I picked up a bag of assorted Russell Stover candy for half off in a post-Christmas sale. I guess the little bow in the top left corner was what made it holiday-y.
I think the packaging was so sparsely decorated that it needn’t have been designated a holiday-specific candy. But who am I to complain about sale candy?
There were three kinds of individually wrapped chocolates in the bag, with two each of coconut, mint, and caramel. Kind of a waste of packaging space for just six chocolates, if you ask me. Today, I’m covering the Russell Stover Coconut, and we’ll hit the rest later this week.
The coconut was a rounded rectangle of dark chocolate filled with fluffy white coconut. The obvious comparison is with Mounds, a similar dark chocolate-covered coconut treat. How would Russell Stover’s version compare?
Pretty favorably! The dark chocolate shell was quite substantial, thick enough to provide a bit of crunch and snap. It didn’t have much of a melt, but it had a surprising depth of flavor.
I was reminded of a Ghirardelli flavor profile. Lots of nice cocoa duskiness with a slightly sweet finish.
The flaky coconut paste was mild in flavor. It was lightly sweet and nutty while avoiding any of that artificial tropicalness that I associate with coconut and sunscreen.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I definitely prefer these to Mounds. Though Mounds are a bit nuttier, the Russell Stover wins out thanks to its superior quantity and quality of chocolate. An OM.
Varsha