One of the earlier reviews I did when I started Candy Blog was of Dr. Doolilttle’s Grapefruit & Blackcurrant Pastilles. I liked them quite a bit, even though they were expensive and hard to find.

After a few years, though, Trader Joe’s stopped carrying them and the comments for that post filled up with folks trying to figure out how to order them or even import them by the case.

Flash forward to last Friday, I was returning from a failed sock-shopping trip when I stopped in at Cost Plus World Market. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles have returned!

They have completely new and distinctive tins (that I might have mistaken for soap if they were on the wrong shelf) and even come in new flavors.

I picked up all three, even though they’re now $2.99 for a tin that holds only 2 ounces (instead of the Trader Joe’s ones that were $1.99 and held 2.5 ounces).

The other difference is also the actual candy pieces. They no longer have the little silhouette of Dr. Doolittle molded into them. Not that I don’t like the smooth surface, it was just a little plainer than I expected.

Soft Fruit Drops Lemon (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Citron) - these sparkling little gummis boast that they have soothing qualities. They are a gummi with gelatin, but have glycerine in addition to vitamin C.

They are firm, like a Haribo (versus a Trolli or Black Forest bear). But the flavor is much more intense than a gummi bear. The lemon is a marmalade or boiled taste - tangy, sweet and a little zesty but more on the jammy side of things than freshly squeezed. They dissolve slowly for the patient among us. But I like to speed it along by kind of chewing them, by folding and pressing them against the roof of my mouth and teeth.

Soft Fruit Drops Pink Grapefruit (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Pamplemousse Rose) - this is the one that I was most interested in, of course, since Pamplemousse is always a huge favorite.

The pastilles are orange, not pink (the ingredients simply say “natural coloring”).

They have a very intense zesty flavor, much moreso than the lemon. Tangy and with that slight bitter flavor of the grapefruit peel. These were definitely the first to disappear. The oily zest essence persists for quite a while after it’s dissolved, too. Not something that goes well with coffee, but I didn’t mind it with afternoon tea.

Soft Fruit Drops Wild Berry (Tendres Pastilles Aux Fruits Baies Sauvages) - this flavor smelled wonderful. A bit like roses, cotton candy and crushed raspberries.

They’re immediately tangy, sweet and jammy. The flavors of the berries are definitely on the blackberry side of things. A bit like a wine gum, there’s a slightly fermented quality to the dark berry tones and maybe a little blackcurrant note.

All the flavors are winners, again, my only complaint here is price. But they are soothing, full of flavor and even have a little dose of vitamin C. The new tins are really pretty and distinctive, though the tops are curved it means I can’t stack them. But I do plan on reusing them as they’re a great shape, easy to open and stay closed in a bag.

At the Fancy Food Show I stopped at the Niederegger importer’s booth. I love their flavored marzipans, though I only ever see them around Christmas at Cost Plus World Market.

The newest version is Bittersweet Chocolate filled with Ginger Marzipan (called Marzipan Ingwer on the package).

Though it wasn’t open and out on the counter for tasting, the fellows at the booth really thought this was a special bar and opened one up for me to try. After I confirmed that it was in fact, pretty darn tasty, they gave me the rest to take home. I had a hard time, even with all my other samples, not continuing to eat it before I got home to photograph it.

It’s a bittersweet chocolate shell filled with a rustic almond marzipan with chunks of candied ginger.

The bar was fresh and glossy, it has a woodsy and spicy scent. A little touch of bitter almond at the start along with the creamy and slightly bitter dark chocolate. This slowly gives way to the mellow almond paste flavors with less of the “amaretto” taste and into a warm ginger burn. It finishes again with the chocolate. 

I ate the whole bar.

I am definitely a fan of Niederegger, though I can’t stress this enough: it has to be fresh. They make a wide variety of products, including traditional loaves of plain marzipan, but they’ve found a new convert through their consistent flavor versions.

The chocolate contains milk products, so this is not a vegan product but it is all-natural.

Related Candies

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2. All Candy Expo - Wednesday Noon Update
3. Niederegger Marzipan Orange
4. Soubeyran Array
5. Charles Chocolates
6. Halvah and Turkish Delight
7. Niederegger Capuccino Marzipan

See’s candy shops carry more than their distinctive boxed chocolates.

