ZOMG, Candy!

I have my last final exam of the semester today. A week ago, my friend Rita, already done with all her finals and term papers, packed up and went to England and Scotland. I’m quite jealous of her, both for being done so early and for getting to go to the UK, which I love. And not just because it has candies we don’t get in the U.S., like Chewits Fruities.

If you can’t make out the blurry writing, Chewits Fruities are “assorted fruit flavour jelly bean sweets”. Is calling something a jelly bean sweet redundant? Not in this case, as the Chewits Fruities aren’t exactly jelly beans. Instead, their candy shell is quite hard and cracks upon biting, much like the shell of a Skittle. The inside is sort of like that of a jelly bean, but it’s much springier. Basically, there’s a much bigger textural contrast between the inner and outer layers of the Chewits Fruities than there is in regular jelly beans.

They came in six flavors. Orange was orange, I think, but it did seem to have light peach notes. Light orange had more tang, so I’d call it tangerine. Yellow was flavorless, green tasted faintly of lime, pink was strawberry, I think, and red was a bright cherry.

Overall, texturally fun, but flavor-ly blah. I give them an O, though they may be worth picking up just to try their mix of textures. After all, even with the exchange rate, they’re a cheap check-out line impulse buy.

I give Rowntree’s Jelly Tots major props for cute packaging with built-in portion control. I only ever saw them in the UK in tiny bags, each including 146 calories, according to the little lower right nutrition corner. The “now with 25% fruit juice” is a bit worrying - what did they use to be made with? - but I’ll take it.

Jelly Tots are little button shaped springy jelly candies covered in sugar, and they come in five flavors. Or flavours. Blackcurrant tasted of dark berry with an almost bitter finish that may be too much for palates not used to blackcurrant flavored things. Lemon was rather bland, with only a slight citrus twinge. Lime was a bit more tangy than the lemon, but too sweet to be truly limey and exciting. Orange had a mild citrus finish but doesn’t warrant much more attention.

Strawberry was my favorite of the bunch. It had a strong mellow berry flavor with a strawberrilicious finish. Overall, Jelly Tots were cute and nicely portioned, but nothing worth stocking up on to fly back to the States. An O.

I stole an assortment of Boston Fruit Slices from my friend John, who got them in a giant food gift basket from some I-banking or consulting firm that was trying to recruit him. I wish being a psych major came with perks like that. The best I’ve gotten is Dunkin Donuts at our neuroscience lab meetings.

Boston Fruit Slices are pretty easy to find on Amazon.com, yet I don’t recall ever seeing them in stores. They’re a soft, sugar coated fruit pate/jelly type candy. I think they fall in that category of candy that people are inured to (Boston Fruit Slices have been around for a while) and will eat if they happen upon it but won’t go out of their way to buy. They’re okay but not exceptional.

I managed to find five flavors in John’s gift basket. Lemon was bright, sweet, and tangy. Orange tasted like a less tangy version of lemon, so much so that it didn’t really taste like orange anymore. What I thought was grape (the purplish red) may actually be raspberry because it carried a slight bitterness, though I could be wrong. Red was cherry, with a strong candied cherry finish. And last and least was watermelon (pink with a green rind), which was so artificially sweetly watermelon flavored that I couldn’t finish it.

I’d eat the lemon and the raspberry again, so they get OMs. The others get Os. If you’re looking for a cheap fruit jelly/pate fix, I suggest Sunkist Fruit Gems (now made by Jelly Belly) instead.

I received my box of Poifull from my friend Michael who bought them for me in Japan in a set of assorted mini boxes. I’ve never seen these guys in my local Asian supermarkets, but I’m definitely going to start looking for them now.

As you can see from the photo, they’re look like jelly beans or Mike and Ikes. And they sort of are, as they have a hard sugar shell with a jelly innard. But the insides of the Poifull were much bouncier than those of jelly beans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they squeaked between my teeth. The nexture was almost rubbery, which you may think would be unpleasant, but that wasn’t the case.

