| « | July 2009 | » | ||||
 |
||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
Yes, I've switched addresses, moving on to a better blog site, one which will allow multiple categories, faster loading and more efficient comments. I won't be updating here any longer, but you can read all my new posts at the new and improved (hopefully) Sugar Hog Blog.
Yesterday I complained about the salt level in the Smooth and Creamy Peanut Butter Store. That's one problem the MM
PBC does not have - in fact, it has only 75 mg of sodium.
Cutting this was interesting. It had some real resistance to the knife, while the knife passed with ease through the regular one. The marshmallow is not like it seems on the package - this is not a runny, liquidy substance, it is firm and substantial. It wasn't as sweet as I assumed it would be - it is sweet, but the marshmallow doesn't overwhelm the peanut butter, and it contributes a nice texture.
I'm not sure about this one. It sounds like it should be awful. I mean, a Reese's Cup and marshmallow? But it's not bad. Shockingly enough (for me, at least), I find I kind of like it. It won't take the place of a regular PBC in my favorites list, but I can see myself getting them again.
Hmm... makes me want to take PBCs with me next time I go camping. Can you imagine a s'mores with one of them in the place of a Hershey's bar?
SCORE: 8 out of 10
Purchased at: 7-11
Price: ?
Here's a question for you - what says smooth and creamy to you? I mean, what is that essential element that just cries out "this is one smooth and creamy candy! Oh, yeah!" If you said, "salt," you would be thinking along the lines of the Reese's flavor designers.
Yes, this candy has a whopping 150 mg of sodium in it, while a normal Reese's has 130. You can taste it, too. The S&C PBC has a noticeably saltier taste. It left a lingering aftertaste in my mouth. I might not notice it so much if I weren't alternating bites with a regular Reese's, but I found the balance of salty and sweet to be skewed in the opposite direction White Chocolate and Caramel PBCs went. It is a little smoother, but I probably won't bother with this again. I admit to a bias - I like the crumbliness of a regular PBC. This one is still a fairly dry peanut butter, a bit crumbly, but please, cut the sodium level.
SCORE: 6.5 out of 10
Purchased at: BP
Price: 75 cents
Caramel Peanut Butter Cups are a permanent addition to the Reese line, a regular peanut butter cup with a layer of caramel. The year of their introduction isn't even listed on the Hershey's site (which is actually pretty pathetic), but it was either 2005 or 2006. Either way, I haven't tried them before.
Well... it's sweet. Sweeter than the White Chocolate PBC, with a caramel that reminded me of the runny center of a Caramello. The caramel is concentrated around the edges of the bottom of the cup, and at least one bite seemed to have the two fillings in equal amounts. That may sound good, but I want a dominant peanut-butter taste, and the caramel won the struggle. As you can see in the cross-sections, the CPBC (top) has significantly less peanut butter than the regular PBC. This might not be so much of a problem if the caramel were better than it is. It's better than the White Chocolate PBC in terms of sweetness, with the counterbalance of milk chocolate and peanut butter, but it's still a little too sweet.
SCORE: 7 out of 10
Purchased at: Kroger
Price: 25 cents, on sale from 69 cents
Here is the exact opposite of yesterday's Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup - the no chocolate peanut butter cup! Okay, yeah, it's white chocolate, but you can't tell me that really counts.
The WC PBC was one of the first special edition peanut butter cups, released in 2003. In 2004, it was added to the regular line on a permanent basis. I must say, I'm not a fan of this one. It's really sweet for one thing, a problem white chocolate often runs into. It really doesn't provide a contrast to the peanut butter taste, and has a mild but unpleasant aftertaste, another problem of white chocolate. The peanut butter is good, as one might expect. However, on the whole I'm underwhelmed.
(Lest one thinks I'm exceptionally biased against white chocolate, I do prefer white chocolate covered pretzels to the milk chocolate variety. It just doesn't do as well here.)
SCORE: 6.5 out of 10
Purchased at: Kroger
Price: 25 cents (4 for $1 sale. Normally 69 cents.)
I've finished my reading for tomorrow and have completed my research prospectus (whatever possessed me to go for a PhD, anyway?). Seems as good a time as anyone to launch the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup theme series! Yes, I have acquired five variants on the traditional PBC, sliced them open and photogaphed them with a regular PBC for purposes of comparison, and stand ready to make the great personal sacrifice of eating them.
First off is Reese's Double Chocolate. It's a PBC with chocolate-flavored peanut butter rather than plain peanut butter. The texture is denser than a regular PBC, without the typical crumbliness. The flavor, as one might expect, is more chocolatey, with the center tasting like a mix of peanut butter and coco. It also seems just a bit more sweet and not as salty. In fact, comparing the back of the two packages, a regular PBC has 130 mg of sodium to the DC PBC's 85, so this may be a better choice for a Reese's lover on a restricted sodium diet. Not a lot better, but hey... Anyway, the DC PBC also has less total fat, at 11 mg versus the regular's 13 mg, 210 calories versus 230 and 100 fat calories versus 120. I didn't expect to see quite so much of a difference. It's also quite good. I'm not sure which I would choose as a preferred snack.
