Last year Just Born launched Chocolate Covered Peeps. It was a natural evolution, as Peeps were already made in a variety of shapes and colors and even flavors. But the one thing lacking in that new product was an essential part of the Peeps experience: the sugar crust.

This year we have another new version, Peeps Milk Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow. It’s exactly what it sounds like. A single Peep partially dipped in milk chocolate. They’re packaged in a tray of three, similar to the way the Sugar Free Peeps are sold. They come at a premium price, I paid $1.99 for my 1.5 ounces of new newness.

Each Peep is about a half an ounce. They’re fully formed, not formerly conjoined like the row of Peeps that usually come in a tray. They have a squat and wide base and just the very bottom of the base has a light coating of sweet milk chocolate.

They’re well protected by the overpackaging of the deep plastic tray. They’re also very fresh, though I prefer mine a little tacky and chewy. (I didn’t wait for some to get stale to post this review.)

The chocolate sticks well to the marshmallow, so even though it crunches when bitten, it doesn’t flake off easily. The flavor is quite milky and sweet and it’s passably smooth. The grain of the sugar crust would probably ruin any appreciation of a silky smooth chocolate anyway. The marshmallow is soft and chewy and relatively flavorless aside from the sweetness. They were probably some of the best Peeps I’ve ever had though I don’t care much for them ordinarily.

The proportion of chocolate to marshmallow was pretty good. Most of all I wanted something to cut the sweetness of the sugar crust and though the milk chocolate did a bit, it really wasn’t enough to warrant me buying these again.

I would love to try them with a really good dark chocolate dip. And I wouldn’t be adverse to seeing them in different flavors either. (Peppermint and dark chocolate? Especially if it wasn’t colored.)

UPDATE 3/28/2011: Oh, yes, they do make Dark Chocolate ones and Milk & Dark Dipped Mousse!

Related Candies

1. Peeps Chocolate Dipped Marshmallows
2. CVS Marshmallow Pop
3. Whitman’s Marshmallow Eggs & Carrot
4. Chocolate Covered Peeps
5. Peeps Mash Ups - Savory
6. Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbits
7. Peeps Mash Ups

One of the most popular chocolate brands in Europe is Milka. It’s currently distributed by the international food conglomerate Kraft but began its existence as a family chocolate brand made by Suchard back in the early 20th century. I tried the version that’s available in the States about four years ago.

Milka is, of course, known as milky chocolate, very similar in profile and price to Cadbury. However, instead of putting vegetable oil in the chocolate, Milka uses just a touch of hazelnut paste.

Milka is now widely available in the United States but I wanted to pick up some while I was in Europe, just in case it was a little different. I did find this assortment called Milka NAPS Mix in Germany. It features four different varieties of tiny bars: Alpenmilch, Crunchy Caramel, Erdbeer & Creme au Cacao.

The little bars are about 4.25 grams, individually wrapped and easy to identify your favorite. The bars are about 1.5 inches long.

The traditional Milka is just as I remember it. Milky, sweet, smooth and not very chocolatey. They’re a good candy and at this size, and excellent little tough-covering pick me up. The hazelnut is just a light hint of roasted nuts, not like a thick gianduia. It’s much creamier than I recall the American packaged bar I tried, though as someone who likes a lot of either chocolate in my chocolate or hazelnuts in my gianduia, this didn’t quite fit my personal profile.

The Milka Crunchy Caramel is the same little bar with some toffee chips in it. (Not Daim chips, for some reason.) I liked the crunchy texture and light salty hint, though sometimes they tasted a bit like butterscotch and not quite like toffee. This was my favorite of the mix, now I’m sorry I didn’t pick up the Daim version of Milka.

The Milka Erdbeer is the milk chocolate with dried strawberry bits in it. The strawberry bits taste real, but have a grainy quality to them that kind of ruins the texture of the chocolate at time. Still, the milk and strawberry flavor was great, it reminded me of neapolitan ice cream.

