Starburst launched a new line of gummis back in 2008 called GummiBursts. They’re a very firm gummi disk filled with a flavored syrup. A year later they introduced a sour version, which sports a tangy grainy coating. Neither is a huge step forward in goo filled gummis, a product which has been around for at least twenty years. The best selling point I can note is that they’re available in small bags of 1.5 ounces and have a very low caloric density - at only 140 calories a bag which is 93 calories per ounce (2 grams of protein, too).

Starburst GummiBurst Flavor Duos are the newest version. They feature a different flavor for the filling from the gummi. The four flavor combinations are: strawberry-watermelon, cherry-fruit punch, green apple-strawberry and lemon-cherry.

The package contained ten little candies. As far as I can tell, I only got three of the four flavor combinations. (And I didn’t feel like chasing down another bag.)

I liked the smell, it was like fresh cotton candy and strawberries. Sweet and a little fruity and nothing plastic or artificial about it.

Lemon-Cherry - the outside was yellow along the edges but the red goo center made it look orange for the most part. The lemon gummi is soft with a distinct bite to it that’s chewy but not completely bouncy like some gummies can be. The lemon flavor is ordinary but intense enough to overshadow the center. It’s tangy and has a well rounded citrus flavor. The goo in the center is sticky and didn’t taste like much except perhaps sour with a light note of wild cherry on some of them. Of the flavors I tried, I liked this one best.

Strawberry-Watermelon - this one has a lot more definition. The outer strawberry gummi is quite tart and otherwise has only a light strawberry flavor. The gooey center is a throat-searing sweet and artificial watermelon flavor. It actually goes pretty well together and I’m not usually a fan of watermelon candies.

Cherry-Fruit Punch - the cherry gummi shell is sweet and tart without much cherry flavor. The fruit punch center has only a slight difference in flavor, more to the tropical side of things. The whole piece is a bit sweeter than the others.

I’m learning that I’m not that fond of goo filled gummis and these are no exception. They’re interesting combinations (though I’ve only tried 3 out of 4 of them) but not really up my alley as far as flavors go. They’re better than the originals, at least in my opinion, but that may just be the flavor assortment was more to my liking.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Squishy Sploshberries Gummies
2. Starburst Sour Gummibursts
3. Skittles Crazy Cores
4. Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows
5. Lemonhead Fruit Snacks
6. Starburst GummiBursts

I spotted these new hexagonal boxes of Finnish licorice at Cost Plus World Market. They were rather expensive, but they were also over one pound, so the value wasn’t too bad.

I like the licorice style known as Rockies, they’re a black licorice tube filled with a cream, which is usually flavored. Many European versions are made with salted licorice, but according to this list of ingredients, it was sweet licorice. This package didn’t say what the flavors were (there was another variety that were filled with a pastel cream that said Fruit) but the ingredients mentioned cocoa, mint, coffee and toffee flavors.

The illustration on the box appears to show four varieties (white, caramel, gray and brown) but I could really only discern three ... and I ate the whole box.

They were just a little sticky in spots but were fresh and moist. The bag smelled nicely of licorice and toffee with a little hint of smoke, beets and molasses. Each is about 3/4 of an inch long and varied in diameter, though most were about 1/3 of an inch.

The middle pieces, the light beige ones were a coffee flavored center. This was fascinating. I like the combination of licorice and coffee and it’s not an easy pair to find together. The center is a little grainy, like frosting. It’s sweet and has a very mellow coffee and toffee note to it. The licorice flavors and the texture of the licorice chew were at the front with the most dominance. I found myself picking through the package to find these.

The darkest looking centers were chocolate, I think. It was a sort of Tootsie Roll version of chocolate. There were some vague cocoa notes but it was rather empty and couldn’t compete with the licorice and sugar flavors.

The white ones appear to be mint. The mint fondant filling is soft with a bit of a crumble though not completely dry. The minty notes are peppermint and menthol. It’s a strange combination with the licorice, the whole thing has a medicated vibe but it’s also fresh and doesn’t feel heavy like some other licorice can. The mint though was very strong and overshadowed the licorice notes.

Overall in this mix, the actual licorice wasn’t that strong. I liked it, it made it very munchable without giving me that feeling that I was eating too much licorice (it can have side effects) but it also left me wanting more licorice/anise punch.

I don’t know why there aren’t American licorice candies like this, it’s rather like Licorice Allsorts, but without the coconut.  I’d venture that many folks who say they don’t like licorice might like it in this version where it’s just a container, not the main event.

