The trend for small batch chocolate with single origin beans is well established now. The newest twist is the creation of milk chocolate. While I’ve found myself particularly attracted to Ocumare sourced beans no matter who makes the bar, I was curious how it would rank once Amano made their Ocumare Handcrafted Milk Chocolate.

Dark chocolate has fewer ingredients which means it’s more about the beans, but with milk chocolate there that whole milk factor to take into account - is it fatty, is it tangy, is it malty?

The ingredients here show that the Ocumare Milk is 30% minimum cacao content. The list goes like this: cocoa beans, pure cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder and whole vanilla beans.

The milk is pretty low on the list and looking at the bar it’s pretty easy to see that, it’s a rather dark bar, darker looking than some actual dark chocolates.

The scent is woodsy, a bit tangy with a whiff of malt and grasses.

The snap is bright and distinct, but the bite is soft. The chocolate melts quickly into a slick & creamy puddle on my tongue. There’s a cooling texture to it, it’s sweet but not sticky or cloying like many milk chocolates can be.

There’s a dark note to it and that same sort of cashew nuttiness that I’ve noticed in other Ocumare chocolate bars.

It’s a very satisfying milk chocolate, so smooth and silky that I ate this much quicker than I’m able to do with regular dark bars.

It’s an expensive proposition, the bars are only 2 ounces and I picked this one up at Mel & Rose’s for $6.50 ... a bit more than I’m willing to pay for a regular snack.

(Allergen notes: though there’s no soy lecithin in the chocolate, it was made on equipment that process soy, peanuts and tree nuts.)

Related Candies

1. Amano Jembrana
2. Askinosie Chocolate
3. Amadei
4. Domori Cru
5. MarieBelle Mayan Chocolate Bar (no sugar added)
6. Amano Single Origin Bars: Madagascar & Ocumare
7. CocoaBella - The Night of the Chocolate Hangover

Hershey’s has an expansive line of individually wrapped chocolate pieces: Kisses, Miniatures and the Nuggets line.

This new product for the Nuggets line is called Double Chocolate Nuggets:

Hershey’s gives you the best of both worlds with Double Chocolate Nuggets. It’s the perfect combination of Hershey’s Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate and Special Dark Mildly Sweet Chocolate, giving you a delicious taste experience.

I’ve mentioned before that I actually like the nugget format. I like a deep bite, especially for a layered product or one that has inclusions (which is why I thought those Cookies ‘n’ Mint Nuggets were so great).

These little blocks have a distinct scent - it’s both the sweet cocoa smell of the Special Dark and the tangy milk chocolate that made Hershey’s famous.

Biting into it right side up I got the slightly chalky taste of the Special Dark first, which has a dry and mellow chocolate bite to it but a thin & watery melt. Then the “extra creamy” milky chocolate, which has a yogurty dairy flavor that give it more of a fudge taste than a deep milk chocolate note. (I really don’t get how this can be considered extra creamy.)

The effect of it all isn’t good nor bad, it just is. I can’t say that I’ve longed for a combination product before, so it’s not like I was anticipating this. 

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
2. Hershey’s Kisses: Chocolate Meltaway
3. Ghirardelli Luxe Milk
4. Scharffen Berger Dark Milk (68%)
5. Choceur Coffee & Cream
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. Kisses Chocolate Truffles

If there’s one thing I think that’s might pull our government out of the red, it might Mars excessive registration of trademarks for their limited edition & marketing tie in candies.

For the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie this summer, Mars has created a line of collectible M&Ms packages that feature different characters from the Transformers pantheon plus M&Ms in Transformers-styled outfits.

The seven packages:

(Yeah, I’m missing some package images, but that’s all that came with the press kit Mars gave me ... how odd.)