Poifull come in four colors and flavors. Purple was grape and tasted like a red grape. Pink was apple, in the sweet Fuji way as opposed to the sour Granny Smith way. Yellow was pineapple, which carried a wonderful acidic tang, and green was muscat, which is a kind of grape. Its flavor was noticeably different from the purple grape. The concept of Poifull was simple yet well executed, with vibrant fruit flavors that carried a wonderfully bright tang, earning them an OMG from me. My tiny box quickly disappeared, and while fruity/sour Jelly Bellies may make a good substitute until I can find more Poifulls, they just don’t bounce against your teeth like the Poifull do.

Speaking of Jelly Bellies, I had bought two small boxes of duty-free Jelly Bellies on my flight to England to give as hostess gifts. Though I saw them at John Lewis, a high-end U.K. department store, and sold with a Marks and Spencer’s stamp at, you guessed it, M&S, none of my Jelly Belly recipients had heard of them. It seems that Jelly Belly has a bit more work to do before they can crack the U.K. market, yet they already have a knock-off competitor in The Jelly Bean Factory’s Gourmet Beans.

These beans come in 36 flavours (to Jelly Belly’s official 50) and include many of Jelly Belly’s favorites (or favourites) like buttered popcorn, pink grapefruit, pina colada, and tangerine. There are also a few flavours that were less derivative, such as cranberry & apple, mint sorbet, and passion fruit.

I’m not going to review each individual flavor, as that would take forever, and the Jelly Bean Factory’s guide isn’t as clear as Jelly Belly’s sheets so it can be hard to tell what the different beans are. Overall, I found the Jelly Bean Factory’s beans to be inferior to the real deal. They were better than generic jelly beans, but the depths of the flavors in the shell and the jelly insides just don’t quite come up to snuff.

They do make a beautiful spectrum though. I bought these in a tube (as far as I can tell, these only come all mixed-up in a big bag or tub or tube) and had great fun sorting them by color. A few flavours stand out in my mind, so I’ll dwell on those.

Pink grapefruit was lovely, tart, and sweet. Grapefruit is too rarely used as fruit candy flavoring, I think. South Seas kiwi wasn’t as good as Jelly Belly’s kiwi. With Jelly Belly, you can almost taste the kiwi fuzz. With the Jelly Bean factory, I don’t know if I could have determined what flavor it was without looking.

Buttered popcorn in the Jelly Bean Factory mix was pretty good. I guess if you’re going to copy such an unusual and iconic flavor, you should make sure you do it right. I wonder if I could taste the difference between the Factory and the Jelly Belly in a blind taste test.

Licorice made me mad. It was actually a deep blue-purple rather than a genuine and opaque black, so I kept eating them thinking they would be a fruit flavor and spitting them out again. Mint sorbet was also strange, mostly because it stood in such shocking flavor contrast to everything else.

I’d buy these again if they came nicely separated by trays so I could really taste them carefully and know what I’m eating, though that would deny me the fun of sorting them by color. But the desire to retaste is fueled by curiosity rather than desire, so they get an O. When faced with a choice between these and Jelly Bellies, it’s Jelly Bellies all the way.

I recently had the pleasure of getting a candy sneak preview. Crown Candies sent me two boxes of their Borrachitos (Spanish for a little drunk, and a traditional Mexican treat, apparently). I got one each of their two available flavors: Tequila and Licor de Cafe.

Crown Candies imports these handmade candies from Mexico. They call them “gourmet caramel candies,” but, as I explained to David of Crown Candies, I find that a bit of a misnomer, as they aren’t actually caramels. Instead, they’re a soft jelly-like candy flavored with caramel (or dulce du leche, if you prefer) and liquor. The Tequila flavor is laced with Tequila (duh), and the Licor de Cafe with coffee liqueur (less intuitive if you’re unfamiliar with romance languages).

