Some good, some bad

I haven't posted in a long time because of so many annoyances-- my computer, Blogger, my domain name, the new kitty that attacks me whenever I put my hands on the keyboard. I figured I was done with this whole blogging business. But the fact is, I just have a soft spot for candy and I probably always will. I'll get all this techo crap out of the way eventually (the cat is another story); in the meantime, enjoy these candies that I've been stockpiling.

I absolutely loved this Fluffy Toffee bar made by Seattle Chocolates. I'm not exactly sure why I chose it, since I'm not a huge toffee fan, but I'm glad I did. This was perhaps the closest candy bar I've ever had to what I envision the bars in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory to be like. The chocolate was smooth and creamy, and the marshmallow was fluffy with just enough stickiness. The toffee added a nice texture contrast.

Then, there is this, which I HATED. I really wanted to like it, because I generally don't like Vosges chocolate and I was hoping that this would be the one. Unfortunately, it wasn't. There's a lot of flavor there, but it's a big mouthful of bitter and nastiness. (Call me unsophisticated. I don't care.)

However, I do have some standards, and so I just couldn't get into this: Rockin' Nut Road Snickers. It was supposed to be all marshmallowey and nutty, but instead it just tasted like a big chemical mashup. For the record, the Sugar Baby enjoyed it.

You win some, you lose some

Yes, Easter came and went without a peep (no pun intended!) from Candy Yum Yum! I took lots of pictures of some of the new candy that I saw on the shelves, but I just wasn't motivated this season. Even the Easter Bunny didn't really pull through for the Sugar Baby. He brought some jelly beans, some gummies and a chocolate rabbit, but overall it wasn't a big sugar rush here. I guess I've just been in a candy funk lately. That doesn't mean I haven't been eating candy, of course. It's just that there's not much to say about eating half a bag of Hershey Kisses, especially when you only meant to eat four.

In any case, here's something new that I tried recently: a Trader Joe's PB&J Milk Chocolate Bar. My first thought was, why ruin a peanut butter cup with jelly? But then I tried it. It's a different taste experience than a peanut butter cup. Obviously, first of all it's a bar. The peanut butter is very smooth and creamy and the jelly is more like the liquid filling you find in "fancy" candy bars, like the Godiva raspberry bar. It wasn't overly sweet, which I liked. I would definitely do this one again.
However, the same can't be said about the Snickers 3X Chocolate. Snickers with three times the chocolate? What's not to love, right? Well, let me just say that this bar was a dud. It was actually 2 mini bars inside one package. I like that concept, because sometimes you just don't want a whole candy bar. The description says "milk chocolate, chocolate flavored nougat, chocolate caramel and peanuts." All of that adds up to, well, practically no taste difference between the ingredients. I missed the lip-puckering maltiness of the regular Snickers nougat and the chocolate caramel just seemed blah. I really uphold Snickers as probably the most iconic candy bar, so this was a huge disappointment.

Oh the anticipation! New candy bars on tap from Mars

Breaking news from Mars! Check this out candy lovers. There's some good stuff here!
1) 3 Musketeers Coconut will hit the shelves in December. Unlike other coconut bars that I so looked forward to (Twix Coconut, for one), this one scares me a little. I'm not sure it sounds that good, but I'm certainly willing to check it out.
2) M&M's Dark Chocolate Mint. Now these, I'm anxiously anticipating.
3) In May, 2012, look for M&M Snack Mixes. Milk Chocolate Candies Snack Mix features milk chocolate M&M’s, mini chocolate chip cookies, mini pretzel twists and peanuts; Dark Chocolate Candies Snack Mix comprises dark chocolate M&M’s, raisins, almonds and mini pretzel twists; Peanut Chocolate Candies Snack Mix has peanut M&M’s, mini shortbread cookies, almonds and mini pretzel twists. YUM!
4) Snickers 3X Chocolate 2 To Go bars (that's a lot of numbers in a candy bar name) will feature peanuts in chocolate caramel on top of chocolate nougat, covered in milk chocolate.

Snickers Peanut Butter Squared

The Easter Island heads contemplate a piece of Snickers Peanut Butter Squared, which they have mixed feelings about.

I don't like to feel like I'm being duped, which is kind of how I feel about the new Snickers Peanut Butter Squared. While the candy comes in a traditional bar wrapper, it's actually two square pieces. For portion control reasons, this is a good idea; you can have one now and one later. With a traditional Snickers, you can't just eat half without getting chocolate and caramel everywhere. But of course, in this format, there is less candy than if it was a single bar, which makes me feel like Snickers is pretending to be all cool with a new candy shape, but instead, they're really trying to save on costs.
In any case, the taste. Imagine a Snickers with a layer of peanut butter wedged in there. It sounds better than it is. Don't get me wrong. It's yummy enough, but the mouth-feel is awfully thick. What it comes down to is this: the regular, run-of-the-mill, plain old Snickers is quite nearly the most perfect mass-market, drugstore candy bar out there. I appreciate the attempts at different flavors and sizes, but why mess with a good thing? Keep the peanut butter for Reese's. I'll have my Snickers old-skool style.