Usually for holidays they’ll have some other panned sugar candies. For Valentine’s Day this year the trend seems to be cinnamon flavor. So I picked up a bag of their See’s Hot Hearts and their Cinnamon Lollypops.

The Hot Hearts were a bit expensive, in my opinion, for a sugar candy. It was $4.50 for a 12 ounce bag of what are basically heart-shaped Hot Tamales.

But hey, the bag was pretty and included a real piece of ribbon on it and a thick plastic bag with pretty little red foil printed hearts.

While See’s makes their own chocolates and lollypops, I’m pretty sure they have their sugar candies specially made for them by an outside company. I was hoping my trip to the Fancy Food Show might shed some light on that, because, spoiler alert ... these were good and I think I might want some more after Valentine’s Day!

The candies are a deep red color, lightly glossy and almost an inch across at the widest part of the heart.

The candy shell is crisp and a little grainy. The jelly center is sweet and very cinnamony. The sizzle of these heart-shaped jelly beans is substantial.

The cinnamon flavor is both woodsy and fiery, capturing all of the great aspects of cinnamon.

Even though there’s a fair amount of food coloring in these (including Red 40), there’s no bitter aftertaste. Not that there ever is an aftertaste, since I don’t actually stop eating them.

Yes, I want to know how to get them all year long, or themed for other holidays, like Fiery Eggs for Easter or a Screaming Phoenix for Halloween.

See’s has been making their own Lollypops for years. The flavors change from time to time, but lately they’ve been adding in their seasonal flavors.

See’s Cinnamon Lollypops are the same rounded block shaped lolly made from a hard caramel base.

The scent is odd. It smells like caramel and cinnamon. But the scent and the flavors are never completely integrated. They just exist side by side.

Mmm, toasted sugar and butter flavors. Then, wow, a pop of hot cinnamon. Then the mellow and sweet caramel.

I liked them, but not quite as much and not in the same way as the Hot Hearts. They last a long time, but the combo of boiled sugar and butter with cinnamon never quite meshed for me. Plus there was a bit of a bitter artificial color aftertaste on these.

The pops are a great, reliable candy. They’re only 70 calories each, but be warned, they’re not fat free. Not that fat is a bad thing, it’s pretty much necessary for a caramel. Their Butterscotch lollypop is still the best (and the Root Beer is the best of their seasonal flavors). I’ve picked up the other flavors for review twice ... but ate them before I could photograph them.

Related Candies

1. See’s Pumpkin Spice & Root Beer Lollypops
2. Cinnamon Fire Twizzlers
3. See’s Hollow Eggs with Novelty
4. Cinnamon Imperial Hearts
5. Gimbal’s Lavaballs
6. Chewy Lemonheads & Atomic Fireballs
7. See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar

I’m a the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco right now and just completed the first day on the floor as I write this.

One of the items that I’ve tried every year is the Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster but never actually saw them in stores until I found them at my local cheese shop. (And then later saw them at Williams-Sonoma.)

Koeze Company used to be known as a tried-and-true roasted nut company, mostly cashews. You may have even gotten it as a corporate gift at some point.

The sad part is that I paid $10.50 for this box of five pieces and it was bloomed. I could have, and probably should have, taken it back for a refund. But I’m kind of lazy and I realized that in this case, they weren’t that bloomed, as in the chocolate wasn’t chalky, so I ate them.

The other cool thing is that I knew I was coming to the Fancy Food Show and would have the opportunity to try them again ... just to confirm.

The construction of the cluster is pretty simple. A base layer of whole pecans (or are they half pecans?) covered in a thick layer of Koeze’s combination of their peanut butter and “white confection” and then the whole thing is coated in dark chocolate.

A candy that combines pecans and peanut butter certainly isn’t common. What’s great here is that that the elements of each of those nuts is used to its full potential. the pecans are light and crispy with a great woodsy flavor. They’re plentiful and the nice size of the pieces means that it’s a lot of pecans.

The peanut butter layer is the unique selling point here though. While they say it’s white chocolate, close inspection of the ingredient label shows that it’s really “white confection” and sadly contains no cocoa butter. However, things like fractionated palm oil and hydrogenated palm kernel oil aside, what this white confection does is add some dairy to it - some none fat milk and whole milk along with the super fine & creamy peanut butter that Koeze Cream Nut is known for.