SCORE: 9 out of 10
Purchased at: BP Station
Price: $0.65
Almond Roca is, like its younger sibling Cashew Roca, a nutty, crunchy butter toffee with a chocolate coating, rolled in chopped nuts.
Almond Roca was created in 1923, by J.C. Haley. It continues to be made by Brown & Haley, who brag that it was also the first candy to be packaged in air-tight tins, in 1927. It's still made in the same factory as in 1923, five billion candies later.
Tastewise, there isn't a huge difference between almond and cashew. The primary taste is of a very rich, crunchy butter toffee, followed by chocolate, followed by nuts. The cashew is perhaps a bit less sweet, but it's not all that noticeable. The texture is nice, with the toffee being a rather soft hard (you're not going to crack a tooth or get a sore jaw from these), and when you bite into it it cleaves without leaving sharp edges.
The Brown & Haley website lists a few other flavors, in addition to almond and cashew - honey-roasted peanut, mocha, candy cane and sugar-free almond. The honey-roasted peanuts are the newest, premiering in the spring of 2006. They sound interesting, and one I would like to try. Mocha - I'm sure they would be lovely if I liked the taste of coffee, but I don't. Love the smell, hate the taste. Candy cane, I would like to try just to see how peppermint and buttery toffee could taste good together. Sugar free... kind of misses the point.
SCORE: 9 out of 10
Purchased at: Kroger
Price: $2.50 (sale) for 5 oz.
King Leo is an old brand founded on peppermint sticks, first produced in 1901. Their only store is located in Julian, California, but their products are sold all around, 
particularly in places which trade in on feelings of nostalgia.
They are advertised as "soft right out of the bag" and "soft peppermint candy." I thought this was funny, because they're really not soft. You know the texture of a really crunchy after-dinner mint? One that required chewing because it was like a peppermint-flavored powder-sugar rock? Yeah, that's these. They're made of sugar, peppermint oil, cream of tartar and artificial colors, and seem to be pressed candy rather than cooked. They do dissolve if you suck on them, but I'm more of a chewer. I quite like the texture, but it isn't a soft candy by any means.
The taste? Think after-dinner mints again. That's basically what these are, just in stick form. Each is about three inches long, and features a white core wrapped in a red and white striped layer. Both layers are the same thing, so they are pretty much indistinguishable.
This is tasty, and a nice alternative peppermint candy. Their web site features a variety that I would love to try - dark chocolate dipped peppermint sticks. I am not, however, willing to spend twenty dollars on one pound, even if it does come in a pretty tin. Maybe I'll just melt some good dark chocolate and dip them myself. It would make a nice addition to a Christmas cookie tray.
SCORE: 8 out of 10
Purchased at: Nashville Candy Store
Cost: $1.99
Milka Noir Milk Chocolate is a nice twist - a milk chocolate bar with 45% cocoa content, tasting like a creamy, sweet dark chocolate. Milka is an old brand, dating back to 1901, although I wasn't able to find specific information on when noir was introduced.
Regular Milka is just what one would expect from a Swiss chocolate - creamy, sweet milk chocolate. Milka Noir has a similar mouth-feel - it's very smooth and tender, and melts quickly in the mouth, without a distracting waxy texture. However, it's a little more bitter, with a stronger chocolate taste and a little less sweet. According to the ingredients list, Milka Noir contains hazelnut paste, which surprised me, because I really didn't taste it. After I read that, I tasted more, and was able to identify that as part of the reason for the nutty, fruity undertones. I love hazelnuts, so I'm always happy to see them. It would have been nice to have been able to taste them more, but it does a good job adding some depth to the flavors.
SCORE: 9 out of 10
Purchased at: The Candy Emporium, Nashville, IN
Cost: $2.99
This is a big bag of candy, with a lot of variety. Some of it is wonderful, some of it is icky, and it runs the range from chocolate, peanuts, hard candies, filled hard candies, flaky bars and jellies. All in all, I would recommend it. But just so you know what you're getting yourself into, I thought I might provide a candy-by-candy review.
This is a long one.
Jofukuki comes in a variety of hard candies:
Orange Swirl Jofukuki: a nice orange flavor, with something else swirled with it. It isn't quite cream, it's almost more of a yogurt flavor. They're not the prettiest of candies, with the white and the colored swirls kind of blending together. It's actually quite good, a kind of a creamsicle flavor, but not as sweet.
Red Swirl Jofukuki: I think this is raspberry, which was kind of unexpected. I don't usually associate raspberries with Chinese candies. Like orange jofukuki, there's a slightly sour, yogurty flavor to them, which is quite tasty once I got used to it. The hard candies in this collection are remarkably smooth and slow to dissolve, so there's plenty of time to enjoy the flavor.
