Mars has expanded their line of M&Ms Premiums (which is barely a year old) with a new variety: M&Ms Premium Dark Chocolate.

The package calls them deeply decadent, rich and intense dark chocolate. They do look deep and dark, the package is a stirring red and brown affair that really jumped off the shelf at me at Target last week.

Like many mass-marketed dark chocolates these days the semi-sweet chocolate is more than cocoa beans, sugar, emulsifiers and vanilla. Inside these little morsels are three different kinds of dairy: milkfat, skim milk and lactose.

The deep maroon/purple metallic coating looks like food (the blue almond ones don’t actually look like something you’re supposed to eat, they look like fingernail polish).

As a solid chocolate piece, they’re not terribly large like some of the other layered versions, most are about the same size as the Peanut Butter M&Ms.

The scent is a soft cocoa, sweet and woodsy. It’s a mellow chocolate with a decent soft melt, but a not-quite-smooth texture. It’s a little chalky and has a bit of a dry aftertaste. They’re pleasant and certainly attractive but don’t quite hit me with a strong premium taste or texture. (This is the hazard of eating stuff like this after an Amano bar and an Askinosie.)

They don’t taste that different from the Dark Chocolate M&Ms either, they just lack that crunchy shell, so they’re a bit less sweet. (There’s also salt in there.)

They’re a great candy to chose for aesthetics over taste, but I admit that the field of good chocolate in lentil form is pretty narrow. (If you’re really looking for great little morsels, go for the Valrhona, they’re not little tiny pieces but they are awesome.)

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
2. M&Ms Memorable Moments (Disney)
3. Head to Head: M&Ms vs Koppers Milkies
4. UK Smarties (no artificial colors)
5. Peruvian Candies
6. M&Ms Line

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

One of their new candies is Puckerooms Sour Gummy Candy. They’re sour gummies (unlike the Sluggles, which are sweet gummies) in mushroom shapes and three different flavors.

The new Wonka’s Edible Garden are made with natural ingredients, including fruit juice and no artificial colorings or flavorings. (But of course they’re gummis and are not vegetarian since they use gelatin ... and in this case cochineal color, too.)

There are three flavors and three different shapes (though the shapes are applied to all the flavors):

Cherry - as you can see from the photo, I found a grape & cherry combo, but for the most part the cherry ones were single flavored. It’s a tart cherry with a black cherry darkness beneath but a lingering sour. It got my glands a’tinglin’.

Grape - it’s just so fun for me to have grape gummis, I have a hard time focusing on these for the review. The grape flavor is much like concord grape jam with Pixy Stix poured over it. (Come on, if you’d thought of it as a kid, you would have loved it!)

Lemon/Orange - I loved the look of these, the orange was always on the top, making the stem lemon. The flavors were a good blend of citrus zest and of course a sour punch that lasted beyond the grainy coating and permeated the soft gummi. The lemon and orange were distinct but blended well.

The sourness isn’t blisteringly strong, in fact, I found them barely more tart than the Sluggles, just more consistently tangy from start to finish.

I like the option of really potent gummis made without artificial flavors & colors, so these are real winners. I saw them at Target over the weekend for $1.59 for a 6.5 ounce bag, so it’s not like parents need to compromise here - the kids get a mainstream treat without going to a special store. (Of course that doesn’t mean adults can’t enjoy them.)

Related Candies

1. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
2. New Flavors: Skittles Sour & Wonka Runts
3. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies
4. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
5. Organic Zootons
6. Super Sour Worms
7. Organic Surf Sweets

What’s especially fun about Cadbury chocolate is the little variations depending on the country. One of those is the Australian set of candy bars. I picked up this single serve bar of Dairy Milk Snack after seeing it in Sera’s photo stream last year (I didn’t really want the big size bar).

It’s a simple concept - a segmented bar with different flavored fillings in each piece. (Note that the large bar has only five segments.)