What I think is most interesting about this is that the package is the only thing that’s different (besides, of course the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms). Open up the packet of the M&Ms (mine was Bumblebee 2 of 7) and there’s no fun new design of the M imprint with a twist on the Transformers like they did with Pirates of the Caribbean Pirate Pearls, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and Shrek II (basically Mega M&Ms).  The Star Wars ones, though introducing Dark Chocolate M&Ms, did not have fancy imprints.

What is good news is that the packages are no smaller. With many of the limited editions what you get in addition to “specialness” is less. The Milk Chocolate Chocl-O-Bots packages have the same 1.69 ounces as the standard Milk Chocolate M&Ms.

The only truly transformed product for the movie tie-in is the Snickers Nougabot (tm). Due to physical laws of the conservation of matter, the energy required for the transformations, the bar is smaller than an unTransformerized one. *

From the outside the packages look rather similar. (Click to enlarge to read the ingredients if you wish.)

This isn’t the first time Mars has mucked with the nougat for a movie. Back in 2007 they turned it green for Shrek but left it the same size, because really, how could a Shrek-ified candy be smaller? The traditional bar is 2.07 ounces and the Nougabot is 1.83 ounces.

The difference, otherwise, is really just the addition of Yellow #5. Considering how much some parents hate Yellow #5 (hint: enough to get it banned in Europe), it’s hard to understand why a candy which was formerly artificial coloring free would add it. Further, the Snickers website doesn’t list the Yellow 5 on the page for the Nougabot bar (sorry, can’t link directly to the page because of stupid flash & beware of annoying sounds).

So how does it taste? About the same. The flavor seemed a little “darker” but I don’t know if that was the caramel batch ... sometimes even big factory candies like Snickers can vary from day to day.

The only thing I liked about it is the same thing that I prefer about the Snickers Dark, that there’s one less bite in it. Because honestly I think that 1.83 ounces is the perfect size for a Snickers bar.

* My theory of this kind of violates the whole world of Transformers and many other fantasy, action & sci-fi movies where small things turn into big things without the perceivable addition of extreme amounts of energy. Anyway, in order to turn back and forth without loss of mass, you’d need lots of energy to turn into matter ... conversely to shrink you’d need to have a way to store a huge reservoir of energy (if you wanted to grow again) or release it. I’ve always wondered if Alice became super-dense when she shrank and puffy, aerated & light when she grew.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Bats (Dark Knight)
2. Snickers Adventure Bar (Indiana Jones)
3. Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road Bar
4. Snickers Nut ‘n Butter Crunch
5. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
6. M&Ms Line
7. Snickers Xtreme

I got this one slightly smashed sample of the new Baby Ruth Crisp from All Candy Expo.

I’m a little hesitant to do a full review of the product based on a “fun sized” bar, so consider this a preview.

The wrapper says that the new bar is Baked Wafers, Caramel, Peanuts & Creme. It’s a nice white & waffle pattern background with the familiar Baby Ruth logo.

From the description it sounds like it could be the old Bar None. But a quick sniff and it’s clear that this is a bar with a strong peanut identity.

The layers are pretty complex. There are wafers and in between the lower wafers is a peanut butter creme. On the top of the wafers is a pretty thick layer of caramel and then some chopped peanuts.

The whole effect is a startlingly familiar flavor to the Baby Ruth but with the texture of a KitKat.

The only disappointment here is the chocolate. Nestle doesn’t really make many chocolate candies any longer and this new bar is no exception. I don’t have the ingredients, but judging by the other Nestle Crisp bars that I do have access to, this is a mockolate coating.

It lacks a good creamy component (more waxy) but has a little cocoa punch to it ... just no good dairy milk chocolate addition.

The addition of the Baby Ruth Crisp also marks the change in Nestle’s rebranding & repackaging of their Crisp bar line.

The new packages for Butterfinger Crisp and Crunch Crisp sport the tag line De * LIGHT * fully CRISPY

The most significant change is the reformatting of the bar.

The original Crunch Crisp was a long & wide bar. The new version is not only smaller (the overall weight of the package) but is also now a narrower (but slightly taller) bar in two separate pieces. The original was 1.74 ounces, the new on is 1.34.

