The folks at Just Born continue to develop new flavors and merchandise for their iconic Marshmallow Peeps line.

The newest flavor addition, which I mentioned in a roundup last month, is Bubble Gum Flavored Peeps. As you might expect, they’re pink. They’re also Peep shaped, not bunny shaped or bubble shaped. Even though they’re little baby chicks, they’re considered a year-round flavor.

Just Born bills them as having that “classic bubble gum taste.” Which of course leads me to examine what that flavor actually is. Well, since there’s no natural item, like a vanilla bean to consult, the recipe varies, but generally bubble gum is very mild wintergreen, sometimes with a little fruity banana and vanilla flavors thrown in.

The Peeps come in a row of five conjoined chicks. They’re pink, which isn’t surprising at all, except for the fact that they’re colored all the way through. This ruins it completely for me.

The flavor is mild and actually goes really well with the sweet, aerated gelatin. But the artificial coloring (Red 40) has a bitter, metallic aftertaste for me. So the first bite is great, but shortly after it begins to dissolve, I have a bunch of bitter goo in my mouth.

I’m really disappointed they had to use so much coloring for these, most of the other Peeps they sell are uncolored in the middle (except for the chocolate coated ones). I’m sure that folks who don’t react poorly to Red 40 and also enjoy the slightly medicinal flavor of bubble gum will go wild for these.

Related Candies

1. Peeps Chocolate Dipped Sugar Cookie & Candy Cane
2. Dubble Bubble Gum Cigars
3. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
4. Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
5. Three Pink Bubble Gums
6. Peeps Mash Ups

Dove is again expanding their line of foil wrapped pieces with Dove Mint & Dark Chocolate Swirl Promises.

Dove has done some wonderful things with white chocolate lately, the best thing is that they’re using cocoa butter instead of substitute oils. This is expecially noticeable in products like this one where chocolate and white chocolate are together. Dove did a great job with their Peppermint Bark for the holidays, it’s a great layered combination of chocolate, white chocolate and mint candy pieces.

I assumed that these new Promises would be similar to the Peppermint Bark but without the crunch. These feature a combination of the classic Dove semisweet chocolate swirled together with artificially-colored white chocolate flavored with peppermint.

Other than finding the color of them a bit unappetizing, I think these are great. They’re minty, but it doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate. They have an incredibly silky melt and just two or three are a satisfying treat. I don’t think they needed the coloring, in fact, I think it detracts from them. The foil does enough to denote the flavor inside, a white or off-white would have been just fine for most people.

I prefer them in the pieces, I don’t think I’d be up for eating a whole bar of this. I’m fond of Andes Mints, but these are much better ... better ingredients, better melt on the tongue, real chocolate ... and pretty much the same price.

Mars is moving towards using all ethically and sustainably sourced chocolate through Rainforest Alliance for their Dove line.

Related Candies

1. Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate (Rainforest Alliance)
2. M&Ms White Chocolate Peppermint
3. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
4. Trader Joe’s Minty Melts
5. Dove Swirl Bars
6. Marich All Natural Holland Mints & Chocolate Jordan Almonds
7. Dove Peppermint Bark

Small and plentiful is the trend these days. Most of the top candy makers are creating unwrapped bites of your favorite candies if they don’t already exist. This isn’t new, they’ve come and gone as brand extensions through the years, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not a good idea.

The Mars Milky Way Unwrapped Bites are similar to the Snickers Unwrapped Bites I already reviewed. They’re little cubes, super tiny versions of the popular Milky Way bar. The base is a fluffy nougat, topped with caramel and coated in milk chocolate.

The little nuggets are 2/3 of an inch cubed. A serving is eight pieces, which comes to about 1.34 ounces. They clock in a bit lighter on the calories than the Snickers, mostly because they don’t contain peanuts, which are a bit fattier (but also contain 50% more protein).

They’re easy to eat, sweet smelling and have a soft bite and easy, aerated chew. There was a bit of a cereal note to the smell, but overall they were just sweet and tasty.

This is another interesting example of how ratios of different element can change a candy. I know that some die hard Milky Way fans will probably detest this, but I happen to like it much more than the bar. The bar was always too big, too filling and too sweet but also lacking in any distinct flavor element. In this version the malt of the fluffed nougat is the most forward; it also combines well with the slightly salty caramel to create a great balance.

My only complaint with the bites is that the thinner chocolate shell makes them more delicate. There were several clumps in my bag where one spilled its caramel and they got stuck together. I don’t see myself buying these regularly, but I can see them being great for recipes, especially as an ice cream topper perhaps inside cookies.

The new trend is reducing packaging. Well, maybe that’s what the food companies want you to believe. The new line of Unwrapped Bites from Mars means you get lots of little miniature minis without all the wrappers that become evidence of how much you’ve eaten.

Hershey’s launched something similar a couple of years ago, so it’s no wonder that Mars is in on it as well.

The package, with a zipper closure, holds a half pound of teensy Snickers cubes. Easy to dump into a bowl, or just eat out of the bag. They’ll also be available in smaller single serving bags.