It’s not a thick and sticky peanut butter layer, instead it’s a light and creamy peanut cream. A touch of salt but mostly it’s a slick and silky peanut sweet.

The pecans are so light and airy as well, they’re not crushed to bits and packed in there, instead they’re just loosely lumped there, it makes the whole thing feel, simply light.

The dark chocolate is also silky smooth. More of a semi sweet than a really dark, it holds it all together, but the nuts are the true star.

There’s really nothing else like it on the market. It’s extremely munchable, very satisfying.

My big complaints, really, are the price and the pseudo-cocoa butter. But good nuts are worth it. And if you have the money or what to give an indulgent gift to a nut lover, this is a pretty good option.

In Los Angeles this week it’s been in the eighties. Yes, in January. So the thought of Mike and Ike Italian Ice doesn’t feel a bit out of place in this strange heat spell.

Though Mike and Ike are available in single serve bags, I see them most often in the movie boxes. I think it’s cool, I like the bold designs on them and of course they’re usually a better value than the single serve. But the packaging itself has been bugging me for a while. Inside the rather large box (for something that holds 4.2 ounces) is a plastic bag. I’d be just as happy to pick up a peg bag for the same one dollar as the box. (A package that collapses as you eat it is handy, too.)

To have both the box and the bag is wasteful, though probably ensures freshness and keeps the soft candies from getting crushed.

I’ve had my fair share of Italian Ice over the years, though usually in the little cups from the convenience store freezer. And always lemon. What distinguishes Italian Ice flavors from other fruity flavors? There’s no indication on the box, except that it tells me that it has Your Favorite Italian Ice Flavors. Which isn’t exactly true, since as I mentioned, I really just like lemon and they’ve put four other unnecessary flavors in here.

The colors are similar to a set of highlighter pens. A little less vivid, a little less dark than the regular Mike and Ike.

The flavors here are:

Light Red = Cherry: A light woodsy cherry flavor. Because the color isn’t quite as dark, I’m guessing it didn’t need as much food coloring so I don’t get a typical bitter aftertaste. Which makes this a flavor that I don’t have to avoid. (Though it was still the last flavor left after I picked over them anyway.)

Light Blue = Blue Raspberry: this one has flavors on the darker end of the raspberry flavor profile, kind of like jam. But then there was a pop of menthol or mint in there. I don’t know if this was the Italian Ice part of it that was supposed to emulate that cool feeling of sorbet, but really it just make me think I was eating a cough drop.

Light Green = Watermelon: Grossly artificial tasting and a strange aftertaste, especially when paired with the citrus ones. (Bitter & slightly medicinal.) Bad artificial watermelon may replace my dislike of cherry very soon.

Light Orange = Orange: Nice blend of orange essence and orange juice flavors. Could use a little bit more tartness.

Light Yellow = Lemon: Light, tangy but also a little fizzy. Didn’t quite have a minty taste. Becomes rather sweet and flavorless quickly.

As you can guess, my favorite assortment so far was been the Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand. But Tangy Twister comes in second and if you look sharp in late February you’ll probably see the Jelly Bean variety for Easter as well (I bought them last year on an after-holiday sale and, well, ate them).

Other reviews of the Italian Ice: Candy Addict and Wisconsin Candy Dish.

These are filled with artificial colors & flavors but are technically vegan.

Related Candies

1. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
2. Organic Zootons
3. Good and Fruity
4. Hot Tamales Ice
5. Mike and Ike Jolly Joes
6. Mike and Ike Orange ‘n Cream

Here’s another item I knew was coming out but it took me months to find it. Ritter Sport Peppermint isn’t exactly new, but newly available in the United States.

It’s a simple bar, described on the wrapper as dark chocolate with peppermint filling. I fully expected it to be like a molded York Peppermint Pattie.

Where this is different from the York Peppermint Pattie is fat. While a York is marketed as a lowfat food, it clocks in with a smidge from the dark chocolate coating, about 2.5 g per 39 g serving.