The last few times I’ve tried the Crunch Crisp bars the ambient temperature was over 80 degrees ... not the best climate for this bar.

Since then I’ve acquired these two versions and both benefit from temps in the high sixties. (Hooray for Southern California’s June Gloom.)

The flavor & overall ratio of crunch, creme & mockolate is similar with both bars. It reminded me a bit of chocolate pudding & ice cream cones. It’s harder to take a “big bite” of the new small bars.

Because of the wafers they seem less like candy and more like decadent cookies.

Since having the Q.bel bars, though, it’s hard to say that these are more than passably decent.

The Butterfinger Crisp disappeared from store shelves around me, and I thought it was discontinued. It turns out it was just going through this reformatting.

Like the Crunch Crisp this one has gone from 1.76 ounces to 1.41 ounces. It also goes from being manufactured in Venezuela to the United States.

The innards look virtually the same to the last one I ate four years ago.

It smells like fake butter flavor ... or maybe butterscotch candies. The crispy wafers are good, the cream in between is a little salty and has a light peanut butter taste (actually less peanutty than the Baby Ruth).

The chocolate on this seems less punchy and more like the waxy stuff from a Butterfinger Bar.

I’m sure the new two piece format makes production for both full serving & fun size much simpler. (And I really don’t have a problem with that, I like fun sized bars because sometimes I want variety for my “single serving”.)

I don’t have much of an issue with companies making products smaller in order to keep prices the same (or raising prices) though in this case they’ve not only made it smaller, it’s not quite the same as before because the shape may change some ratios. Still, they pack some calories for such small bars - the new Crunch Crisp is 190 (was 250) and the Butterfinger Crisp is 210 (was 250).

Again, having found the Q.bel line, I see no reason to personally entertain this stuff any further unless I had some sort of financial issue that I couldn’t afford the Q.bel or no longer had access. (But these still wouldn’t be a choice high on my list. Nestle is capable of making chocolate and I think these would be much better with it.)

Expect the new line of Crisp bars including the Baby Ruth Crisp to hit shelves late August or early September.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
2. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
4. Butterfinger Stixx
5. Nestle Crunch Dark Stixx
6. Nutrageous
7. Head-to-Head: Butterfinger vs. 5th Avenue

It seemed odd to me that Dove never had any peanut butter items in their line. While most of us probably think that Reese’s has the corner on peanut butter, Mars has been doing a pretty good job with peanut confections with Snickers, Peanut M&Ms and PB Twix.

The new Dove Peanut Butter Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate comes in both in the form of a single-serving bar and the foil wrapped Promises. I found the bar at 7-11 but the Promises were sent to me by Mars.

The bar, like all Dove single serve bars, is rather small. It looks like a series of conjoined Dove Promises. Inside each little domed piece is a bit of peanut butter filling.

The Promises are wrapped in orange foil (the universal color for peanut butter).

The silky & sweet milk chocolate stands up well flavor-wise to the peanut butter filling. The filling is a smooth peanut butter paste that’s both sweet and salty. Both of those qualities overshadow the peanut butter flavors, which exhibit a nice even roasting but a bit of blandness.

The bar seems to have less peanut butter filling, for some reason, than the Promises, so overall I preferred them. (I also like foil wrapped things.)

Because they were introduced at virtually the same time, I had to do a little comparison between the Dove Peanut Butter Promises and the Reese’s Select Cremes.

The Reese’s Cremes are a bit bigger (same footprint but taller). The ingredients are similar (especially use of salt, partially hydrogenated palm oil & TBHQ) ... but surprisingly Dove uses PGPR in their chocolate while the Reese’s Cremes don’t plus use real vanilla instead of artificial flavorings.

