Holiday Gifts #2 & 3: Stocking Stuffers

I love the new Wonka Exceptionals products. It's like they take a typical candy and tweak it just a bit to make it different. Such is the case with their Peppermint Shortbread Chocolate Pieces. Each little piece is wrapped in foil like a present and the candy is milk chocolate with shortbread cookie and peppermint candy pieces. A new twist on peppermint bark.
I was very excited to see these limited edition Paul Frank Nestle Crunch bars. Who doesn't love a monkey with their chocolate? The package is actually a cardboard box/card. The only disappointing thing is that I expected the actual chocolate to have a monkey on it, but it was just a regular King Size Crunch. Still fun though. Love the packaging. The Paul Frank bars are only available at Target, by the way.

Review Re-Do: Nestle Crunch Crisp

I've been inspired by my previous post, wherein I couldn't remember if I had reviewed the Trader Joe's Raisin and Pecan bar before and decided not to check my archives before tasting it again. I thought it would be kind of fun to actually go back and re-sample some candy bars that I know I've reviewed in the past, but can't quite remember what I thought of them.
That brings us to the Nestle Crunch Crisp. A very fresh Nestle Crunch is one of my top favorite candy bars, so I had high hopes for the Crunch Crisp. I bought a pack of snack-sized bars, since they were on sale this week and my house has been stripped clean of all chocolate.
The first thing I noticed was the description on the wrapper: "Baked Wafers, Crisped Rice & Chocolate Creme." (The bold text is theirs, not mine.) Are they hoping we feel like this is a healthy choice because the wafers are baked? As opposed to what? Fried?
Now like I said, I haven't looked back at my original review, but I have to tell you, I found these terribly disappointing. Yes, they were crunchy, but they were overly sweet and had a funky chemical-chocolate taste to them. I wouldn't buy these again.
Now comes the fun part. I just looked back at my original review here. OMG. I loved them! And I even compared them to the now-extinct Bar None. What was I thinking?! This is SO not like a Bar None. I hang my head in shame. Although there are two factors to take into consideration: 1) My first sample was had after several glasses of champagne, which no doubt made my taste buds all wacky and 2) The current samples have been sitting in my refrigerator, so that absolutely does alter the taste a bit.
I'm not sure how I feel about this now. Can I be trusted? Will you ever listen to anything I say ever again? I didn't expect such an existential crisis this evening. I think I need to go cleanse my palate with Saltines now. We'll talk again tomorrow after I sleep on this.

Two New Reviews: Lindt Raisins & Nuts and Nestle Cranberry Raisinets

My goodness, I've had a lot on my candy dish lately and barely any time to write about it. The summer is whizzing by quickly. Before you know it, Halloween will be here. (In fact, that's what the grocery stores would have you think; they've already stacked out the cases of candy corn. I haven't even had a Pixy Stick or a Circus Peanut yet, for cryin' out loud.)
So, given my backlog, this is going to be a rambling, random post full of miscellany.

The Internet candy world has been abuzz with the latest candy bar from Lindt: Raisin & Nuts. Several people have done comparisons between this new Lindt bar and the classic Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar. I used to love the Cadbury version, until some brilliant rocket scientist decided to change the recipe. What used to be a creamy, milky chocolate is now gritty and flavorless. So I was excited to taste the Lindt version and see how it compared. I was not disappointed. The chocolate was smooth, creamy and sweet with a good mix of almonds and hazelnuts. My only complaint is that I wish the almonds were whole, but in the long run, it didn't matter. I wolfed that thing down. Thank you, Lindt, for restoring my faith in fruit and nut candy bars.Speaking of fruit and chocolate, another big buzz has been Nestle's Cranberry Raisinets. Oh how I wish I bought stock in the cranberry industry right before they decided to start selling dried cranberries. It used to be that cranberries were only for Thanksgiving. Now they're everywhere, including chocolate. I passed along a few packs of these to some family members for tasting. The consensus: Eh, they're fine, but nothing great. My mother said, "When I want chocolate, I want CHOCOLATE." Good point there. These little nibblies might be better in say, a cookie, than eaten alone. I love Craisins, but I think I'd still pick the classic Raisinet over the cranberry version.
And lastly these delicious chocolates. Ho, ho. I'm just joking. These aren't edible, they're candles, silly! The Ice Cube Queen was in town last week and she found these candles that are just perfect for the Candy Yum Yum homestead. My favorite is the one with the walnut.

And what about you, dear Yumsters? What has your candy land been looking like lately?

Nestle Crunch: Cause for Play! (A Contest and A Giveaway!)

