The caramel is milk chocolate around a square of honey-amber colored caramel. The milk chocolate is thin and nicely shatters/crunches when bitten into.

There’s not too much of a noticeable flavor profile for the milk chocolate. It’s fairly sweet and gets swallowed up by the caramel’s more powerful flavor.

The caramel was solid when bitten into but them became sticky when chewed. It’s sweet but not too sweet and rather round and mild tasting for a burnt sugar confection.

There’s a hint of brown sugar to the caramel’s finish. It was okay, but I like my caramels scorchy and complex, while this was a sweet and simple treat.

A high O for that I’d eat again but not something that I’d buy again.

The mint came in a flat fondant filled dark-chocolate disk. They seem to be trying to emulate York Peppermint Patties, perhaps with good reason – this particular shape creates a higher ratio of chocolate to mint.

Some of my mint filling had oozed out of cracks in the chocolate by the time I opened it. The ooze was a sticky, clear liquid, which makes me think some of the invert sugar had re-liquified a tad too soon, for the remaining center filling was an opaque white fondant with the consistency of runny frosting.

That fondant was peppermint-y rather than herbaceous minty. It had a slightly bitter finish when tasted on its own and left behind a menthol cooling sensation. I found it just a bit too sweet and cloying.

The dark chocolate wasn’t as thick as it was on the coconut, but it was thicker than that of York Peppermint Patties. It had a thick melt that played off the mint while also concealing the mint’s bitter finish.

I enjoyed this, but it was a little too sweet and messy, so it gets an O.

I think the packaging was so sparsely decorated that it needn’t have been designated a holiday-specific candy. But who am I to complain about sale candy?

There were three kinds of individually wrapped chocolates in the bag, with two each of coconut, mint, and caramel. Kind of a waste of packaging space for just six chocolates, if you ask me. Today, I’m covering the coconut, and we’ll hit the rest later this week.

The coconut was a rounded rectangle of dark chocolate filled with fluffy white coconut. The obvious comparison is with Mounds, a similar dark chocolate-covered coconut treat. How would Russell Stover’s version compare?

Pretty favorably! The dark chocolate shell was quite substantial, thick enough to provide a bit of crunch and snap. It didn’t have much of a melt, but it had surprising depth of flavor.

I was reminded of a Ghirardelli flavor profile. Lots of nice cocoa duskiness with a slightly sweet finish.

The flaky coconut paste was mild in flavor. It was lightly sweet and nutty while avoiding any of that artificial tropicalness that I associate with coconut and sunscreen.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I definitely prefer these to Mounds. Though Mounds are a bit nuttier, the Russell Stover wins out thanks to its superior quantity and quality of chocolate. An OM.

Recently, they mailed me a bunch of Japanese candies, including this pack of Lime Shikwasa Hi-Chew. I originally thought these were lime, but Debby and Nana cleared that up in the comments. A Shikwasa is a tart Japanese citrus fruit with a green rind and golden flesh.

Also, there’s all kinds of fun stuff going on on that wrapper in addition to the Shikwasas. Nana has a great explanation in the comments.

I’ve reviewed a bunch of Hi-Chew in the past. Like all Hi-Chew, it comes in a pack of individually wrapped rectangles. The chew started off sproingy and then softened and became stickier.

These were a pale pistachio green with a white center. The flavor was amazingly juicy and spot on.

It was incredibly sweetly limey and zesty with the perfect edge of pithy bitterness. As the chew went on, the zestiness intensified and took on just a hint of herbal grassiness.

There was no sourness to it, and the sweetness level was perfect – tasty without being cloying – with just the right tidbit of bitterness to set it off.

I couldn’t stop popping these and would change nothing about them. Well, I would change one thing: bring them to the U.S. please! A ZOMG!

The tub described them as “buttery, soft chewy caramels with imported French sea salt.” It had two sealed pouches of individually cellophane-wrapped caramels.

Be prepared for some serious teeth picking if you decide to chew these up. They’re incredibly sticky and impossible to eat in polite company.

When held on my tongue, they were buttery and smooth, though constant vigilance was still required to keep them from adhering to the backs of my teeth. When eaten this way, they left a greasy feeling on my lips.

They tasted lightly sweet and mostly of butter with a hint of butterscotch flavor. There was a slightly salty hit at the end that brought just the tiniest edge of sourness.

For me, they were too one-dimensional and way too sticky/chewy. The salt just wasn’t pronounced enough, and I wish the caramel was deeper and more complex.

They were a fine treat, but there are better caramels out there. An O. Cybele liked them more than I did, so your mileage may vary.

I’ve breezed over the See’s Scotchmallow before, and it’s near the top of my list of favorite candies. It’s about time it warranted a full review.

You can get Scotchmallows by the box, as part of an assorted box, or as a hefty, 1.5 oz. individually wrpaped bar, as I did here. The website calls them, “a delicious layer of See’s caramel with a layer of See’s honey marshmallow enrobed in rich dark chocolate”.

In bar form, they only come in milk chocolate. That milk chocolate shell had a slight snap. It had a great duskiness with hints of malt and slight notes of coffee.

The marshmallow was dense and foamy with a light pull when bitten into. It’s unlike anything you could pick up in a grocery store – it’s lightly sweet and vanilla-y, and the texture is a toothy pleasure.

The caramel was extremely chewy and sticky. It tasted of sweet, brown sugar with a slight grit at the end.

