ZOMG, Candy!

Remember when I complained about having to miss a free Hedonist chocolate tasting? My boyfriend and I ended up swapping our travel duties, and he came to Rochester instead of me going to New Haven, which meant we both got to go to the tasting party. Hooray!

Cody came up with some great stuff - the cardamom was the stellar standout for me - and I made off with a goodie bag full of treats: a Rosa-selected box of 5 truffles (above) that I paid for (including another of Cody’s cardamom truffles), and free samples of their Autumn Truffle Collection, their milk chocolate sesame bark, and their pistachio ginger bark.

I’ll review the milk chocolate sesame bark on Friday; today’s all about the Autumn Truffle Collection. This season’s collection includes fennel, whiskey sage, honey thyme, cinnamon, and rosemary.

I love that Hedonist includes a customizeable guide with every box, to help you identify which is which. So much easier than trying to guess or cross-reference with the chocolatier’s website.

Fennel was easy to spot, as it was garnished with whole fennel seeds. Fennel goes quite well with the high quality, dusky dark chocolate (Valrhona, I think) even in its most potent, whole-seed state.

In the actual truffle, a dark chocolate shell around a white ganache, the fennel flavor is tempered, and it works even better, especially with the slight saltiness that Hedonist added.

Whiskey sage smells a little boozy but in taste, the whiskey mostly manifests as a light sweetness. The most prominent flavor in the truffle is sage.

The herb and chocolate meld together beautifully. It tastes velvety, and it’s a unique flavor combination that melds beautifully.

Honey thyme smells just like the jar of thyme in our spice rack. It tastes just like thyme too, with a dusky, dry cocoa finish. I can’t pick out honey flavors from the overall sweetness of the truffle, as the thyme has such a strong presence.

Again, the flavors go together well, but it makes me think of Italian food and pasta sauce when I eat it, and that’s cognitively jarring. I enjoyed it, but I don’t know if I would seek it out again.

Cinnamon, understandably enough, smells just like fresh ground cinnamon. I think it’s Ceylon rather than your more run-of-the-mill Cassia, as the cinnamon tastes delicate and maybe slightly sweet. Its presence is super strong in the truffle, so much so that it becomes slightly astringent. It definitely seeks a different target palate than Cinnamon Toast Crunch (which I love, too, by the way).

Rosemary was a rolled rather than a molded truffle and came wrapped in cheery orange foil. I didn’t get an unwrapped picture of this one, specifically, but it looked like this (actually Hedonist’s Imperial Stout, another rolled truffle), all charmingly lumpy and dusted with unsweetened cocoa powder.

Again, it smells and tastes of my spice rack. The ganache inside is rich and fattily cool on the tongue. I know “fattily cool” doesn’t exactly sound appetizing, but it’s a good sensation!

Hedonist’s Autumn collection of savory spice + dark chocolate is definitely a winner. Their flavor combinations were novel (well, cinnamon and chocolate is relatively common, but not the way Hedonist made them) and despite their… unintuitiveness… worked together quite well, making this an intriguing and delicious set.

Whiskey sage was my favorite, and even my least favorite (the honey thyme) was tasty - it just messed with my mind a little too much. It makes me want to whip up a pan of chocolate bark and sprinkle the contents of my spice rack over it to see if I can find chocolate magic too. An OMG for the collection as a whole, with whiskey sage meriting that extra Z.

If you want to try them out for yourselves, remember that they’re offering free shipping until the end of the month!

I had been looking for Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms 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&Ms 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&Ms, they’re irregularly sized and lopsided. Also like peanut butter M&Ms, 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&Ms 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.

When I was a kid, I didn’t play with Barbies much. It wasn’t because my parents were afraid that she’d give me body image issues or anything like that (though if I had a daughter of my own, I probably wouldn’t give her Barbies for that reason) - it’s because we were too po’. My parents immigrated from China just before I was born. When I was young, we lived off my father’s tiny grad student stipend, which left little room in the family budget for Barbies. Now that we’re financially comfortable (though that financial comfort will disappear once I graduate from college and attempt to be financially independent), I’m too old for Barbies.