This was the only filled bar in the mix. The center was a thin little strip of chocolate creme. It really didn’t taste that much different than the standard Milka Bar, mostly because of the proportions. It had more of a chocolate frosting flavor to it though. It was my least favorite of the mix.

I like that Milka comes in so many different varieties and that the European versions also come in different sizes and seasonal variations. This box of chocolate though was a bit on the expensive side, compared to the large 100 gram (3.5 ounce) tablet bars at 3 Euros (about $4). Basically, I could have bought one of each of these varieties as a full sized bar for about the same amount of money, but had more than 3 times as much candy.

I have a dark chocolate version of a Milka bar at home, I’m hoping that’s a bit more to my personal liking, but mixes like this always have something to please most folks. (And I did finish most of the box without any help from anyone else.)

Related Candies

1. Kraft Daim
2. UK vs US Cadbury Dairy Milk
3. Terry’s Chocolate Toffee Crunch Orange
4. Toblerone Single Peaks
5. Milka Alpenmilch
6. Caffarel Gianduias

The Daim bar is a popular crunchy toffee bar covered in chocolate that originated in Sweden.

According to Wikipedia, the development tale is rather curious. Marabou, the preeminent Swedish chocolate company, approached Heath Bar back in the early 1950s for permission to license the Heath name and recipe to be produced for the Swedish/Norwegian marketplace. Heath said they couldn’t but did furnish the basic recipe so Marabou created the Daim Bar. The Daim went on to become quite a sensation, so much so that Hershey’s decided it needed its own crunchy toffee bar and copied the Daim in the US and called it Skor (along with the tag line of “The Taste of Sweden” in their launch advertising). The funniest part of the whole thing about Hershey’s marketing a copy of a Swedish candy that was a copy of an American candy was that Hershey’s ended up buying Heath Bar when they acquired Leaf Candy Company in 1996.

Marabou, in turn, was bought out by Kraft back in 1993 which distributes the Marabou chocolate products around the world. The easiest place to find Daim bars is at IKEA.

The bar does look a lot like the American Skor. It’s a smallish bar, flat and with a crisp buttery toffee center with a few bits of almonds in there. The milk chocolate coating is a little thicker on top with some attractive swirls and waves.

At only 28 grams (about .99 ounces) it’s a small bar but provides a lot of crunch.

I’ve bought this bar at least three different times for review on Candy Blog and each time I’ve managed to eat it before reviewing. (The photos here are from a 2008 episode where at least the bar made it into the studio for documentation.)

While I was in Europe I was pleased to see Daim widely available. Not only does it come in the familiar bar format, the toffee chips are also used in other co-branded confections, like a version of the Milka Bar (Jim’s Chocolate Mission has a review)

Since I knew I could find another bar in the States if I wanted it, I picked up this 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bag of Daim. The package says nothing else on the front - no description, no brand name ... just Daim. Not even the fact that this is not a bar but little chocolate covered nuggets. I guess the picture on the front says it all. My guess is since Daim is available in so many countries, it’s just confusing to say things, why not show them? The back of the package features micro-printing to accommodate at least 8 different language versions of the ingredients and still no actual name of the product. So I’m going to call these Daim Nuggets.

The little pieces are actually better, in my opinion, than the bar. I loved them. The chocolate is certainly not of excellent quality but good enough for this purpose. It’s milky and sweet and just creamy enough. It seals in the crunchy pieces of toffee to keep them from getting sticky and syrupy.

The toffee has a light burnt taste to it, plenty of milk and a touch of salt. It’s crunchy and every once in a while I think I got a little bit of an almond. The toffee is cooked to perfection - it’s crunchy but not too hard (having small pieces helps) and also doesn’t get tacky or stick to my teeth in large clumps.

I bet this is great on ice cream or added to cookies, of course it would need to come in larger bags, because this one is empty.