Check out this bucket o' fun, Yumsters! Nestle Crunches, a ball, a frisbee ... there's a whole summer of good times right there for you. And guess what? The good folks at Nestle have offered to give three Yumsters a bucket of their own! It's all part of their "Cause for Play" campaign, in which they'll be giving away a playground and a grant to a well-deserving community. Here's the deets:

From March 7, 2009 through Oct. 29, 2009, parents, teachers, community organizers and anyone who believes in the power of play can enter to win a residential ready-to-assemble playground, $3,500 cash and the opportunity to help designate a $30,000 KaBOOM! playground grant to a deserving community. Entry to win can be found on NESTLE and WONKA fun-size bags via a unique online entry code to use on www.NestleCrunch.com/CauseforPlay. For every entry, NESTLE CRUNCH will also donate up to $30,000 to KaBOOM! - a national non-profit organization dedicated to bringing play back into children's lives. Additionally, NESTLE CRUNCH is donating $70,000 to KaBOOM! to further their national mission.

But for you, my friends, if you'd like a chance to win your very own bucket of "Cause for Play" fun, all you have to do is leave me a comment telling me about a favorite summer memory. It can be anything; I'll choose three lucky Yumsters on August 1, noon (EST). PLEASE don't sign in as anonymous, because then I'll have no way of contacting you. Leave me some way to get in touch with you. And please be a resident of the continental U.S. Good luck!

Hanging with The Connection: Totally Dope!

I saw The Connection this weekend and he had a few surprises up his sleeve for me. First off, an Israeli candy bar. You can't see in the horrid picture, but the wrapper shows a cow with a piece of chocolate and a fireworks-type explosion. Upon first glance, you'd think this was a piece of milk chocolate with bits of toffee in it. But then you put it in your mouth and-- taadaa! Fireworks! It's like it's filled with Pop Rocks. Suddenly these little glassy shards start popping in your mouth and in your head it sounds like sleet hitting a window. Good fun! The creepy part is that, even after you swallow the chocolate, the popping continues.

Next up, another horrid picture. But this is a gem, believe me. Here we have an excerpt from The Connection's travel journal, circa 1994. In it, he details every pound he spent on jams, boxers and tea at the Muffin Man. He also, however, rated the beers and chocolates he had, so without further ado, I give you The Connection's Pre-Blog Guide to British Sweets. (Note the ratings, from 1/2 star to three.)

Cadbury Caramel

**1/2: long sectioned bar, like Rolo, better smoother caramel, good chocolate

Nestle Lion

**: combination Kit Kat/Twix, lumpy ugly bar. If seen floating in a pool would cause a scare.

Terry's Bitz

***: very good chocolate with crunchy bits of mint crisp. Like eating the all-American mint Girl Scout cookie. Totally dope!

Nestle Secret

*1/2: Form over function, the Secret's out. This beautifully designed bar gets the chocolate engineer's award. Beautifully latticed wiring wrapped around chocolate mousse. Mousse like tough marshmallow. Disappointing.

Nestle Vice Versas

**: Oversize M&Ms thin dark shell over white chocolate and vice versa! White chocolate is great (from Switz.) but the Versa is the choc. It lacks.

Nestle Milky Bar

*: Small compact bar. Ok white choc. Basically it's mountain white.

Cadbury Timeout

1/2: They should call it quits and go to the showers. 2 bars like Twix with folded Flake chocolate between 2 wafers covered in chocolate. Almost no taste. Like eating cotton.

His last surprise will be unveiled soon. It'll be a treat for everyone!

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties ...

Crikey! I left my camera pluggy-transfer-cord at the von Schokolats, which means I can't show you the fabulous pictures of our candy art work. Oh well. In the meantime, let's talk about this: a Nestle Black Magic bar ("Mellow dark chocolate with raisins & almonds.")

I found it at the dreaded Christmas Tree Shoppe. When I saw it I thought, "Oh ho, what have we here? Something I've totally missed!" I felt kind of bad, like I've been shirking my candy duties and not keeping up on the latest yumminess.

It wasn't until I got it home and read the label that I saw it said, "Made in the Czech Republic for Nestle UK." Ah, so it's not something I necessarily should've known about! Whew!

The package is pretty hideous, so I probably wouldn't have bought it except for the fact that it contained raisins and almonds, quite possibly my favorite candy bar combination. So how was it? Mmmmm! It was really quite good. When they say "mellow" dark chocolate, they mean it. It didn't have that same aggressive snap that many dark chocolates have. This was more like a "Hey, I'm a bit older and wiser than milk chocolate, without the attitude." Deelish.