The first thing that sets this little bar apart is that each piece is coded with the contents. Though the package didn’t say what the fillings are (and please, why?) I did figure out the pineapple one immediately and took a good guess at the strawberry and orange.

The flavors in all are: caramel, pineapple, coconut ice (I have no idea what that is), strawberry, Turkish delight and orange.

My bar was fresh, unmarred and in great condition.

Caramel - I thought it’d be like the Caramello, but it’s a little firmer, a little thicker. The chocolate outside is rather strange - it has a good snap, but not a very good melt. It’s a bit stiff, a little chalky. The flavor is recognizably Cadbury with a strong powdered milk flavor and a gentle malty cocoa taste.

Pineapple - has a light tangy pineapple scent. The fondant is thick, it has a good sheen to it, but it doesn’t flow. The flavor is sweet and has a tangy pineapple bite. It’s an odd combination with the musky chocolate, but I enjoyed the change of pace.

Coconut Ice - honestly I don’t know what this is. It’s pink and it’s crumbly and has a slight sweet flavor that I can’t quite place. If it’s supposed to be coconut, it’s missing that completely.

Strawberry - the fondant is smooth, but a little more crumbly than the pineapple. Fragrant and floral, there’s not tart component. Rather authentic tasting and pleasant.

Turkish Delight - wow, they went all out for the rose here. The texture is quite soft, more like a jelly than a firm paste. The floral notes are pungent with a slight tangy middle note that dissipates quickly. I rather liked it, but I can tell that this would be quite off-putting for many Americans and other cultures not accustomed to floral flavors.

Orange - I had hoped this would be the winner piece, but I found it rather bland. The fondant was too firm and lacking a distinctive zest.

Just as a little touchstone, I picked up an American Cadbury Dairy Milk bar to compare the flavors, and I do find that I prefer the stickier, fudgier texture of the Hershey-made version, but that may just be what I’m accustomed to.

It’s a fun bar and honestly I’d probably enjoy a whole bar of the pineapple or Turkish delight, the rest of the flavors just didn’t feel like they were the best that Cadbury could muster. (I know they can do better with the caramel & chocolate combination.) For the money, especially since I’m paying import prices, if I felt like boxed chocolate candy, I’d be better off getting some Russell Stover or finding a See’s or I’d probably even choose a Whitman’s Sampler of this.

One of the best things I can say about Cadbury right now is that they’re making a huge effort to go Fair Trade with their chocolate though it’s going to be a long process.

Some other reviews: Jim’s Chocolate Mission, Chocolate Reviews,  Sera at The Candy Enthusiast.

Related Candies

1. Cadbury Crunchie
2. KitKat Temptations: Hazelnut & Coconut
3. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel
4. Sky Bar
5. Cadbury Twirl and Snow Flake
6. Violet Crumble

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

(GPS location.)

What powers me when hiking? Besides a fig bar before starting, we munched on Goetze’s Caramel Creams and Swedish Fish, then at the top, at 1,100 feet we ate a BT McElrath Salty Dog Bar.

Don’t worry, all we took were photos, all we made were memories and all we left were footprints.

Yogen Fruz is a high-concept frozen yogurt & smoothie chain that began in Toronto and now has over 1,000 stores in 20 countries. In this case it’s the smoothies that have been turned into a line of little candies.

The little tin I picked up of the Yogen Fruz Smoothies Strawberry Banana smelled very strong. Even before I took off the plastic overwrap, I had to keep it in a ziploc bag.

Aside from the blastingly strong scent, the ingredients are pretty positive: pure cane sugar, yogurt, tartaric acid, malic acid, natural strawberry and banana flavors, ascorbic acid and natural color.

Though they’re made with nice ingredients, they’re basically a “tablet candy”, much like a SweeTart though not dextrose-based. They come in a tin, the same one, as far as I can tell, that Godiva uses for their Chocoiste Pearls but in this case I had no trouble with opening & closing it.

The little tablets have the umlauted U on them (that conveniently looks like a very big smile) with a light pink speckling. They’re immediately tangy on the tongue and dissolve a little unevenly. It’s both lightly sour and has that yogurt twang.