Mars is utilizing this new icon system on the front of the package for serving size and calorie counts. The serving here is 8 bites or 41 grams, which comes to 190 calories. (3 grams of protein from the peanuts.) Stacked up, the little cubes are cute and hold their shape pretty well. They do get scuffed up in the bag, so they’re not that glossy, swirled perfection found in the individual wrappers.

I can see these being very useful for recipes ... though kind of expensive at 2.99 for 8 ounces, but no worse than premium chocolate chips.

What they got right here is the ratios. Even though they’re not perfect large Snickers ratios, these strike an extremely pleasing balance of nougat, nuts and chocolate. By far the nuts take center stage. Instead of omitting the nuts or putting teensy crushed ones in there, they’re still big peanut pieces. (Though I did get on that had no nuts.) There’s a hint of salt in the nougat which balances the sweet chocolate and caramel. The caramel really doesn’t do much here, maybe it adds a little chew.

What I really enjoy though is the portioning. I like that I can eat only three or four at a time, then maybe three or four later. A full portion is eight pieces, which is less than a regular Snickers, but feels like a lot. Of course the bag is 8 ounces ... nothing keeping you from eating the whole thing in one sitting. These are pretty much the antithesis of the Snickers Slice n’ Share 1 Pound bar ... and actually a better value since a full pound of the Bites retails for $6 instead of $10.

Snickers are made with peanuts, dairy, soy and eggs. They’re also processed in a facility with almonds and I cannot find anything that says that they’re gluten free. Mars has not rolled over to sustainable, ethical sourcing for their ingredients, though they’re on track for 2020.

Related Candies

1. Rolo Minis
2. Snickers Peanut Butter Squared
3. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
4. Snickers Charged
5. Snickers Dark

When I was in Germany a couple of years ago, I picked up a bag of a new Haribo variety of gummi bears called Saft Baeren. They were made with real fruit juice and had a much softer, juicier texture than the traditional Haribo Gold Bears.

Well, Haribo has decided to sell a version of those bears in the United States as Haribo Juicy Gold-Bears. They’re coming out now and feature more than 20% fruit juice and no artificial colors.

They’re a little different from the bears that I tried. First, the version I tried was made in Germany, and as I found out from my taste test, the German Haribo products are usually the ones I prefer because they’re more intense and have a better texture. This bag was made in Turkey. Second, the flavor variety is a little different. The original version had five flavors, this one has six. The flavors are black currant, pear, lime, apple, raspberry and peach. No orange, lemon, pineapple or strawberry.

Black Currant (Purple) is deep and jammy, slightly bitter, in an authentic way with a dry note to it.

Apple (dull green) is very, well, green tasting. It’s an authentic apple flavor, like juice, but it’s also very green, like someone threw a dash of wheatgrass in there or something.

Peach (orange) is fascinating. It’s more apricot if you ask me, and that’s probably a good thing. It’s quite tangy and has a lot of that balsam note that gives peach their fuzzy flavor. It’s a dense and nuanced flavor, done very well, far better than any other peach candy I’ve had.

Raspberry (red) is a great bear. It’s tart and juicy and has a light tannic quality that’s kind of jammy and lightly floral.

Pear (clear) is tangy and a little bland compared to the others. It’s like a baked pear.

Lime (yellow) is actually pretty boring. It’s not as vibrant as the citrus flavors in the original Gold bears.

Overall, the flavors are good, even great, but the actual flavor variety is a little weird. I’m all for not using mainstream flavors, but this mix is just a little too strange for me. There were only two that I liked, and I found myself picking them out of the mix, which is something I never do with the standard Gold Bears. I think the fact that they’re using natural colors and lots of real juice is great and I hope that trend continues ... now if they could just do an all citrus mix of bears that way. However, I know that these flavors, since they’re so specific and so rare in a mix sold in the US, are going to be someone’s favorite.

Related Candies

1. Haribo Gold Bears from Turkey and Germany
2. Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone Gummis
3. Grether’s Pastilles Blackcurrant
4. Goody Good Stuff Koala Gummy Bears
5. Bissinger’s Pink Grapefruit Gummy Pandas
6. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies

M&Ms are ranked as the #1 candy by companies who track such things. But that popularity has always been limited to the lentil type candies, not other candies branded under M&Ms. As an example, Mars launched the M-Azing bar, a chocolate bar with M&Ms in 2004 but it was discontinued in 2008.

Mars is trying again trying to flatten and solidify the candies with the new Milk Chocolate M&Ms Chocolate Bar. The tagline is chocolate bars are better with M.

The bar, as you can imagine, is a milk chocolate base studded with M&Ms (candy coated milk chocolate pieces). I was curious if the chocolate of the bar was the same as the chocolate inside the M&Ms. Looking at the ingredients list, it appears they are slightly different.

The embedded candies are the mini sized M&Ms, not the full sized. (As you can imagine, the bar would need to be pretty thick to full encapsulate them.) The minis have a much thinner shell, so less of a sharp crispness.

