I love it when the Candy Blog community points me to something new. We have a little conversation going on in the Candy Blog Forums about the 2009 holiday candy offerings. One that ruffy mentioned was Hershey’s Kisses Filled with Irish Creme. I found them at Target as well and I suspect since no one else has seen them anywhere else that they may be a Target exclusive this year.

Irish Cream is a combination of flavors and textures; it’s usually heavy cream, whiskey and coffee. Kisses filled with Irish Creme are less of that. There’s no actual whiskey in there, for starters. It’s a molded chocolate shell filled with a sugar and oil paste with some milk products (nonfat milk and whey) and artificial flavoring. So maybe a more accurate name would be Kisses filled with Sweet Flavored Whey Paste.

While my confidence level in them was low, I was also plenty curious. The dark green bag and gold wrappers with green fireworks on them were certainly appealing.

The smell, when I pushed my face into the bag, is actually mildly alcoholic. I don’t know how they did that, but it definitely has a bit of a whiskey note.

Out of the foil it’s even more noticeable - more than just bourbon vanilla, this smells like strong stuff. The chocolate flavors of the molded shell aren’t much. It’s smooth enough, with a slight fudgy grain that’s definitely candy-like. The center is a bit of a paste, thicker than the cordial creme in some of the Kisses. It’s not quite grainy and rather like a fondant. The center is a little bit salty so it has an immediate difference from the chocolate shell. The whiskey flavors of woodsy alcohol are there along with a slightly warm and cozy background note.

The liquor flavor though has an odd medicinal quality, especially later on. It’s like the after effects of Cepacol or some other throat anesthetic. Eating another one kind of gets rid of the benzocaine & menthol aftertaste by introducing the primary tastes of sugar, milk and whiskey flavored cheesecake.

I’m not blown away, but they are different than the last few flavors. But a true coffee flavored Kiss might be a nice change one of these days or an Egg Nog for the holidays.

Related Candies

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

The problem with Mr. Goodbar was that it was never Mr. Greatbar in the first place.  When Hershey’s replaced the cocoa butter in it, I completely lost interest. So, I’ve been looking for Mr. Betterbar because I still believed there could be a simple, satisfying combination of milk chocolate and fresh roasted peanuts. When I was at the Target in Harbor City shortly before Halloween I spotted this new bar: Green & Black’s Peanut. Since Green & Black’s is organic and expensive, I thought for sure it was going to be better.

After I got the bar home and photographed it, I read a little closer to see that it wasn’t just a plain milk chocolate with whole (or half) pieces of peanuts. No, this was something quite different but still equally compelling: Milk chocolate with caramelized peanuts and a hint of sea salt - 37% Cocoa Content.

The bar looks smooth and shiny. It also looks darker than most milk chocolate bars, somewhere between a true dark and a milk chocolate. I like how Green & Black’s bars are just a little thicker than the Lindt Excellence or Scharffen Berger. This is great especially when there are inclusions, because it leaves room for them to stack and still be surrounded by chocolate.

The bar smells incredible. It’s deep and smoky with a great authentic peanut scent along with the faint hint of caramelized sugar and milk. The texture is equally great, there’s a silky smooth melt and a sweet dairy flavor along with some dark bitter notes of both chocolate and toasted nuts. The peanut flavors are quite strong, and the nuts themselves are crunchy but there’s also the wonderful surprise of both little buttery toffee bits and a crisp toffee coating on some of the peanuts. The salt is also a nice complement to the flavors, keeping the rather sweet milk chocolate from becoming too sticky and setting off the woodsy notes.

I ate this bar up in less than two days. Then I went looking for another. I still haven’t found one, but when I see it, I’ll buy it. Oddly enough, it’s still not the Mr. Goodbar substitute I was looking for, but I’m going to just be happy with the serendipity that brought it into my life and be grateful that my mistakes are so tasty.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Peanuts (plus Mr. Goodbar)
2. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Green & Black’s Ginger Chocolate
5. Nestle Crunch with Peanuts

Lindt is well known for their economically priced & widely available Lindor truffle line.

Their line of individually wrapped bites called Fioretto differs from the Lindor Truffles in that it contains no tropical oils (palm, palm kernel or coconut).

These little morsels are more of a cross between Perugina Baci and Ferrero Rocher.

I liked the little stand up bag, it’s simple and not too fussy. What I liked even more is that they sell the chocolates in single flavor bags plus this assortment of all three. To top it all off, Target had them on sale for $2.50 a bag (regularly $3.50). While that sounds like a good deal, it’s not like there’s a lot in the bag - it’s 4.1 ounces and holds 10 pieces.