Other Daim reviews: Chocablog, Jim’s Chocolate Mission and Candy Addict.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
2. Godis Gula Snoren (Toffee Laces)
3. Lindt Excellence Toffee Crunch
4. Roca Buttercrunch Thins
5. Valerie Toffees & Nougats
6. See’s Peanut Brittle Bar

Christopher’s Good News bar is something of a mystery to me. It’s currently made locally in Los Angeles by Adams-Brooks but before that it was created back in the late thirties by Ben Myerson for his newly founded Ben Myerson Candy Company. In 1955 the Ben Myerson Candy Company acquired Christopher’s Candy which was already a venerable confectioner in Southern California since 1887. In 2006 Ben Myerson was bought up by Jelly Belly, who quickly gobbled up the Sunkist Fruit Gems brand and spun off the chocolate products like the Good News bar and Christopher’s Big Cherry to Adams-Brooks.

The bars were extremely popular as a gift parents would hand out to friends heralding the birth of their baby. The package design to this day looks like a newspaper masthead and my bar even had a little sticker that said “it’s a girl”. But the curious thing about this bar was instead of going national, as other brands within Ben Myerson’s company did, the Good News bar became hyper-regional. In fact, the only place it’s still sold widely is in Hawaii. I happened to find my bar at Marukai Market in Torrance, CA which is a Japanese grocery store that also carries a lot of Hawaiian favorites (as many Southern California Japanese folks either immigrated through Hawaii or have relatives there).

The bar’s description is rich milk chocolate, peanuts, caramel. What the description doesn’t mention is that there’s also crisped rice in there. Looking at all that, you can see that it’s actually a unique bar, there are no other nationally distributed bars that match this element combination.

The bar is beautifully enrobed in a rippled, dark looking milk chocolate. The center is a combination of caramel, peanuts and crisped rice. The ingredients are wholesome and easy to understand and probably the worse thing on the list is a little bit of hydrogenated cottonseed oil towards the end.

The chew is firm and light with a good balance of crisped rice. There weren’t that many peanuts in my bar, enough to impart a nutty flavor but the cereal flavors of the crisped rice definitely won out. The caramel had a milky flavor that was far stronger than the chocolate, which was passable and well-tempered. I was afraid the bar would be messy to eat, as sometimes chocolate coatings flake off, but this was easy to bite even slice.

I’m not sure why these bars aren’t more popular. The elements are similar to a 100 Grand but with a few peanuts tossed in (and an extra quarter ounce for the same price).

Related Candies

1. Sunkist Fruit Gems
2. Snickers Xtreme
3. Nestle Lion
4. 100 Grand with Peanuts
5. Christopher’s Big Cherry is Big Peanuts

Just Born has been steadily expanding the Peeps line of products for the the past five years or so. Beyond just new colors and shapes for the iconic sugar crusted marshmallows, they’ve also delved into flavors and more recently, the addition of chocolate.

The newest member of the Peeps repertoire is Peeps Peepsters Chocolate with Marshmallow Flavored Creme. They come in two varieties, milk and dark chocolate and sound like an interesting new version, more about the chocolate and less about the marshmallow.

I found them at the drug store before Valentine’s Day, so I paid full price for my bags - $3.99, which I found startling for 11 ounces of candy whose first ingredient was sugar and contained palm kernel oil.

I’ll start with the Peepsters Milk Chocolate with Marshmallow Flavored Creme which are enclosed in an easy to spot yellow bag with brown and green trim. The pieces inside are visible through a little window and foil wrapped in a matte pastel assortment of yellow, orange and pink.

The pieces are a little bit bigger than a Rolo. They feel solid and firm. Even without unwrapping them a vague soft vanilla flavor wafted from the bag. The little domes on the pieces have a little Peep on them, but that’s the only chicky thing about them. There’s really nothing that otherwise makes these feel Peepy except that the packaging tells me so.

