ZOMG, Candy!

I think Jelly Belly’s new Cocktail Classics have an awesome tagline: “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Their press release had another great line, “All the flavors and none of the hangover.”

I’m a cocktail person (I’m too wimpy for beer’s bitterness), so I was excited to see what Jelly Belly’s jelly bean mixologists out together.

There are three new cocktail flavors – Mojito, Pomegranate Cosmo, and Peach Bellini – to add to their three current ones that have been around for two decades – Margarita, Pina Colada, and Strawberry Daiquiri.

The mini sample packs I got had all 6 cocktail flavors. For some reason, the boxed set was missing margarita.

We’ll start with the newbies. Mojito was light green with darker green speckles. Real mojitos are mint, rum, and lime.

Jelly Belly Mojito beans start off brightly tart and zesty with fresh lime flavor. Suddenly, a strong mintiness comes through.

For me, that mintiness was too much, too reminiscent of toothpaste, and I missed any notes of rum. I didn’t like the flavor mix, but I also don’t particularly care for mojitos.

Pomegranate Cosmo was a prettily translucent pink. Its initial bite of red fruitiness that gave way to a darker sweetness reminded me of regular pomegranate Jelly Bellies. I’m not sure I could differentiate the two in a blind taste test. Still, it was quite tasty!

Peach Bellini was another prettily translucent bean, more light orange than peach colored. Bellinis are peach puree with sparkling wine, and I think Jelly Belly nailed it here.

The bean version tasted fresh and fragant, with a lovely floral peachiness. There’s a champagne undertone that dances around the edge of bitterness in the finish.

And now, the old hats:

Margarita, a solid, translucent green, has always been one of my favorite Jelly Bellies. It tastes of tart citrus and lime, with a boozy undertone.

Pina Colada, yellow, starts with the tartness of pineapple, then gives way to a round coconut flavor and a sugary sweetness after the shell is gone. I like the pineapple component, but for some reason, I don’t like the mix of jelly bean texture with coconut flavor.

Strawberry Daiquiri is a solid, faintly mottled pink. It starts with an initial strong flash of genuine strawberry flavor with a hint of lime and a seedy raspberry undertone.

I enjoyed Pomegranate Cosmo, Peach Bellini, and Margarita enough to want to scoop them out of a Jelly Belly bulk bin in the future, so they get OMs. While I was less enamored of the other three, I did enjoy tasting them, so Os.

Kudos to Jelly Belly for a fun flavor mix. And kudos to Cybele for finding a fun way to photograph them (I wish I’d thought of that!)

Ooh La La Candy isn’t a candy company per se. Rather, they’re a candy packaging – or repackaging company – with the tag line, “Style and Taste.” Their wares include candy greeting cards and candy gift boxes, which are pretty cute and clever.

What really caught my eye, however, were their candy cupcakes. I got to try a couple for review: Peanut Butter and Jelly and Cupcake Couture.

The candy cupcakes were really just cutely and cleverly packaged bags of candy. The candy is encased in plastic wrap and then taped to a cupcake liner with a hidden lift.

The cupcake liner is, in turn, taped to the bottom of a clear display box. I had some issues getting the cupcakes out of the box for photographing without totally crushing the paper liner and ruining the cupcake shape.

Peanut butter and jelly was a mix of peanut butter chips and blueberry (or grape jelly? The website itself is confused, but the letter I got said blueberry) jelly beans topped with a non-branded peanut butter cup.

I don’t think the jelly beans taste like blueberry or grape jelly, but they do taste sweet and like a dark fruit. When eaten alone, they have a musty undertone, but that disappears when they’re eaten in combination with the peanut butter chips.

The pairing of the jelly beans and the peanut butter chips is surprisingly spot on. There’s some textural disparity, as the chips sort of melt and crumble while the jelly beans are chewy, but the flavor mix is a harmonious blend of sweet and salty and fruity and nutty.

Cupcake Couture was composed of black and pink Sixlets (I didn’t even know they came in those colors!) and was topped with a big pink gumball. My gumball placement was a bit off-center, which gave the cupcake an invitingly jaunty look.

The color combination was super chic. Sixlets aren’t exactly the pinnacle of fine chocolate – they’re spherical chocolates with a crunchy candy shell and a funny poor-quality-chocolate aftertaste – but they look great in Ooh La La Candy’s hands.

In the end, with Ooh La La Candy, you’re really paying for the packaging rather than for the candy. Since they don’t actually make the candy, I don’t think it’s fair to give them a rating (though the peanut butter and jelly combination is inspired!), but I will say that the candy cupcakes are seriously cute and charming.

These cupcakes aren’t something to buy for yourself; they’re meant to serve as gifts or party favors to coo over. If you wanted to save money or use your choice of candy, I don’t think it would be too difficult to make your own version (I can just imagine some Bridezilla forcing her bridesmaids to make 500 candy cupcakes in her wedding colors).

