The Northern Indiana town of Merrillville is home to Albanese Candy. They’re known for their line of “World’s Best Gummy Bears” that sport little A’s on their chests.

One of the most exciting parts of my recent trip was a visit to a real, working candy factory. I didn’t get a special tour or anything, but I always like to get close to the source of candy - even if it’s through a wall of glass. The Albanese Candy Factory is easy to get to, at the junction of I65 and RTE30. (Though Google Maps took me on a far more direct but slower route through the neighboring Indiana towns from I80.)

The factory is nicely situated with a large parking lot and a charming “house” entry for the candy store and tour portion of the facility. Entering the space, at first it just looks like a huge candy store - probably about 2,000 square feet of not just Albanese Candy, but oodles of other bulk items in bins, novelties and classic favorites from all sorts of manufacturers. At the back of this space is the tour.

No photos were allowed of their candy factory tour, which amounts to walking along one wall of the factory and peering into the active operation. I was able to see the starch molds stacked up and ready to be fed into the depositor, which squeezes out the gummy goo that becomes the bears. The next steps were a bit hidden, but the next conveyer showed the completed gummi bears on a belt being tossed around and bagged up. (The true intervening step is that the gummy bears cure for a while in their molds, are then cleaned of their corn starch coats & given a little shine in a tumbler called a panning machine.) The bears were then bagged up and robots came in and created huge boxes then pallets that were moved around.

The space is just a wide carpeted ramp with a few videos to demonstrate and explain the processes. It’s wheelchair accessible and easy for folks to spend as much or as little time on as they want.

I was really interested in the candy store and I wasn’t disappointed. First and foremost they sold Albanese Candy. By the door were piles of boxes of “seconds” at reasonable prices - a 5 lb box of Peach Rings was $8. Great for a party.

The perfect candy was sold either in pre-packs or at one of the three bulk candy stations. There were plenty of helpful and knowledgeable staffers there. All of the items that weren’t individually wrapped were packaged up by request by the staff. They stood there with their tongs, scoops, plastic bags and gloved hands at the ready for any request. They had every Albanese gummy candy I could think of. The standard items were all $2.49 a pound - a great price as anyone who has been to Dylan’s Candy Bar or other mall bulk candy shop will recognize. (Those shops sell Albanese Candy for anywhere between $9 and $14 a pound.)

I picked out their new Natural Sour Poppers, Gummi Butterflies (now in small and large sizes) and Gummi Fishes. I’ve actually had the last two items before, but I thought I’d try them again, especially because I wanted a standard flavor to try against the natural ones.

The packaging was nice. Just little stand-up zipper plastic bags. What I appreciated was the each one got its own label that did list the ingredients for the product - a rare service when buying in bulk. These little four ounce bags were just $65 cents, quite a deal for getting exactly what I wanted.

The new Natural Sour Poppers are cute little smiley faced buttons of gummis. I have no idea what the flavors are supposed to be, or even how many are in the assortment. I didn’t try to overthink them, I just ate them.

Though there’s no sour sanding on them they’re still quite tangy right from the start. They’re soft and squishy with good, well rounded flavors but very much on the sour side. I could pick out the cherry, lemon, orange and pineapple ones, there might have been green apple, fruit punch, strawberry and maybe watermelon in there.

I liked that there were no weird aftertastes associated with the coloring, though the flavors were less vibrant than the traditionally produced ones. They recognizable “emoticon” shape will probably be quite fun for kids. I also appreciate that they’re the same price as the unnatural gummi products.

I’ve reviewed the stunning-looking Albanese Gummi Butterflies before. I’m not quite sure why I picked them up again, but I was enchanted by their appearance. The wingspan on the large ones is a full 3 inches. The small ones are less than half that, at about 1.33 inches across and the same thickness.

Combining the two sizes was actually more satisfying for me than one or the other. I liked the look of them together, the small ones gave context for the large sized shape (which often get folded up). The flavors are the same charming Albanese cherry, orange, grape, punch and apple. I especially liked the orange ones, but found the cherry to have the robust woodsy notes and not too much red food coloring flavor.

Albanese’s chocolate products are far less well known. I picked up only one chocolate item to review, their Dark Chocolate Caramel Marshmallow. The prices on the chocolate items varied depending on the product itself. They had a good selection of traditional chocolate treats like toffee, fruit creams, caramels and nuts. They’re packaged just like the gummis, into little zipper bags.

