ZOMG, Candy!

I got this Nintendo mushroom tin in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press kit/goodie bag. It was immediately eye-catching due to its sheer adorableness factor.

It came in a little aluminum tin designed to look just like a Super Mario mushroom. I loved the bright and cheery red-spotted cap.

The cap was cut inside so that it covered the mushroom stem at an angle. That meant it was super fun to play with. Below is my rakish, mysterious mushroom.

Enough about the cute factor. What was the candy component like?

The mushroom stem was full of little pink compressed sugar candies. They, too, were shaped like mushrooms.

Alas, mine were all mottled inside, which made them look water damaged. They were like that when I first opened the mushroom tin, and I opened it right when the goodie bag arrived.

They tasted slightly sour and brightly of artificial, slightly medicinal cherry. They were hard enough so that they could be sucked on. They were also quite chompable.

Chomping on them released a rush of artificial cherry sweetness along with an iron-y bite (think just shy of Flintstone vitamin) as the candy disintegrated. I definitely preferred them sans chomping.

The packaging was far better than the candy within. I’d buy it once just for the tin, but the candy wasn’t that great. An O.

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.

Most people are pretty familiar with Ferrero’s Kinder Surprise eggs. They’re banned in the U.S. and some other countries because they mix edibles and toys with tiny parts, which is a no-no. Kinder Joy, which I came across for the first time in Europe, is a newer addition to the Kinder egg line. It too, mixes edibles and toys, so it’s also not allowed in the U.S.

The two halves of Joy egg are split. One half contains a toy (in my case, a lame Ice Age 3 – yes, they apparently made an Ice Age 3 – badge), while the other half is a creamy spread studded with two chocolate cookie balls. Each half is individually sealed so that the spread doesn’t get on the toy (and vice-versa, I suppose). Finally, a flat plastic “spoon” is included to scoop up the spread.

The spread is a layer of white chocolate on hazelnut chocolate. It has the viscosity of Nutella – smooth and thick and glossy, but just short of the runniness of honey. Inside the spread are two chocolate balls comprised of chocolate ganache surrounded by a thin wafer shell covered in chocolate and crunchy chocolate sprinkles. They’re similar to Rocher balls, but smaller and without hazelnuts.

If you try to pry the balls out of the spread, a half shell of chocolate and sprinkles gets left behind, which imparts a nice crunch to the spread. Overall, I found this treat too sweet to eat on its own. The balls are managable, as their wafer shells help cut the cloy, but eating the spread is akin to eating straight frosting: okay for a lick or two, but too much beyond that. It did go nicely on bread, however.

All in all, a nice treat, but I’d rather buy a normal Kinder chocolate treat, like a Happy Hippo, Bueno, Rocher, or Duplo, and just put Nutella on my bread. The Joy gets an O, with the caveat that it would be great for gift-giving as soon as they stop coming with lame-O Ice Age 3 toys.

I receive press release emails fairly frequently. The one that I got from Das foods was more eye-catching then most. Read for yourself:

“What’s your flava?  Man Bait, Naughty Ginger, Fab-O-Pom or Caramel Me Happy? They may sound like names you’d have if you worked for an “escort” service, but they are not. Instead, they’re the inspired flavors of Das Foods’ chic and unique new brand of delicious lollipops that will launch nationally next week at the All Candy Expo in Chicago, May 19-21.”

I gave these babies a test drive on my drive from New Haven to Rochester. They definitely helped keep me awake with their extreme lollipop flavor novelty. That’s also why the remaining photos are courtesy of Das, as I couldn’t photograph them while on the road. As an added bonus, I tasted them without access to the press release materials (quoted below in italics), so I didn’t know what I was eating while I ate it.

Fab-O-Pom: “A pomegranate and orange lolli that’s good and good for you.  It’s a sweet and tangy fusion of heart-healthy real pomegranate extract and fragrant orange oil with tiny pieces of orange zest.”

The lolli is a pale, translucent salmon flecked with bits of brown. It smells strongly of orange. The flavor is deep citrus, like a blood orange, while the finish has a bit of a bite to it, probably due to the pomegranate component. The brown flecks eventually wind up studding the surface as the lolli melts. They taste like bits of fruit leather or candied orange peel. I like this, despite the two air bubbles it contained. An OM.