And if you want to save money but are too lazy for candy arts and crafts, Ooh La La Candy has been kind enough to set y’all up with a ZOMG, Candy! discount code. “ZOMG” as a coupon code will get you 20% off your entire order anytime throughout the summer, and it can be used on top of their current 10% off 3 or more cupcakes promo.

Every time I visit my boyfriend’s Boston home, I make ask him to take me to Trader Joe’s, as they always have an assortment of neat packaged foods. The last time I went, I picked up a bunch of new candy loot, and their Citrus Gum Drops are first up to be reviewed.

The gum drops came in a cheerful nature-themed bag that invoked eco-friendly associations. I don’t think the candies are as such, as the first ingredient is corn syrup, but I still appreciated the aesthetic.

I love citrus fruits and citrus-flavored candies, so I had high expectations for these gum drops. They come in tangerine, pink grapefruit, lemon, and key lime.

Each gum drop was about the size of the first joint of my pinky finger. They were all covered in sweet granulated sugar and had sticky-soft chews. That is, they yielded immediately upon being bitten into but still stuck to my teeth, just a tad.

Tangerine was expectedly orange colored. Its actual orange flavor, however, was unexpectedly dark. It tasted deeply of orange oil and lacked the bright citrus flavor that most orange gummi candies have.

Pink grapefruit was a purplish-pink. It tasted sweet at first bite before the grapefruit acid flavor came out. It’s not the best grapefruit gummi I’ve had, but it was a solid effort.

Lemon was yellow and sweet with no tartness. It tasted of lemon zest and had a light edge of bitter pith, which brought a wonderful complexity.

Finally, the white key lime was my favorite (to eat, at least. Its lack of color threw off the color balance of the photo!). But it perfectly encapsulated the flavor of fresh limes. It tasted extremely zesty and limey and had a bitter undertone that set off the whole thing quite nicely.

Trader Joe’s Citrus Gum Drops are a great flavor mix and a cut above “normal” gum drops. Better yet, the price point is awesome – $1.99 for an 8 oz bag. An OM.

This bag of Streit’s Sour Bears caught my eye in a display of Passover foods at Wegmans. They’re imported from Israel and “Kosher for Passover and year round.”

They’re billed as “soft & chewy” and “sour jelly candy”. I expected them to be gummi bears. Instead, their texture was similar to Haribo TropiFrutti, only way better!

The jelly candy was soft with an instant give. It was similar to fruit pate, only smooth rather than lightly grainy. The outer layer had a light stiffness and was softly wrinkly.

Yellow was a bright and sunny lemon. It was sweet with just a little tang and sour all over.

Orange was slightly more bitter at the start. It was tart with a zesty edge – surprisingly complex!

Green was lime, maybe? I didn’t get any lime-specific notes, but it was still nice and bright and tart.

Pink was strawberry, I think. It had the sour overtones of all the Sour Bears but also had nice floral undertones.

Pinkish purple was the least sour of the lot (and hard to visually distinguish from the pink and the purple). It just tasted sweet and fruity to me. I’d guess cherry, but it was pretty mild if it was cherry.

Last, but definitely not least, was purple. I’m pretty sure it was blackcurrant, which is a great flavor that’s not really used in American candy. It had a touch of edgy bite to it.

I had low expectations for these candies because the packaging looked so simple and old-fashioned. They totally blew me away with their bright, concentrated flavors and pleasantly soft and buoyant texture.

I couldn’t handle more than ~a dozen in a sitting – the sweetness got overpowering, and I hit sugar overload – but the flavors were so powerful that they were satisfying in small amounts. An OMG.

Jelly Belly just debuted their 92nd flavor of jelly bean – a honey bean, infused with real wildflower honey. They’ve got a descriptive PR team working for them. Check out the press release:

“A comforting and soothing flavor, Honey Bean Jelly Belly bean is golden yellow and drenched in the taste of honey from the chewy center to the tender shell of the jelly bean… Savor it for the straight-from-the-hive flavor along with a cup of tea.”

The beans themselves are beautiful – shiny beads of amber that almost look translucent. I want to string them together and turn them into jewelry. They would make great drop earrings!

As usual, Jelly Belly has managed to be pretty spot on in their flavor capture. They taste just like little drops of honey – sweet and floral – but they have the gelatinous and slightly grainy texture of jelly beans.

As Cybele noted in her review, these aren’t a mindlessly-chomp-through-a-whole-bag candy. The inevitably saccharine nature of their flavor means that they get to be too much after a while. But they are nice in small doses, and they seem like they’d play well with other beans. An O.