The Caramel Marshmallow is smaller than the See’s Scotchmallow. A nicely domed piece, they were in pristine, unmarred condition when I bought them but got jostled around a bit in transit (drove to Chicago from there, then flew back to Los Angeles four days later).

It has a nice dark cocoa scent, a little sweet but woodsy. The bite is not at all like I expected a marshmallow to be. Instead of a latexy puff, it was more of a light fluffed cream. It still had a little chew to it, but not at all like I was accustomed to with See’s or Russell Stover. The flavor was barely sweet and had a light hint of vanilla to it (they use both real vanilla and vanillin in them). The caramel was soft and chewy but lacking much of a salty or burnt sugar punch. The dark chocolate was decent quality and well tempered though not complex. They’re certainly edible but of course don’t hold a candle to my favorite, the Scotchmallow. Since they’re about the same price at $11.99 a pound, I can’t see myself getting these again - even though I know they’re extremely fresh.

The diversity of candy offerings in the store is amazing. They had a huge selection of nostalgic favorites, such as swirl lollipops, candy buttons, wax lips and theater box favorites. I lucked out and found Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy as well as the more recent Doscher’s French Chew. They also had a great wall of individually wrapped candies which included Mary Jane’s, Anise Squares, Honey Drops and all sorts of items from Atkinson’s like their Peerless line. I picked up Angel Mints and my mother found Sen Sen and got a tin of Anis de Flavigny. Prices for the candy that they don’t make there is a little more than a drug store but less than most other candy stores.

The shop is only about one hour outside of Chicago and a half an hour south of Gary, Indiana. So if you’re in the area, it’s a nice place to stop. (Though it’d be nice if they also had coffee, we really needed some to go with our toffee that we ate in the car.)

Albanese Candy Factory Outlet Store
5441 East Lincoln Hwy
Merrillville, IN 46410
(219) 947-3070
see website for current hours

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On my recent trip to Ohio I was delighted to visit the local Aldi twice. I was worried there wouldn’t be much candy in the summertime, as I know that Christmas and Easter are the best time to visit Aldi’s candy section. I wasn’t disappointed with the variety of candy. I’ll have coverage in the coming weeks of many of my finds, but first the one that I was most excited about: Choceur Chocolate Crisp Bars.

This cute box holds a compact stack of little chocolate covered wafers with hazelnut creme. There are 10 little bars in there, each portion is two bars, but each finger is only 95 calories for those watching their tally.

The package describes them as crisp wafers and hazelnut creme covered in fine milk chocolate. What that amounts to is a hazelnut KitKat knock-off.

The little fingers are nicely wrapped in a stiff paper-backed foil. They’re 4.5 inches long and about .75 inches wide. They pieces are in three distinct segments though each of those is more than a bite.

I admit that I had a little trouble with keeping these from the heat. (No air conditioning for the first five days of my trip.) My other goods did fine, but for some reason the way I packed these wasn’t insulated enough. However, the texture and consistency is unmarred.

They smell slightly toasty and sweet with a little milky note. The bite is soft and very crispy. The hazelnut cream is a lot more forward than the cream filling in KitKats. The cream is in between the wafer layers (looks like only two layers instead of KitKat’s three) but also heaped under the domed top, too. The milk chocolate coating is sweet and has that European dairy twang to it. The crispy wafers are light and flavorless which allows the hazelnut cream to be the most recognizable note. There’s also a slight malty flavor to it all. The crisp and airy wafers along with the slightly sticky-sweet chocolate actually makes a good combination. A single bar isn’t quite enough to satisfy on its own, but again, two are the recommended dosage.

The price is great, they’re $1.79 for the box of 10, which means that each bar is about 18 cents. That’s a crazy good deal for a real chocolate product. (It also says on the package that there are no preservatives or artificial colors - but it’s not like it’s all natural or a particularly great list of ingredients which include fake vanilla and palm oil, albeit low on the list.)

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I found this smart looking bar at Mel & Rose Wine and Liquors a few weeks ago, before it got blisteringly hot and I’m adverse to buying chocolate.

The Nestle Aero line is a fun sort - it’s aerated chocolate. That means that air bubbles are trapped in the chocolate, making it light and fluffy, kind of like chocolate pumice. This is rather foreign to us here in the US where aerated chocolate isn’t that common. Europe Cadbury has a whole Wispa and Diary Milk Bubby line of products and they’re also popular in Israel where Elite makes some bars.