What's new

It sounds like everyone is having a grand ol' time at the Candy Expo. Good for them! You can read about Cybele's and Sera's coverage on their websites. I'm particularly interested in the Reese's Whipps (doesn't that just sound good?!) and the gigantic Junior Mints. Mmm, giant mints!
In the meantime, I just sampled the Nestle Crunch Stixx for the first time and wowee, those things are good. They're almost like chocolate-covered Pirouettes (or Yohays, depending on what you call them); crispy, crunchy, chocolatey and addicting. I can't have these in the house.

Free Candy! Free Candy!

People always ask me if Henri is named after anyone. (It's their polite way of saying, "Where the heck did you get that name from?") My standard answer is that he's named after Henry Miller-- my uncle and the writer. I mean, no, my uncle wasn't the writer, but his name was Henry Miller. Well now I have a more exciting answer, thanks to a press kit that just came in from Nestle. Among the little bits of trivia printed on the press kit folder was this gem:

"It was the neighbor of Nestle founder, Henri Nestle, who first combined Nestle Canned Milk with cocoa powder to create the world's first milk chocolate in 1875."

Is that cool or what? Now I'm going to tell everyone that he's named after the founder of Nestles and is heir to the candy fortune.

To celebrate this momentous discovery-- well, all right-- because Nestle is launching a new campaign, I'll be giving out two, yes count 'em, TWO coupons for a free Nestle Crunch Crisp. (See my previous review; I loved this candy bar; thought it tasted like a Bar None.) So let's have a little fun with this, shall we? Let's pretend that Henri was going to have a sibling (which he totally is not, so don't even get any ideas) and I want another candy-inspired name. What would it be? The two I like best will get a shiny, gleaming coupon good for One (1) Free Nestle Crunch Crisp Single Bar.

Maine: A Candy Wonderland

I went to Maine this weekend to visit family and it turned out to be a candy fantasyland (as the scale will now attest). Where to begin? Brian and I took advantage of the plethora of babysitters and went to check out Augusta where we found Kennebec Chocolates. I got some assorted pieces including a chocolate cheesecake, orange jelly, coconut cups, cashew turtles and, the most unusual and best of all, a blueberry cream. I'm really starting to dig blueberries. Traditionally I've only liked them in muffins, but I'm finding that I really like the flavor and it does go well with dark chocolate. My poor sister-in-law: we all scarfed down the chocolates before she had a chance to try them. (Same thing with the Nestle Crunch Crisp-- that puppy got devoured before she even got a bite. I think I owe her some candy now.)

The next day we all took a ride to the Maine State Prison Store where you can find all sorts of hand-carved wooden items made by, you guessed it, prisoners. Fun! I bought a cedar hanger and two cedar boxes to put in my closets. (Closets! Yes, I finally have closets!) On the way back, I spied a sign that said "Sauerkraut: 8 miles." Well, c'mon, how can you resist that?! So we made the trek and found ourselves at Morse's Sauerkraut, a little German store and restaurant. I nearly hyperventilated when we walked in and I saw row upon row of German candy. It was so overwhelming that I only bought a few things including a chocolate bar (which again, was devoured before I even had time to take a picture), and a box of Happy Hippos. These are made by the Kinder company that also makes Kinder Bueno and Kinder Eggs, some truly lovely confections. The hippos were made from wafers and inside was a creamy chocolate and milky-white-chocolate filling. They were a big hit.

Bar None is back! (And other candy news)

Well, not really. But the new Nestle Crunch Crisp is pretty damn close to the Bar None of my memory. I first heard about this new bar from William at Chocolate Obsession, where he described it as the "horrific love child of a Nestle Crunch and Kit Kat." Love that! So I had to try it. Oh YUM! It was crispy wafers and chocolatey cream and crunchy stuff. It's not crunchy enough to "feel" like a Nestle Crunch and the chocolate cream pushes aside any Kit Kat references. I really dig this bar. I will admit, though, that I tried it after a few glasses of champagne, so it could be that I'm totally off-base. Guess I'll just have to try it again to be sure.
In other candy news, apparently Dum Dums are having a contest where you can enter to have a lollipop flavor named after you (or your kid). I can't think of any "H" flavors to go with Henri, though.
And this is pretty exciting, although it's not candy-related: the banana Twinkie is back! Apparently this is the summer of banana. I thought Twinkies were going to be discontinued for some reason, but I guess not. I haven't kept up on the news. But I have a vague recollection of banana Twinkies from when I was a kid, although naturally I always preferred a Chocodile, which was a Twinkie-like cake covered in chocolate.