Halloween 2010: WE WERE TRICKED!

Okay, first of all, Halloween on a Sunday: bad idea. There was just something wrong, something off about the whole evening.
Here's how it went down for us. In the afternoon, I took the Sugar Baby to the local farm where they were supposedly having some sort of Halloween celebration. "Bring a canned good for the local food bank!" it said in the paper. I went into my pantry and oddly, had nary a canned good, so I packed up the ten thousand individual packets of Annie's Cheddar Bunny crackers I had that the Sugar Baby won't eat. It was the best I could. We got to the farm and basically it was a "buy a raffle ticket to win a pumpkin" and "listen to loud, annoying spooky music" festival. Boo.
We started off trick-or-treating in my parents' neighborhood. It was oddly quiet. It seemed as if more people had their lights off than on. And, a new thing this year, quite a few houses actually left out buckets of candy. This was my dream when I was little. I'd heard of people doing it, but never experienced it. Well, this year, the Sugar Baby got plenty of opportunities to paw through bowls of candy.
After doing that circuit, we went to see Fr. John who was rocking Halloween. Then, onto our neighborhood. Again, fewer houses were giving out candy. What gives?
In any case, here's the haul: one full-sized Snickers and Skittles. Lots of mini Milky Ways, Snickers, Twizzlers, Sweettarts, etc. But enough of that. Let's look at the freaks.
Example one: a mini candy cane. You cannot fool me, Candy Cane person. I know this is leftover from last year's Christmas.
Example two: A Clark Teaberry Gum Ball. Where did this even come from? I've never seen these and who on earth would buy them. (I mean, I totally would, but that's just me.)
Example three: Butterfinger Snackerz. I couldn't wait to try these bad boys. They were strange. The first taste was really good. They're just like Butterfingers, except they're small squares and the center is hollow so they're not as dense. But then they got this weird butteriness to them that I wasn't sure I liked. Although to be fair, my teeth are not in great shape these days and I found crunching to be difficult.
And then, dear Yumsters, I give you our two tricks.
For tonight's after-dinner treat, the Sugar Baby chose the Cow Tail. "Good choice," I said. "You'll like that." I opened it for him and found that it was broken. I gave him the first piece, then the second, then I said, "Wait a minute. These aren't supposed to break. These are supposed to be chewy." I looked at the wrapper. It had expired in 2009! So gross.
I suggested the Sugar Baby take something similar, like perhaps that Chick-o-Stick. I unwrapped it, he took a bite and then this cloud came over his face. I knew that cloud. I had experienced it myself this summer when I bit into a cracker from 2000. I grabbed the Chick-o-Stick wrapper and wouldn't you know it? Expired in 2008. Someone's trying to poison us! Naturally I then put it in my mouth to see if it truly was bad. O.M.G. The Sugar Baby took it all with aplomb (and cleansed his taste buds with Dots), but I can still taste the bitter sawdust in my mouth. A pox upon those who distribute expired candy! Raisins and pennies are one thing, but bad candy is a whole 'nother ball game.

Guest Review: Snickers Fudge and Milky Way Simply Caramel

The Von Schokolats have taken time out of their busy schedules to do a taste test of the latest offerings from Mars. (The candy manufacturer, that is; not the planet.)
(If you've been paying attention, you'll notice another name amongst the crowd. Let me introduce Manfred, the Von Schokolats' exchange student from Brazil.)

Milky Way Simply Caramel

Liesl: very thick, stuck to my braces

Manfred: spit it out after about 2 seconds of chewing (ew!)

The Baron : Nothing special, I wouldn't buy it

Gretl : Tastes like caramels. Don't like it; it's too sticky.

The Baroness : Tastes like a Caramello. No big deal, very disappointing.

Snickers Fudge

The Baron : Don't like the texture at the beginning. Slight peanut butter taste. No fudge texture or flavor.

Liesl : Chocolatety deliciousness, crunchy, I think I ate my elastic, very thick

Manfred : Good, but you wouldn't want to eat too much of it.

Gretl : Tastes like ... nothing. It's a rip off on a Snickers.

The Baroness : I was very excited to try this as Snickers are my favorite candy bar. However, this one left a gritty feeling in my mouth. There wasn't enough caramel and I was very disappointed. I would prefer a regular Snickers!