Caramel Me Happy: “A caramel and lavender lolli made with caramelized cane sugar and indulgent chewy Das Salty Caramel mixed with real lavender extract and tiny crystals of Fleur De Sel sea salt for a trendy, delicious sweet and salty treat.”

This smells just like a salted caramel. It’s reminiscent of a deeper, more complex butterscotch candy with burnt sugar notes. The lollipop itself is not perfectly smooth; rather, it’s very finely textured. I enjoy the salted caramel flavor, but I’m a bit thrown by the mismatch between texture and taste. I wish I could chew this lollipop! I’d much rather have a Das salted caramel, so an O.

Naughty Ginger: “A ginger and lemon lolli that’s sweet, tangy and tantalizingly spicy all at once.  Small bits of wickedly spicy candied ginger are complemented by all-natural lemon extract.  And the ginger works double time; it tastes great AND soothes an upset stomach!”

Whoo boy is the ginger smell strong! This lolli is super, super gingery and super, super spicy. I got in a few licks, just enough to note the strong ginger flavor with a very light, sweet undertone of lemon, but couldn’t keep eating it because it was just too spicy for me. It left my mouth tingling. I’m a ginger wuss, so this guy wasn’t for me, but I bet ginger enthusiasts would appreciate it. A –.

Man Bait: “A maple bacon lolli that’s a fiercely delicious combination of real smoky bacon bits and delicious maple syrup providing an all-at-once savory and sweet sensation.”

Like the Naughty Ginger, this lollipop was too much flavor for me to handle. It smells like maple syrup with a hint of meat undertone. That’s pretty much how it tastes as well. It’s pretty sweet from the strong maple sugar flavor, and that plus the smoky meatiness from the bacon bits and the lollipop nature/hard candy texture does not compute in my brain. I felt a bit ill and couldn’t keep eating it. A – from me.

Out of all four lollipops, Fab-O-Pom is the only one that I would want to eat again. They are all, however, a fine flavor effort. They taste exactly as promised, and the flavors are strong, vibrant, and concentrated. While the ginger and bacon pops weren’t for me, ginger and bacon enthusiasts would enjoy them, making those the pops a great novelty gift. And at $0.50 a pop (har har), they’re an affordable gift as well.

I’m sure I left y’all on the edge of your computer chairs last Friday when I promised weird Japanese Kit Kat reviews. Here are the remaining three in order of escalating weirdness.

Apple and chocolate aren’t an unheard of combination, but I’ve not enjoyed it in the past. In the Kit Kat iteration, it’s less bad, but it’s still not good.

Visually, it seems just like a normal Kit Kat. Though it smells strongly of Fuji apples, it initially tastes mostly of chocolate. Then the apple comes in. It’s weird and unpleasant and kind of earthy, more like an apple core than an apple. A –.

Next up, Muscat grape. Or, more specifically, Muscat of Alexandria. I don’t really know if a Muscat grape is any more special than the white seedless grapes you’d pick up at your local supermarket, and I also don’t know what makes Muscat of Alexandria special enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry. Or its own Kit Kat flavor.

I also don’t know why people thought grape flavored chocolate would be worth making. This bar is white chocolate with a pale green tinge, at once pretty and alien. I think it smells more like lychee than grape, but the taste is white grape all the way through. Would you want to eat grapes and white chocolate in the same bite? I wouldn’t, but I did try this bar, and I didn’t like it. Another –.

Finally, the mystery flavored Kit Kat. I don’t know Japanese, but I know some Chinese, and there’s a lot of character overlap. I could make out the characters for “university” on here, which didn’t help at all. I guessed that it was candied sweet potato with black sesame seeds. Cassie had no clue, and my boyfriend thought it may be tofu. We consulted my friend Michael, who lives in Kobe. Turns out I was sort of right; it is sweet potato and sesame.

The “university” part was to signal that it was a limited edition bar, released for exam session when Japanese students test to get into universities. Just goes to show you how candy can teach you about other cultures. Can you imagine an SAT Kit Kat being sold in the U.S.?

This was another white chocolate bar, tinged pale yellow. It was slightly nutty with toastiness that may have come from the wafers. I don’t really get sweet potato, exactly. The white chocolate is the most prominent flavor. Another –.