Or so I thought. When Mattel approached me about doing a giveaway of their new limited/collectors’ edition Hershey’s Barbie Doll, my first thought was, “I want one!” And because Mattel is so nice, I got one!

She’s “adorned with a fun and flirtatious cocktail dress in a rich milk chocolate brown, accented with twinkles of silver,” just as the press release promised. And killer shoes, which weren’t touted in the fact sheet that I got. Yes, I’ll never be able to walk en point in heels, and I’ll never have Barbie’s impossible figure, but I’m old enough to accept that and enjoy my Hershey’s Barbie for what she is - a neat collaboration between two old and beloved American institutions.

And, thanks to Mattel, I’m running a giveaway for a second doll, so that one of you can have one to enjoy as well! One randomly selected reader (U.S. only, please, unless you’re willing to pay your own shipping) will win a Hershey’s Barbie. To enter, leave a Barbie or Hershey’s related comment on this post with a valid email address by midnight on Friday, April 17th.

Good luck! And if you don’t win, you can still buy your own at Toys R Us, Hershey’s stores, select U.S. retailers, and at BarbieCollector.com .

NOTE: This contest has now closed. Winners posted here!

Normally, candy blogging has lots of perks. My friends give me candy, PR companies mail me free samples, people love me for feeding them my extra candy, and I get to eat lots of candy! But eating lots of candy isn’t always fun and games. Candy doesn’t always taste good, and sometimes, it can be downright nasty. Take, for example, Junior Fruit Cremes, one of the most misguided limited edition candies I have ever had the misfortune to come across and actually spend money on.

Granted, it was just a dollar at the Dollar Tree, but still. Junior Mint, why did you even go there? You make a perfectly lovely chocolate mint confection. Why branch out into these horrible things that you call fruit cremes, which are dull and ugly while your Junior Mints are bright and shiny, which erroneously claim “creamy coated fruit centers!” and which taste of unfortunate approximations of black cherry, orange, and raspberry?

Seriously, these guys were gnarly nasty. I’ll give Junior Mints the benefit of the doubt - maybe my box was a bit old, and that’s why the fruit centers had solidified into greasy messes. But that doesn’t excuse the greasy crumbly coatings or the strangely artificial, can’t-find-anything-close-to-it-in-nature waxy “fruit” flavors. I took a nibble of each and just couldn’t bring myself to taste more. These guys went straight into the trash, earning them a null –. I want my dollar back. Actually, I want Tootsie Roll to pay me for eating these horrible things. I don’t understand how they ever made it onto the shelves.

Did you manage to catch the limited edition run of Cherry 3 Musketeers that were out for Valentine’s Day? I didn’t. But I did get mailed a free sample bag of 3 Musketeers Raspberry minis, a limited edition for Easter. I also got a couple of their non-limited edition mint bars, but since I’ve reviewed those way back when I first started this blog, I won’t write them up again.

Though they’re ostensibly for Easter, the bars’ packaging didn’t seem that Easter-y to me. It had the requisite daisies and pastel eggs on the wrappers, but I think the shiny hot pink and silver foil wrappers went against the Easter mood. The packaging exhorts you to “bring the spring feeling home,” but they just don’t look like spring to me.

The Minis are perfect little squares (about quarter-sized) of pink-tinged nougat covered in dark chocolate. The nougat is typical 3 Musketeers nougat, soft and fluffy. The packaging promised “whipped up, fluffy chocolate-on-raspberry taste. ” They smell medicinally fruity, and they kind of taste that way too, with a seedy, artificially and overly sweet fruitiness that mingles with the mild dark chocolate coating.

I didn’t particularly care for these myself, so they get an O, but that’s a personal taste preference. I also wouldn’t care for a See’s version of the same thing. The people I shared these with liked them, and one of my friends even remarked that they taste remarkably high end for a Mars mass-produced product. So if chocolate covered fruity-nougat is your thing, by all means, add these to your Easter basket.