Ritter Sport Peppermint, on the other hand, has a liberal amount of fat in it, about 11 g per 38 g serving. At first I thought it was because there is more chocolate, ratio-wise, in the Ritter Sport. But looking at the ingredients, it lists palm kernel oil in there (which I’m guessing isn’t in the chocolate, since it does say it’s chocolate and not a chocolate flavored shell).

Some would find that disconcerting, or perhaps even a reason to eschew it. I, on the other hand, have often wondered what a fattier York Peppermint Pattie would be like.

The bar was lovely to look at. Glossy and dark, though not as dark as some dark chocolates. It smells mostly of peppermint, delicate and refreshing with a little acidic twang.

The snap of the chocolate was good. It broke along the segments easily and there was no sticky goo emerging from the margins. Biting into an invididual segment though, that was a very nice feeling. The chocolate shell keeps its shape well, not shattering into a bazillion flakes.

The mint filling is silky smooth, whatever fat is in there is doing a wonderful job of keeping it from becoming a fudgy blob or a crystallized chunk. Instead it’s almost like a white chocolate truffle - sweet and minty but not watery or milky. The chocolate is buttery smooth as well, and melts readily but without any sort of greasy tastelessness. It’s a little bitter, a little dry and the perfect balance for the sweet center.

I don’t know why Ritter Sport hasn’t sent this to the States before, it’s definitely not like other chocolate & mint fondant options here, so it’s allowed to occupy its own niche. I hope it’s not seasonal, because I think this is a perfect item for a crisp fall picnic. (I give these suggestions as if I live this sort of life, which I don’t, but go ahead and imagine it.)

Jim’s Chocolate Mission has been doing an awesome job documenting far more Ritter Sport than I’ve been able to. (Of interest to me are the Trauben Cashew, Neapolitan Waffle and the Voll Erdnuss.)

Related Candies

1. Christmas Mint Round Up
2. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
3. Junior Mints Deluxe
4. Ritter Darks
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6. York Pinkermint Patties

Skittles Crazy Cores were announced late last year and have been on shelves for at least a month. I was lucky enough to find some at a convenience store in Studio City while I was refueling my car yesterday.

The orange package fits in perfectly with the current array of Skittles but sports one of Mars’ new features, front of package nutritional labeling.

It says right on the front what’s inside. You’re gonna get 230 calories per pack, that’s 12% of your daily caloric intake.

I don’t know if that makes it a good value for 99 cents or not. (Actually, I do know that it’s not a very good nutritional value.)

Crazy Cores are two flavors in each Skittle, and the centers are even colored.

Mango & Peach - is a pleasant creamy light orange color on the outside and a peachy color on the inside.

I don’t know what the layering on this was as I often find peach flavor and mango flavor rather similar. The coating, I belive, is peach and the center is a bit more peppery which would make it mango.

I love fresh peaches and mangoes, but I’ve never been a big fan of the candy flavors that come from them. These are no different. I didn’t avoid them, but they’re not a color I’d pick out for initial eating.

An odd note, I found the center of all of these to be rather hard, harder than a fresh Skittle should be.

Blue Raspberry & Lemon

Sadly I only got four of these blue beauties in my package. I usually eat blue things last as they’re often punch flavors. In this case it’s just a blue colored raspberry which is fine with me. The soft floral outside went really well with the tangy citrus chew of the inside. Kind of like a raspberry lemonade.

Melon Berry

This was another one of those odd colors that Skittles sometimes end up. It’s mauve or maybe raspberries & cream.

It sounded pretty bad to me, but then again, I actually eat fresh melons and berries together all the time, so it’s not like this idea is so far fetched.

The outside is a soft watermelon flavor, rather like a Jolly Rancher. Inside it’s more tangy and also rather melon tasting with a little bit of a strawberry flavor.

Strawberry Watermelon

At this point I was wondering which flavor was supposed to be on the outside, not that it should really matter. As with the Melon Berry, Watermelon Strawberry is a natural combo with fresh fruit.

It has a very strong artificial flavor component, but overall I was pleased with the fake watermelon and passable Strawberry Starburst flavor.

Cherry Lemonade

I thought I could make a go of this one, but the cherry was very much like cough medicine and not like Lifesavers. The lemonade was missing that good citrus burst & tangy component so it was a total loss.