Candy Kitchen

Even though the cupboards were chock full o' Whoopie Pies (oh wait, that's not true. The Baron ate them all), the energetic Lake Glory Hi campers decided to attempt to make homemade Snickers and Peppermint Patties.

We chopped, we melted, we layered and refrigerated. We followed the dang recipes to a T and what did we get? A giant pan of break-your-teeth Snickers and lots of peppermint-flavored patties o' goop. What went wrong?? In the case of the Snickers, apparently we melted the caramel too long because when it set up, it became like shards of sticky evil glass that magnetized to any and all fillings in our teeth. Quite a disappointment, because otherwise, these would've been pretty darn good.

As for the Peppermint Patties-- who knows what went wrong. All I know is they weren't dippable (they crumbled under the weight of the chocolate, even after we added oil to thin the chocolate out), and we couldn't even just drizzle them. It was a very messy undertaking, and now the Baroness is stuck with lots of leftover weird ingredients that she'll never have another use for.

Lesson learned. Shell out the $1 and just buy a stinkin' pre-made candy bar.

Hello, 1980s? Snickers is Calling

Mars has announced their new Christmas offerings for 2008, including a Mr. T Snickers gift pack. Um, I know I'm hopelessly out of the loop, but wasn't Mr. T popular, like, almost two decades ago?

Snickers Adventure and Twix Java

It was looking like I was going to have some yummy days ahead of me, since I was finally able to get my mitts on both a Snickers Adventure bar and a Twix Java. Never have I been so disappointed. Well, okay, there was that one time when I was eight years old and the Ice Cube Queen took me to the kids' bingo night at church and I was really, really hoping to win the giant roll of insulation that someone had donated as a prize*, but this was a close second.
The Snickers Adventure bar is the latest tie-in for the new Indiana Jones movie (that, despite my better judgement, I'm actually looking forward to). The description on the wrapper says, "Rich chocolate. Crunchy nuts. And a cliffhanger kick of exotic spice and a hint of sweet coconut flavor." Well, boy howdee, that sounds good, doesn't it?
It's not.
Imagine if you will: you take an air-tight Tupperware container and put in a regular Snickers and an open bottle of Coppertone suntan lotion. You seal up the Tupperware and let it bake in the hot sun for a few months, thereby allowing the fake coconut aroma of the lotion to infiltrate the normally delicious Snickers. And voila! You have a Snickers Adventure.
Next, the Twix Java, which I've been sooo looking forward to. In fact, I contacted someone at Mars to find out where I could get one, because I haven't had any luck. The nice lady informed me that they're already being phased out, but I happened to stumble upon one. The caramel is coffee flavored and the cookie is chocolate, not vanilla. It was good. It was perfectly acceptable. But it wasn't the big "OMG!" I was hoping it would be. Frankly, I didn't think it had enough coffee flavor. So there you have it. A disappointing haul, but still better than listening to some other kid shout "BINGO!"

*As I was only eight years old, I had no idea what the insulation was, but it looked amazingly similar to cotton candy and it had a picture of the Pink Panther on the wrapping. You would think, however, that some thoughtful adult might've said, "Hey, I don't think any kids are going to want to win this insulation. Why don't we just donate it to the church and offer them a 25 cent candy bar instead?"

Caramel catch-up

It's been a few days since I've posted. Life is getting crazy around here with a pending move and Henri's first birthday fast approaching. Not to mention the fact that I'm having my annual White Elephant party on Sunday. Woo hoo! I found a great recipe for the party at Candy Addict for Leftover Easter Candy Cake. How awesome does that sound? And why didn't I think of that? A cake with all sorts of candy chopped up and baked into it. I'm going to have to make it.
My candy samplings have taken me down the caramel road, and I can't say I've been too impressed. First up, I bought a package of Hershey's 'n' More Caramel Cookie Bars. I thought they'd be like Twix, but they weren't at all. The caramel was really sweet and the chocolate was very plastic-y, which was a disappointment, since you can usually count on Hershey for some palatable chocolate. The cookie lacked the grainy grittiness of a Twix. There were four in the package, so I tried to pawn them off on my niece, but she wasn't impressed either.
My second new item this week was an Easter item, a Snickers Creme Sports Egg. First of all, let me just say that it bothers me that suddenly sports have entered the realm of Easter candy. Why is this? Can boys not have bunnies and chicks? Now their eggs have to be shaped like soccer balls and footballs? I find that annoying. But I bought this because I was intrigued by the "creme" reference. What could that possibly mean? As it turns out, this isn't just a Snickers in an egg shape. There's no nougat, which was disappointing. Instead the filling is a soft, not quite liquid caramel with peanuts. It was fine but nothing I'd buy again.