The borrachitos come inside a resealable plastic tub with paper dividers separating them from each other. That tub is then shrink-wrapped and packaged inside a box. The texture of the candy is hard to describe. It’s super soft and immediately gives way when you bite into it, yet there’s a slight chew to it, The white center is creamy and also soft. They’re covered in granulated sugar, presumably to keep them from sticking to each other and to add an extra touch of sweetness.

The Licor de Cafe had a lovely strong coffee liqueur flavor to it in addition to its caramel notes. I noticed an initial, barely perceptible mustiness to it, probably from the paper liner, but it wasn’t present enough for friends to notice when I shared the borrachitos. My band director proclaimed them to be “very good,” and he’s got a doctorate in music education (sorry; inside YUB joke).

The Tequila borrachitos (left three in below photo) were lighter in color than the Licor de Cafe flavored ones (right three below) - more golden than brown - and their mustiness was a little stronger, probably because they had a double-layered paper liner. David from Crown Candies assures me that they’ve stopped using the double layer and that they’re looking into plastic separators, so that should resolve that issue. He was so confident that he sent me a third box of borrachitos with the new packaging to taste, but I haven’t had a chance to get them yet because I’ve been out of town and without access to my PO box.

The Tequila borrachitos were also strong! They immediately taste of caramel, and then whoosh comes the alcohol flavor. I’m not hardcore enough to enjoy the Tequila flavor, but I think tequila lovers/hard liquor connoisseurs would enjoy it. The Licor de Cafe flavor was just right for me, with it’s slight but innocuous alcohol tinge. An O for the tequila. The Licor de Cafe isn’t something I would reach for as a casual snack, but I would indulge in a piece now and then and would offer it to company. It gets an OM. I wonder if Crown Candies has considered a chocolate liqueur version.

Borrachitos are available online from the Crown Candies website, and they’ll also be at the All Candy Expo in Chicago that’s going on next week.

These Liberty Orchards’ Aplets and Cotlets were given to me by my friend Rita, who is from Washington state. In Washington, these are a locally made confection that probably takes advantage of the fruit trees of the state. If I ever get to visit her at home, I’m making her take me on the Liberty Orchards’ factory tour.

The Aplets (apples + walnuts ) and Cotlets (apricots + walnuts) come in a pretty box split in half between the two types. I love the logo design, with a apple as the O. On sight, the aplets and cotlets seem identical, but Liberty Orchards was thoughtful enough to include a decorative piece of paper that explained which half of the tray was which. There were 16 total confectioneries in my box, so 8 of each.

The aplets and cotlets smell lightly fruity. They’re basically a wonderfully smooth fruit pate/jelly candy with walnuts mixed in, all covered in confectioner’s sugar. The aplets had a light and subtle apple taste that tasted like genuine, real fruit - because it was made from real fruit. The cotlet, which was billed as tangy, wasn’t. In fact, I found it to have an even lighter fruit flavor than the apple. The walnuts were crunchy and mild, as walnuts should be.

I give these an OM because I find them too delicate and dainty for my taste. They’re a great, light way to finish a meal, but for snacking purposes, I’d prefer something with a little more OMPH.

I found these Narbles at the grocery store in the candy display near what used to be the video rental area. I had never heard of Narbles, but the bag was super cheap so I decided to give them a try.

Narbles are like spherical jelly beans - the good kind of jelly bean, like the kind made by Starburst (BUY) where the flavor is strong and vibrant. Narble shells, however, are much thicker than those of jelly beans, and I found it a hair too thick to make chewing easy. The chewy jelly insides also dissolve easily, unlike jelly beans, which can sometimes get stuck in your teeth.

The flavors are cherry (generically artificial cherry taste), grape (a strong artificial grape lollipop/popsicle flavor), orange (a strong sweetness that could have used more of a citrus tang), lemon (way too sweet and barely any lemon taste), and apple (also way too sweet and with hardly any discernible green apple taste). The cherry ones are actually red, by the way; for some reason they showed up pink in the photo.

Narbles are pleasant enough. They’re intensely sugary, so they’re not terribly addictive. If Starburst jelly beans didn’t exist in the world, I’d gladly eat these instead.