I was just in Target this past weekend and saw that they already had an endcap of Easter candy on display. It’s still January! Ridiculous as that was, it at least served the purpose of reminding me that I’ve been sitting on some jelly bean tasting notes from last Easter-ish (ish because I bought them after Easter. I love post-holiday candy sales!)

There’s nothing on the packaging of Hawaiian Punch Jelly Beans to indicate that they’re holiday-specific. I think I caught them on sale post-Easter, though, so I’m not sure if these guys are available year-round. They’re made by Brach’s, and they boast of containing loads of vitamin C and real fruit juice.

I find the real fruit juice/pectin claim amusing, as they come in colors that are definitely not found in nature. “Hawaiian Punch” (dark red) has a deep artificial red candy flavor. I can’t remember what Hawaiian Punch the drink tastes like, but I imagine it’s similar to that.

“Fruity Juicy Red” (pinkish red, I think) just tastes generically of red hard candy, while “Green Berry Rush” (kiwi green in the back) tastes mutedly of green apple.

“Berry Blue Typhoon” (psychedelic blue) tastes of gnarly artificial blue raspberry flavors. “Lemon Berry Squeeze” (not pictured but probably yellow) had a sweet and tart lemon flavor with a cherry finish.

“Mango Passionfruit Squeeze”  (yellow-orange with orange speckles; the prettiest ones, I think) had a decently authentic mango finish to the flavor, with that slight seediness that you get as you eat closer to the pit. Finally, “Orange Ocean” (orange) just tasted sweetly of muted citrus.

While there was nothing wrong about these guys, per se, I found them generically sweet with flavors that were too weak to hold up in the strong Easter jelly bean market (check out a 2008 round-up from Candy Addict; Cybele from Candy Blog has also reviewed loads of them).

Hawaiian Punch Jelly Beans get an O, with the caveat that it looks like they may have been reformulated since I bought them – Candy Warehouse has a photo of them with far more speckles than mine had – so they may taste different now.

Bats!! I have an affinity for bats. They’re a special tourist attraction in my hometown of Austin, for starters. And last year, a bat once somehow made its way into my New Haven apartment on the last day of Thanksgiving break. My now boyfriend (then just a friend) made fun of me for completely freaking out about it giving me rabies.

Later that night, he got a call from home – his mother had found a dead bat in his bed, and he may or may not have been sleeping with it all Thanksgiving break. He ended up needing rabies shots, just in case. How’s that for karma?

Anywho, on to the candy! These Bat Dots are a Halloween special. They’re blood orange flavored (vampire bats!). I LOVE the little orange smiled, juice-dripping, winged Dot on the box.

Sadly, the actual candy isn’t nearly as adorable. But it is delicious! And it is as black as it looks on the box. I love the color. I can see parents totally taking advantage of this to not have to share with their kids by pretending that they’re licorice.

They’re soft and slightly sticky. Though they give instantly when bitten into, they have a nagging tendency to sometimes stick to the crannies of my teeth. But I should expect that; normal Dots do that too.

It’s sweet with a round citrus flavor. It’s wonderful, spot-on orange. There’s no citrus tang or tartness, but it’s still clear that it’s citrus. I found these super addictive and kept popping them. I wish these were available year-round, and I’ve got to buy these up before Halloween is over! The dilemma – to buy them now or hope they’re not sold out and go on sale after the holiday?

An OMG. You can check out Cybele and Sera’s take on these and the rest of Dots’ Halloween line.

I bought these Gummi Jellys (Jellies?) in Spain, but I’m 90% sure that I also saw them in France. Though the gummi part of the name conjures up thoughts of springy gummi candies, the jelly part is the more accurate moniker, as the Gummi Jelly is a soft fruit pate-like candy.

Each Gummi Jelly is individually wrapped. They’re about an inch in height and a centimeter in width and depth (yes I’m mixing my metric and customary). They’re quite soft, with a bit a grainy texture from their granulated sugar coating.

They come in four flavors: lime, orange, strawberry, and pineapple.

Lime (green) has a bitter bite of zest that tastes rather medicinal. For a sweet candy, it’s actually a tad unpleasant. Sad, as I usually love all things citrus flavored.

Orange (orange) has a big zesty bite, only in this case, it’s quite enjoyable. The orange flavor isn’t bright, but it is intense.

Strawberry (red) is floral and sweet, with a deeper than expected strawberry flavor. It’s the strongest one of the bunch.

Pineapple (yellow) is sweet and lightly acidic, with just a tinge of the flavor of pineapple cores. It could pass for a sweet and mellow lemon, but I’m pretty sure it’s pineapple because there’s a pineapple on the bag.

Overall, these are good and dangerously poppable. I like that the flavors are more concentrated than your average gummi candy, though they’re weaker than fruit pate. But hey, the mass produced candy is also much cheaper than fruit pate. An OM, though I could do without the lime ones.