The centers are different - the Reese’s Cremes are whipped-smooth but shockingly salty and of course the larger reservoir of filling makes it more of a counterpoint to the chocolate. The Dove Promises are more of an even ratio of chocolate & filling, but a similarly salty center.

I don’t think either quite rise to the level of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures (when fresh) but the Dove Promises are quite elegant and definitely an item to satisfy folks who like both milk chocolate and peanut butter. However, since I had both a bag of the Reese’s Cremes and a dozen of the Dove Peanut Butter Promises sitting around as a test, the Reese’s Cremes disappeared first.

Other reviews (Mars PR folks sent a lot of these around to tastemaking blogs): Heather from Chocolate Bytes, ZOMG Candy, the Candy Addict and The AV Club.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Bar
2. Dove Desserts Bananas Foster
3. Dove Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Bars
4. Colt’s Bolts
5. Peanut Butter Kisses
6. Dove Chocolate
7. Reese’s Line

Hershey’s has added to their huge line of Kisses. The new introduction is the Hershey’s Chocolate Meltaway Kisses.

The bag, at first glance, looked a bit like the Caramel or Almond Kisses. The big difference here is the large oval New in the corner.

They’re described to be velvety smooth chocolate center in milk chocolate.

The first sample I got of these, they were rolling around in the bottom of a bag of items from All Candy Expo. The little flags said “center” and that was it ... I thought maybe they were just customized little flags that were from the McCormick Center (the host to All Candy Expo ... which is actually called McCormick Place, but I was really grasping to figure these things out).

Later I got the press release from Hershey’s with the announcement of the new product ... and then I saw the full bags in stores (Target & Long’s have them so far).

I find these a little confusing. Hershey’s came out with their new Bliss line, which includes milk chocolate meltaway. Why make a Kiss version?

That aside, the Kisses are molded, so they’re nicely uniform and shiny. The gold tinged foil has amber waves on it. The little flag, when fully unfurled says Meltaway Center. (Nice name for a chocolate themed spa, if you ask me.)

They smell like Hershey’s chocolate, a bit sour and like hot cocoa.

They’re a very soft bite, rather fudgy and a little grainy but a consistent melt. The center has a slight salty note to it, but overall it’s sweet enough to burn my throat.

The ingredients are a bit different from the previous Kisses too, they’ve completely eliminated all hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats.

Milk chocolate (sugar, milk, chocolate, cocoa butter, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, PGPR, vanillin), sugar, palm kernel oil, whey, nonfat milk, cocoa processed with alkali, milk, chocolate, contains 2% or less of milk fat, cocoa, soy lecithin, salt, vanillin.

With all that milk in there, maybe I’m not surprised that there’s 8% of your daily RDA of calcium for a serving of 9 Kisses.

I’ve had a few of these soft-centered Kisses now: Hot Cocoa and Chocolate Truffle and I’m sure if I tasted them in an array (a flight, is what the fine establishments call them these days) I could tell the difference. But at the moment it seems like a rehash of the same thing. I don’t know if these are supposed to take the place of the Chocolate Truffle (which is still listed on the Hershey’s site) but I don’t think it’d be a big deal if they did ... except that I liked the blue & silver foil on those.

Overall, they’re not exciting and they’re not new. But they are pretty good at what they’re doing. I don’t understand why Hershey’s has both Bliss Meltaways and Kiss Meltaways, but they’re making a profit in an overall down economy, so who am I to dissect their clouded marketing decisions?

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2009 - Hershey
2. Nestle Treasures 50% Cacao Dark Chocolate Truffle
3. Pumpkin Spice Kisses
4. Candy Corn Kisses
5. Honey Roasted Peanut Roca
6. The Mint Kisses
7. Peanut Butter Kisses
8. Choxies in Boxies

Since the introduction of chocolate covered espresso beans sometime in the seventies not much has changed. Oh sure, sometimes they’re milk chocolate covered ... sometimes dark chocolate and even white chocolate.

At the Fancy Food Show in January I did get to try what I thought was one of the best revisions of the classic caffeinated confection: JAVAZ.