The Aero 70% Cocoa bar was a little more expensive than some of the imports I find, I paid $2 for mine, though in Canada, where these are from, they might be more reasonably priced. It’s five inches long and 1/75 inches across making it seem like a large bar. It only weighs 1.41 ounces, which is a great portion for chocolate but at this size it looks large but feels a bit puffy. Well, that’s because it is. The wrapping is simple and elegant. There’s a lot of info on the bar but they balance it well with the bubbly graphic elements and the matte paper keeps it from being too chaotic.

Inside the foil wrapper, the bar is nicely molded, the shape is great and does a great job of highlighting the bubbly attributes while still making it easy to portion. The bubbles vary in size, but are consistently distributed throughout the bar - no solids spots.

The bite is easy and doesn’t flake or crumble. The scent is odd, almost alcoholic - like whiskey with hints of tobacco and cedar. The chocolate flavors are similarly woodsy and rich with just a hint of tannic cherries. The melt is creamy and slick. It’s amazing how good this is for a Nestle bar. Like all the best things about Nestle Chocolate Morsels, but even creamier.

The nutrition label was kind of shocking. The reason the melt was so smooth was the level of dreamy cocoa butter in the bar - it has one of the highest calorie counts per ounce of a whole chocolate product: 169. There are 16 grams of fat in here, but also 4 grams of fiber, 21 grams of sugar and finally 3 grams of protein. There’s a shocking 35% of the Canadian RDA of iron & 25% of the magnesium. The front of the package also says that there are 500 mg of polyphenols. The ingredients are also simple and easy to understand: cacao mass, sugar, cocoa, cocoa butter, soy lecithin & natural flavor.

I happened to have some of the Bubble Chocolate 60% Dark bar around to compare it to, and the Nestle Aero is surprisingly richer and smoother. I ate the whole bar and would probably buy it again if I saw it - it’s my favorite of the aerated bars I’ve had.

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NewTree is one of those feel good chocolate companies that balances the desires of the chocolatiers with nutritionists. Most of their products that I’ve tried until now have been their standard Belgian dark or milk chocolate blended with herbs or spices. Things like ginger, coffee, mint or lavender.

More recently they’ve been doing herbal infusions with alpha omega 3 fatty acids - so going more towards a nutraceutical than a simple decadent indulgence. One of the bars that seemed more mainstream is this NewTree Dark Milk 51% Cocoa I found at Target.

It boasts 3x more fiber, a full 51% cacao content and 30% less sugar than regular milk chocolate. I don’t usually expect my chocolate to do anything other than be chocolatey, but I thought I’d give it a try.

The box is simple, an easy to open tab top with a thin silver foil around the bar itself.

The first thing I noticed was that the bar didn’t look anything like the package image. It doesn’t say New Tree on the pieces. It’s just a generic bar.

It’s a thin tablet, six by four. The snap is good, a little softer than a straight dark but not as soft as some fudgier milks I’ve had. The color is between a dark and a milk.

There’s a definite dairy scent to it, more than a cocoa note. The texture is smooth for the most part and rather light on the tongue. It’s a little sticky and has a cooling effect as it melts. It’s slightly chalky and every once in a while there’s a little fiber to it, or maybe it’s grit.

The cocoa notes are smoky and toasted, a light caramel tone and quite a bit of dairy.

The ingredients list is quite long: sugar, cacao mass, pure cacao butter, (inulin & oligofructose, dextrin) added for fiber, whole milk powder, natural vanilla flavor, vanilla bean powder extract, soy lecithin.

The trick with this bar is that the fiber takes up space that would ordinarily be occupied by sugar, milk or chocolate. The sweetness level of the chocolate is perfect, so the only reason to add more sugar would be because it’s cheaper than chocolate or milk. It doesn’t need more milk and any more chocolate and it wouldn’t really be milk chocolate any longer.

For folks watching their sugar intake, this is an impressive fete. There are 13 grams of sugar in a 40 gram serving, but also 2 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber & 14 grams of fat and only 170 calories (about 20 fewer per ounce than standard milk chocolate). It doesn’t taste like a compromise and is actually a nice, less sweet but still rich experience. I ended up eating the whole bar, and not just because I was reviewing it.