I recently spent several days visiting my boyfriend’s home in Boston. While I was there, his mother was kind enough to take me on an excursion to Nichols Candies, a homegrown chocolate store in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It reminded me a lot of See’s and Haven’s: solid and tasty, if not frou-frou fancy, treats made with care and at a reasonable price (around $18 a pound at Nichols, if I remember correctly).

The store is filled with tables covered in trays and trays of a huge variety of chocolate treats. It was hard to pick just a few to try! I especially appreciated the creativity of their tulips, Brazil nuts wrapped in petals of caramel and dipped in chocolate. I didn’t actually buy any because I don’t particularly like Brazil nuts, but I thought I’d share the photo anyway.

Instead, I picked out a dark chocolate-covered ginger, a dark chocolate molasses chip, a dark chocolate-covered pineapple jelly, and a walnut whip (much lauded on their Yelp page). The molasses chip turned out to be an iteration of the dark sponge that I love so much (I was expecting something like See’s chocolate-covered toffee version). That disappeared into my belly before I got a chance to photograph it (oops), but I do have proper reviews of the rest!

The dark ginger is a disk of crystallized ginger covered in dark chocolate. The flavor of the ginger was pretty mild, making it enjoyable for a ginger novice like myself. It’s got a tad more bite than ginger ale but falls far short of the pickled ginger that comes with sushi. The ginger’s texture is firm but toothy. The coating was on the sweet side for dark chocolate. It had a cocoa-y tinge with a nice snap and a thin melt. An OM for the fine balance of ginger bite and chocolate melt.

I was excited to try the pineapple jelly. I guessed that it would be pineapple fruit pate covered in dark chocolate, and it was, but only sort of, thus falling short of my expectations. The jelly was smooth with just enough gelatin to give it some texture, which was nice, but it lacked the graininess of true fruit pate. The flavor was lacking as well. Good fruit pate is vibrant and bursting with flavor. In this, I got no pineapple flavor, just a generic sweetness, so it gets an O.

And finally, the much lauded walnut whip. It looked like a square of chocolate fudge with walnuts, but the texture was different. Instead of thick and grainy fudge, it was smooth, rich, creamy, fatty chocolate that melted thickly in the mouth. The chocolate had buttery caramel notes, and while the walnuts, being a mild nut, didn’t add much in terms of flavor, they did provide a bit of a textural contrast. I give it an OM, with the caveat that it’s too rich for frequent consumption. But that richness is what makes it so good!

Overall, Nichols is worth a visit if you’re passing by, and I’d happily stop there again to try more of their wide selection of chocolate goodies. And to stock up on their molasses chips (which get a biased ZOMG! because they’re one of my favorite candies).

We used to have a Cold Stone creamery by campus, but it recently went out of business. Fortunately, Jelly Belly has a new-ish line of Cold Stone creamery flavored jelly beans, dubbed their ice cream parlor mix. Unfortunately, the bag came with a coupon for ice cream that I can’t use because there’s no longer a Cold Stone within walking distance.

These come in five flavors named after Cold Stone ice creams:

Chocolate Devotion – chocolate ice cream, chocolate chips, brownie and fudge. This bean has a dark cocoa edge to it that’s quite reminiscent of brownies. It’s super chocolate-y, which I appreciate, but I’m not a big fan of the chocolate with the jelly bean texture.

Our Strawberry Blonde: strawberry ice cream, graham cracker pie crust, strawberries, caramel and whipped topping. The strawberry flavor is quite bright. You can almost taste the seeds. In fact, the seedy finish makes me think more raspberry than strawberry. I don’t get the caramel and graham cracker, though.

Birthday Cake Remix – cake batter ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, brownie and fudge. The bean is festive looking – pale cream with rainbow speckles. It tastes like vanilla cake, like the kind that comes out of a box of mix, with a slight hint of chocolate to the finish. That hint is so slight that I wonder if I’m imagining it because of the flavor description.

Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip – mint ice cream, chocolate chips, brownie and fudge. It tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream with a refreshing finish. Like the chocolate, however, it’s just not a flavor I enjoy in jelly bean form.

Apple Pie A La Cold Stone – French vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, graham cracker pie crust, apple pie filling and caramel. Strong caramel and canned apple pie filling flavors make this thing too sweet. I’m not a fan.

Overall, the flavors are interesting, but they’re not for me. And they don’t mix well. I chased a mint with a chocolate and got a wave of bitter. Blech! An O from me, but an A for effort.

Finally a personal note – I’m playing in my last Yale Concert Band concert tonight, April 3, 7:30, in Woolsey Hall. We’re playing the Rite of Spring and the Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto (with an amazing Yale School of Music professor of clarineting soloist), so it should be a good one – a great way to finish off my YCB career. Come listen if you happen to live near New Haven/Yale!