Here’s the deal, there are five different Skittles here, each a combo of two flavors. But the number of flavors represented isn’t ten, it’s only seven (maybe eight, depending on how you categorize melon & watermelon as distinct flavors).

1. Lemon & Lemonade
2. Cherry
3. Mango
4. Peach
5. Blue Raspberry & Berry
6. Watermelon & Melon
7. Strawberry

I didn’t think I could be more disappointed in a package of Skittles since the Chocolate Mix ones came out in 2007. But these are just dreadful. There are some great fruit flavors out there that could have been combined to great effect. Instead it’s far too much in the melon & peach family, which will probably make some candy lovers very happy and I wish them all the best with these.

Odd note: gelatin is not listed in the ingredients. In fact, the wrapper now says “Gluten-Free, Gelatin-Free.”

I bought two packages and will now find someone who will eat the second one. (And I still have some Carnival Skittles left, so I’ll eat those instead.)

I’m going to say it one more time. Mars, make Citrus Mix Skittles: tangerine, meyer lemon, key lime, sweet orange & pink grapefruit.

Related Candies

1. Runts
2. Skittles Chocolate Mix
3. Skittles from the UK
4. Skittles Carnival Flavors
5. Skittles (Fruits, Wild Berry, Tropical, Smoothies & Sour)
6. Skittles Fresh Mint
7. Skittles Ice Cream

As a huge fan of citrus, I was immediately smitten with Yuzu. Though they look like bumpy, ugly grapefruits they’re a bit more like tangerines.

I first experienced it in candy with the Yuzu HiCHEW and have eagerly consumed anything Yuzu I can get my hands on since. (And am considering planting a Yuzu tree in my back yard.)

So the Yuzu KitKat was enough to get me to place a pre-Christmas order with JBox. However, they were pretty expensive. $4.25 for 150 grams.

These little minis are two short fingers in a package (66 calories).

They smell like tangerines, chocolate and Cheerios.

The chocolate is rich and creamy and the zesty notes of Yuzu, which include grapefruit, mandarin, lime and tangerine come across immediately. The crunchy and bland wafers give it a bit of crunch. Towards the end there’s even a little bit of a bitter aftertaste from the citrus zest.

One of my favorite Japanese KitKats ever.

Rating: 9 out of 10

KitKat Oshiruko

Azuki beans are used to make many confections in Japan, including a thick and sweet paste filling for mochi and a dessert soup called Oshiruko. Oshiruko varies depending on where you get it, but the little picture on the box looks like a thin, sweet bean broth with azuki beans and a dumpling of mochi in the middle.

The first Azuki KitKat I had was a white chocolate version, so I was definitely curious to try the red bean and milk chocolate combo in the newest Limited Edition from Nestle Japan.

This is definitely the kind of KitKat that fits into my mantra of “open your mouth, expand your mind.” Before I started my candy obsessed website I was pretty content with my American and sometimes Italian candies. I stuck to flavors and combinations that seemed logical to me. Combining beans and sugar (besides perhaps molasses baked beans) didn’t seem very confectionery to me. But now that I’ve had a good amount of mochi and red bean caramels I can say that beans are a natural, earthy & textured base flavor for candy.

This KitKat comes in the lovely box that is common in the Asian KitKats. Each little portion holds a two fingered KitKat. The front of this wrapper also has the new style of nutritional labeling that includes the calories right there - 110.

They’re glossy and pretty out of the mylar wrapper.

They smell like dirt. There are notes of freshly sawn wood, beets, caramel and rusted iron. It’s quite a different experience.

The bite and textures are the same as other KitKats. The milk chocolate is sweet and pretty creamy. The wafers are light and crunchy. The flavor is just as it smells - beets, charcoal, a hint of milk chocolate and butterscotch pudding. The Azuki flavor doesn’t quite make it in there, in fact, if I didn’t know that it was a red bean KitKat I probably would have guessed beets.

It’s not bad, a little bitter at times (which I don’t usually experience with other red bean items) but overall a tasty experience.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Grapefruit Mentos (Japan)
2. Japanese Black Sugar & Tropical Chews
3. Candy Bites: The Sweet, Crunchy & Creamy
4. Frey Supreme: White, Lemon & Lime and Citron & Poivre
5. Niederegger Marzipan Orange
6. KitKat Red Bean & Fruit Parfait