Reese’s is awesome at churning out limited edition stuff. The newest iteration is their Limited Edition Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups, which I picked up as an impulse buy at the counter of my local Walgreen’s. Hooray marketing!

My friend Steve just asked what makes it crunchy. Just like peanut butter, the peanut butter cups are crunchified by the presence of peanuts. The peanut butter cup doesn’t look any different on the outside, but the peanut bits are visible in the pb cup cross section.

The peanut bits add a nice textural component to the cup and contributes a strong peanut scent, though I don’t have a regular pb cup to compare it to. Even without a regular pb cup handy, I can tell that the peanut butter filling in the crunchy cup is sweeter and less salty than its non-limited edition counterpart.

I think the crunchy is an improvement on peanut butter cups. The peanuts aren’t too intrusive and don’t get stuck in your teeth, and the peanut butter cup texture is more exciting. I do wish the nuts were roastier but still give this limited edition a solid OMG.

In continuing with Wednesday’s spirit of cleaning notes out of my candy tasting notebook, more quick reviews of candies that I didn’t have much to say about. These, like Wednesday’s, were all gifts, but they are not all international.

South African Nestle Chocolates from former suitemate, future roommate Catherine (who doesn’t like chocolate!), who got them from a YDN friend

Tex - milk chocolate coating around two wafers sandwiching an aerated chocolate middle. Meh chocolate quality, but coolness and novelty points. I’ll definitely seek this out if Concert Band tour is in South Africa next summer. OM.

Bar-one - nougat and chocolate. Reminds me of a Tootsie Roll’s flavor. O.

Quality Street - the name confused me, because Quality Street is a whole line-up of assorted and individually wrapped chocolate miniatures in the UK. In this case, the treat labeled “chocolate nut toffee creme” had caramel and was vaguely hazelnutty. Another O.

Hershey’s Limited Edition Hot Cocoa Kisses from a YPMB scavenger hunt group, submitted as “Candy Rosa’s never tried before”

I think these kisses had melted a bit, then reformed, hence the kind of lumpy look on the wrapped one. I wonder if they have a lower melting point because truffling the filling means adding vegetable fat or something.

Like many of the overabundant Kiss varieties (seriously thorough round-up from Cybele here; awesome photographic round-up here) that Hershey’s rolled out recently, these are molded truffles rather than “kissed” out like traditional kisses. The hot cocoa kiss had a milk chocolate shell surrounding a soft truffle center with a cocoa powder finish. It was soft and sweet and so-so. An O for something that was awfully similar to the plain old truffle kisses.

Long Grove Confectionary Chocolates from Mrs. Cobb that didn’t make it to Chicago Week

Clockwise from the top: Kahlua, raspberry, vanilla buttercream, and dark chocolate.

Kahlua - nice whole coffee bean on top. A thick and creamy ganache with a slightly sweet finish. Not much chocolate or coffee flavor.

Raspberry - nicely sweet raspberry flavored filling without the bitter seeds

Vanilla buttercream - strong maple notes with a super sweet maple finish. Slight grain to the ganache.

Dark chocolate - doesn’t taste very chocolatey or very dark, but the ganache is lovely, as it’s thick and creamy and smooth.

A good assortment that’s better than most grocery-store bought boxed chocolates, but nothing that really sets it apart from other not mass-distributed chocolates. An O.

I’m a little late to the game on reviewing the Wildly Cherry M&M’s, as I am on many Limited Edition candies. That’s what happens when you’re a college student on a meal plan who doesn’t go grocery shopping. I found these at one of the many gas stations we stopped at on my spring break roadtrips. The cashier saw me buy two bags (one to eat in the car, as I couldn’t wait to taste them, and the other to photograph and review later) and remarked that she liked the Razzberry ones better (my review of the Razzberry M&M’s). I agree.