It’s a bit expensive, but again, for something that’s slightly better for you than the usual candy aisle fare that doesn’t taste like “healthy candy” it would be a nice option.

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While I didn’t get to attend the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago back in May, Mars was kind enough to send me some samples of their candies that haven’t hit store shelves yet. The one that got the most buzz (after Pretzel M&Ms, naturally) was the new Snickers Peanut Butter Squared.

First, it’s a new product in the Snickers line, not a limited edition. It’ll come out in December, but they’re obviously gearing up for a big push if they were distributing fully packaged samples more than six months in advance.

There are a lot of things that are different about this bar. The packaging is a little flatter, shorter and wider than the standard Snickers “log” package. The yellow background reminded me of the recently discontinued Snickers Cruncher.

Inside the package are two squares. See, it’s not even a bar, it’s two pieces. They’re 1.25 inches square and about .75 inches high. There’s a nice ripple on the top. They’re nicely made, beautiful to look at when placed on a plate and enjoyed like a fine chocolate.

What’s different isn’t just that this is a smaller candy. It’s 1.78 ounces total (.89 ounces per piece) and the package says that you can “twist wrap” to keep the second piece fresh. It might be about portion control. There are only 250 calories in this package compared to the 2.07 ounce classic Snickers that clocks in at 271 calories. So you’re paying more, perhaps gaining the ability to stop halfway.

But it’s not just the shape that’s different. Inside is a radical change for Snickers lovers. It’s a base of peanut butter nougat layered with a dry but dense peanut butter layer then a thin layer of caramel all covered in milk chocolate. So the caramel is minimized and the peanut butter portion is upped ... but it feels like there are fewer actual peanuts.

It smells just like a Snickers. Biting into it, it’s not as thick and the layers aren’t as distinct. The caramel is just a thin layer that’s a little tougher than the others. The peanut butter and nougat weren’t very distinct. It was a little salty and very peanutty. The chocolate was creamy. But there was something just kind of bland for me. I missed the decadent chew of the caramel, especially because it combined with the other flavors to create something new and wonderful in the mouth. However, there’s a much more intense peanut butter experience; the texture is far smoother than, say, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but not quite creamy.

I had two of these to try, so I got a pretty good sense of them. If you were a fan of the Snickers Nut ‘n’ Butter Crunch or Snickers Fudge, which I consider drier bars because they don’t have caramel, then this might be a good substitution. I actually prefer the Snickers Xtreme, which goes the other direction. It’s a bar with just caramel and peanuts. It was a limited edition item that will return in September 2010.

Other views & reviews on the Snickers Peanut Butter Squared:
Sugar Pressure
About Candy
Motivation by Chocolate
AV Club

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The Peter Paul Mounds bar is a classic. It’s a simple moist coconut center covered in dark chocolate. The bar was introduced in 1920 by Peter Paul in New Haven, Connecticut and quickly became one of their best sellers. Though Peter Paul made other bars over the years, the only two that remain are Mounds and the sister milk chocolate and nut bar, Almond Joy. In 1978 Peter Paul merged with Cadbury and then in 1988 Cadbury sold it off to Hershey’s, who continues the production today keeping the Peter Paul name on the product.

The candy is rather like a long version of a chocolate you’d find in a mixed box instead of a candy bar. The format of two pieces in a single package goes back to the 40s and remains today even though the wrappers have changed over the years. It’s one of the few bars that still has the little paperboard tray, and I must say that I appreciate it when it comes to getting the candy out and the fact that mine nearly always look pristine.

The dark chocolate coating is simple, with some slight ripples on the top. The pieces are rounded and have a great feel to them - easy to get out of the package, easy to bite and with two pieces it’s easy to share.

The dark chocolate can’t contain the coconut aroma. It’s a fresh and clean smell. The bite of the chocolate is good, it’s thick enough to hold the coconut and there are never any little leaky spots. But it doesn’t flake off or make a mess. The coconut is soft and chewy, moist and rather sweet at first. The dark chocolate keeps that sweetness from feeling too sticky and adds a woodsy and dark cherry note to the whole thing. The coconut has a long chew and usually tastes very fresh, though often not much more than that (no grassy fresh notes).

It’s a great combination and it endures because of its simplicity as far as I’m concerned. It’s one of the few candy bars that I still pick up on top of all the other candy eating that I do. I wish the ingredients were a little “purer” as there are things like hydrolyzed milk protein and PGPR in there that I can’t recall eating as a child.