First, they’re all natural and use organic, fair traded coffee beans. Second, they use good quality chocolate. Third, they have a candy shell. But most of all, they actually roast the coffee for eating. That is, instead of roasting it for optimal brewing, it’s roasted with the idea that someone is going to crunch & consume it.

They come in two varieties: Milk and Dark.

JAVAZ Milk are much larger than most chocolate covered coffee beans, so it’s a goodly dose of chocolate. I threw some coffee beans into the photo to show the scale.

They’re even larger than Peanut M&Ms.

They look like little bird eggs: a faint tan color with brown speckles.

The shell is thick and crunchy and the milk chocolate is sweet and has a strong dairy/milky flavor to it. The coffee bean at the center is crispy and light, I wasn’t getting the fibery, woody bits that some coffee candies seem to leave behind. The coffee beans don’t have that acrid, oily taste to them.

The whole thing tastes like coffee ice cream with crunchy bits.

Though there’s obviously caffeine in here it’s not as much as you might think: a 55 gram bag has about the same amount as a cup of coffee.

JAVAZ Dark are decorated in the reverse of the milk ones. The shell is brown with beige speckles.

The chocolate layer here is dark chocolate, though not “pure” in the sense that there’s some dairy in there (sorry vegans, but the confectioners glaze spoiled these for you anyway).

The chocolate is quite sweet and the punch of the coffee bean is nice and balances that sugary-ness quite well. I might have preferred a little more coffee flavor.

They’re substantially crunchy, I can’t say that these are a quiet way to get a caffeine boost.

I like how thick the shells are and how easy it is to hold them in my hand or just throw a few in my jacket pocket without the protection of the bag. As long as they stay dry, they do just fine. (Okay, maybe that’s not the most sanitary thing, but I’m just being honest about my road-testing of the product.)

The coffee is sourced from Indonesia and uses only Arabica beans and benefits the Indonesia Relief Fund.

They’re made in the USA and are Kosher. The packages are a little expensive ($3.00 for 1.94 ounces), but I expect that’s because they’re just starting out ... volume usually helps to even these things out and they’re only sold in the small package. Right now I can only find them on Foodzie, though they’ve been at some food trade shows so might be in cafes and gourmet delis as well.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows
2. M&Ms Premiums
3. Crackheads
4. Starbucks Chocolate
5. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
6. Pocket Coffee
7. Coffee Beat
8. Bali’s Best Coffee & United Coffee Candy

Hot on the tails of the Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms will be the release of Limited Edition Coconut M&Ms in August. (More here)

The cream colored packet holds 1.5 ounces of green, white and brown milk chocolate morsels flavored with coconut.

As with most limited editions, the package is a bit slighter than the regular products. This one clocks in at 1.5 ounces instead of the normal 1.69 in a Milk Chocolate M&Ms pack.

The package is cute and playful, featuring Ms. Green reclining in the sand, leaning against a coconut filled with coconut M&Ms. In the background the Yellow Peanut M&M is falling out of a coconut palm laden with more coconuts.

The contents smell much like most M&Ms, sweet and slightly woodsy but only the slightest whiff of coconut.

The individual lentils are a bit puffier than regular M&Ms, though not as big as the Peanut Butter variety.

Inside they’re just milk chocolate but with an added touch of coconut flavoring (but no actual coconut to be found in the ingredients).

The chocolate is fudgy, the flavor is a little salty and tropical but with a strange yogurty tang (kind of like Hershey’s) ... the crunch of the shell is crisp.

On the whole, it’s a nice change-up, very appealing. It’s not something that I think deserves to be made part of the regular repertoire. But see the review on Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
2. M&Ms Premiums
3. M&Ms Razzberry - Limited Edition
4. Cherry Almondine M&Ms
5. Kisses Coconut Creme
6. Russell Stover Coconut Wreath
7. M&Ms Line