The mix of flavors and textures was sublime. The sticky caramel chew combined with the fluffy marshmallow chew plus the melting milk chocolate is a chomping pleasure, and the malty chocolate goes great with the scorchy brown sugar caramel and vanilla marshmallow.

It’s incredible how the different types of sweetness play off each other and bring out each others’ flavors. I could eat Scotchmallows for days.

I prefer the dark chocolate version because it better cuts the sweetness, but this bar version is still a favorite. An enthusiastic ZOMG!

I got today’s candies the best possible way: the mall See’s stand had a little basket of individually wrapped candies by the register, and the owner told me to help myself to as many as I wanted. I nabbed a Cafe Latte Krispy and Mint Krispy, along with a Butterscotch Square and Dark Butterchew.

Both pieces were squares of flavored toffee covered with a thin layer of chocolate. The Cafe Latte Krispy was a golden brown coffee toffee hidden in milk chocolate.

The toffee chip cleaved into shards with a great crunch. It had a bit of a tendency to gather as grit in my molars but mostly melted on my tongue.

The thin milk chocolate coating melted thickly and tasted of malt and caramel. The toffee had a nice coffee flavor without any bitterness. Combined with the chocolate, it had a nice mocha frappucino effect.

The toffee crispness kept the whole treat feeling light. It was a nice mix of texture and flavor and OM-worthy.

The Mint Krispy was a white mint toffee covered in dark chocolate. The texture of the mint toffee was the same as that of the Cafe Latte: light and crisp.

The minty center was powerful in flavor and scent. It tasted strongly of peppermint oil and was nearly spicy in how it set my mouth a-tingling, with just a hint of bitterness to the finish.

The strength of that mintiness overpowered the dark chocolate, which came through as just a hint of cocoa flavor undertone. I enjoyed the treat but it was too minty. An O.

See’s has long been one of my favorite confectioners for good reason. They make delicious treats at reasonable price points, and they may be enough impetus to get me back to the mall more than once every six months.

The bulk of the rectangular bar was a log of chewy nougat covered with a dark chocolate hsell. The texture was great. It was chock full of crunchy whole almonds surrounded by a lightly sweet and chewy nougat.

The nougat had the amber undertone of honey, which nicely set off the crisp, fresh almonds. The dark chocolate shell was only lightly sweet and brought a great cocoa depth to the bar.

I loved this bar. The honey in the nougat added a delicious complexity while the almonds had a great crunchy nuttiness.

The chewy nougat and the crunchy almonds and the dusky chocolate also made for a great textural mix. It was a near perfect treat.

My only complaint was that the dark chocolate shell shattered and made a bit of a mess when I bit into the bar, but it’s a minor one. An OMG.

Again, here are Cybele and Sera’s takes.

Thus, I had lived in Durham for nearly six months before I finally set foot in a mall for an Apple store errand. Lo and behold, the mall had a See’s stand! I picked up enough treats to make this week another See’s week.

The See’s Awesome Peanut Brittle Bar was a 1 oz. bar that they described as “crunchy peanut brittle drenched in milk chocolate.” It was a beautifully enrobed slab.

The brittle cleaved cleanly and was full of peanuts, some whole and some in pieces. When chewed, some of the brittle shards came together and got a bit stuck in my molars, but it was mostly a clean chomp.

It was salty and buttery with a hearty nuttiness thanks to the roasted peanuts. The milk chocolate added a light duskiness that was a great pairing with the salty sweet brittle.

I’m generally meh about peanuts, but I really enjoyed this treat. I love toffee that cleaves like this brittle did, and the flavors were great – predominantly that of roasted peanuts with a nice balance of salty and sweet. An OM.

If you want other opinions, Cybele and Sera both reviewed this on their sites long before I did. In my defense, I’ve never lived in a city with any sort of See’s shop before!

The back of the box had the following wordy description: “From master confectioners in Germany, we bring you an aristocratic treat with a bourgeois bent. Here’s a candy that’s sure to delight both chocolate and brandy connoisseurs alike. Our Trader Joe’s Brandy Beans are a harmonious pairing of creamy bittersweet chocolate and the soothing warmth of brandy. Serve slightly chilled for maximum enjoyment.”

While I was intrigued by the mix of brandy and chocolate, I somehow doubt that true brandy connoisseurs would be happy with the booze inside these beans. The booze is real, by the way; you have to be of age to buy it.

The long, slim rectangle of a box contained 24 bean-shaped chocolates. Each was about the size of the first two joints of my index finger.

The beans contained a lightly amber colored ooze of booze. I tried them at room temperature, so the smooth liquid was pretty flowy, only slightly more viscous than water.

The chocolate shell had a thick base and thin upper shell. It was slightly grainy when first bitten into, but its melt thickened if I held it on my tongue.

I thought it rather sweet for dark chocolate, but perhaps that was to counter the alcoholic’s slight bitterness. Beyond that, it was hard to get a feel for its flavor profile through the brandy.

That brandy packed a solid hit of alcoholic flavor and feel, but it lacked the throat searing burn of true brandy. Definitely the easiest I’ve ever had brandy go down.

This was a solid cut above the generic bottle-shaped chocolates filled with liquor that have been my previous experience with booze and chocolate, mostly due to the palatable quality of the chocolate and brandy.

While neither would be exceptional in its own category, they stand out from the pack in combination. That being said, I think I prefer my chocolate and brandy in isolation (or sidecars, for the latter). I enjoyed this for the novelty factor, but I wouldn’t buy them again. An O.