ZOMG, Candy!

I got this Twix Java in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press pack. It’s not a new bar; instead, it’s been on and off the market as a limited edition since at least 2007.

I, unfortunately, had never been lucky enough to catch it in the wild in any of its previous incarnations, so this was my first time trying it. My packaging made no mention of limited-edition-ness. Perhaps that means it’s here to stay?

The wrapper describes it as “chocolate cookies bars; coffee caramel; milk chocolate.” The back of the wrapper proudly proclaims it to be made with Mars’s real chocolate.

It’s like a regular Twix bar, only the cookie is chocolate and the caramel is coffee tinged. If you’re not familiar with Twix, they come in “fingers”, with a bottom layer of cookie and a top layer of caramel, with the whole thing covered in milk chocolate.

The caramel was sticky yet smooth with a candied coffee flavor. It had a beautiful pull.

The coffee flavor was dry and roasty, with burnt caramel and cocoa notes. As the flavor progressed, it got darker. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the coffee flavor.

The chocolate cookie was soft and dry, and it crumbled rather than crunched. The milk chocolate coating was just so-so, sweet without any distinction.

I give this an OM. I wish the cookie were just a tad crunchier, but otherwise, I thought it was a great mix of flavors and textures. In fact, I like it better than regular Twix, as it’s less sweet and more interesting.

The new Milky Way Simply Caramel bar was included as a free sample in my Sweets and Snacks press pack delivery. They officially launched in June of this year as “a decadent blend of Milky Way Bar’s pure smooth caramel covered completely in Mars’ real milk chocolate.”

It’s far easier to launch a new confection under a familiar brand than it is to build a new brand from the ground up. Thus, while the Milky Way Simply Caramel is a pretty significant departure from the original (I would argue that a Milky Way’s defining characteristic is its chocolatey, malty nougat), it makes sense from a marketing standpoint.

While the Milky Way Simply Caramel looked fairly standard on the outside, the inside was an oozy, decadent looking caramel mess. This was not a treat you’d want to give to small children, unless you want them getting caramel everywhere.

The outer shell was made of a snappy chocolate that turned sweet and sour in my mouth. Hooray American mass-produced chocolate!

The caramel inside was sticky, thick, and chewy. It was sweet and bright with a buttery creaminess. I prefer my caramel with dark, complex, scorched sugar flavors, so it wasn’t really my style. I have to admit, though, that it was luxuriously sticky-sweet.

My beef with this bar was basically what I have with most mass-produced checkout aisle/vending machine bars: too sweet and too one note. I prefer the extra malty hit of regular Milky Ways.

Still, it wasn’t bad, and it’s totally harmless unless you’re susceptible to sugar shock. I think I’d like these best in fun size form. An O.

If you’d like to try one of these for yourself, stay tuned! More to come tomorrow…

Coconut M&M’s have been out for a while, but I only just stumbled across them at a local convenience store. They had started out as a limited edition M&M, but I do believe they’ve now morphed into a permanent addition.

They smelled like a mix of generic quality chocolate and coconut sunscreen. The M&M’s were fatter than plain ones and irregularly shaped.

They only came in three colors – green, dark brown, and white. As you can see, some of them had Ms adorned with additional tropical-themed decorations, like beach umbrellas and flowers.

The insides were solid chocolate. The chocolate was reminiscent of that of plain M&M’s, so there was a tad bit of graininess to it. It was on the sweet side, with just a bit of fruitiness.

The center also had a nicely genuine coconut flavor that was pretty spot on. All in all, the whole M&M was a tad too sweet from the milk chocolate and the sugar shell, but I still enjoyed it.

I liked Almond Joy Pieces better. AJP had more nuttiness in the center thanks to their bits of almond, their shell was crunchier, and their chocolate was darker and nuttier.

I found the Pieces better balanced, but I wouldn’t turn down Coconut M&M’s if they were offered to me. They get an O. I’d say they’d be good enough for an OM, but the Almond Joy Pieces got an OM, and the AJP are definitely better.

These Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits came in my free candy goodie bag from the NCA. They’re a new type of Skittle that “fizzes in your mouth to deliver a tongue-tingling sensation.”

For some reason, Skittles chose to debut these in berry flavors: strawberry, berry punch, melon berry, wild cherry, and raspberry.

Each Fizzl’d Fruits Skittle came with an uneven coating of white fizz that created a bubbly, carbonated sensation on the tongue and in the back of the throat. The severity of the coating varied significantly from Skittle to Skittle, so each Skittle’s fizzy factor varied as well.