The bar is cute to look at. It’s nicely segmented and molded and breaks apart easily with a good snap. The scent is sweet and a little on the sugary side; it didn’t smell rich and reminded me of R.M. Palmer. The melt is pretty smooth overall, but there’s a slight cereal flavor to it, which I’m guessing is from the candy shells. It’s also has a slight sharpness to it, almost verging on a Hershey’s taste. On the whole, I was unimpressed.

The candy pieces inside gave a little crisp crunch to it and added sweetness. There was little difference in the flavor when it came to the centers of the M&Ms when eaten in the context of the bar. Overall ... the chocolate itself was never the strong suit of M&Ms, it’s always been the munchable, colorful portability of them.

If you’ve been looking for a milk chocolate bar with more artificial ingredients, this might be just the thing. Not only do you get the artificial colors on the actual M&Ms, there’s also the added bonus of PGPR,

Related Candies

1. Dove Cookies and Creme + Ghirardelli Cookies Jubilee
2. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
3. Crispy M&Ms
4. UK vs US Cadbury Dairy Milk
5. Hershey’s Miniatures
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. M&Ms Line

In a world where bacon is regularly combined with chocolate, it should come as no surprise the cheese is also becoming a popular infusion for chocolate and other confections.

Lillie Belle Farms of Oregon has introduced the Lillie Belle Stella Blue Milk Chocolate which is a dark milk chocolate base of 50% cocoa solids mixed with Rogue Creamery’s Powdered Blue Heaven Cheese. Lillie Belle has been making a Smokey Blue Cheese truffle for some years, so the idea of a solid bar should not be a shock to anyone.

The bar’s packaging and name is a full homage to the Grateful Dead. The ingredients include organic chocolate, organic sugar, organic cocoa butter, powdered buttermilk, powdered nonfat milk, blue cheese (made from raw milk, salt and penicillin bacteria).

The bar is beautifully molded. It has an ideal set of ratios, though the bar is not segmented (which I usually prefer) - it’s thick but not difficult to snap apart, but it also has a small footprint so the bar doesn’t take up much space in my bag.

The bar is less smoky smelling than I expected, it really just smells like a chocolate bar with a strong woodsy and less sweet/milky note. The melt is excellent, the texture is smooth with only the slightest grain to the cocoa solids. After the immediate chocolate notes, there is a hit of sharpness ... I can’t quite say that it’s salty so perhaps it’s umami.

There’s no cheesy component to it, it doesn’t have that sort of moldy smell or sort of metallic note that some blue cheese have. Overall, it’s just a less sweet, slightly savory and dark milk chocolate bar.

I enjoyed it, especially since it was both a milk chocolate bar and pretty dark. I don’t know if I would reach for this regularly but I do have to say that it mixes well with nuts but not with other sorts of candy that has more berry notes to it.

Since the ingredients list is so small and it’s all bean to bar, I feel pretty good about the ethical sourcing. The bar is made in a facility that also processes nuts, soy and of course it contains milk.

Related Candies

1. Kauai Chocolate Tour plus Nanea & Madre Chocolate Bars
2. Madre Chocolate: Dominican, Jaguar & Rosita de Cacao
3. McIlhenny Co Tabasco Brand Spicy Chocolate
4. Marmite Very Peculiar Milk Chocolate
5. Al Nassma Camel Milk Chocolate
6. Lillie Belle Farms Assortment
7. Chuao Chocolatier

Trader Joe’s always selects their confectionery products with a bit of an atypical flair. Sure, they have some organic mints in tins at the check out counter, but they’re also offering these Trader Joe’s Organic Gingermints as well.

The tin is cute and bold, featuring orange and salmon accents and some wasabi-green highlights. The mints are Kosher and made with organic ingredients, gluten free and vegan. The steel, hinged box holds 50 “mints” though they’re really just ginger flavored ... no peppermint or spearmint flavors in there.

The ingredients are simple:

Organic cane sugar, water, organic tapioca syrup, ginger oil, organic maple syrup, organic ground ginger root, agar, gum tragacanth

They’re rather creamy looking, just slightly off white which could be from the maple syrup or ground ginger root. They’re also very gingery. They’re smoother than Altoids, less of a chalky quality to them. When I let it dissolve, it was a little syrupy instead, kind of like a slippery elm lozenge. Mostly I crunch them, which means that I get a big kick of the ginger immediately. They’re sweet, but it’s more earthy and clean with a lingering heat from the ginger. They’re spicy, but the burn doesn’t accumulate, so I didn’t have trouble eating three or four in a row.

I suspect that these are just repackaged VerMints which are also made in Canada and have the same agar and gum tragacanth ingredients, but that’s fine with me these are certainly easier to find. Trader Joe’s also sells a straight Organic Peppermint tin as well.

Related Candies

1. Torie & Howard Organic Hard Candies
2. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
3. GoNaturally Hard Candies
4. VerMints
5. St. Claire’s Organic Mints & Tarts
6. Anis de Flavigny