Happy Valentine's Day Yumsters!

It's the night before Valentine's Day. I've just tucked the Sugar Baby in and he says to me, "Did you buy me a heart?" Despite the fact that I've just spent the past 15 minutes tearing my hair out trying to convince him that he does not need his shell collection, presidential dollars, Easter Island statues and ukulele all on his night stand, and all I want to do is sit down and watch Lady Gaga emerge from her egg on the Grammy's and drink a glass of wine, I say "you'll find out tomorrow." Then I turn out the light and bolt out the front door to the grocery store.
Somehow, I managed to a) not only forget to buy the Sugar Baby a candy-filled heart but I also b) have absolutely no candy in the house that could possibly serve as a Valentine's Day present. I think I've lost all credibility as a candy blogger.
To make things even worse, I wrote an article about Valentine's chocolates this week. I mean, hello! I was at a bunch of different chocolate shops. I could've picked something up at any time. This is serious, people.
Fortunately, I scored a really cool balloon and a box of chocolates. Whew.
In the meantime (just so you don't think I'm a complete failure), I saw these Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Chocolate Dips. I love the combination of orange and chocolate, so this is probably the only jelly bean flavor I'd ever want to try with chocolate. At first, I was unsure. The jelly bean lacked the usual punch of a Jelly Belly ... it didn't scream ORANGE! But then I ate a few more and decided I liked them. They're similar to chocolate-covered orange peel.

Starbuck's Jelly Beans

In Starbucks the other day, I almost didn't see the little box of jellybeans on the counter. For $1, I grabbed this little packet of assorted-flavor jellybeans and tucked them into my bag. I totally forgot about them until I picked the Sugarbaby up from camp one day and he was starving. As you can see, he had no problem devouring the whole package before I even had a chance to take a picture. The flavors were strawberry, peach, fruit punch and I think lemon and orange. From the few that I tried, they were good but a little too sweet for my tastes. They made my teeth hurt.
I don't know if Jelly Belly is the maker of these beans, although I suspect they probably are. I've compared the Starbucks package next to a Jelly Belly sample-size package. I still haven't tried the honey jelly beans, but they've been given good reviews across the board. Needless to say, there were more jelly beans in the Starbucks package than in the sample bag, which is a good thing, especially if you're the Sugar Baby.

The Inside Scoop (From the Outside)

While I sit here with the world’s neediest cat tucked under my elbow, hundreds of candy manufacturers and buyers are partying their lights out working hard at the All Candy Expo. I’m not there because 1) I’m broke; 2) I don’t have coverage for the Sugar Baby and 3) I’m too tired to even return my library books, let alone haul my sorry butt to the airport. In any case, the kind press folks at the Expo are keeping candy bloggers in the know with daily info. So dear Yumsters, want a sneak peek into what’s coming up around the bend? Here are a few I thought were interesting.

• Jelly Belly® will have two new super fruit flavors: Barbados Cherry, an emerging super fruit high in Vitamin C, and Acai (ah-sigh-ee) Berry, an exotic Amazon rainforest fruit, in their new Superfruit Mix, which also includes other super fruits of pomegranate, blueberry and cranberry flavors. Another new flavor will be Chili Mango Jelly Belly® jelly beans which will “offer an exotic fusion of heat and sweet.” I’m not so sure about those, but then again, I don’t like mango.


• MARS Snackfood US is introducing another flavor in its PROMISES line: DOVE® Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate with Peanut Butter PROMISES®. These individually wrapped chocolates include eloquent "promise" captions inside each wrapper. (NOTE: One lucky Yumster just might find some of these in the Great Anniversary Candy Giveaway!)


• For Halloween, DOTS® Halloween Mix will include Candy Corn DOTS®, Blood Orange flavored Bat DOTS® and haunting Ghost DOTS® (Tootsie® Roll Industries). I’m psyched about these!


• And finally, DAS® Lolli lollipops have new flavor pairings: Naughty Ginger is a ginger and lemon flavored pop, Caramelini Me Happy is a salty caramel lollipop, Fab-O-Pom blends orange and pomegranate, and Man Bait is a maple bacon flavored lollipop. As I’m writing this, I’m eating one of the Fab-O-Poms. It’s got a nice balance of sweet and sour, although now that I’m getting down to the end of it, there are little pieces of fruit in it, and I’m not digging that. I prefer a totally smooth lollipop—no chunks. We’ll see how the others fare.

"I'm just an innocent little girl who has no idea what flavor this jelly bean is"

I'm up here in the Great White North to celebrate New Year's at the von Schokolats'. It's been snowing for four days straight. Fortunately we've got lots of chocolate to keep us happy.

On my first morning here, wee little Gretl von Schokolat put a Jelly Belly in front of me and said, "I don't know what flavor this is."

