ZOMG, Candy!

This Hershey’s Kiss Air Delight is the newest addition to the Hershey Kiss line-up. It’s basically aerated chocolate in Hershey Kiss form.

I was a total sucker for the packaging here – I loved the retro polka dotted look of the wrapper. The Kiss itself looked like a normal Kiss until I bit into it.

The inside, as expected, contained a network of bubbles. They weren’t as neatly spherical as those of other aerated chocolates that I’ve reviewed and photographed.

The chocolate of this Kiss had a soft, instant compression. It just squished in my mouth before yielding a thick melt that coated my mouth. I didn’t notice the aeration beyond the squish factor and an overall lightening of the Kiss.

The flavor was classic Hershey’s: mild cocoa with a slight sour tinge. It was a fun take on the classic Kiss but not unique enough for me to want to just buy them for their own sake. An O.

Cybele reviewed these before they even officially hit the market. You can check out her take here.

Here’s another bar from the Dagoba line, the Xocolatl. It’s described as “rich dark chocolate, chilies, and nibs.”

It had a 74% base, perhaps the same chocolate that made up the New Moon? The chocolate had a dry and crunchy snap.

It was tough for me to get a flavor profile from this bar because the fiery heat from the chilies was overwhelmingly hot. It wasn’t a slow, pleasant burn. Instead, it was the intense, immediate heat of cayenne pepper.

The spiciness lingered in the finish and kept my tongue tingling. I usually love chili chocolate, but this had far too much chili burn that completely displaced the chocolate’s flavor. An O.

I received a couple of Dagoba chocolate squares in my American Chocolate Week Chocolate Gift Pack: Milk and New Moon.

I’d reviewed the Milk before, but that was years ago, and it was nice to take another gander at it with a much darker Dagoba bar for contrast.

The Milk was 37% cacao. The coloring was dark for a milk bar (left in the photo below). It had a snappy break and a smooth but not thick melt.

It had a nice complexity – woodsy and dark with burnt caramel notes. I found it quite enjoyable, so an OM.

The New Moon was labeled as “rich dark chocolate” and had 74% cacao (right in the photo above). Its melt was on the grainy side.

The chocolate had a burnt tasting edge with extremely fruity notes of cherry. There was a slight bitterness that persisted in the finish that I didn’t appreciate. An O.

I got to try this small, sample-sized bag of Hershey’s Drops as a free sample via the National Confectioners Association.

It’s hard for me to envision these Drops as anything but a wannabe M&M’s competitor. Even Drops’s slogan of “No candy shell – No mess” calls to mind the M&M’s catchphrase, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

The Drops were spheroids, like M&M’s, but they were significantly larger and more irregularly shaped. All of them were imprinted with the Hershey’s logo, which stood out in sharp contrast to the brown Drops.

The flavor was that of classic milk chocolate Hershey’s, with that distinctive sour finish. It’s not the classiest chocolate, but it’s certainly a classic!

The chocolate was surprisingly solid. I was expecting a creamy melt. Instead, it didn’t melt so much as dryly dissolve.

The Drops was a suitable shape for a chocolate vehicle, but it lacked the textural contrast of a candy shell and the nice, tongue-coating melt of M&M’s. It was nice to try them, but I wouldn’t buy them. An O.

These holiday Hershey Kisses, Mint Truffle and Candy Cane, have been around for a while, but I’ve never reviewed them before. They were out at an event that I attended, so I slipped a few into my pockets to write about later.

The Mint Truffle Kisses came wrapped in green foil with little snowflakes. The center was an unnaturally bright sea green, while the outer shell was chocolate.

It tasted similar to an Andes mint. The mint flavor was strong, fresh, and effervescent while the milk chocolate had a sour finish. Ahh, Hershey’s signature flavor profile… An OM.

The Candy Cane Kiss’s wrapper was silver with little red canes. The Kiss itself had a red and white striped outside. The inside was solid white chocolate flecked with little dots of red nonpareil.

The white chocolate was quite sweet with a milky sourness that was especially strong in the finish. There was a light milky dairy flavor to it, but it mostly tasted of meh quality white chocolate with a hint of peppermintiness.

I enjoyed the textural contrast of the nonpareils – they brought a great crunch – but I was not a fan of the white chocolate, so this gets an O.

All in all, not bad for holiday-specific treats and definitely tastier and more interesting than the originals!

After I tried and loved Almond Joy Pieces, I thought it was worth giving the rest of the line-up a try, so I picked up this bag of York Peppermint Patty Pieces.

They’re described as peppermint flavored dark chocolate candy in a crunchy shell. They are sugar-shelled lentil candies, approximately M&M sized.

The York Pieces have a jaunty color scheme of pure white and bright navy blue. Like the Almond Joy Pieces, the sugar shell on these is thicker than that of M&Ms.

The chocolate within is solid, with a cool and fatty melt – emphasis on the fatty. It feels almost slippery as it melts but lingers as a matte finish on the tongue when it’s gone.