I saw that Cost Plus World Market also carries the plain licorice and salted licorice from Halva, I’m thinking I might want to try their straight varieties. I get the impression that this isn’t the most elegant variety from Finland (which is known for its licorice), it’s more like the kid’s version of licorice or mass-produced like Twizzlers or Red Vines though I’m guessing with better ingredients (but perhaps some Finnish readers can help with that).

These contain gelatin, so are not vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Panda Soft Herb Licorice and Licorice Cremes
2. Organic Finnska Soft Licorice
3. Licorice Assortment
4. Fazer Lemon Lakritsi

Rowntree’s created what would be one of the most popular candy bars in the world, the KitKat, in 1935. In the same year they also created the Aero bar. There have been dozens of versions since then even as Nestle’s has taken over the brand and spread the bars worldwide.

It’s odd then to ponder that there is a mash-up bar of the two that’s found in South Africa. The Nestle Tex was launched around 1956 and combines the aerated chocolate of the Aero bar and the crispy filled wafers of the KitKat. I don’t know how the bar got the name Tex.

It’s a big chunky looking bar. It’s over 5.5 inches long and a little under one inch square. The wrapping isn’t fancy, just the name of the bar and a satisfyingly accurate cross section of the bar that shows the bubbly chocolate center with a layer of wafers above and below.

The bar smells more like sweetened cereal than a decadent chocolate bar. It’s quite light for its size, only 40 grams (1.41 ounces) when you think that a 3 Musketeers bar is 60 grams and has similar volume.

The bar is a little messy to eat. The wafers are crispy but also darn flaky.

The chocolate flavors are disappointing. There’s little cocoa flavor or chocolate texture in there. It’s not grainy or waxy, but certainly doesn’t have a silky smooth melt. The wafers are fun and distinctive, though not quite KitKat-like since they’re wider and have a more distinctive cream filling. The Aero layer is lost in the mix, it’s light on the chocolate but I didn’t really get the same airy melt and bubbly texture because of the fact that I felt obligated to chew the wafers.

Mostly I’m disappointed in the poor quality of the chocolate (it might be mockolate, it’s hard to tell which ingredients are the chocolate coating and which are the cream filling in the wafer part). I know Nestle is capable of making better chocolate, and since I bought this as an import, it was $2.00. I could buy some really good chocolate for that.

I could see this bar benefiting from other versions, like dark chocolate and flavors like coffee or orange. As it is, I see it as a middle of the road offering. Certainly unique but not better than the sum of its progenitors.

(I found one note in a book about Rowntree that said that the Tex bar was first introduced in Canada in 1955 around the same time as Coffee Crisp but was a flop.)

Related Candies

1. Nestle Aero 70% Dark
2. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
3. Nestle Lion
4. Aero
5. Coffee Crisp

Life Savers were introduced in 1912 by Clarence Crane. They came in one flavor, Pep-O-Mint. Crane made chocolate most of the year but wanted a candy product that could withstand the summer heat and have a long shelf life. So he innovated the Life Saver. At first he was just trying to create a mint disk, similar to a Necco Wafer. But the pill maker he took his contract to had trouble making a plain, thick disk that didn’t fall apart. So they put a little hole in the center to stabilize the production. The look of the little white hoop of candy reminded Crane of the life saver found on boats, so that’s what he named the mint.

Within a could of years Crane sold the company and rights to Life Savers to Edward John Noble who saw the great potential of the candy. They were sold in little cardboard tubes, he streamlined things and packaged them like they’re sold today, in a roll wrapped in waxed paper and foil with a little paper label.

Noble was an excellent salesman and introduced techniques to his clients, such as telling them to make sure that customers always had at least one nickel in their change and to display the rolls on the counter by the cash register. Life Savers were positioned as an impulse buy. Early packages were all one flavor and consisted of the standard mints (wintergreen & spearmint), cinnamon, violet and even licorice. It wasn’t until 1935 that Life Savers in the Five Flavor roll came out.

In the late 1968s Noble sold the company to E.R. Squibb Corporation (yes, the drug people that later became Bristol-Meyers Squibb who make Plavix and Coumadin) and then they sold to Nabisco Brands Inc in 1981. Nabisco in turn was taken over by Kraft in 2000 and Kraft sold their candy interests including Life Savers off to Wrigley’s in 2004. Wrigley’s was acquired by Mars in 2008.

Life Savers Pep-O-Mint themselves are simple. A little loop of compressed sugar with some strong peppermint flavoring. It’s all held together with a dash of stearic acid. There are 14 in the standard rolls these days.

