant idea.

    Comment by The Sugar Mommy on 5/31/09 at 1:53 am #
  5. Shouldn’t they be calling these CRaisinets?  (Emphasis mine.)  smile

    Comment by Johnny Carruthers on 6/01/09 at 8:52 am #
  6. Trader Joe’s has sold dark chocolate covered cranberries for a while (at least since last Thanksgiving), which are pretty darn tasty!

    Comment by z on 6/06/09 at 8:33 pm #
  7. Should have called them Craisinets. -_-

    Comment by Mackrelmint on 5/30/13 at 6:05 pm #
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