The Nougat Hazelnut Praline is in a blue wrapper, which may be the universal color of hazelnut.

Inside the cellophane the little candy is further wrapped in paper-backed foil. The pieces are about 1.25” in diameter and barely 1” tall. They’re lumpy affairs with obvious cereal crunchies lurking below the milk chocolate coating.

They smell sweet and milky, and a little like malty rice crispies.

Biting into them is quite a journey of textures. The chocolate shell does have crisped rice bits in it. Then the center is a soft hazelnut cream with crushed hazelnuts in it. The hazelnut aroma comes out quite distinctly once the seal has been broken.

It’s sweet but with a good bit of hazelnut and milk flavor to it. It’s sticky and a bit cloying but the variety of nut & cereal crunches break that up.

Cappuccino was a bit of a mystery, as the package didn’t really have any description. So I was pleased to see it was a milk chocolate shell (not a white chocolate one). It does smell like rich dark espresso with a liberal helping of sugar.

Like the hazelnut, there were crisped rice bits in the shell. The center here, though, had no nuts. Instead it was a creamy coffee, milk & chocolate filling. It’s a bit crumbly but melts easily. It has a strong coffee flavor and even bits of coffee beans in there (not my favorite way to get coffee flavor).

I liked the flavors and the crisped rice covered up some of the bitterness associated with the little crunchy coffee bits.

As I mentioned at the top, there were 10 pieces in my package. As you might imagine there were at least three of each ... and the flavor that got four was Caramel.

The wrapper is a tantalizing burnt orange. It smells a bit buttery and like Stroopwaffles (if you’ve ever had those, you’ll know what I mean).

The consistent element in the Fioretto is the chocolate shell with a moderate amount of crisped rice in it. It’s creamy and sweet, but doesn’t have a super chocolate punch to it, allowing whatever center is there to be the dominant flavor.

The caramel center is smooth and almost like a pudding. There’s a faint cinnamon or mild spice in there, like this is a baked good instead of a chocolate. It’s a comforting sweet flavor and texture, but lacking that bunch of “caramel” that I would expect to have notes of butter, salt and burnt sugar. 

I prefer these over the Lindor Truffle line, if only because they seem more chocolate-based than oily. I would love to see them in a dark chocolate version.

Other views: Candy Addict, Jim’s Chocolate Mission got a dark one (and a lime & white chocolate) and Rebecca at SugarHog.

Related Candies

1. Laica & Caffarel Chocolate Eggs
2. Ghirardelli Luxe Milk Crisp
3. Lindt Chocolate Carrots
4. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
5. Ritter Schokowurfel
6. Ferrero Rocher
7. Baci Bar

I went back to Target over the weekend in hopes of finding more new Halloween goodies. Though it was mostly the same items I found there two weeks ago, the seemed to have a bit more in the way of their Gourmet Candy Corn line.

They have a lot of funny flavors that seem incongruous with candy corn like Tangerine, Green Apple (plus Chocolate Covered Green Apple), Toffee (which I already reviewed) and S’Mores. However, Pumpkin Pie sounded pretty good.

It’s in the same style of stand up black shiny bag that the other gourmet treats were in. They’re all terribly overpriced, but the packaging is nice enough that you could probably bring a bag as a hostess gift for the right occasion.

I found the colors off-putting. The tip is soft orange, the center is bright yellow but the base is some unworldly fluorescent orange that just makes me think of faded vinyl tub toys. I really couldn’t capture the color in the photo. 

The bag smells sweet and creamy when opened.

The texture is soft and has very little grain to it. They’re sweet and lack that touch of honey that true candy corn usually puts forward. The pumpkin pie here is just a light blend of spices. Cinnamon is the boldest, but it doesn’t rise to the level of spicy or hot cinnamon. There’s a slight twinge of woodsy nutmeg or allspice ... but that’s pretty much it.

I was disappointed. I hoped for some more nutmeg or even a note of clove but instead it was about as bland as generic canned pumpkin pie mix. I think I’m done tasting novelty candy corn, at least when the price is $2.99 per flavor. So if you’ve tried some of the others, chime in with your experience to help out other readers.

Related Candies

1. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
2. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
3. See’s Pumpkin Spice Lollypops
4. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
5. Pumpkin Spice Kisses
6. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins

The newest thing about Candy Corn over the past five years has been flavors: Green Apple, Pumpkin Spice, Caramel Apple, Tangerine and on and on.  The odd thing is that their kin, little shaped mellocremes, have always come in different flavors - harvest mixes come in maple & chocolate and the Easter specialties often had delicate citrus & berry flavors.