Instead of the smoothness of a boiled candy mint, these have a little bit of a chalky texture to them. They’re not as grainy as Altoids (and not as strong) but they’re not as airy and melt-in-your-mouth as Buttermints or After Dinner Mints.

It’s quite a simple little candy. I like to crunch them, but they also dissolve slowly if you’re patient. I’m not patient and can crunch through a whole roll on a drive home from work.

  Just as Life Savers have gone through plenty of owners, the wrappers have been designed, redesigned and undesigned time and again. The packages I’ve featured in this review are from the new “throwback” release of the Pep-O-Mint and Wint-O-Green rolls that are available in convenience stores. (Here’s one article about the most recent redesign shortly before Mars acquired Wrigley’s.) Here are some more photos of the different designs & flavors of Life Savers over the years.

I like the classic look of these packages, but really it’s the size and shape that probably compels me. It’s the one consistent item no matter what year it is.

Wint-O-Green Life Savers were introduced in 1919. They’re probably best know because of the cool feature that you can create a luminescent spark when crunching a Wint-O-Green Life Saver. (I can’t capture it with a camera, but here’s a guy who has.)

The flavor is strong and smells therapeutic, like Ben Gay or denture cream ... not like the milder Teaberry Gum or Canada Mints.

They’re smooth but quite aromatic. After eating about half a roll I tend to get a strange numbness, like Cepacol or other topical anesthetics can cause. It’s not all about medicine and therapy though, it reminds me of classic Bazooka Bubble Gum and Root Beer soda.

I don’t really like the smell of wintergreen that much, because of some of the more unpleasant associations with pain relieving rubs, but I do like the strange tingly flavor and how different it is from the standard peppermint or spearmint.

Both flavors are classics and still made in the classic way, though now in Canada where sugar is cheaper. I’m glad Wrigley’s hasn’t mucked around with anything aside from the packaging.

Related Candies

1. Choward’s Spearmint & Lemon
2. Musk Beechies Chewing Gum
3. All Natural Necco Wafers
4. Canada Wintergreen
5. VerMints
6. Lifesaver Musk
7. Choward’s Violet

I am a huge proponent of improving upon classic candies. The peanut butter cup is so simple, yet there are a few weaknesses in the most commonly found ones on store shelves.

So could a company known for it’s amazingly fresh tasting peanut butter (and other nut butters) make something like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup even better? The new Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have a lot going for them in their lists of specs. They’re all-natural, organic and gluten-free, they use fair-trade chocolate, contain no preservatives and are packaged in compostable wrappers.

They’re also about $2 per package of two cups. Premium has a premium price. But I was on board, I wanted to see if eco-awareness would make the actual candy tastier (and possibly limit my other candy consumption because of the pricetag.) So after I got them home and took a few pictures I turned over the package to see some serious trash talk from Justin himself:

Think of your favorite peanut butter cup. How would you feel if I told you that compared to ours it tastes like chocolate covered sawdust? That’s right, I said it. Imagine what happens when I take the best tasting organic peanut butter in the world and delicately place it into the highest quality organic and fair trade chocolate available. Yup. Peanut Butter Cup Perfection. [signed] Justin

I don’t mind a little puffery in sales copy, but I don’t like it when my preferences are insulted. Why would Justin start out our relationship by exhibiting such contempt for my predilections? (For the record, my problems with Reese’s have never involved the peanut butter, it’s about the lackluster chocolate.) It took me a while to shrug this off, but I think I managed to center myself back to zero on the predisposed opinion scale.

Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

There are two cups in the package, which weighs 1.4 ounces (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are 1.5 ounces per two cup package). Each cup is exactly 100 calories.

I picked these up at Whole Foods within a week or so of them being placed on store shelves (I frequent the one near my office for lunch and I always cruise by the chocolate shelf). The “best by” date was 5/11, so they’re are definitely fresh. Yet there was a slight bloom on all of the cups. This is the opposite of the issue I usually have with peanut butter cups, which tend to get a greasy sheen as the peanut butter oils migrate into the chocolate.

They smell wonderful, mostly like grassy, fresh peanuts but with a light note of milk and cocoa.

What I noticed first when biting into the cup was how sandy and dry the center was. Most peanut butter cups will bend first, this crumbled and broke into chunks. Not a bad thing, just different. The chocolate is silky smooth and like a silky not-to-sweet chocolate butter. The peanut butter center is salty and sweet with strong roasted peanut notes. The texture is odd, it’s not pasty or buttery, it’s crumbly. It’s not grainy either, it’s a very fine sort of powdery texture. The chocolate really makes up for a lot of that with its silken texture and consistent melt.