The chocolate is smooth and has an excellent snap (however, it is rather cold in Los Angeles right now, they’ve been sitting in the unheated Candy Blog studio, which is about 58 degrees right now). It’s quite sweet but what’s most notable about the creme center is how firm it is. It seems to have the same density as the chocolate. So biting into it is like biting into a thick chunk of chocolate. As you can see from the cross section, there’s a lot of chocolate and not much filling.

The chocolate is sweet and milky, which adds to the marshmallow notes. The cream center does melt a bit on the tongue, kind of like a white chocolate but without the extra milk notes and malty flavor. Instead it’s all vanilla and sweetness. I didn’t get marshmallow at all. If this was served to me without a name, I don’t think think I would have come up with marshmallow as a descriptor. The essential elements of marshmallow are missing. (Lightness, fluffiness and smooth melt.)

The Peepsters Dark Chocolate filled with Marshmallow Flavored Creme are similar to the milk counterpart. They come in a blue bag with white polka dots and the same brown trim. The foil wrapping on the pieces is blue, green and lilac. (So you could mix these in a bowl and knowing the key, pick out your preference.)

The dark chocolate contains milk fat, so it’s not suitable for vegans ... but the creme center has milk products in it anyway. There is no gelatin in it though, so lacto-ovo vegetarians can indulge if they want to. The thickener used for the center is gum arabic.

The caloric density on the dark version is slightly higher, there are two more grams of fat per serving in this version.

Again there’s nothing Peepish about these. They have a much more pronounced vanilla smells to them, and less of the milky notes.

The chocolate is deep and rich, though not entirely well rounded. There are bitter, woodsy notes of charcoal and a lack of fruity notes to balance it all out. So it’s a very rough sort of flavors in combination - the one note sweet vanilla flavored center and then the cocoa powder outside. The balance of sweetness in this was much better though, so I definitely felt much less throat-searing on this version.

It’s an interesting brand extension from a company that I’ve never really though of much more than a sugar candy manufacturer. The foil is cute, but the ratio of center to chocolate was a bit off for something that I thought was going to have the lightness of marshmallow. The attention to detail on the production though is much better than my recent experiences with the Chocolate Covered Peeps. The pieces were well made and protected appropriately by their wrappings. I like that there’s no unnecessary food coloring used in the centers to make them violently yellow - so parents can feel better about giving these to kids. And for once vegetarians can enjoy a Peeps product.

But if I were to pick up an Easter themed cream, I think I’d stick with the Russell Stover eggs line, even though the ratio of chocolate to cream is pretty much the opposite.

UPDATE 11/29/2012: Just Born updated the packaging look for Peepsters this year, though the product remains the same. They also introduced a Christmas-themed version with red and green foil wrappings.

Related Candies

1. Peeps Dark Chocolate Covered Mint Marshmallow
2. Chocolate Covered Peeps
3. Peeps Mash Ups - Savory
4. Russell Stover Eggs
5. Peeps Mash Ups
6. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel

Last year Mars announced a new Limited Edition Twix that would hit store shelves this spring: Twix Coconut.

It seems like a natural extension, since they also made a Coconut version of M&Ms as a limited edition that went over so well they added them as a regular item.

The Twix package will be easy to spot, it has a white background but features the gold metallic background and red Twix logo in the center.

The coconut scent is convincing, it’s rich and buttery with that inimitable tropical note. The cookie is crunchy and sandy giving a great textural counterpoint to the chewy pull of the caramel. The chocolate is passable, it’s creamy and sweet but doesn’t pack much chocolate punch overall. The coconut flavor permeates all parts of the bar but actual coconut is nowhere to be found. So for fans of the Coconut M&Ms, these will be of equal fascination. For folks who were hoping for something more like a cross between a Mounds Bar and the old Cookies n Creme Twix (in this case the cream would be a real layer of coconut), well, you’ll be disappointed.

The first stick I ate, I wasn’t really that impressed. Twix really aren’t my favorite candy bar, I find them too sweet. But by the time I ate the second bar (which was admittedly months later), I really enjoyed how the coconut flavor moderated the sweetness and brought the textures together.