So now comes the ultimate mash-up of candy corn. Both flavored and covered in chocolate. It seems odd that this product hasn’t succeeded before.

I found this bag of Toffee Flavored Candy Corn covered in Milk Chocolate at Target. They have a special line of little stand up pouches like this marketed in their house-brand.

The package is cute & compelling - a dark orange accented thick cellophane bag with a clear window to show off the shiny chocolate covered mix. I thought it was a little expensive at $2.99 ... but $7 a pound for a chocolate item isn’t that bad, and this is a Candy Holiday.

About one third of the package is chocolate covered. The rest are plain Naturally & Artificially Flavored Toffee Candy Corn. The colors are a muted amber center with the stereotypical yellow base and white tip.

The package smells off-putting. It’s a fake butter flavor which leads me to a rant about toffee:

Toffee is carefully boiled sugar and butter. The essential qualities of toffee (as it’s made in America) besides the crunchy texture & cleave are the toasted flavors of the caramelized sugar and the creamy melt of the butter/heavy cream. It’s not about the butter flavor, it’s about the burnt sugar. So when someone offers me something toffee flavored I expect dark sugar notes not artificially flavored buttered popcorn.

I tried sampling it a few times and found it too artificial, so I left the package open overnight and that seems to have let some of the volatile organic compounds evaporate and it became a bit more appealing if bland. Rather like ordinary candy corn. I even detected the smell of milk & chocolate in there.

The plain candy corn is nicely textured. It’s soft but not too crumbly, it melts easily and though it’s sweet it’s not too sickly. It could have used just a tad more salt to sell the toffee flavor.

The chocolate covered pieces are very nicely panned. They’re huge and meaty, with a thick coat of chocolate.

It seems more sugary than the uncoated stuff. The milk chocolate isn’t particularly creamy, though the flavor profile has a fair bit of the dairy component to really sell the toffee part. I liked the combination of textures - the fondant of the candy corn has a crumbly texture, kind of like the center of a York Peppermint Pattie. (Which makes me wonder why I’ve never seen Mint Candy Corn and then the logical conclusion of Chocolate Covered Mint Candy Corn.)

I give them kudos for the attractive mix and the innovation factor here. It’s also available in Green Apple flavor (maybe some green apple fans would love it - I’m not keen on the combo of chocolate & green apple).

The package gives full disclosure: Candy made in USA. Bag made in China. Packed in Mexico. (Best by December 27, 2010) It also says that it contains milk, eggs, soy and coconut and may contain peanut & tree nuts. The only thing it doesn’t mention is gluten.

Related Candies

1. Marich Easter Select Mix
2. Candy Place Harvest Mix
3. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
4. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
5. Mint Cremes from the Makers of Jelly Belly
6. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
7. Candy Corn Kisses
8. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
9. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn

Candy Season has started with the first Halloween candy entering the aisles as drug stores, discount warehouses & grocery chains move their summer & back to school merchandise to clearance.

I was excited to find the new Bat Dots in the large theater-sized box at Target over the weekend. They haven’t quite put out all their Halloween items yet, but I found these in the regular candy aisle on a little hanging display at an endcap. I first tried them after All Candy Expo and was looking forward to seeing this single flavor box.

Bat Dots are black but instead of being the black licorice Crows in a different box, they’re Blood Orange.

The package is great and plays with themes of the orange as a harvest moon, the word bat is juicy and the little bat shaped Dot uses an orange slice as a smile.

It’s unusual to find a box of Dots that has just one flavor, and for it to be blood orange is quite a coup for citrus lovers.

As far as flavor goes, these are packed with it. There’s an immediate tartness followed by some nice zesty notes and a strong orange juice flavor. They’re soft and easy to chew ... and for some reason they’re not sticking to my teeth quite as much as other Dots.

My only misgiving with these is the heavy use of food coloring so I get a little weird aftertaste ... if I don’t pop another one in my mouth right away.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Candy Corn Dots seem like a natural mash-up. They look pretty cute - though I have to say that they weren’t as consistent as the package leads me to believe. The layering is sometimes spot on, with a yellow third on the bottom and an orange top (no white tip) but other times I had to turn over the Dots to even see the yellow.

I didn’t know what flavor to expect but I girding myself for fake butter. Instead they ended up being a pleasant French vanilla or maybe pudding flavor. It was missing that light touch of honey that the better candy corn has ... but overall it’s a cute take on Dots.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Ghost Dots have actually been a seasonal product for three years now. Again, I give Tootsie some props for the package design and the concept itself.

They’re regular fruit Dots, but they’re all the same translucent & spooky beach glass light green color.