Thanks for the flavor adventure, Cassie! I enjoyed tasting them, even if the flavors weren’t that enjoyable. Guess there’s a reason they’re not widely available outside of Japan. Now, if only I could find a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat…

Like Gummy Bears? Then check out what Vat19 sent me as a free sample:

That, dear readers, is a Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick that’s 88 times the size of a regular gummy bear (by the way, if you can’t tell, that’s Vat19’s photo, so those aren’t my man hands. I don’t have man hands). If you like regular gummy bears, would you like the Giant Gummy 88 times as much? Maybe not, but it’s still pretty neat.

The Giant Gummy Bears on Sticks come in three flavors, blue raspberry, green apple, and cherry. I requested the green apple, as it’s the only flavor out of the three that I normally like, so I can only comment on that one. Basically, it tasted just like your standard green apple gummy bear, nicely sweet and mellow. It’s a soft gummy, more Trolli than Haribo, but it still has a bite to it. And it’s ginormous. I’ve polished off most of the head, and I feel a bit ill/sugar overloaded. Now I have a headless Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick.

I’m a little uncertain how to rate this. It tastes just fine, but not exceptional, so it gets an O. But clearly, the attraction is the size. I definitely appreciate that the Giant Gummy Bear didn’t compromise taste or texture in blowing up the bear. I wouldn’t buy it for myself just to eat, but it’s a great gag gift. I also see centerpiece potential for candy themed parties or weddings or something. At $9.99 a bear, I think it’s worth it. After all, a bag of regular gummy bears will run you about $2-3, the Giant Gummy is equivalent to at least two or three bags, and the extra mark-up is for the novelty factor, yeah?

Ever since someone brought my family a can of See’s Almond Royal as a hostess gift, See’s Candies has been a Li family favorite. When we were on the West Coast last winter, we made sure to visit at least one See’s store to load up. I’ve also previously reviewed one of their chocolate fundraiser bars when one of the boys next door had a whole case.

When See’s emailed asking if I wanted a free box of their chocolates to review, I of course said yes. A couple of days later, I received an entire pound of their assorted chocolates. Because you can create your own custom mix, either online or in the See’s store, I shall review them piece by piece over the course of this week.

The Dark Chocolate Butter is a chocolate buttercream enrobed in See’s dark chocolate couverture. The buttercream inside is fluffy, sweet, and pretty cocoa-y. Along with the dark chocolate coating, this was overly sweet for my taste, but it was good. An O from me, but most people have a higher tolerance for sweetness than I do, and I can see others enjoying it.

Maple Walnut is a maple buttercream with English walnuts. It reminded me of the chocolate covered maple sugar candy from The Big E that I reviewed a while back, but better, as it was less cloying, and you could still taste the chocolate. The buttercream had a strong maple sugar flavor, and it was on the crumbly side for a buttercream. The crunchy walnuts tempered the sweetness a bit. Another O from me.

The Dark Nougat contains honey nougat, coconut, vanilla, and almonds. The honey nougat was more like a chewy caramel, and I liked the almond crunch. It was like a Snicker’s bar, just with dark chocolate and almonds. I enjoyed the balance of nutty and salty and crunchy and chewy, earning this an OM.

I’m pretty sure the above is a Butterscotch Square, which See’s describes as a “firm brown sugar, vanilla buttercream.” I’m assuming that means a brown sugar and vanilla buttercream? This was a sweet milk chocolate over a brown sugar center. It was throat-burningly sweet, but I actually liked it, for the same reasons that I’ll sneak a few grains of brown sugar by itself while making my morning oatmeal. And I enjoy See’s milk chocolate couverture, which is creamy without being too sweet. An OM for this guy, even though I couldn’t eat more than a bit at a time.

Come back on Wednesday and Friday as we go through the rest of the box!

Sometimes, candy can come awfully close to being too cute to eat. Fortunately for you lot, dear readers, I am willing to sacrifice my cuteness sensibilities and chomp down on adorable candy, even if it happens to endearingly resemble frightened hippos.

Kinder’s Happy Hippos, like nearly everything made by Kinder/Ferrero, is tinged with hazelnut deliciousness. The Hippos come in two varieties, cacao cream (left) and biscuit (right). Both varieties consist of hippo shaped wafers (complete with eyes, nostrils, and eyebrows) filled with flavored cream and half dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. They differ in that the cacao cream has, well, a cacao (cocoa) flavored cream, and while the Cacao Hippo can be found submerged in a lake of chocolate, the Biscuit Hippo’s prefers a lake of white chocolate.