Caramel Ecstasy

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had bought a bag of Nestle caramel eggs after Easter, thinking they were Nestle Crunch. As a candy, I wasn't too impressed with them. But as an ingredient in a recipe, well now, hoo boy, that's another matter.
I made these Caramel-Filled Chocolate Cookies from a recipe off of Allrecipes.com. Basically it's a chocolate cookie dough that you wrap around a chocolate-covered caramel. I used Penzey's cocoa powder rather than a cheaper brand since the recipe called for so much of it. The cookie was almost like a brownie: soft and chewy with a nice, complex chocolate taste. The candy in the center got all melty and oozey so you'd bite into this warm caramel filling. These were a huge hit with my weekend guests. I actually took a picture, but it came out really atrocious, so I'll let you imagine them instead. Better yet, make a batch yourself. They're pretty easy and totally worth the effort. I'd like to try this recipe with peanut butter cups. I think that would phenomenol.

Week in review

It's quite a stormy day here in New England. I've been writing an article on morning sickness all day and I'm counting my blessings that those days are OVER! Those nine months were probably the longest I've ever gone without a regular diet of chocolate. Anyhow, I've whittled down my Polish supply. The 3 Bit had a strange, milky-flavored substance between the chocolate and the biscuit which made the whole thing a bit too sweet for me. But the Kinder Bueno, ooohhhh boy, it's true what everyone says. Yummy crispy flaky smooth. The wafer part reminded me of these peanut butter things I used to get in high school. It's like a pillow of crispy wafer, only instead of being filled with peanut butter, it has a smooth, creamy hazelnut filling. Mmmmm, mmmmm. I scarfed that puppy down in no time.
In other news, the after-Easter candy sales were pitiful. It was like the shelves had been ransacked by some crazed, last-minute Easter bunnies. The only thing I got was a bag of Nestle's eggs. I thought they were Nestle Crunch eggs, but because I was in too much of a hurry, I didn't realize that they're actually caramel eggs. They're not very good, so I'm going to make chocolate caramel cookies out of them later this week.

I promised you something fantabulous ...

... so here it is. It's not a candy bar, it's a book called "Krazy Kids' Food! Vintage Food Graphics" by Steve Roden and Dan Goodsell.
I have to preface this by saying that something weird happens when you have a baby. Suddenly you start talking and singing and saying all sorts of stuff that a normal sane person would not. For example, lately we've started singing an old Nestle's jingle, substituting "Henri" for "Nestle's." It originally went like this: "Nestle's makes the very best ... chocolate." It was sung by a hideously scary dachsund with sharp teeth like a dolphin. So I was at Barnes & Noble the other day, and I saw this book on the discount rack. I picked it up and opened to a random page and there was an ad for Nestle's Chocolate Soda with the freaky dog who, as it turns out, is named Farfel. I had to get it, but it wasn't until later when I realized what a treasure this was.
The book is simply pictures of products from the 1950s-1970s, but holy cow! What memories they bring back! A few delicious examples:

• Mr. Wiggle, the Candy Flavor Gelatin Dessert From Jell-O: these little boxes have a wiggly dude on them and came in flavors like Candycorn Orange, Gumdrop Grape, Rockcandy Raspberry, Candyball Cherry, Lollypop Lime and Jellybean Strawberry.
• Life Savers Candy & Gum Fun House: I totally forgot that there used to be Life Savers gum! The box, decorated with kooky alien-like characters, had five rolls of Life Savers and five rolls of gum.
• Nabisco Chocolate Snaps: These cookies came in little individual boxes. My mom used to buy them all the time. There was a photo of a cookie on the front with drawn-on eyes, ears and nose to make it look like a bear. There were also the Zuzu Ginger Snaps and Lemon Snaps, but I only remember having the chocolate.
• Willy Wonka's Peanut Butter Oompas: These were like big M&Ms, only with peanut butter inside. They were pretty gross.
• Big Banana Bubble Gum: Yes! I remember this! I can almost taste the incredibly artificial banana flavor now!
• Quicksand Bubblegum: The package says, "The world's fastest flavor chew. It pours." I remember this powdery goo you'd chomp on until it turned into a semi-solid wad of gum.
• Little Monster Cookies: "A fright in every bite ... Flavor that will haunt you." If I remember correctly, the flavor was haunting.
• Pillsbury's Funny Face Soft Drink Mix: I don't think I ever had this-- my mom wasn't into giving us fancy drinks-- but I do remember going to Rugby Park down the street from my house and there was a teenage boy wearing a T-shirt with one of the Funny Face characters on it and I thought that was so cool. The flavors were: Freckle Face Strawberry, Lefty Lemon, Rootin'-Tootin' Raspberry, Jolly Olly Orange, Choo Choo Cherry and Goofy Grape. I'm pretty sure it was the Goofy Grape on his shirt.
• Wrapples: "6 neat sheets of caramel with sticks for making 6 caramel apples." These didn't really wrap around the apples very well. It was like eating an apple with a piece of plastic squished onto it.
  
  I could go on and on. What a find! For only four bucks, this little book has offered me endless nostalgia.