Wild cherry (red) had a deep red cherry flavor. Strawberry (pink) started off sour, then mellowed out to sweeter floral fruity flavors.

Raspberry (blue) tasted lightly seedy but was overall rather light on flavor. Berry punch (purple) tasted deeply of dark tanin flavors, and melon berry (green) tasted vaguely of kiwi.

I enjoyed the fun effect of the fizzy coating, but I wasn’t particularly attached to any of the Skittles flavors themselves. I’m not sure why they chose to Fizzl berry flavors rather than their original line-up, but I’d really like to try Fizzl’d citrus Skittles.

An O for this flavor assortment, but the idea definitely holds promise!

Pretzel M&M’s are the newest addition to the M&M’s lineup. Unlike many of the other M&M’s varieties that I’ve reviewed in the past, these look to be a semi-permanent, non-limited edition addition. I got to try them out for free via the NCA and also via some M&M’s PR people.

Please note the cute and clever pretzel X-ray. There are only 150 calories per bag, but my bag only had 16 M&M’s. They are, however, significantly larger than regular M&M’s.

These guys are irregularly sized spheres, each with a little pretzel nugget in the center, which is then surrounded by a thin layer of M&Ms milk chocolate and coated with the M&M’s candy shell.

The bag called them “crunchy, salty, sweet”, and that’s just what they were. Each one packed a substantial crunch, partly from the candy shell but mostly from the pretzel nugget inside.

The pretzel brings a salty hit to the treat which lingers after the M&M is gone. The chocolate is mostly just sweet in the back of the throat. It contrasts well with the starchy saltiness of the pretzel.

At first, I found them a bit too dry, and they made me miss the airiness of the now-defunct crispy M&M’s. But that dryness made me want to pop a second as a chaser, and then a third, and before I knew it, the whole bag was gone.

Pretzel M&M’s are sneakily poppable, thanks to a winning combination of sweet and salty. An OM!

If you’d like to try them for yourself, they’re slowly being released around the country. M&M’s has a Facebook app to help you track where they’ve been spotted (if you’re not scared by all of Facebook’s privacy craziness).

OR you can try to win some free bags via me, via the M&M’s PR people. Just leave a comment here telling me which is your favorite variety of M&M’s by midnight on Friday, May 28th, EST. I’ll randomly select 2 commenters to win 2 free bags each! Good luck!

Edit 05/30: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Maureen and Stephen, who were randomly selected as the winners!

I had been looking for Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M’s for ages, since they first starting popping up in the candy blogosphere.

They were released as a limited edition promotional tie-in for the Transformers sequel, and I finally found them a week or so ago in a local discount grocery store. Only in a giant bag, but oh well. Now I have roommates who eat chocolate to share with!

Strawberry, peanut butter, and chocolate are an unusual flavor combination to find in candy, though it makes perfect sense. Peanut butter and chocolate are great together, and strawberry jam and peanut butter are a classic, so why not combine the three components?

The M&M’s are colored to look like those three elements: brown, red, and orange with light red specks. I’m not sure if that was the intention – maybe they were going for fall colors? – but I appreciate the color scheme.

Like regular peanut butter M&M’s, they’re irregularly sized and lopsided. Also like peanut butter M&M’s, they’re a peanut butter spheroid (oblate, to be precise) surrounded by chocolate, which is covered by a sugar shell.

These guys smell like artificial berry with an undertone of chocolate. No peanut butter scent comes through. When bitten into, there’s the usual M&M’s crunch, then a burst of sweet strawberry fruitiness that finishes with a cloyingly artificial tinge.

Beneath it all, there’s the underlying flavor of creamy peanut butter. It’s reminiscent of cheap jarred peanut butter, as it’s not that roasty or nutty.

The flavor combination really works well, but it’s a tad too sweet for me, mostly due to the artificial fruit finish. I mostly enjoy them when I eat them, but I can’t handle more than a few at a time (built in portion control – maybe not necessarily a bad thing?). I can’t decide if I’d buy another bag of these or not. Normally, I’d say no, but they are a limited edition…

They get an O from me. My roommates seemed to like them more, as the bag didn’t last long in the living room.

Crazy Core Skittles are the latest flavor addition to the Skittles line up. My package wasn’t marked as a limited edition, so I think they’re around for good.

They come in five flavors:

Mango Peach is pastel orange on the outside and pink on the inside. It tastes of a floral artificial peachiness with a slight seedy mango bite to the finish.

Cherry Lemonade is red on the outside and yellow inside. It starts out tasting like artificial cherry, then mellows into a sweet lemonade flavor. And I do mean lemonade – it tastes of lemons but without any citrus bite.