The wrapper of the Biscuit Happy Hippo shows milk and hazelnuts, and that’s what you get in lovely combination in this chap. The light wafer crunch of the Hippo stands in sharp contrast to the thick hazelnut and milk cream that fills its three pods – bum, head, and nose. The fillings are so thick and creamy that they’re moisture-suckingly good, even if the finish is rather cloying.

The wrapper of the Cacao Hippo calls the filling fat-reduced. Clearly I should take that to mean that I can eat a bloat of Happy Hippos (yes, a group of hippos is called a bloat) and not have to worry about personally bloating from Hippo-related weight gain, right? There are two layers of cream inside, one brown that tasted of cocoa and one white that tasted of milk and vanilla. Online ingredients lists for the cacao cream Hippo lists hazelnuts in the ingredients, so the milk layer may have been the same as the filling of the Biscuit Hippo, but I didn’t taste any hazelnut in the filling of the one I got. The filling of the Cacao Hippo was thinner, which meant that it didn’t coat the mouth or cloy.

An ZOMG! for both because I am a sucker for chocolate and hazelnut things and cute things.

More Japanese candy fun thanks to my friend Michael, this time in the form of Gummi Sushi. The Japanese are quite good at coming up with cute things (Hello Kitty much?) and clever things, and they certainly haven’t skimped on cuteness and cleverness in their gummis. Better yet, unlike the gummi hamburgers or pizzas that you can find at most party stores,the Gummi Sushi actually tasted good.

I like the cartoony sushi chef guy on the packaging and the clearly illustrated instructions on how to eat sushi gummies. Just in case you couldn’t figure it out for yourself. And I liked the little pictures of fruit – an apple, a cantaloupe melon, and a strawberry – on the bottom to help those of us who love Japanese candy but can’t actually read Japanese.

The gummies themselves are sealed inside a second bag and arrayed on a plastic tray so you can marvel at the cuteness of the gummi shrimp and rice and things. The gummis are sweet and fruity smelling, with a scent that reminds me of those little lychee gelatin pots.

The gummis are very soft (a case of good double-bagging!) and slightly greasy to the touch. And they’re so cute! Red is strawberry, white is apple, and orange is cantaloupe. While the apple and strawberry go well together, the melon flavor of the cantaloupe is so strong that it’s not so good for pairing. A sweet concept with a sweet and tasty execution earns these an OMG.

When I was in Chicago over spring break, I stopped by a Vosges boutique because even though I can’t really afford their products on my college student budget, holy cow are their truffles gooooood. Plus I got permission from my residential college master to pick up another bacon bar for our next tasting. I also got a Calindia Bar because I hadn’t seen that one at Whole Foods or at the Las Vegas Vosges I visited.

Speaking of the Las Vegas Vosges, I liked the Chicago one much better because they had free samples placed out all over the place. And, after I paid for the two bars I picked out, the saleslady slipped me a little plastic bag of four truffles. I promise, I did not breathe one word of my candy blogging hobby to ingratiate myself with her, though I did ask lots of questions and probably sounded fairly knowledgeable about their line. The truffle freebies were probably near their best-by date, but still, it was a nice and much appreciated gesture.

Another nice Vosges surprise was waiting for me when I got back from break – a press kit containing a library of their mini bars (I already have a set, so I gave those to my suitemates), a box of 9 of their exotic truffles (review to come Wednesday), and a flying chocolate pig made of their bacon chocolate.

I liked the flying chocolate pig better than their standard Bacon Bar not only because it’s much cuter but also because I’m convinced it actually tastes better. It’s also more expensive though, and it weighs only 1.2 oz. as compared to the 3.0 oz bar.

I found the flavor of bacon to be much stronger in the pig. It certainly smelled stronger. In the case of the pig, the bits of bacon were meatier and chewier than those of the bar, which were crunchier like dried bacon bits. In the case of the pig, I could actually feel the grain of the meat as I ate the chocolate. Because of that, I give the pig an OMG rather the OM I bestowed upon the bar version, though I should note that they may have revamped the way they make their bacon chocolate, so it’s possible the bacon bar has been made just as bacon-y.

I shared some of the pig with my history of food professor, who loved it. I also offered some to my dean, who refused a taste at first, then went back for seconds. If anything, bacon chocolate always makes a splash and is a good conversation piece, making the Flying Chocolate Pig a cute (gag) gift.