I thought the taste was vibrant and even a bit unique. If you’re looking for an all-natural SweeTart-like product then this is a nice idea though certainly quite expensive.

These are made in Canada by Big Sky Brands, who also make the Jones Soda candies.

Such was my experience with The Wild Thing chocolate bar from Lillie Belle Farms. So after eating my sample from Jeff at Lillie Belle Farms that I got at the Fancy Food Show in January, I finally found a store the stocks them: Mel & Rose here in Los Angeles.

The Wild Thing is a variety of chocolate known as cru sauvage which, conveniently enough means, wild vintage (or wild source). The beans are from feral cacao trees from old plantation properties in Bolivia that have been harvested. Like many “volunteer” plants that pop up long after a garden or farm is untended, they possess all the crucial characteristics of the well tended trees, but a little something else. Perhaps a little more of the true essence of cacao that made it so attractive to the ancient Americans.

The bar itself is wonderfully molded, I like a thick bar. It has the Lillie Belle logo on it, and though that’s pretty too, it doesn’t really make for easy portioning.

It’s a moderately dark bar at 68%. The wrapper mentions that the beans are roasted a low temperatures and then refined for nearly three days.

The color is a nice, solid brown with a hint of deep red. The thick pieces give a lot of room for developing the texture on the tongue. It’s sweet at first, but the melt is smooth and immediate. The primary notes that hit me first were brown sugar and raisin, but as the flavor develops there’s a slight dry bite that holds some cherry, tobacco and coffee notes.

The texture was really what blew me away on this bar. I love the extra silky melt, bright snap and shiny molding.

The bar is made with only three ingredients: cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar. No vanilla, no soy. (Though made in facility that does have soy, so not for soy allergic folks - same goes for nuts & dairy.) As far as I know, this chocolate is the Max Felchlin Cru Sauvage, just remelted (and nicely priced, if you ask me).

My only hesitation with the bar (besides the fact that I don’t like falling in love with things in short supply) is the packaging. While it looks nice, the wrapper is a bit thin, as is the foil. The paper overwrap is excessively glued, and pasted to the foil at that, so I never had any luck with either bar in rewrapping it. (That’s why I have a bunch of zip lock bags.)

If you’re a chocolate fan who enjoys single origins, this is definitely one to experience.

(Apologies for those who saw this before I finished the review, I published instead of saving.)

Related Candies

1. TCHO Fruity
2. Askinosie Chocolate
3. Amadei
4. Domori Cru
5. Choxie 3 Ounce Chocolate Bars
6. Malie Kai: Waialua Estate Chocolate
7. Michel Cluizel Les 1ers Crus de Plantation

Here are two new super charged coffee bean candies. GoGo Beans are made by How Do You Take Your Coffee and feature “The Eating Roast” coffee, which are beans that are chosen & roasted to be tastier for consuming than for brewing (I already reviewed their JAVAZ). Jitterbeans are the overclocked version of Crackheads (review here) from Osmanium ... and when I say overclocked I mean it, each piece contains about 20 mg of caffeine so the package has as much as 6 small cups of coffee.

GoGo Beans
Size: 2.43 ounces (69 grams)
Price: $2.50
Caffeine Content: approximately 125 mg (about 5 mg per bean)
Calories per ounce: 134
Other Fortifications: ginseng, taurine, B vitamins
Allergens: soy & milk - plus uses confectioners glaze so not vegetarian (but made in a peanut free facility)
Ingredient notes: not real chocolate, contains palm kernel oil, artificial colors: Yellow 6 & Red 40
My source: sample from How Do You Take Your Coffee

GoGo Beans are super-fortified and offer both the caffeine inherent in the bean plus an addition kick added to the candy shell plus some special B vitamins, taurine and ginseng. The format is an bean at the center (specially roasted for eating) then a mockolate coating all covered in a thick candy shell.