As it was morning and I hadn't yet had my coffee, I popped the unassuming green bean in my mouth, expecting it was green apple. But no. It was, of course, jalapeno. Let me state for the record that I hate peppers. Furthermore, I'm not much for really hot stuff except wasabi. So thank you very much, little evil child, for starting my day off with a bang.

Good Work!

Here we have evidence of the Baron's unusual candy find: Butter Toffee Popcorn Candy Corn. Personally, I just don't get the whole popcorn-flavored candy trend. I know that there's a secret society of people who go nuts over Buttered Popcorn Jelly Bellies, and I just don't get it. But then again, I'm not much of a popcorn lover. Kudos to the Baron for finding these, though, even if he ended up spilling them all in the car.

We Want Answers, Jelly Belly!

Little Gretl von Schokolat received a gift from Memaw at Thanksgiving: a bucket full of Jelly Bellys! Or so we all thought.

When the bucket was opened, we were all shocked to see a teeny-tiny, eensy-weensy package of Jelly Bellys in the bottom. I mean, we're talking small! On the tag, it said 3.25 ounces, so it was a little less than a quarter pound. From my experience working at the chocolate shop in college, I can tell you that a quarter pound ain't much. But to the lay person, that sounds like it would be a decent amount (as evidenced by the fact that people would always come into the store and want a quarter pound, "some of every flavor," which just wasn't possible unless you scooped out one bean per flavor. We finally started telling customers that there was a five-flavor limit on quarter-pounds). Needless to say, it was quite a disappointment.

I understand that packaging costs money, and the little bucket was very cute, but come on, seriously. This was just plain evil. So what've you got to say for yourselves, Jelly Belly people, huh?! Do you like making a little girl cry? (Well, all right, she didn't cry, but the Baron did.)

Thankfully there was another gift to cheer the mini von Schokolats up-- lip glosses in candy flavors: Nestle Crunch, Butterfinger and Baby Ruth. Apparently Buddy the Sausage Dog liked them, too, because he tried to eat the package.

Soda Pop Shoppe Jelly Bellys

Despite the fact that I suddenly have enough candy in the house to last me a good long time-- a weekend at least-- I decided to pick up a box of Jelly Belly Soda Pop Shoppe jelly beans. The flavors are: Orange Crush, A&W Rootbeer, Dr Pepper, 7Up, A&W Cream Soda and Grape Crush. I was particularly interested in the Dr Pepper and 7Up, since I've spent so much time taste-testing the actual soda for my job at Cadbury. Like all the other Jelly Belly flavors, these were pretty spot-on. The 7Up seemed a little bit more furniture-polish-lemon than the soda, but that may be because of the missing carbonation. The Dr Pepper tasted like the soda, only with maybe a hint more violet. The Orange Crush had that distinct orangey Life Saver flavor.
My only complaint about them is that they come in a big box, but inside there's just a little packet of beans. Wasteful packaging and misleading to the consumer. But hey, whatever.

The Jelly Bellies are trying to tell me something

For some reason, Jelly Bellies keep appearing in my life lately. I ordered a bunch of stuff the other day for my new hobby, creating jewelry out of Precious Metal Clay. I got a box filled with clay and cutters and texture sheets and-- a small bag of cherry and pineapple Jelly Bellies. I don't know why but there was a note that said "Enjoy the freebie!" I just found it a bit odd that it was only those two flavors. I almost wonder if the owner of the clay store had bought an assorted mix and didn't like cherry and pineapple, so she saved them for her customers. Eh, I'm okay with that.
When Sue and I were at Chocopologie, she mentioned a store that she liked because they offered Jelly Bellies in the individual flavors and that suddenly sparked a memory I had forgotten. When I worked at the chocolate store during college, there were some regular customers. One teeny-tiny woman bought two pounds of caramel nougats every week. She said she worked out at the gym an hour every day just to be able to eat them.
And then there were the freaky sisters. Every Saturday, these two women would come in and their order would always be the same: a half pound of every flavor Jelly Belly except licorice. First of all, a half pound isn't all that much, and secondly, we had a drawer of every flavor JB already mixed. So a normal person would order a half pound of the mix and call it a day. But no, these two freaky sisters would make us open every drawer of beans and scoop out two or three of every dang flavor. It was so annoying because it would take forever and if you overmeasured, you had to dump it into the premixed batch without them seeing. Eventually we got mean and started to screw around with them, putting a stray licorice bean into their boxes. Finally, one of the girls I worked with told them we had a limit of no more than ten flavors or you'd have to buy the pre-mixed. They stopped coming in.
On really slow days, my friend Kelly and I would devise our own fantasy mixes, like the "Carnival Mix," which consisted of cotton candy, buttered popcorn and bubblegum or the "Fruit Salad Mix" with tangerine, blueberry, watermelon, pineapple and green apple.