Like other limited edition Twix products, this was made in Russia. They are not Kosher and of course contain dairy, soy and wheat but also traces of peanuts, tree nuts and eggs. They’ll be available in stores in April 2011 (and sometimes these things pop up a little sooner due to eager store owners putting out the inventory early).

Related Candies

1. Eat with your Eyes: Twix Coconut
2. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
3. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
4. Triple Chocolate Twixels
5. Java Twix
6. Twix PB
7. Kisses Coconut Creme

I found this box of Tootsie Chocolate Covered Raspberry Cremes in with the Valentine’s candy at Walgreen’s, but I don’t see why this is a seasonal item and it doesn’t say that it’s Limited Edition.

The box says that there’s Delight in each bite!. The design is, well, odd and out of place. There’s a little Tootsie logo in the corner, but I never really think of Tootsie when I think of Junior Mints, which is a similar product.

They look just like Junior Mints. They’re same size and shape and have the same deep dark chocolate shell with a glossy shine. They smell, well, like perfume made for fashion dolls. It’s a floral raspberry but has a soft fake vanilla note to it as well.

The chocolate is thin but has a crisp crunch to it and protects the gooey innards very well. The raspberry flavor is all sweetness and floral artificiality. It’s an interesting mix, the chocolate is not very strong, but has a decent cocoa punch. The fondant is sticky and sweet, and a little grainy like a frosting or glazed donut might be.

They were intriguing, but not compelling for me. The raspberry wasn’t overpowering but also didn’t wow me much. I like the idea of other flavored centers for Junior Mints, like orange or chocolate or maybe maple. I’m sure some folks are going to absolutely love these. If I were making them though, I probably would just keep them as a seasonal item.

Raspberry Cremes are made in a peanut free and gluten free facility. (The do contain soy, eggs and dairy.)

Related Candies

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2. Junior Fruit Cremes
3. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
4. Junior Mints Peppermint Crunch
5. Mountain - Regular & Raspberry
6. Junior Mints - Heart Shaped

While in Germany a couple of weeks ago I scoured the store candy aisle for products that were either unique or perhaps just like ones we get in the United States. I was excited to find this boxed selection in an Aldi Süd market in Cologne called Die Besten von Ferrero. It’s a dark chocolate mix of the best of Ferrero, makers of the famous Ferrero Rocher. This mix contains a luxurious sampling of their dark chocolate items: Dunkel Kusschen (10x), Mon Cheri (10x) and Rondnoir (6x).

The exciting part for me was twofold. First, I’ve never had the European version of Mon Cheri (more on that later) and second, that I found the Küsschen in the new dark chocolate version.

The box was nicely organized and though it felt like a bit of over-packaging from the viewpoint of someone who had to lug everything back to the States on the train/plane, it did the job very well. Each little compartment held its pieces in place. The whole box was shrink-wrapped, each piece was individually wrapped and the Mon Cheri has an additional sealed, plastic sleeve. All emerged un-scuffed and shiny. The package says that it’s a limited edition item, but it’s just this assortment and format, each of the items are available independently.

A few years ago I reviewed the American version of the Mon Cheri. It was a little nugget of milk chocolate filled with crushed hazelnuts and a hazelnut paste. People loved it, but it was confusing because in Europe the Mon Cheri is actually a liquored up cherry in dark chocolate. Slowly the hazelnut Mon Cheri disappeared from American stores. However, I noticed overseas that there was a product that was like the American version, the Küsschen. The Küsschen was introduced in 1968 but this dark chocolate version is a little more recent.

The Küsschen wrapper is a light paper foil with the name clearly marked (though hard to tell from the milk version) and a little image of the candy on the front with some hazelnuts.

The Küsschen is a little piece, about the same size as the Mon Cheri or Pocket Coffee. It’s a hard chocolate shell filled with a thick, nutty chocolate cream filled with crushed hazelnuts and a whole nut at the center. It’s exactly one inch wide at the base and about 2/3 of an inch high.