The shell has a pretty immediate light bitterness which may be the fortification or may be the food coloring. That fades away pretty quickly for me. The inside has a mellow cocoa flavor but not a huge kick for me. The texture is soft and has a decent melt, but at times felt a little waxy. The bean at the center was lovely, just as I found with the Javaz - crunchy and crisp with a strong coffee flavor but no oily bitterness.

Jitterbeans
Size: 1.3 ounces (37 grams)
Price: retail $3.00
Caffeine Content: 600 mg (462 mg per ounce)
Calories per ounce: not available
Other Fortifications: none
Allergens: soy, peanuts & nuts - also uses confectioners glaze so not vegan
Ingredient notes: Uses guarana for extra caffeine, artificial colors: Red 40, Yellow 5 & Blue 1
My source: All Candy Expo

The Jitterbeans follow the tried and true format of chocolate over an espresso bean and adds a candy shell. Like the original Crackheads, these are in the classic tuxedo colors of black and white, though there’s no actual white chocolate in there.

The candy shell is rather thin and offers a sandy crunch. Inside the chocolate is sweet and has a bit of a spicy woodsy ginger flavor to it along with the mellow coffee notes. The extra caffeine isn’t bitter at all though some of the beans in the center had a bitter kick. The whole thing is rather tasty and probably very dangerous for those who don’t know that there’s a lot of caffeine in these and consumes a whole box. I limited myself to three beans in the three different times I tried these. That said, I have a hard time believing they have that much caffeine in them without so much bitterness that I’ve found in other caffeinated candies - maybe someone can comment on the caffeine in “guarana seed extract.”

Both of these are great, durable & portable caffeine supplements. They’re tasty and what’s most important - portionable so you can control exactly how much caffeine you take in. That said, I much prefer the more sedate and non-fortified versions and will stick with the JAVAZ for my candy, coffee & caffeine combination. The addition of artificial colors wasn’t enough of selling point.

Jitterbeans and GoGo Beans get a 6 out of 10 - not bad candy, but not for me.

Related Candies

1. Beechies Force Chewy Candy
2. Loud Truck Energy Gummies
3. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
4. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolate
5. Pocket Coffee
6. No Time & Black Black

Finally on one of my candy jaunts a few weeks ago I found it at IT’SUGAR at Universal City Walk (they’re also a few webstores). The bar is rather sought after ... Topps introduced them with a big marketing campaign including TV commercials, then the company that ran the factory that was making them went under. Hopefully Topps will find someone else to gear up to make the bars soon to combat their elusiveness before interest wanes.

This bar is My Little Pony Lilac.

The berry scent is actually pretty good, it does smell like raspberry flavor, right down to that woodsy smell that the seeds tend to give jam.

The bar has the familiar Wazoo structure - two layers of soft edible, fruit-flavored Play Doh covered in solidified raspberry milk. The whole thing is sprinkled with tangy candy beads.

The pink layer is sweet and tastes a bit like cherries & strawberries. It’s soft and chewy and has only the slightest grain to it with a barely perceptible bitter aftertaste (coloring).

The yellow layer, well, I had trouble getting it well separated but it tasted about the same, maybe a more yogurty tang to it.

The lilac coating is similarly yogurty - sweet but with a slight fruity tartness.

Overall, as odd as the bar is, it’s a nice change from the heaviness of chocolate and the lack of a creamy component from fruit chews. The little beads are kind of messy, but as a candy it’s a pretty good new interpretation of the standard bar. I admit, it’s growing on me. The only real disappointment is that the flavor wasn’t that distinct from the Blue Razz. I think for a line of bars like this they should be really different - an orange & lemon one might be fun (kind of like a creamsicle) and probably a cherry one along with the Razz. Or go really off the deep end with a mint bar.

Related Candies

1. Big Bite Gummy Bear
2. Junior Fruit Cremes
3. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
4. Bratz Candy Cosmetics
5. Gummi Lightning Bugs
6. Rolly Pop
7. Kinder Egg