The other thing I noticed, as the photo shows is that it’s not a coherent block of peanut butter filling. It has some swirls of milk chocolate in it and a rather thick chocolate reservoir on the top. This was the same with all of the cups that I got (see the dark chocolate one below as well).

So after the milk chocolate version, I was definitely curious how the dark chocolate would fare with the different texture style for the peanut butter center.

The Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are also gluten free, organic, use fair trade chocolate, Kosher and packaged in biodegradable wrappers. They’re also vegan. I consider this a pretty big deal, lots of dark chocolate bars are considered vegan but very few “candy” bars are. (But note that they are processed on shared equipment that has been used for dairy ingredients, so they’re not for folks with dairy allergies.)

Many all natural products have brief ingredients lists, but Justin’s is quite elaborate, mostly because each ingredient needs a qualification:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Chocolate Liquor*, Organic Cocoa Butter*, Organic Soy Lecithin, Organic Vanilla), Organic Peanut Butter (Organic dry roasted peanuts, Organic palm fruit oil), Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Cocoa Butter, Organic Vanilla Flavor, Sea Salt.

* denotes Rainforest Alliance Certified products

I don’t know what the status of Palm Fruit Oil is on the list of palm oils these days. Palm plantations displace rainforest, but then again this is organic. Maybe some free range, wild-foraged palm fruit oil would be preferable.

The chocolate is silky smooth, just as the milk chocolate version was, but much more intense. In this case the chocolate flavors overpower the peanut butter flavors in many bites (mostly because of the inconsistent distribution of the chocolate, both of my cups had a full chocolate center). The cocoa flavors are woodsy with a slight acidic burn and tannic, bitter bite. It balanced well with the lightly sweet peanut butter center.

I liked the chocolate but I bought these because I thought they were peanut butter cups. Where’s my peanut butter!

I like that the peanut butter is less sweet than many other peanut butter confections, but I wanted it to be more buttery, it was like they used peanut flour instead of actual ground peanuts with all their glorious native oils. For this price I need a cup that delivers consistent ratios of peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a new product and maybe they don’t have things worked out, but the fact that the same swirling and high chocolate ratio occurred in both versions leads me to believe that this is either intended or permitted. Some folks might prefer it that way, so there’s a unique selling proposition for Justin’s. But it doesn’t rise to the level of Peanut Butter Cup Perfection.

Justin’s Nut Butters makes a variety of nut butters, like Honey Almond (which I love) and also a Hazelnut Chocolate (which I haven’t tried yet) ... so once they get their inconsistencies settled, I think that should be their next product developed. An Organic, Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Cup. Then we’ll talk about chocolate nut cup perfection.

UPDATE 3/14/2011

I picked up some new samples of Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups at ExpoWest. They were given to me directly by Justin himself. The packaging is identical, but the cups are greatly improved.

My main complaints about the cups were that the peanut butter was too dry and there was too much chocolate. New versions hitting store shelves addressed this. As you can see from the photo above, the peanut butter is more consistently distributed in the center and appears less crumbly and dry. The chocolate shell still has a crisp, well tempered bite to it, but the peanut butter portion is well defined and flavorful. It tastes like a little darker roast as well and perhaps even a little saltier.

On the milk chocolate version I have to update my rating to 9 out of 10. Justin really did rise up to the challenge he made on the wrapper, this is better than a Reese’s.

The dark chocolate version also gets an upgrade, but only to 8 out of 10. It’s vegan, so that’s a huge thing, but the chocolate is still bitter and has a strong olive and grassy taste to it that overpowers the peanut flavors. The textures were excellent and the ratios dead on perfect.

My last hesitation on this product line is still the price though, but they’re definitely worth it now.

I was a bit overwhelmed when talking to Justin that I forgot to mention my desire for the Hazelnut Cup (though he said he’d read the review). Instead of pitching that I told him I wanted someone to make an all-natural peanut butter that had an additional bit of cocoa butter in it instead of hydrogenated tropical oils to keep it emulsified. The cocoa butter would keep it from separating but also add that inimitable texture, (and if you used un-deodorized) a light malty taste and keep it spreadable.

Related Candies

1. World’s Largest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
2. Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
3. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster
4. Colt’s Bolts
5. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
6. Boyer Smoothie

Sometimes candy can be therapeutic. Honey is supposed to have cough suppressing qualities. Honey candies are a great, compact and less-sticky way to serve up honey.