The piece smells much sweeter than it actually is. The scent is a combination of hot cocoa and dark roasted hazelnuts. The bite is crisp; there are a lot of crunchy nut pieces in the filling. The filling, however, is not like I would have expected. I thought it would be a bit of a Perugina Baci clone. Instead the center isn’t sticky or sweet, just a bit of a firm ganache type filling. The nuts take front and center, and by center I mean the middle of the piece is one large, perfectly roasted hazelnut. It’s crunchy and has wonderful toffee and pecan notes with no fibery chew that I get sometimes with the Oregon variety. The filling is airy, which promotes the hazelnut flavors mixing with the dark chocolate shell. The chocolate is smooth with a light bitter trace to it.

Overall, a not-too-sweet and satisfying little nugget.

The Mon Cheri was a bit of a mystery to me. As far as I knew, it was a cherry centered chocolate candy. There was no need for me to try it, because I knew what it was, something that by its very conception and design was not something I could like.

Each piece is a similar format to the Ferrero Pocket Coffee (in fact, I think they use the same mold). It’s a whole cherry and some liqueur encased in a dark chocolate shell. They’re wrapped in foil and an extra piece of clear cellophane. (I bought them once before last year and was disappointed to find them either oozing a grainy syrup or looking a bit hollow so I never even bothered to photograph them.)

The pieces are messy if you’re the type who likes to bite things open, then place them on a table to shoot with a camera. In fact, I recommend not biting them unless the whole thing is in your mouth.

The cherry is firm and crunchy, with an authentic Bing or Rainier cherry flavor. It’s tart and sweet with some deep raisin or fig notes. But the part that sells it is the liquor. This isn’t just a dash of the stuff or something within a sticky fondant. This liquor syrup is, well, all liquored up. There’s a slight alcoholic burn with some light rum notes to it. (The package and Ferrero website don’t specify the alcohol type.)

I loved the combination, the cherry brings a fruity sweetness, the chocolate has a creamy and slightly dry finish while the liquor syrup give it a decadent appeal of a cocktail. I’m not a big fan of harsh spirits (though I love a really herby Gin and Tonic sometimes) but there’s something about what a liquor does when it infuses a piece of real fruit.

I reviewed the Ferrero Rondnoir when it was first introduced in the United States in 2007.

At its heart is a small dark chocolate pearl floating in a mass of chocolate paste inside a crunchy wafer shell. That is covered in a crispy chocolate sprinkling. They’re wrapped in an elegant, textured brown foil and packaged in a little fluted cup.

I see them sold in the US, unlike the other two components to this box, at drug stores and discount chains like Target or KMart. They come in a little single serve package of three or in full boxes and sometimes in mixes, especially around the holidays.

As I’ve already reviewed them, this is just a little review for myself to confirm that they’re not only a unique product, they’re also quite tasty. In fact, I think my original review pegged them as tasty (8 out of 10) but I’m upgrading them to yummy (9 out of 10). That could just be the liquor talking though.

I feel like Ferrero is preparing to release the Küsschen in the United States, though I have nothing more to go on than the fact that they discontinued the hazelnut Mon Cheri. The big issue would be to find a name for it that doesn’t require an umlaut or resonates more with Americans. The fact that it means little kiss might be a trademark issue because of both the Hershey’s Kiss and possibly the Italian Perugina Baci (also means kiss).

This was the perfect sort of box of chocolates for me. It contained adventure (I tried something new), tried and true comfort and a conclusion to the search for a replacement for a discontinued product. The fact that they’re also all dark chocolate and less sweet than some other Ferrero products was a bonus for me. Some of these assortments can be purchased online as well as in Duty Free shops at airports around the world - the family of Ferrero Rocher products are quite popular in Asia.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Delights
2. Hachez Edel Vollmilch Nuss (Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts)
3. Short & Sweet: Hazelnut Bites
4. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
5. Ferrero Rocher
6. Ferrero Mon Cheri
7. Baci Bar