The spooky part is you never know what you’re going to get. It’s rather interesting to experience the flavors without the color contribution to the flavor event. It confirmed that I really don’t like cherry much, even if there isn’t a crazy aftertaste and I had trouble telling my citrus apart from time to time. It’s tempting to think that they should be glow in the dark, but I don’t think that’d be safe. (Though maybe it would be - kids could mount them on little sticks and carry them around while trick or treating for extra visibility!)

Rating: 6 out of 10

I really couldn’t beat the price on these either - for a buck they’re a fun change-up and hopefully they’ll go over well and return every year. (I haven’t seen them in the Trick-or-Treat size yet ... has anyone else?)

Related Candies

1. Short & Sweet: Summer Bites
2. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
3. Candy Corn Kisses
4. Dots
5. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn

Trolli is a big gummi brand in the United States. Originally founded by a German (actually West Germany at the time) company named Mederer Corporation in 1981, they quickly established an American production facility in the United States in 1986.

Though you wouldn’t notice it as a candy buyer, Trolli has passed through quite a few corporate hands over the years. First Favorite Brands, Inc bought them in 1997, but went bankrupt and were bought out by Nabisco in 1999. Nabisco sold them off in 2000 to Kraft. Then Kraft sold all their candy brands to Wrigley’s in 2005 and within that same year it was acquired by Farley’s and Sathers.

Trolli has the distinction of innovating the Gummi Worm. Not only was it a new shape (one that kids love to play with and adults might find a little off-putting) but it also features multiple flavors in one piece.

Trolli’s Sour Brite Crawlers not only have that duo of flavors, they’re also fluorescent colors with a slightly sour grainy coating.

There are three flavor varieties in the bag, though there is no directory or description of what they are:

Orange & Green = Orange & Lime - these are not Sour Patch or Sour Skittles style sour ... they’re just a little more tart than the regular gummis. The flavor combo here is a nice mix of citrus. The lime is rather ordinary and I don’t think I’d care for it much in a plain gummi, but it goes well with the juicy and tangy orange. Some good zest notes to keep it from being all about some sort of bland punch flavor.

Pink & Blue = Strawberry & Raspberry - nice berry mix though the distinction between the two isn’t terribly clear. I liked the tangy bite to the chew and the graininess on the outside especially on this version.

Yellow & Red = Lemon & Cherry - the cherry flavor was dominant when I opened the bag, so I fully expected both ends of this worm to taste the same. Cherry is, well, a light sour cherry without the dark woodsy “black cherry” notes. The lemon side is distinctive, a good lemonade flavor though not quite sour enough for a product that calls itself sour.

On the whole, a fun candy. The colors are, as described, very bright. They’re nicely made, the bag was fresh and cheap ($1.59 at Target). The only hesitation is that these in no way qualify as a sour candy.

Related Candies

1. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
2. Super Sour Worms
3. Krunchy Bears
4. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
5. Gummi Lightning Bugs
6. Gummi Clown Fish
7. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

The Werther’s Original line has really expanded over the past few years. Known best for their classic toffee/hard caramel candies they’ve expanded into caramels and chocolate. Their newest product, Caramel Dreams combines the two.

The package says: Rich Creamy Caramel Covered in Smooth European Chocolate.

The bag is an interesting soft matte mylar. My bag was puffed up from a lot of air, which I assumed was to like the air in a bag of potato chips - meant to protect the contents from getting smashed. And it did its job well. Each little piece I picked out looked pretty close to perfect.

Each little molded chocolate is wrapped in the classic golden folk/cellophane wrapper that Werther’s is known for.

They smell a little milky, a bit like Cadbury chocolate. The caramel center is quite liquid and gooey, so I don’t recommend biting into them expecting a chewy caramel. They’re best enjoyed popping the whole thing in the mouth.

The caramel center is smooth, a bit thick & sticky with a slight salty note to it. It’s more on the milky side of caramel than toasted sugar flavors.

They’re very pretty, well crafted and decently priced. If you’re a fan of Rolos, Cadbury Caramello or Dove Promises Caramels you might also find these to your liking. I think I’ll stick to See’s or perhaps something a little more nutty like Snickers for my caramel needs or just some Sugar Babies.

The other varieties in this line are CaraMelts and Caramel Mousse. (Candy For Dinner has photos of CaraMelts & Caramel Mousse.)

Related Candies

1. Caramilk Deluxe
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels
3. Big Mo’ Bars: Peanut Butter & Creamy Caramel
4. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
5. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
6. Sugar Babies
7. Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramels
8. Head to Head: Rolo vs Caramel Kisses