NOTE: This is a re-post – I just wanted to make sure everyone saw it since it’s timely.
Since the holidays are almost here, I thought I’d post a roundup of 10 candies I think would make excellent gifts for the holidays. These include the best candies I have come across in the short time that the Candy Addict website has been existence. Here they are (despite the numbering, they are in no particular order):
- Chocolate Covered Blueberries – These are by far my favorite candy that I have found since I started this website – they are soooooooo freakin’ good!
- Custom box of chocolates – Wolfgang Candy allows you to create your own box of chocolates – leave out the yucky ones! This should only be bought as a gift for someone if you really know their tastes in chocolates.
- Dragon Beard Candy – This handmade candy is lightly sweet and filled with a peanutty mixture. The packaging is elegant and would make a great, unique gift.
- Choxie – You’re bound to find a Choxie flavor your gift-recipient will like in this budget/gourmet line of chocolates sold by Target. It’s good chocolate at an affordable price and is packaged in fancy-schmancy packaging – perfect for gift-giving
- Plush Puffs – Gourmet marshmallows in many different flavors. Get some for the chef or marhsmallow lover in your life.
- Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans These are just too much fun to eat. At about $2 a box for the 1.6oz sampler, it would make a great stocking stuffer.
- Hershey’s Cherry Kisses – Yes, this seems like an odd gift, but these are really good and they are “limited edition” – they are supposed to be gone by February and they are hard to find in some areas of the country. If you know someone who like cherries and chocolate, these should be a hit.
- Oral Fixation Mints – These are fancy mints in fancy tins. The six pack (that comes in a cool little pack that looks like a mini boxed DVD set) is only $15 plus shipping and you get one of each flavor. The flavors include some really good ones like Mojito Mint (lime mint cocktail), and Night Light (caffeinated chai).
- Toblerone – Another inexpensive stocking stuffer, Toblerone is probably my most favorite affordable chocolate. You can find it in most groceries stores’ candy sections (at least here in NC). Go with the yellow box with red writing (contains honey nougat bits).
- Retro Candy Box (Candy You Ate As a Kid) – You can get these at the Old Time Candy Company and they come in boxes of candies from the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. A 2lb box is about $20. My wife got one of these (80s) for me for my birthday a few years back – fun stuff.
Other candies not reviewed on Candy Addict yet:
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
TAGS: candy chocolate blueberries reviews gifts holiday gift+ideas gift+giving food candies top10
I bought a package of Brach’s new chocolate-covered blueberry candies a couple of days ago. My interest in buying them was triggered by your review of those chocolate-covered blueberries from Chocolate Moon. Well, I opened them that night and tried a few, then a few more, then a few more…and less than 24 hours after I purchased them, I had emptied the package. So I guess you could say I liked them. I wouldn’t say they are my absolute favorite new candy, but they were fairly tasty.
A couple of caveats, however: CAVEAT #1. The Brach’s version is not technically chocolate-covered berries. In fact, the package itself says it contains milk chocolate-coated “blueberry pieces.” I interpreted that to mean that underneath the chocolate coating, I would find actual pieces of blueberries. WRONG. When I read the ingredient list (not until after I had taken the package home and opened it–shame on me!), I noticed that Brach’s apparently defines “blueberry pieces” as chewy pellets created from real blueberry puree, corn syrup, and various other ingredients that sound like refugees from a chemistry set. These little pellets do taste like real blueberries–probably because of the puree–and they approximate the consistency and texture of actual dried berries, but they are NOT what I consider to be berry PIECES, any more than today’s typical “fruit snacks” (the ones resembling gummy candies) are actual “pieces” of fruit. I imagine that using authentic dried blueberries (or PIECES of authentic dried blueberries) would improve these candies.
CAVEAT #2. I would prefer a little less chocolate, a little more blueberry. The Brach’s candies have a coating that is pretty good milk chocolate, but I would prefer the coating a bit thinner, so as to improve the chocolate-berry taste ratio. Sometimes it was hard for me to taste the blueberry flavor underneath the chocolate layer.
I noticed that Brach’s has a few other flavors in this new “Orchard Fresh” line of chocolates. One of them is orange, which I won’t try because I have never liked the combination of chocolate and orange flavors. I think they also have cherry and strawberry, and perhaps others as well. I’ll probably at least try the cherry-flavored ones, because I love chocolate-covered cherries and the chocolate-cherry flavor combination in general (as in black forest cake, for instance).
Anyway, the bottom line is: the Brach’s “Orchard Fresh” blueberry candies are a fairly pleasurable eating experience, but probably not nearly as good as the Chocolate Moon candies.
December 5th, 2005 at 10:34 amI found a great online candy bouquet company at http://www.candyblast.com. They do all sorts of cool birthday and get well candy gift baskets. I sent one to my sister and she loved it.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:14 pmthe wolfgang site has the chocolate covered blueberries
December 6th, 2007 at 10:44 pm