Strawberry Watermelon is green on the outside and pink on the inside. Melon Berry is the opposite: pink on the outside and green inside. I don’t quite get the distinction between the flavor names. I guess Melon Berry is more generic? Both taste like watermelon Jolly Ranchers, with the Melon Berry having a stronger candy watermelon flavor.

Finally, Blue Raspberry Lemon is blue on the outside and yellow on the inside. It opens with an artificial berry bite that dominates the lemon part, as I couldn’t taste any lemon. It does veer towards sweet and sour, which was the main contribution of the lemon part.

I think the concept was good, but the execution needed work. The different flavors in each individual Skittle didn’t really come through. I tried letting the shells dissolve but didn’t get flavors from them. While these aren’t bad, plain old original fruit Skittles are still my go to, as long as I can find someone to eat all the red and purple ones (I’m a citrus Skittles gal). An O.

Starburst Choozers are “fruit flavoured chews with liquid centre made with real fruit juices.” Did you catch those UK spellings? Yup – these guys are, at least for now, only available abroad.

My pack had 10 Choozers unevenly distributed amongst 3 flavors: 6 pineapple & orange, 3 orange & mango, and 1 raspberry & orange. Though the unbalanced flavor distribution was a tad annoying, the pineapple & orange were my favorite, so that worked out well for me.

Starburst Choozers are basically like Gushers, just with a Starburst chew outside. The chew was slightly stiffer than that of regular Starbursts, while the liquid centers were a cool, non-oozy goo.

Pineapple & orange had a nicely pineapple-astringent chew. It was hard to get a feel or taste for the liquid center in this chew. Still, I enjoyed this one the most, and it made me wish that Starburst fruit chews came in pineapple.

In orange & mango, both flavors were distinguishable. Mango overpowers at first, then gives way to a tart orange. In raspberry & orange, it’s all the taste of seedy raspberry, with a slightly plasticy aftertaste.

I wish I could buy a pack of all pineapple chews (I guess they do make a pineapple Hi-Chew for that). The pineapple & orange get an OM, the orange & mango gets an O, and the raspberry & orange gets a –. Overall, I give the pack an O, as I doubt all packs are as favorably flavor imbalanced as mine was.

Here’s the second of the two Balisto bars I bought in Cambridge. In case you missed it, the other Balisto that I bought, a Muesli-Mix bar, was reviewed last Friday.

The ingredients for this bar are biscuit à la farine complete, crème au miel et amandes, enrobe de chocolat au lait (39%). I believe that translates to a whole-wheat cookie, cream of honey, and almonds enrobed in milk chocolate.

The composition of this bar was similar to that of the Muesli-Mix, and it was the same wholesome-tasting cookie with a similar fake-milk-cream thing, all covered in milk chocolate. I didn’t notice any almonds or almond bits, perhaps because the fake-milk-cream thing had a honeyed tinge that was pretty overpowering.

I thought the cross-section of this bar looked better than that of the Muesli-Mix, but unfortunately, it didn’t really taste better. The honey cream give the bar a strange finish that really doesn’t work for me. I finished the two bars, but that’s enough for me. An O.

So the honey-almond-mix wasn’t quite right. Still, after two bars, I’m going to keep my eye out for the rest of the line while I’m in Europe, as I’d love to try more variations.

I’m hopping a plane to Paris today, so I thought it fitting to trot out a review of a French candy bar that I ate last summer. I found these two Balisto bars in Le Gros Franck, the same Cambridge cafe where I found the Carambars I reviewed a while back. I’ll review the Muesli-Mix bar today and the Honey-Almond-Mix on Monday.

Muesli is a breakfast cereal made with oats, dried fruits, and nuts. It’s fairly popular in the UK. The ingredients in this Muesli Mix bar are: biscuit à la farine complète, crème au lait (16%), raisins et noisettes, enrobe de chocolat au lait (39%).

Thinking back to my high school and freshmen year French, I believe that means a whole-wheat cookie, cream, raisins, and hazelnuts, enrobed in milk chocolate.

The bulk of the bar was a fine-grained but grittily textured cookie that tasted wholesomely yummy. A thin layer of white cream topped the chocolate. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was – it reminded me of the fake milk stuff in General Mill’s Milk and Cereal bars.

Whole raisins randomly studded the top under the milk chocolate enrobing. The hazelnuts must have been quite finely chopped, as I didn’t notice any hazelnut pieces, but the whole bar had a nicely nutty tinge. I liked the Muesli-Mix bar. It tasted wholesome but was still a nice treat. An OMG.