Milk Dream: This hard candy is shaped like a Rolo, with a texture just like a Werther's Original. They are very light and creamy, and the taste is that of a very milky caramel. The taste is not as buttery as I'm accustomed to, with more of a caramelized condensed milk flavor.
Orange Wrapper Swirl Jofukuki: I'm calling this a swirl, because it's showed that way on the packaging, but it actually is a darker version of the Milk Dream. The texture is the same, but the flavor is more caramelized, with almost a burnt caramel taste (not that that's a bad thing). There's another flavor as well, one that's hard to define, probably light coco but also with a subtle coffee nuance.
Gold Wrapper Swirl Jofukuki: (not pictured) This is more milky than the one in the orange wrapper, without as much of a caramel/coco flavor and a lot sweeter. It has an almost fruity taste to it.
Chocolate Flavor Crispy Tart: "Chocolate flavor" had me nervous from the start. The tart is a little dome of crisped rice, held together with "chocolate". The ingredients don't list puffed rice, but I would swear that's right. They list peanuts and shredded coconuts, but I didn't detect that at all. I also didn't taste any hazelnut, which was depicted on the package. They were really rather flavorless, although the texture was nice.
Orange Crispy Tart: It smells like a cheap orange flavored "white chocolate," and it tastes like it, too. It isn't bad, but it isn't good either, just mediocre.
Yoghourt Crispy Tart: Their spelling, not mine. A lot of East Asian candies have a yogurt flavor to them - it seems to be quite popular. It is vaguely sour, but tastes more like the yogurt on breakfast bars, very sugary and bland. Strangely enough, it made me cough.
Apple: A light green translucent hard candy. The taste is milder than I expected, a light, creamy apple juice flavor. The creaminess may come from the whole milk powder and condensced milk being the third and fourth ingredient. The center of the candy is chewy rather than being hard all the way through, and there is a semi-liquid pocket in the very middle.
Lemon: Very pale yellow-green. Actually, it looks a lot like the apple. It starts with a very nice lemon drop flavor, and continues to hold onto that to the end. The center isn't as chewy as apple's, but it does have a more noticeable semi-liquid center.
Heart Candies: So named because it has a heart on the package, in both red and pink foil. This is a pretty candy, a nice peachy orange, transparent and the same shape as the milk dreams. There is no noticeable scent, but a strong honey taste. There seems to be seomething else, which I again can't identify. It has a nice smooth texture, and is sweet but not too sweet. I don't know why they chose the color they did - you would think a honey candy would be, you know, honey colored. Oh, well, it's still quite lovely and it's nice to have a honey-based candy, which you don't tend to see much.
Long Orange: No, nothing orange-flavored. It's the dark orange package in the bottom row, dead center; also the light orange, they're both the same flavor. This looks and tastes amazingly like a less-sweet Butterfingers. It's flaky, layered texture shatters when you bite into it. It's quite good.
Dark Red:This is the dark red package next to the orange one. It has the same texture as the orange one, but the taste and color are very different. First of all, it's a strange gunmetal gray color, not one I associate with candy. It has a bit of a peanut taste, so I'm wondering if it has to do with sesame - it's hard to taste, but the sesame is definitely there.
Light Red: First row, third from the right. This a firm jelly candy, a very dark brown with a dense texture. It's some kind of fruit flavor, but I have no idea what. I think it's one of those acquired tastes that I haven't got. To me, it isn't sweet and has an earthy flavor.
Dark Red with Double Character: Same as the Light Red directly below it.
Nougat: Silver wrapper with blue center. The peanut nougat isn't very good - the peanuts are nice, and they're not chopped too small, but the nougat itself is pretty tasteless. It isn't sweet or anything, just sort of there to bind the peanuts together. This is a dry nougat, not chewy or soft. In fact, I encountered two in the bag which were rock hard and inedible.
Peanut Chocolate Milk (Green wrapper): The peanuts are a bit unusual, very crunchy, with almost a candied peanut texture, although they're no sweeter than, say, a peanut M&M. The chocolate is passable, nothing special. The nuts taste fresh. I wonder if there's a thin sugar shell on the inside, providing that extra oomph.
Peanut Chocolate Strawberry (Pink wrapper): I honestly had no idea what to expect on this one. It's a peanut covered in beige, very faintly pink coating. There was a loose peanut in this one, so I can confidently say that the extra crunch was not coming from the nut itself.. The flavor is tasty, like a strawberry yogurt. I didn't think I would like these, but they're pretty good.
Peanut Chocolate Orange (Red wrapper): Interesting - the orange flavored candies are bright lemon yellow. Like strawberry, it has a yogurt feel to it, but it also brings to mind Creamsicles. Another one that I didn't think I would like, but they're good. Not great, but not bad.
Peanut Chocolate Dark Cocoa (Blue wrapper): There isn't a huge difference between this and Peanut Chocolate Milk, but it is a little less sweet and has more of a chocolate taste.
SCORE: 7 out of 10 for the collection.
Purchased at: Obo's
Price: $4.95
Newer | Latest | Older