I’ve picked up these Honees made by Ambrosolio Candies of Italy a couple of times in the past year. The first time I found them at Mel & Rose Wine & Liquors, which they were $1.25 ... not bad as far as I was concerned. But then I went to downtown Los Angeles last weekend to a place called Jack’s Wholesale Candy & Toy (photos) and found a box of $24 for only $12.99 ... that’s about 54 cents a package. I bought the whole box (and they said that when their current inventory was gone, the price was going up to $14). They were far cheaper than the lovely French Boules de Miel I got last year at a gourmet store.

The candies are simple. It’s a honey flavored hard candy with a gooey honey center. They come in this simple foil package of nine candies. Each rectangular rod is about one inch long with rounded sides. It fits in the mouth easily, it’s about the same mass as a Starlight Mint (5 grams).

They’re sweet but not cloying or throat searing, it’s more soothing. The honey notes are a little malty, soapy and floral and sometimes I get a little whiff of lemon or eucalyptus. I found that sometimes I could let the candy dissolve and reach the honey center but most of the time I bit them and sucked out the honey or chewed them up.

They’re all natural and only have three ingredients: sugar, corn syrup and honey. (But the honey keeps them from being vegan.)

They’re less like cough drops and more like candy. I can’t say that they calmed my cough that much (but it’s just allergies at the moment, not a cold). They also come in a menthol version and a milk & honey version.

Related Candies

1. Gimbal’s Honey Lovers
2. Jelly Belly Honey Beans
3. Boules de Miel (balls of honey)
4. Melville Candy Company Honey Spoons

I’ve honestly been curious why I don’t see all natural or organic Candy Corn this time of year. But here’s something pretty close. I found this little container at Whole Foods. They call them Marich Cream Jellybeans but they’re really mellocremes or fondant.

They’re all natural and come in a delightful variety of colors and shapes. There are bats, crescent moons, witches on brooms, owls and cats. I picked out a mix that was as evenly randomized as I could detect. They came in little box like a take out container, only made of a clear polyester-plastic that’s easy to open and close.

The candy was on the expensive side for something that’s all sugar, $5.99 a pound (far less expensive than the other mixes that I’ve picked up). But they were cute and I haven’t bought much for Halloween this year because there have been so few new products.

The pieces are about an inch to an inch and a quarter at their longest. Some were particularly flat, like the Witch and Cat, which means that they were a little dryer and firmer than the thick ones like the Crescent Moon. They all stand up on their sides except for the moon, which naturally wants to be curve side down. (I held that one up with a little piece of sticky clay for the photo.)

Cocoa Brown - I hesitate to actually call this chocolate flavored because it doesn’t taste at all like chocolate, but cocoa is listed on the ingredients so that appears to be the intention. It’s a little woodsy and less sweet than the others. There are notes of honey, toffee, rum and coconut. This flavor also seemed moister than the others, no matter what shape it was, not sticky just not as dry.

Orange - a creamsicle sort of orange flavor, mostly zest but not intense at all. The color and the flavor wasn’t that different from the yellow.

Yellow - lemon in the softest and sweetest way possible. Just a hint of lemon peel and maybe a little note of honey.

White - was unflavored, I’d call them a light vanilla. They taste a bit like marshmallows, pretty clean overall but of course sweet.

The texture was a little firmer than Candy Corn, but very smooth with a fast dissolve. They have a strong sheen on them, some more than others. There’s a glaze on them (confectioners glaze plus beeswax and carnauba wax) which means that they don’t stick together but also don’t dissolve immediately.

The owl reminds me of those macrame owls from the seventies.

It’s expensive for sugar candy, as I mentioned, but for a small bowl of candy matched to a Halloween or even harvest theme, they’re a great choice.

They remind me of carved alabaster or soapstone figures. I can see that these are more sophisticated than brightly colored, strongly flavored kids fare ... but I can also imagine that there are kids out there would would love to play with these like edible chess pieces.

I’ve complained before that Marich’s excessive food colorings in their Easter Mix get in the way of my enjoyment of their holiday novelty candies, so it’s great to see that these are not only less expensive than those but also truer in their flavor profile. I’m in love with Marich’s all natural and organic lines. I’d still like these to have more intense flavors and maybe more variation (like maple, honey and better cocoa) but I could still pick up the Brach’s Halloween Mix for that.