I love the cute little bag design that makes Red look like a cherry. As you can see, the Wildly Cherry M&M’s come in two colors, red and a darker maroon. They’re slightly larger than regular M&M’s, like the Razzberry ones, and also like the Razzberry ones, the larger size makes the sugar shell feel a little thicker and a little crunchier. I found the flavor to be reminiscent of artificial black cherry rather than of fresh cherries. It was quite faithful to the slightly medicinal flavor of a cherry cordial. They’re not as intoxicating as the Razzberry M&M’s, possibly because the slightly medicinal cherry flavor is far more common and therefore less interesting than it’s slightly medicinal raspberry counterpart. An OM from me. I passed the first bag around the car, where it was favorably received by my road tripping companions. I popped a couple of the second bag to take tasting notes but have since had no desire to pop more.

Check out Sera on Candy Addict and Heather on Chocolate Bytes for other takes. I wonder if they’re the same as the Cherry Cordial M&Ms from last Christmas the Sugarhog.net reviewed.

Oh Limited Edition items, how you appeal to my candy blogger impulses! The bright orange wrapper on the Snickers Limited Edition Nut ‘n Butter Crunch (I’m fond of pointing out how Reese’s has driven us to associate orange candy bar wrappers with peanut butter) promises “milk chocolate, peanuts and creamy peanut butter taste.”

Peanut butter taste? That worries me. Why not just creamy peanut butter? It must be some horrid substitute made from oil or something. Yum…

I must admit that I’ve never been a Snickers fan, as I don’t really like peanuts that much. I used to hate nuts in things. Now that I’ve been candy blogging for a while, I’ve learned to tolerate and even enjoy eating nuts. But I’ve still never had the urge to grab a Snickers bar. I don’t even think I’ve ever had a standard-sized Snickers (just the mini versions), so though I felt that the Nut ‘n Butter Crunch was smaller than usual, I couldn’t be sure. It weighed in at 1.71 ounces.

First of all, this bar doesn’t live up to its name, as it’s not that crunchy. The peanuts are the only thing providing texture to the bar. It had a strong peanut smell, probably thanks to whatever provided the peanut butter tate. The milk chocolate coating was slight sweet and covered a thick filling of peanuts in a pasty… thing… that’s definitely not peanut butter, as its texture is not at all creamy. The Nut ‘n Butter Crunch was an extremely salty bar (14- mg of sodium), possibly due to the peanuts and the nuts. The sweet and salty mix of the bar works well, and the texture is pretty good as well.

I give the Nut ‘n Butter Crunch an OM. All the peanuts make it high in protein, and it tastes better than most of those supposedly healthy protein bars that are covered in chocolate and full of sugar. Maybe this is a candy indulgence that you can pretend is good for you!

With their limited edition Razzberry M&M’s (BUY!), Mars has further added to an already fairly expansive line of M&M (BUY!) varieties. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! These guys were tasty. I brought them to a party, and they disappeared in about ten minutes.

If Mars had made the packaging and the M&M’s a pale pink instead of this red color, they could’ve seriously capitalized on October being breast cancer awareness month. Then again, this purplish-reddish pink does a better job of capturing the color of raspberries. Sort of.

The M&M’s are the same shade of razzberry. I think it’s a pretty shade, if a bit jarring because it’s not what we’re used to. The Razzberry M&M’s are bigger than milk chocolate M&M’s - close to the size of peanut M&M’s but not oblong due to the lack of needing to accommodate peanut shapes - and unevenly sized, as you can see from the photo. My favorite one is the dented one, I think. Perhaps it was dropped on its head as a child.

These are sweet with a lightly fruity raspberry flavor. The flavor is quite artificial but still enjoyable. The candy sugar shell feels thicker, making these M&M’s a tad more tiring to chew. As far as I can tell, the shell isn’t Razzberry flavored. I think it’s too thick, which makes the M&M’s too sweet. I found them more enjoyable when I let the sugar shell dissolve for a bit and then crunched through the remaining thin shell. An OM. Tasty; could be tastier.