Candy Blog

Botticelli is an upscale chocolate brand in Canada that makes nice bars at reasonable prices. I’ve never seen them in stores, but last year my husband brought me one that he got a London Drugs, so they’re pretty easy to find.

Sam, whom I met at All Candy Expo earlier this summer sent me some excellent bars to try in their Signature line. I want to post about all of them, but I have to finish tasting them all. I had to post about this one first because he sent me TWO bars and both are gone now. The listing of quality ingredients on the label alone made my mouth water.

The Cashew Butter Truffle is a milk chocolate bar with a filling of cashew butter. It’s not quite truffle-like in my estimation, more on the nut butter end of things, but that suits me just fine. The smooth and nutty butter has a good salty hit (though it says there’s no added salt) and a true-to-life flavor of cashews that just sends me over the moon.

My only disappointment about the bar was there were some “unfilled” squares on one end of the bar that were just chocolate. I like chocolate and all, but I really wanted more of that cashwey goodness.

Cashews are so rare in consumer branded chocolates it’s so refreshing to not only find a bar, but find it to be good. If you’re a nut fan, this might be the bar for you. If you’ve seen them in stores in Canada, do let me know where they’ve turned up.

Mmm, more Mentos from the Pacific. These little cuties were also in my package from Santos. It was a mixed bag of miniatures in three flavors. Grape, Apple and Watermelon.

Starting from the left the light yellow-green ones are Apple. It’s a mild apple, not very tangy, but floral and sweet and very pleasant. The candies themselves are a little smaller than the normal Mentos, not just small pack like you’d get Lifesavers.

In the middle are little lilac wonders in Grape, these were, to put it mildly, odd. They were kind of concord grapey and completely unlike those malic acid wonders you find in a roll of SweeTarts. These were floral and had a sort of balsam note that reminds me of concord grape skins when you eat them fresh off the vine. At first I was a little put off, but I chalk that up to the whole expectations thing. When I stopped thinking about it, I really like them and now I’m regretting sending a bunch of them off to the Mentos winner last month.

The more vivid green ones are Watermelon which are very sweet and have an odd note of mint to them (which could be a manufacturing problem). The melon flavor is true and has that sort of woodsy note to it, but no tartness to it. Not my fave but not terrible.

I have to call this one the deal of the month. I find a lot of great deals out there in candy world, but I had to mention this one because I gave the Queen Anne Milk Chocolate Covered Cherries a bad review last year.

So that makes it all the more wonderful that I took a chance on these.

I found them at the 99 Cent Only Store. In fact, I saw them for several weeks at several different stores, which usually means it’s a new item and probably more likely to be fresh. I’ve seen the Queen Anne line at Von’s for $2.99, so at 99 cents, it was quite a deal for 5 ounces of chocolate. They come in a rather elegant stand up cardboard box/bag with a sealed cellophane pouch inside.

I’m a huge fan of Chocolate Covered Candied Orange Peel and the fact that you can’t get such a thing at Trader Joe’s is rather disheartening (I got the “orange sticks” once thinking that’s what they were, but it was a jelly stick covered with chocolate).

These were fresh and glossy and had a wonderful scent of orange zest. The orange peel inside was firm and a little chewy but not overly sweetened. The dark chocolate though not the best in the world was a wonderful sweet complement to the zesty innards.

If I see these again, I’m definitely going to pick them up. I have quite figured out how to decipher the code on the back as to how old these are (164513 was all it said), so I consider them a limited opportunity good deal. At this price they’re an 8 out of 10, at regular price they’re a 6 out of 10 ... so I’m calling them in the middle for the review rating at 7 out of 10.

(Queen Anne Candy is made by the same company that makes those World’s Finest Chocolate bars that the band kids are always trying to sell you.)

I know it’s Halloween, but I’ve decided to cover chocolate covered fruit today. I’ve just had a craving for it, maybe it’s because it’s fall or maybe it’s because I’m lacking some micronutrients or something. I’ve also discovered that chocolate covered fruit is great for snacking on while writing. Especially when mixed with a few nuts like plain raw almonds and pretzels.

Trader Joe’s and their wonderful panned candy supplier have done it again. I just spotted Figments a couple of weeks ago and picked them up immediately. They’re dried black mission fig pieces covered in dark chocolate.

The pieces are quite variable, some as large as the tip of my finger and others the size a sunflower seed. The big ones, of course, were the best because there was a high density of both chocolate and fig. The figness got lost in the smaller pieces.

Dried figs have a wonderful earthy flavor to them, less sweet and tart than raisins. There’s the added bonus of the texture of the seeds, which some people don’t care for, but I think of as tree caviar.

Sometimes the chocolate overpowered the figness and sometimes the figness just wasn’t very powerful. This is definitely an excellent treat to have by your side when writing a novel. (Which I plan to start tonight at midnight, but have sadly eaten all my Figments already.)

I have only one gum that I consume regularly. It’s plain old Chiclets (peppermint). They’re not that easy to find (and I think made in Colombia now) so when I see the multipack at the 99 Cent Only store I usually grab one.

I then empty out the box on my desk and divide the pieces up into groups of three. I chew three pieces at a time and then spit it out when the sugar is gone. Rinse, repeat. A whole box of 12 pieces might last an hour.

Sugarless gum is great for freshening breath and calming a queasy stomach, but Chicklets are like candy to me. But let’s face it, they’re just white tiles ... sometimes I want something pretty to chew on.

So the 99 Cent Only store didn’t have the Chiclets last time I was in there ... so I bought these gumballs (hey, at 4 for 99 cents, how could I resist?). Made by Wonka, they’re plain old large gumballs with Nerds inside.

They’re big gumballs and have a pleasant rattle when you shake them close to your ear. The Nerds inside are confetti colored and have no relation to the outside color/flavor of the gumball itself. Some gumballs had lots of Nerds in them, with 12 being about average. However, there were two gumballs (I consumed two packages) that had four or less.

The gum itself was ordinary with a light fruity flavor.

Orange: orange - mild and pleasant. The tart bump of the Nerds was nice and combined well with the sugary graininess of the gum.

Purple: grape - it had that bitter initial taste to it, which I suspect is the food coloring. The flavor was floral and fruity though it faded quickly but went well with the Nerds.

Red: cherry - a light cherry flavor and a slight bitter tinge but sweet and pleasant after the flavor was halfway gone.

Green: apple - I’m not sure what flavor this was, it was sweet and fruity and had a slight sour bite which goes nicely with the grainy tartness of the Nerds.

Yellow: lemon - sweet and tangy and probably the most flavorful of all of them, not that it lasted very long.

I’m not going to switch to these. The flavor wasn’t very intense, though the gum was nice and soft and had a good sugar charge to it that was supplemented by the Nerds. If you’re one of those people who likes to eat saltines with your gum for a nice crunch, these might be perfect for you.