Related Candies

1. Marich All Natural Holland Mints & Chocolate Jordan Almonds
2. Jelly Belly Deluxe Halloween Mix
3. Farley’s Harvest Mix
4. Marich Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews
5. Marich Easter Select Mix
6. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix

Kraft Caramels are one of those products that transcends the definition of candy. Like chocolate chips, they’re also an ingredient in countless recipes. I’m more likely to see these bags in the baking aisle of the grocery store than the candy section.

Kraft Caramels were introduced in 1933, the same year Kraft brought Miracle Whip into people’s lives. In a strange twist, Kraft decided to sell their industry-standard caramels and spun them off with a few other brands to a new company called Favorite Brands. They made the caramels with the Kraft name for two years under the agreement, but after that they rolled them into their other candy brand, Farley’s and called them Farley’s Original Chewy Caramels. Well, I don’t know if you remember those years of not being able to find Kraft Caramels ... I’m not sure how brand aware I was at that time, but I think I considered myself confused and ended up buying Brach’s Caramels. Kraft got their caramels back in 2000 and I think they learned their lesson. (You can read more here.)

The caramels are packaged simply and perfectly. Each cube is wrapped in clear cellophane, like little gifts with the surprise spoiled with the transparent packaging.

The color is beautiful and mine were fresh, slightly soft and glossy. They smells sweet, like vanilla pudding. The bite is soft and easy, but not a stringy chew. It’s also not quite a fudge texture. This style of caramel is called a short caramel, the sugar and milk is completely emulsified so there are no sugar crystals. The sugar is caramelize, so it has a light toffee note to it along with the mellow dairy flavors of the milk.

The chew is interesting and flavorful, but lacks a bit of the stickiness that I desire in a caramel. I like a complex flavor and silkier texture. They’re sweet but at least have a salty note to balance that out. They stick in my teeth a bit, but don’t bind my molars together like some stale Sugar Babies can do.

The ingredients are decent enough for cheap candy: corn syrup, sugar, skim milk, palm oil, whey, salt, artificial flavor and soy lecithin.

I understand that one of the benefits to this style though is its versatility for recipes. They can be melted and added to other ingredients like swirled into brownies, drizzled on popcorn and of course their most popular use - caramel dipped apples.

There are 32 calories in each caramel cube and they’re still made in the U.S.A. Kosher.

Finally, an early TV commercial for Kraft Caramels:

While looking for Kraft Caramels these past few weeks, I stumbled on these smaller bags of Ferrara Pan Traditional Caramels. This little 6.75 ounce bag also included sticks for making the classic caramel covered apples.

Ferrara Pan is known for their panned candies (hence the company name) like Lemonheads, Boston Baked Bean and Atomic Fireballs. A boiled sweet like caramels is kind of out of place, but then again Ferrara recently branched out into chocolate, so why not caramel?

Turning over the bag to compare the ingredients I found something more substantially informative. Ferrara Pan doesn’t make these. They’re made by Embare in Brazil. Embare is a premiere candy maker in South America, known for their dairy-based confections like caramels and pudding mixes. Caramel has a fine tradition in South America, so why not go there for some great ones?

They look just like the Kraft version. They’re the same size, and have roughly the same variations. (Some are bigger than others and have little ridges on them from manufacturing.)

The cellophane seems a little heavier and is actually sealed at the ends. They’re soft enough to pinch. They don’t smell like much out of the wrapper.

The bite is much softer and chewier. They’re not quite a stringy caramel, but halfway between. They’re not as sweet as the Kraft variety, quite smooth and have a strong real vanilla flavor profile. The caramel notes are also great - a little toasty with just a hint or rum or molasses.

Each cube has 27 calories. I don’t actually mind that they’re made in Brazil and I appreciate Ferrara Pan saying exactly who is making the product.

On the left are the Ferrara Pan and on the right are the Kraft. They really do look the same.

The ingredient list on the Ferrara Pan version is longer: Sugar, corn syrup, skim milk, hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean, cottonseed and/or palm kernel), whey, milk, cream, salt, soy lecithin, mono- & di-glycerides, artificial vanilla flavor.

I can’t say which is better for recipes, but I preferred the texture and flavor profile of the Ferrara Pan. But I can’t say that I really loved either, if I really wanted a bite sized caramel, I’d probably go for Sugar Babies, pay a premium for See’s ... or make my own.

Related Candies

1. Bequet Gourmet Caramels
2. Grandma’s Caramels
3. Caramel Texture Poll Results
4. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
5. Sugar Babies
6. Caramel Previews: Mitchell Sweets & Caramoos