The chocolate has the airy essence of peppermint oil, but the flavor isn’t too heavy-handed, allowing the dark cocoa powder notes of the chocolate to come through.

I enjoyed them, but they weren’t nearly as tasty or as exciting as the Almond Joy version. When I eat Almond Joy Pieces, I don’t want to stop snacking on them. The York Pieces weren’t so addictive that I couldn’t make my bag last for weeks.

I think they could be fun to bake with. In some homemade take on a Thin Mint, perhaps? I feel these deserve an OM. Since that was the rating that I gave the Almond Joy Pieces, they’re getting upgraded to an OMG.

I thought I nabbed a candy scoop with these Almond Joy Pieces. A quick Google revealed that, they’ve been out for nearly a year now, and Candy Addict and Candy Blog‘s already covered them! Guess it just took me a while to come across them in stores.

Hershey’s basically extrapolated their Reese’s Pieces concept to other candy bars (there are also Special Dark and York Pieces). The Almond Joy Pieces were described on the bag as “milk chocolate, coconut, and almond candy in a crunchy shell.”

While most of them were generally oblate spheroids, quite a few of them were wonkily shaped, and even the nicer ones were a little bumpy around the edges. I think this may be due to the bits of almond and coconut in the chocolate.

The shells were super crispy and loudly crunched in my mouth. They came in blue, brown, and cream.

The Pieces tasted of super sweet chocolate with coconut and an underlying nuttiness. The coconut had a nice floral finish. Every once in a while, I hit an almond-heavy Piece in which the almond overpowered the coconut.

There was a definite grittiness when the Pieces were nearly gone, due to the bits of almond and flakes of coconut. But the grittiness wasn’t unpleasant by any means, and there was never a risk of stuff getting lodged in my teeth.

I wish they were a tad less sweet, but otherwise, it’s a great mix of flavors, and I loved the crunchiness of the Pieces. They were poppable and tasty, and they crunched beautifully. An OMG.

Hershey’s Zero bar‘s claim to fame is its white coating. Specifically, it’s “caramel, peanut and almond nougat covered with white fudge.”

Mine came free, courtesy of Munchies Sweets and Treats.  It was a bit too abundantly full of caramel, I guess, as my bar’s trademark white coating was streaked with it.

The bottom layer of nougat was faintly sweet chocolate with strong almond extract notes. Every once in a while, I hit an actual peanut, which introduced a bit more nuttiness, but the almond extract was the predominant player.

The nougat was covered with a stripe of sweet and serviceable caramel. The white fudge coating was milky and overly sweet.

Overall, I found this bar to be too sweet, and its flavors weren’t distinctive enough. I needed to eat it slowly and carefully to pick out the different flavors, as they got all mushed together and masked by the sweet. An O.

According to its entry on Hershey’s website, the Zagnut has been around for ~80 years now (I think Hershey’s needs to update their mathing). Wikipedia says that it used to be owned by the Clark Company, though how Hershey’s ended up with Zagnut and Necco ended up with the Clark Bar, I don’t know. Cybele didn’t know either.

I do know that I found it tasty, and like the Clark Bar, it made me wonder how I’d never had one before. Mine came in a gifted sample box from Munchies Sweets and Treats, but I do believe I’ve seem then in Wegmans, housed in the retro candy display.

The bar was described as “crunchy peanut butter – toasted coconut.” It had the flaky layered center of a Clark Bar, plus an outer layer of what looked like compressed nuts.

The golden bar was super crisp. As I bit into it, there was a lovely crunch, and flakes well, flaked off. I also noticed tiny bits of peanuts in the texture.

It tasted mostly of peanuts/peanut butter with a touch of coconut to the finish. Some of it got lodged in my molars a tad, like brittle, but it wasn’t nearly as bad a teeth situation as you get with Butterfingers.

I loved the texture, with its mix of flaky and crispy, and the nutty/coconutty flavors were nice as well. I’m definitely a newly converted Zagnut fan. An OM.

I got this bag of Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips in my Halloween grab bag from the NCA. I’m glad that I did, because they were delicious and because I would never have thought to buy them myself for the blog, as they’re only sort of candy.

They’re a peanut butter and pretzel sandwich coated in sweet Hershey’s milk chocolate. The chocolate is kind of greasy, and I’d prefer something of nicer quality, but it does its job okay.

It doesn’t look all that impressive though. Imagine how great it would be with a shiny, glossy coat!

The pretzel portion is great – just crackery and salty enough to stand up to the sweet milk chocolate coating and make you take notice, but not so salty as to make you thirsty.

There isn’t much peanut butter, but there’s just enough to add a roasty nuttiness that’s quite enjoyable. The pretzels are round waffles, and the peanut butter sort of seeps into the grids.

All in all, I think they’re an awesome mix of textures and flavors. They remind me of the Take 5, only with real chocolate (cocoa butter’s on the ingredients list; hooray! Along with PGPR, less hooray…). An OM.