And of course no discussion of the Mounds bar would be complete without a mention (and inclusion) of the classic jingle “Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes You Don’t.”

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Italy has probably been a confectionery center for thousands of years. Before cane sugar came along candies were made from dates, honey and nuts. But when Italy became a center of trade in the Mediterranean and had access to white sugar they became a hotbed of candy invention.

The heart of this tradition is the panned sweet. A nut or seed is the starter and then layers of sugar or chocolate are added as they tumble in a bin (rather like a cement mixer). The bonus in this kind of candy making was that a thick sugar coating actually preserved the nut or seed at the center. So a candied almond or pistachio could be easily carried around without worry that they’d get rancid and of course they were ideal for gifting.

In 1833 William diCarlo was founded in Sulmona, Italy, an area known for confetti (panned nuts and seeds). Their traditional methods and care in selecting their ingredients is evident from the packaging, list of ingredients and the product itself. I was given this box of Perle di dolcezza by their distributor Ritrovo Italian Regional Foods in the United States after I saw them at the Fancy Food Show in January.

The box is a fascinating construction. It’s like a flower (see this page at Amazon). Pop the top off and the sides fold out, like origami. Inside that is a little clear cellophane bag nestled inside the foil lined box.

Let’s face it, they’re drop dead gorgeous candies from the outside. But the construction is just as tantalizing: they’re a hazelnut covered in rich chocolate and then a candy coating. The whole thing is finished with a bronzy sparkling layer.

They smell sweet and a little like roasted nuts, but not much like chocolate.

The shell is thick and very crispy. The nuts are well roasted, so they’re also crunchy with no hint of raw chewiness. The dark chocolate layer is thick, but not overpowering. So the whole thing munched together has an excellent balance between the nut and the chocolate. The shell is kind of odd, the pearly coating not only looks metallic, it tastes slightly metallic, kind of like pennies. Maybe that was my mind playing tricks on me, but it had a mineral salt flavor to it, like a strong mineral water with a little zinc or copper note.

I loved the look and the crunch with the fresh nut plus the good quality chocolate was definitely different - this is the M&M I’ve always wished existed. But the metallic taste to it was a little off-putting - like my mouth was saying “danger” so I was careful not to eat too many in one day. The price is something that would keep most mortals from chowing down on lethal levels anyway, I saw them on Amazon for $13.50 a package (that’s $49 a pound). So they’re definitely a “sometimes food” not an everyday indulgence. They’d be ideal for a small wedding/shower/party - and I’d probably mix them in with other not-so-expensive items as part of a favor or candy display.

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Seattle Chocolates is probably known best for their line of affordable truffles, but they also have a line of Truffle Bars with inventive and unique combinations that make gourmet easy to take along.

I’ve been sampling their entire line so here’s the first and probably most approachable of the bunch: Perfect Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Truffle Bar with Roasted Peanuts.

The packaging is bold. I’ve had their bars before in the old look and honestly they didn’t impress me much. While some may not like the graphics, color combos and geometric patterns, I love them. They remind me of silk ties and scarves.

While the packaging has changed and the line has expanded, the format is the same.

The bars are a simple molding with four distinct segments. This makes portioning easy and for me half of the bar (two segments) was about 1.25 ounces and a satisfying amount. The dark chocolate is shiny and though I scuffed my bars a bit when bringing them back from the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, they were pristine in the flavor department.

A grown up version of a childhood favorite, this new truffle bar boasts all-natural ingredients, a smooth meltaway center and a dark chocolate shell. Roasted peanuts and creamy peanut butter in rich dark chocolate. Kosher. 2.5 oz.

The dark chocolate is rich and buttery with a quick and slick melt on the tongue. The roasted notes of the peanuts bleed through and add to the dark and slightly burnt flavors of the cocoa. It’s mostly a woodsy and earthy bar. The center has a snap to it, but it melts pretty readily. It’s studded with peanut chunks but the base is a peanut butter meltaway. It’s salty and crunchy and basically peanutty.

I enjoyed it thoroughly. It doesn’t satisfy me the same way that a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup does, but the crunches and the far superior chocolate experience makes it something else. Now, if all this sounds a little familiar, you might recognize the bar format as something that Target has in the Choxie line. So if you’re having trouble finding Seattle Chocolates, you can always try some Choxie Truffle Bars, which are about the same price.

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